Any class can be fun, yes. But its not power gaming to recognize that the base damage those two classes do doesn't really change much at all between levels 5 and 20.
This isn't true at all for monks. You're sorta correct in that in 1 round of combat the damage doesn't really change a ton. But having access to an ever increasing supply of ki does increase damage a ton over time. This is especially true with the additions of Ki-Fueled Attack and Focused Aim. Those two abilities combine and synergize very well and can lead to good consistent damage.
I was just assuming flurry of blows is constantly going after 5. Sure, they get to use it more often, but ki is still a finite resource and now there are new ways to burn through it.
I think ki-fuled attack and focused aim are overhyped. Not only do they eat up the same resource the monk needs for everything else, but it can do so even less efficiently.
If you think you've narrowly missed, turn it into a hit. That's better than anything else you're going to do with a ki point. Then you get a free attack with your weapon as a bonus action. All that for potentially 1 ki point. That is not overhyped. You're just looking for ways to hate on the monk.
Ki-fueled attack is really only useful if you have a good enough weapon to be worth while. Just switching out a free d6 kick for a d8 quarterstaff whack does no favors.
Well, 1-2 damage increase is not nothing. If your using a magic weapon the benefit only increases.
Focused aim really only becomes worthwhile once the monk metagames to realize what the enemy AC is. And its a narrow range to actually use the ability after that, meaning if one wants to proc ki-fueld attack with it, they need to waste their precious ki.
Metagame? Kinda. But you can also RP it. "Oh jeez my attack narrowly missed! Wait, let me use my superpower that let's me turn a narrow miss into a hit!" As metagaming goes, this one is not that bad.
Tasha's added some fun extra buttons to push, but it didn't fundamentally change how strong the monk is.
"That's like, your opinion, man." It added more options for spending ki that can have a big impact.
And neither ability is going to work out consistently
Turning misses into hits is literally making your damage output more consistent.
If you figure out the enemy ac is 15, you aren’t using focused aim for anything less than a 12 or more than a 15. So unless you use it needlessly to activate ki fueled strike, it’s not consistent. It isn’t even turning every miss into a hit, just a narrow range of near hits. And potentially for the price of 3 rounds worth of fury of blows for one use.
That isn’t just my opinion, it’s just math. My opinion based on that math is that it isn’t some world of difference for the monk.
If you figure out the enemy ac is 15, you aren’t using focused aim for anything less than a 12 or more than a 15. So unless you use it needlessly to activate ki fueled strike, it’s not consistent. It isn’t even turning every miss into a hit, just a narrow range of near hits. And potentially for the price of 3 rounds worth of fury of blows for one use.
That isn’t just my opinion, it’s just math. My opinion based on that math is that it isn’t some world of difference for the monk.
Note focused aim is +2 per 1 ki point. So 2 would be +4 and 3 is +6. Honestly though you usually don't spend more than 1 or maybe 2 ki at higher levels. At 11 you have enough ki to flurry every round and still hae like another ki per round for stunning or a nice +2 without losing anything. Spending 2 for a +4 costs you 1 extra attack from flurry for a miss turned into a hit so one attack with chance to hit, for 1 hit trade.
But the biggest thing is it isnt +1 per ki it is +2 per ki.
If you figure out the enemy ac is 15, you aren’t using focused aim for anything less than a 12 or more than a 15. So unless you use it needlessly to activate ki fueled strike, it’s not consistent. It isn’t even turning every miss into a hit, just a narrow range of near hits. And potentially for the price of 3 rounds worth of fury of blows for one use.
That isn’t just my opinion, it’s just math. My opinion based on that math is that it isn’t some world of difference for the monk.
Note focused aim is +2 per 1 ki point. So 2 would be +4 and 3 is +6. Honestly though you usually don't spend more than 1 or maybe 2 ki at higher levels. At 11 you have enough ki to flurry every round and still hae like another ki per round for stunning or a nice +2 without losing anything. Spending 2 for a +4 costs you 1 extra attack from flurry for a miss turned into a hit so one attack with chance to hit, for 1 hit trade. But the biggest thing is it isnt +1 per ki it is +2 per ki.
Yes, "Focused Aim" is a useful feature, but it is not obvious. Ki is not easy to handle and this ability is like a poisonous candy. Useful according to the right situations, but it is also a quick way to run out of ki. Several players say that ki is always poor and this feature, although useful is a double-edged sword. Useful but difficult to manage for less experienced players. This skill will only lead to more players complaining that the monk doesn't have enough ki to be playable. Honestly, I would have preferred a different power, something that is used more often and is easier to use. Then it depends a lot on the player's taste.
I think the issue with focused aim is that monks don't benefit from single attack heavy damage. Paladin, rogue, fighters/barbs with SS/GWM it's all super helpful to have that aim. Monk... Not so much as their individual attacks are weak.
