Any class martial class can be considered to. The Wood Elves are especially good monks, with +2 Dex and +1 Wis. They could be seeing a 16 Dex and 16 Wis for an AC of 16, and +5 to hit and +3 damage. and base land speed of 35, which will only keep going up from there.
That said their best damage is a spear or quarterstaff in versatile mode for 1d8 amage and their unarmed attacks only do 1d4 until they hit 1d6, and more.
I never found them to be OP, especially since they their abilities are constrained by a pretty small Ki pool.
Question: Which sub-class is this monk and are they MClassing?
1.) They are glass cannons, to a certain extent. Their AC is middling and they tend to crumple under focused attack. Compare to a Barbarian with oodles of damage and damage resistance and I don't think you'll find them overpowered.
2.) As is common to most editions, the Monk's powers grow over time and a smart DM can circumvent some of their early weaknesses - for example, their saves aren't great early on, they don't get Evasion until 7th level, and their ki pool is a limited resource. Smoking a Monk with ranged attacks, Fireballs, and the like early on also makes them appreciate those powers all the more when they get them.
3.) Monk utility tends to be a little limited. They don't have much in the way of ribbon abilities, they don't get extra skills like some classes, and especially Open Hand monks (which are practically the default) don't even get ki-based spells to aid the party. So being good at one pillar of the game does come a little bit at the expense of the other two.
Monks are somewhat more fragile compared to Fighters, Rangers, Paladins, and Barbarians. Because they usually invest in both WIS and DEX, that takes away from their CON, and that's made worse by their lower hit die.
Fighters can invest purely in STR and CON and rely on heavy armor for AC. Paladins also get heavy armor, and while they invest in CHA more than CON, they make up for with not just spell slots, but Lay on Hands too. Likewise, Rangers can attain similarly high AC with medium armor and DEX, can also heal with spell slots, and can do their job from a distance to stay out of harm's way.
While Monks have a second attack baked into their class features, a Fighter can achieve the same thing using two-weapon fighting, and even get their ability modifier on their second attack using the Two-Weapon Fighting fighting style.
monks look really awesome on paper but in play they peter out pretty fast, especially at early lvls. later on they'll focus on hit and run tactics, but they will just be an annoyance, they cant take the damage like front line fighters and they dont dish out the damage like casters. they are support characters with fun tricks that are more thematic.
I've played two monks and they're a lot of fun to play. They have a ton of vulnerabilities and you need to be smart when you're playing them, but they're incredibly effective when they're played well. I'm going to ignore the Monastic Traditions and just focus on the things that all monks can do here.
At 1st level, they should have an AC of 15 and 9 or 10 HP depending on how you allocate your ability scores. They have 2 attacks per round as long as an unarmed attack (d4) is the second attack. At 2nd level their speed increases by 10 which lets them move so that they're able to help other characters like rogues increase their damage by using their sneak attack. Plus they get 2 Ki points which they can use to dodge or disengage at the cost of one of their attacks. When they dodge, their opponents have disadvantage to attack them so they soak up several attacks without taking damage instead of those attacks hitting other characters. At 3rd level they get deflect missiles which is a life saver. Especially when you have a DM who throws Drow at you. At 4th level they get slow fall which I used a couple of times to screw up my DM's plans for combat by just jumping down 20 or 40 foot cliffs and attacking our opponents from behind while the rest of the party attacked from the front. This is situational of course, but it's possible in every campaign that I've played in at least once. At 5th level they get a second attack, which is nice, and they get stunning strike, which let's them hit a big boss once and then step back while the rest of the party steps in to just pound away with disadvantage. Then they can step in again and hit the big boss with advantage and try to stun him again.
But, while they have all of that, they're also extremely fragile. Their AC doesn't go up the way a fighter's AC does unless they get magic items and they tend to have lower HP than most of the rest of the party too. They don't handle damage very well and they're not proficient in wisdom saving throws and there are a lot of very effective spells with wisdom saves that DM's love using on parties. Fear, confusion, sleep, etc..
This guy is straight Way of Shadow and with great stealth. In this campaign, this guy stays stealth until front-line attackers come in, closes the distance quickly with his movement, and then starts attacking. Furthermore, his starting AC was 17. I guess I can suggest to the DM to use more wisdom-saving spells to counteract him. He just takes the spotlight in fights (our paladin doesn't have a great track record for attack rolls).