They only thing I can think of is you really need to hit so that you can attempt to stun. In which case that's the main reason to use it
Beyond that you are almost always better spending the point on Stun or for FoB.
It's really nice if you know that you will kill the enemy if you hit but in every other situation it's better to use the ki for something else.
Honestly stunning is sometimes underrated when looking at the monk. It makes it hard for me to choose dex or wisdom sometimes. Stunning gives you and all of your allies advantages which is huge, but con saves scale like AC does. So if you pump wis to make them fail the save more often then you miss more often and thus have less opportunities to make them save, but if you pump dex instead of wisdom they are more likely to succeed the save.
I don't think stunning strike ever gets underestimated. It's the one thing everyone speaks of when talking about Monks.
I mean when calculating damage
Thats cause its pretty outstanding when calculating damage, especially when including the damage of allies.
But that requires stunning strike to actually land. Which means something like a 50% chance or worse against strong enemies, depends on not having ki stores depleted, still pulls on your ki... its good, but its still tied into the whole deal with a ki pool that feels too small.
I don't think stunning strike ever gets underestimated. It's the one thing everyone speaks of when talking about Monks.
I mean when calculating damage
Thats cause its pretty outstanding when calculating damage, especially when including the damage of allies.
But that requires stunning strike to actually land. Which means something like a 50% chance or worse against strong enemies, depends on not having ki stores depleted, still pulls on your ki... its good, but its still tied into the whole deal with a ki pool that feels too small.
I am thinking of making a Monk-Sorcerer build to help with this. It is a level 1-20 campaign.
Go half elf shadow Monk 8 (starting with 16Dex, 17Wisdom, 14 Charisma) maxing wisdom with a half feat and ASI. Then multiclass to sorcerer and pick up silvery barbs (and shield).
Then you can make him reroll when he makes his save using silvery barbs and give yourself advantage on your next attack.
As you gain sorcerer levels you can pick up protection from good and evil, blur and invisibility and maybe have a lot going for you.
I am also considering the build with 1 level of fighter to start for martial weapons and unarmed fighting style.
Honestly that whole "requires it to land" thing is always why I am torn between Going + dex vs + wisdom with ASI. The average Con Save between CR 5-7 is 3.6,3.3,3.6 respectively. While the average AC is for 5 to 7 is 15. If you keep your dex at 16 through level 4-8 and pump your wis to 18 your save dc is 15 instead of 14 and your to hit is +6 instead of +7 at +6 you hit on a 9 or better so you have a 60% chance to hit compared to a 65% at +7, while your DC at 14 would fail against a +4 55% of the time and against a +3 50% of the time. Meanwhile at 15 your DC would only fail against a +4 50% and a +3 45% of the time. The sad thing is your odds never really get better than this either. If you pump Wisdom for level 4 and 8 you keep up with Con Saves at around 50% the whole way through, but if you don't it gets worse. Same with Dex vs AC, it starts at 65% and if you level your dex each time it kind of just stays there, any time you ignore it, it gets worse. So far my habit is to go dex first (no stunning strike until level 5 anyway) and then go wisdom, then wisdom, then dex.
If you figure out the enemy ac is 15, you aren’t using focused aim for anything less than a 12 or more than a 15. So unless you use it needlessly to activate ki fueled strike, it’s not consistent. It isn’t even turning every miss into a hit, just a narrow range of near hits. And potentially for the price of 3 rounds worth of fury of blows for one use.
That isn’t just my opinion, it’s just math. My opinion based on that math is that it isn’t some world of difference for the monk.
I think the issue with focused aim is that monks don't benefit from single attack heavy damage. Paladin, rogue, fighters/barbs with SS/GWM it's all super helpful to have that aim. Monk... Not so much as their individual attacks are weak.
I've said before, but their single attacks aren't that weak; even if we assume the least favourable comparison at early levels when Martial Arts is a d4 and a Paladin might have a greatsword, the difference on average is 4.5 (average for greatsword is 7, for a d4 is 2.5), and if you're hitting when the Paladin doesn't then that closes the gap even without using a bonus action attack or Flurry of Blows.
While, sure, the Paladin can do a lot more damage on a hit using Divine Smite, that uses an more limited resources than the Monk's Ki points. A Monk spending a few Ki here and there to make sure their attacks land isn't going to make them bursty like a Paladin, but then it's not supposed to, it just keeps their damage consistent, gives more than opportunities to use Stunning Strike (which you need vs. targets with higher CON saves) and opportunities to use Ki-fuelled Attack.
You need to stop falling into the trap of thinking that something isn't good on a Monk because it doesn't make them better at being another class, that's not the point; the point of landing more blows is dealing consistent damage, and what else you can do with those hits. Most Monk sub-classes have added benefits on a hit (or abilities that trigger on a hit), so ensuring you get one is crucial to using them, plus the Crusher feat (which most Monks should be considering over Mobile) triggers on a hit and so-on.