While Monks have a second attack baked into their class features, a Fighter can achieve the same thing using two-weapon fighting, and even get their ability modifier on their second attack using the Two-Weapon Fighting fighting style.
Monks get their dex or str mod to their martial arts bonus attack, they don't need two-weapon fighting style, the way you worded it looked like they just did the damage listed on their monk chart.
Lower levels monks do fairly well, but higher levels other classes will pull ahead and outclass him due to magic, class abilities, utility, feats, so on. Just be glad he didn't go Elven Kensai Bladesinger, and boost his AC with Agile Parry, Bladesong and Shield(spell). Throw some haste into that or even a blur and things get interesting trying to hit him at all. Or 3 levels of fighter and Samurai, he can give himself advantage every time he uses Action Surge.
The hidden joy in playing a monk is the fear in your dm's eyes when he asks for an acrobatics/athletics skill check to do the absurd thing you just described to him, that you have no buisness pulling off but probably will.
Unless your starting with two high level stats (18) before racials monks are, rather than overpowered, under strength. I have seen three monk players who played at first level with starting array stats (15 the highest and lowering from there). The extra attack was great compared to most other players, as soon as they made themselves a target their lack of armor (max 16) and a con score suffering from being the third stat chosen meant that they were torn down quickly.
One after the first time decided to save all Ki for dodging, but this took away most of the monk specialisation and they again were less than competitive. Another reverted to hurling darts because melee was too much of a gamble.
I wont disagree that a high stat monk (or barbarian) can be a monster. However thats true of most classes, they just benefit more.
Keep in mind ki is a resource that can hurt you to over or under spend. Flurry is nice for burst damage, step of the wind for utility, and patient defense to bolster your survivability but they are all situationally useful and don't need used just because you have ki. Keep in mind other things like stunning strikes because stunning an enemy can be a strong defensive move even though it has offensive implications.
Beyond 9th level running up things can provide tactical benefits that can throw many off and has various situational uses just like Tims mention of jumping off things and the two can be combined.
Dex is important but it can be over valued as being the primary stat for monks. Think instead about your group make up, your dm's game style and how that affects your monks play. Wisdom may instead be most important. Your DC is based in wisdom it will hurt you if its a bit low and you rely on stuns and such and wisdom mitigates not being proficient in wis saves. Slightly lower dex can be effective longer and hurt less than it seems against by the book monsters.
At mid levels you do get certain resistances and such as well as proficiency in all saves at level 11. This doesn't seem like much but can be leveraged in certain instances as well as mitigates weaknesses.
Monks magical item interests are somewhat non-standard and is something hopefully your dm keeps in mind and your party understands. The plusses on magical weapons and armor look nice but mean little to most monks. So other items that might typically go to other classes that aren't restricted might. A few DM's mitigate this by creating a few monk focused items.
Aside from the fact ranged non magic attacks are virtually useless against them thanks to deflect missiles and that evasion means aoe spells will rarely do more than scratch them this really depends on the type of monk for example its not to hard for a Kensei to push an ac over 25 even before lvl 6 if they rolled half decent stats and took the right feats, and at lvl11 a long death monk can just ignore death for a single ki point at no action cost then take a nuke to the face over and over without breaking a sweat.
So.i'd like to start off by saying I only had one true experience as a monk, however this is what I experienced.
I was a Human monk, lvl 1 with a DeX of 18. You can choose to do your damage through your strength mod or your dex mod(5e) so I went dex and my AC was pretty decent (forget my bass) the first few levels I spent my time as an essential rogue, i would attempt to attack opponents already in combat or squishes if I could close the gap. This allowed me to actually put out some decent damage and solidify some respect with a new party both IC and OC. Around lvl 5 or so I found myself becoming fairly strong, I was able to attack up to five times in a round, and through levels and a necklace i acquired at around lvl4 I managed to have a dex of 20 at this time, around this point I began treating my combat as if I were a fighter becoming braver and taking on two opponents at a time.
As the campaign(s) would progress I would retire around lvl 12. The monk has some wonderfully broken abilities, being able to run up walls by focusing your ki or catching arrows from annoying archers became a regular occurrence as my DEX became almost god like. I do remember at one point fighting our parties barbarian in a friendly weapons duel and wiping the floor, being able to sling out a ridiculous amount of attacks per turn with only spending a ki point was arguably the saving grace of this class. Having 1d6÷5-6 on a damage roll and landing three to four attacks in a turn will melt any character, but that's also the luck of the roll. Way of the open hand really seemed to be the most straight forward damage dealing tree, I may never play a monk again because it all felt too easy and too straightforward, there wasn't much thinking that needed to be used, just punch to victory, climb walls like spiderman, and with the knowledge of environmental damage using force punches can cause some fights to end sooner than your DM planned
Aside from the fact ranged non magic attacks are virtually useless against them thanks to deflect missiles and that evasion means aoe spells will rarely do more than scratch them this really depends on the type of monk for example its not to hard for a Kensei to push an ac over 25 even before lvl 6 if they rolled half decent stats and took the right feats, and at lvl11 a long death monk can just ignore death for a single ki point at no action cost then take a nuke to the face over and over without breaking a sweat.
How are you calculating 25 ac before 6? 20 dex 20 wis and +2 from agile parry only puts out 22 ac. perhaps dual wielder for +1 and defensive duelist for +3 on a single attack for a reaction?
I was wondering if anybody also felt as if some of the monk archetypes are extremely OP compared to the others especially later on. The reason for this is that in the PHB Way of the Open Hand seems a lot more overpowered especially with its feature at LVL 17 because at this point the monk can attack 7 times according to a reddit post with Flurry of Blows and the reason the 17th LVL feature is so overpowered because you can kill monsters instantly once per turn which I feel is OP, especially compared to way of the 4 Elements.
I was wondering if anybody also felt as if some of the monk archetypes are extremely OP compared to the others especially later on. The reason for this is that in the PHB Way of the Open Hand seems a lot more overpowered especially with its feature at LVL 17 because at this point the monk can attack 7 times according to a reddit post with Flurry of Blows and the reason the 17th LVL feature is so overpowered because you can kill monsters instantly once per turn which I feel is OP, especially compared to way of the 4 Elements.
Having completed a campaign with a Lizardfolk Kensai monk from level 4 - 20, my experience was that I was very competitive on damage compared to our level 20 Rogue (arcane trickster). It was became a game of probability with me spending ki to do flurry, for 4 attacks a round vs. his main hand / off hand to get a \ sneak attack. It usually ended up I had the higher damage, mostly because I could close the distance faster to engage for a round. By endgame it was if I burned ki like water (2 per round), it could be a max damage of 5d10+26 (56 avg) vs 10d6+2d4+8 (55 avg) (two daggers) .The fact that a head could be removed at any time was a bonus. But while a vorpal blade looks cool, it could have been a +3 sword, since the number of times that heads did fly off was low. Mostly because it almost always occurred at the very end of an encounter, so it wasn't important. I didn't use stuns much, because of low DC, and the campaign had very high con opponents much of the time.
This is a point buy build, so I focused on Dex, but less on Wis, so stuns weren't a priority vs. slicing opponents. The natural armor bonus, made WIS less important as a +3 bonus is equivalent to 16 WIS. But even at the end, this mattered little...because of the OTHER lizardfolk next to me. As an Ancestral Guardian Barbarian, everything was practically at a disadvantage to hit me, and with an end game of 325 health, because he focused into CON he was nigh unkillable, and attacking me would be difficult. But in cases of swarm fighting, my AC and extra health because of a 14 CON was enough to take a hit or two.
If I used an open hand build, my damage output would have been lower at first, and I suspect I would have put more into WIS and focused on stunning blows. Based on how the campaign was being run, I think I would have been less successful, because of the high CON opponents.
So part of being effective, is building what is around you and tailoring to your opponents in the campaign. Based on earlier threads on how Sun Soul is underpowered, or is Kensei crappy, mileage can vary a bit.
Agile parry is a really bad feat I don’t think anyone should factor into AC calculations. Also, monks are better served going straight asi with feats with elven accuracy.
Monks are not op but I think often played incorrectly. Many choose the open hand monk when it’s actually one of the weaker options. Monks excel with stunning fist and should only use their ki for it save niche circumstances. Using it for flurry is a waste. They are easily the best single target disablers in the game.
For example at lvl 6 over the average adventure day of two short rests a monk has 18 stunning fist attempts. That’s 18 hold person casts that target con + little damage + at a potential rate of three per turn. That is a lot of stun!
As a monk think of yourself as essentially a warlock with cool out of combat utility and a specialized in combat role. Also, since stunning fist targets con a monk is the ultimate mage slayer. The best is the shadow monk who can teleport / move next to them and unleash stunning. You will shut down the enemy mage.
So in conclusion a well played monk is not trying to out dpr anyone, they are stunning opponents so the party can smash them.
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A wood elf monk with high dex, wis, and con ability modifiers shreds through low level campaigns. Should I accept that as normal?
Any class martial class can be considered to. The Wood Elves are especially good monks, with +2 Dex and +1 Wis. They could be seeing a 16 Dex and 16 Wis for an AC of 16, and +5 to hit and +3 damage. and base land speed of 35, which will only keep going up from there.
That said their best damage is a spear or quarterstaff in versatile mode for 1d8 amage and their unarmed attacks only do 1d4 until they hit 1d6, and more.
I never found them to be OP, especially since they their abilities are constrained by a pretty small Ki pool.
Question: Which sub-class is this monk and are they MClassing?
1.) They are glass cannons, to a certain extent. Their AC is middling and they tend to crumple under focused attack. Compare to a Barbarian with oodles of damage and damage resistance and I don't think you'll find them overpowered.
2.) As is common to most editions, the Monk's powers grow over time and a smart DM can circumvent some of their early weaknesses - for example, their saves aren't great early on, they don't get Evasion until 7th level, and their ki pool is a limited resource. Smoking a Monk with ranged attacks, Fireballs, and the like early on also makes them appreciate those powers all the more when they get them.
3.) Monk utility tends to be a little limited. They don't have much in the way of ribbon abilities, they don't get extra skills like some classes, and especially Open Hand monks (which are practically the default) don't even get ki-based spells to aid the party. So being good at one pillar of the game does come a little bit at the expense of the other two.
Even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in awhile.
Monks are somewhat more fragile compared to Fighters, Rangers, Paladins, and Barbarians. Because they usually invest in both WIS and DEX, that takes away from their CON, and that's made worse by their lower hit die.
Fighters can invest purely in STR and CON and rely on heavy armor for AC. Paladins also get heavy armor, and while they invest in CHA more than CON, they make up for with not just spell slots, but Lay on Hands too. Likewise, Rangers can attain similarly high AC with medium armor and DEX, can also heal with spell slots, and can do their job from a distance to stay out of harm's way.
While Monks have a second attack baked into their class features, a Fighter can achieve the same thing using two-weapon fighting, and even get their ability modifier on their second attack using the Two-Weapon Fighting fighting style.
monks look really awesome on paper but in play they peter out pretty fast, especially at early lvls. later on they'll focus on hit and run tactics, but they will just be an annoyance, they cant take the damage like front line fighters and they dont dish out the damage like casters. they are support characters with fun tricks that are more thematic.
I've played two monks and they're a lot of fun to play. They have a ton of vulnerabilities and you need to be smart when you're playing them, but they're incredibly effective when they're played well. I'm going to ignore the Monastic Traditions and just focus on the things that all monks can do here.
At 1st level, they should have an AC of 15 and 9 or 10 HP depending on how you allocate your ability scores. They have 2 attacks per round as long as an unarmed attack (d4) is the second attack.
At 2nd level their speed increases by 10 which lets them move so that they're able to help other characters like rogues increase their damage by using their sneak attack. Plus they get 2 Ki points which they can use to dodge or disengage at the cost of one of their attacks. When they dodge, their opponents have disadvantage to attack them so they soak up several attacks without taking damage instead of those attacks hitting other characters.
At 3rd level they get deflect missiles which is a life saver. Especially when you have a DM who throws Drow at you.
At 4th level they get slow fall which I used a couple of times to screw up my DM's plans for combat by just jumping down 20 or 40 foot cliffs and attacking our opponents from behind while the rest of the party attacked from the front. This is situational of course, but it's possible in every campaign that I've played in at least once.
At 5th level they get a second attack, which is nice, and they get stunning strike, which let's them hit a big boss once and then step back while the rest of the party steps in to just pound away with disadvantage. Then they can step in again and hit the big boss with advantage and try to stun him again.
But, while they have all of that, they're also extremely fragile. Their AC doesn't go up the way a fighter's AC does unless they get magic items and they tend to have lower HP than most of the rest of the party too. They don't handle damage very well and they're not proficient in wisdom saving throws and there are a lot of very effective spells with wisdom saves that DM's love using on parties. Fear, confusion, sleep, etc..
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This guy is straight Way of Shadow and with great stealth. In this campaign, this guy stays stealth until front-line attackers come in, closes the distance quickly with his movement, and then starts attacking. Furthermore, his starting AC was 17. I guess I can suggest to the DM to use more wisdom-saving spells to counteract him. He just takes the spotlight in fights (our paladin doesn't have a great track record for attack rolls).
The hidden joy in playing a monk is the fear in your dm's eyes when he asks for an acrobatics/athletics skill check to do the absurd thing you just described to him, that you have no buisness pulling off but probably will.
When I Dragon Suplexed a low level vampire, the DM made me make an acrobatics roll in between grapple checks.
Unless your starting with two high level stats (18) before racials monks are, rather than overpowered, under strength. I have seen three monk players who played at first level with starting array stats (15 the highest and lowering from there). The extra attack was great compared to most other players, as soon as they made themselves a target their lack of armor (max 16) and a con score suffering from being the third stat chosen meant that they were torn down quickly.
One after the first time decided to save all Ki for dodging, but this took away most of the monk specialisation and they again were less than competitive. Another reverted to hurling darts because melee was too much of a gamble.
I wont disagree that a high stat monk (or barbarian) can be a monster. However thats true of most classes, they just benefit more.
Monks are totally op, until they get hit by ANYTHING.
When it comes to monks think tactically.
Tim touched on this a bit with his list.
Keep in mind ki is a resource that can hurt you to over or under spend. Flurry is nice for burst damage, step of the wind for utility, and patient defense to bolster your survivability but they are all situationally useful and don't need used just because you have ki. Keep in mind other things like stunning strikes because stunning an enemy can be a strong defensive move even though it has offensive implications.
Beyond 9th level running up things can provide tactical benefits that can throw many off and has various situational uses just like Tims mention of jumping off things and the two can be combined.
Dex is important but it can be over valued as being the primary stat for monks. Think instead about your group make up, your dm's game style and how that affects your monks play. Wisdom may instead be most important. Your DC is based in wisdom it will hurt you if its a bit low and you rely on stuns and such and wisdom mitigates not being proficient in wis saves. Slightly lower dex can be effective longer and hurt less than it seems against by the book monsters.
At mid levels you do get certain resistances and such as well as proficiency in all saves at level 11. This doesn't seem like much but can be leveraged in certain instances as well as mitigates weaknesses.
Monks magical item interests are somewhat non-standard and is something hopefully your dm keeps in mind and your party understands. The plusses on magical weapons and armor look nice but mean little to most monks. So other items that might typically go to other classes that aren't restricted might. A few DM's mitigate this by creating a few monk focused items.
This. Monks are bone-breaking roadrunners up until they're not, and suddenly you realize how not OP you are.
"The Epic Level Handbook wasn't that bad, guys.
Guys, pls."
Aside from the fact ranged non magic attacks are virtually useless against them thanks to deflect missiles and that evasion means aoe spells will rarely do more than scratch them this really depends on the type of monk for example its not to hard for a Kensei to push an ac over 25 even before lvl 6 if they rolled half decent stats and took the right feats, and at lvl11 a long death monk can just ignore death for a single ki point at no action cost then take a nuke to the face over and over without breaking a sweat.
So.i'd like to start off by saying I only had one true experience as a monk, however this is what I experienced.
I was a Human monk, lvl 1 with a DeX of 18. You can choose to do your damage through your strength mod or your dex mod(5e) so I went dex and my AC was pretty decent (forget my bass) the first few levels I spent my time as an essential rogue, i would attempt to attack opponents already in combat or squishes if I could close the gap. This allowed me to actually put out some decent damage and solidify some respect with a new party both IC and OC. Around lvl 5 or so I found myself becoming fairly strong, I was able to attack up to five times in a round, and through levels and a necklace i acquired at around lvl4 I managed to have a dex of 20 at this time, around this point I began treating my combat as if I were a fighter becoming braver and taking on two opponents at a time.
As the campaign(s) would progress I would retire around lvl 12. The monk has some wonderfully broken abilities, being able to run up walls by focusing your ki or catching arrows from annoying archers became a regular occurrence as my DEX became almost god like. I do remember at one point fighting our parties barbarian in a friendly weapons duel and wiping the floor, being able to sling out a ridiculous amount of attacks per turn with only spending a ki point was arguably the saving grace of this class. Having 1d6÷5-6 on a damage roll and landing three to four attacks in a turn will melt any character, but that's also the luck of the roll. Way of the open hand really seemed to be the most straight forward damage dealing tree, I may never play a monk again because it all felt too easy and too straightforward, there wasn't much thinking that needed to be used, just punch to victory, climb walls like spiderman, and with the knowledge of environmental damage using force punches can cause some fights to end sooner than your DM planned
How are you calculating 25 ac before 6? 20 dex 20 wis and +2 from agile parry only puts out 22 ac. perhaps dual wielder for +1 and defensive duelist for +3 on a single attack for a reaction?
I was wondering if anybody also felt as if some of the monk archetypes are extremely OP compared to the others especially later on. The reason for this is that in the PHB Way of the Open Hand seems a lot more overpowered especially with its feature at LVL 17 because at this point the monk can attack 7 times according to a reddit post with Flurry of Blows and the reason the 17th LVL feature is so overpowered because you can kill monsters instantly once per turn which I feel is OP, especially compared to way of the 4 Elements.
Having completed a campaign with a Lizardfolk Kensai monk from level 4 - 20, my experience was that I was very competitive on damage compared to our level 20 Rogue (arcane trickster). It was became a game of probability with me spending ki to do flurry, for 4 attacks a round vs. his main hand / off hand to get a \ sneak attack. It usually ended up I had the higher damage, mostly because I could close the distance faster to engage for a round. By endgame it was if I burned ki like water (2 per round), it could be a max damage of 5d10+26 (56 avg) vs 10d6+2d4+8 (55 avg) (two daggers) .The fact that a head could be removed at any time was a bonus. But while a vorpal blade looks cool, it could have been a +3 sword, since the number of times that heads did fly off was low. Mostly because it almost always occurred at the very end of an encounter, so it wasn't important. I didn't use stuns much, because of low DC, and the campaign had very high con opponents much of the time.
This is a point buy build, so I focused on Dex, but less on Wis, so stuns weren't a priority vs. slicing opponents. The natural armor bonus, made WIS less important as a +3 bonus is equivalent to 16 WIS. But even at the end, this mattered little...because of the OTHER lizardfolk next to me. As an Ancestral Guardian Barbarian, everything was practically at a disadvantage to hit me, and with an end game of 325 health, because he focused into CON he was nigh unkillable, and attacking me would be difficult. But in cases of swarm fighting, my AC and extra health because of a 14 CON was enough to take a hit or two.
If I used an open hand build, my damage output would have been lower at first, and I suspect I would have put more into WIS and focused on stunning blows. Based on how the campaign was being run, I think I would have been less successful, because of the high CON opponents.
So part of being effective, is building what is around you and tailoring to your opponents in the campaign. Based on earlier threads on how Sun Soul is underpowered, or is Kensei crappy, mileage can vary a bit.
Agile parry is a really bad feat I don’t think anyone should factor into AC calculations. Also, monks are better served going straight asi with feats with elven accuracy.
Monks are not op but I think often played incorrectly. Many choose the open hand monk when it’s actually one of the weaker options. Monks excel with stunning fist and should only use their ki for it save niche circumstances. Using it for flurry is a waste. They are easily the best single target disablers in the game.
For example at lvl 6 over the average adventure day of two short rests a monk has 18 stunning fist attempts. That’s 18 hold person casts that target con + little damage + at a potential rate of three per turn. That is a lot of stun!
As a monk think of yourself as essentially a warlock with cool out of combat utility and a specialized in combat role. Also, since stunning fist targets con a monk is the ultimate mage slayer. The best is the shadow monk who can teleport / move next to them and unleash stunning. You will shut down the enemy mage.
So in conclusion a well played monk is not trying to out dpr anyone, they are stunning opponents so the party can smash them.