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I think the issue with focused aim is that monks don't benefit from single attack heavy damage. Paladin, rogue, fighters/barbs with SS/GWM it's all super helpful to have that aim. Monk... Not so much as their individual attacks are weak.
I've said before, but their single attacks aren't that weak; even if we assume the least favourable comparison at early levels when Martial Arts is a d4 and a Paladin might have a greatsword, the difference on average is 4.5 (average for greatsword is 7, for a d4 is 2.5), and if you're hitting when the Paladin doesn't then that closes the gap even without using a bonus action attack or Flurry of Blows.
While, sure, the Paladin can do a lot more damage on a hit using Divine Smite, that uses an more limited resources than the Monk's Ki points. A Monk spending a few Ki here and there to make sure their attacks land isn't going to make them bursty like a Paladin, but then it's not supposed to, it just keeps their damage consistent, gives more than opportunities to use Stunning Strike (which you need vs. targets with higher CON saves) and opportunities to use Ki-fuelled Attack.
You need to stop falling into the trap of thinking that something isn't good on a Monk because it doesn't make them better at being another class, that's not the point; the point of landing more blows is dealing consistent damage, and what else you can do with those hits. Most Monk sub-classes have added benefits on a hit (or abilities that trigger on a hit), so ensuring you get one is crucial to using them, plus the Crusher feat (which most Monks should be considering over Mobile) triggers on a hit and so-on.
I'm just making a comparison between classes and even have the pros of where the ability is good.
Their attacks are weak when compared to these other classes....
Barbs have heavy weapons and rage damage.
Rogue has sneak attack
Fighter has fighting styles and more than likely one of the damage feats
Paladin has smites
All of these have significantly higher single attack damage.
It's ok to look at something and call out the weakness in it
It's great for them when you need to hit to stun tho which is the best use IMO.
If you figure out the enemy ac is 15, you aren’t using focused aim for anything less than a 12 or more than a 15. So unless you use it needlessly to activate ki fueled strike, it’s not consistent. It isn’t even turning every miss into a hit, just a narrow range of near hits. And potentially for the price of 3 rounds worth of fury of blows for one use.
That isn’t just my opinion, it’s just math. My opinion based on that math is that it isn’t some world of difference for the monk.
Well by all means enlighten us with your math.
I forgot that the ki invested didn't directly correlate to the bonus, but the point still stands.
You have to spend some attacks figuring out the AC, so using Focused Aim to use Ki empowered strike starts off a bit inconsistent.
But from there, you're attack rolls will dictate if its even worthwhile. If you roll so high you know you'll hit, or so low you know you'll miss, you are just spending a ki just for another weapon attack (a ki that can just be spent for fury of blows).
Its niche, and all of these builds saying monks are strong cause they can spam this combo every round of every fight to basically have 3 attacks at level 5 with a weapon pretend ki is limitless and that magic weapons or guns to make it obviously better than unarmed fighting are a given.
Something I'd like to point out as an idea, is that monks are a caster's best friend.
1. Monk's ability to repeatedly force saving throws against a round of stun (which is a brutal condition any dm would hate to have happen), means that they are also very good at forcing the use of legendary resistances. Burning off those for your dedicated casters to land some nasty more lasting debuffs can make certain fights a lot easier.
2. Monks with options that let them move enemies (Bludgeoner feat, Astral Self, Open Hand) have very strong synergy with spells that lay down dangerous terrain. Spike Growth, Cloud of Daggers, Stinking Cloud, Sickening Radiance, etc. get exponentially more dangerous when you have actual party synergy to work with them. It also helps that they can just try and keep melee enemies from getting too close to your vulnerable party members.
3. Monks are good for harassing enemy spellcasters, and removing the threat of counter spells and guaranteed half damage spells from whittling down your friendly squishies.
If you figure out the enemy ac is 15, you aren’t using focused aim for anything less than a 12 or more than a 15. So unless you use it needlessly to activate ki fueled strike, it’s not consistent. It isn’t even turning every miss into a hit, just a narrow range of near hits. And potentially for the price of 3 rounds worth of fury of blows for one use.
That isn’t just my opinion, it’s just math. My opinion based on that math is that it isn’t some world of difference for the monk.
Well by all means enlighten us with your math.
I forgot that the ki invested didn't directly correlate to the bonus, but the point still stands.
You have to spend some attacks figuring out the AC, so using Focused Aim to use Ki empowered strike starts off a bit inconsistent.
But from there, you're attack rolls will dictate if its even worthwhile. If you roll so high you know you'll hit, or so low you know you'll miss, you are just spending a ki just for another weapon attack (a ki that can just be spent for fury of blows).
You get to use it after the DM has told you you've missed. It should be fairly easy to figure out the AC without even trying after 1 round. Also, RAW it doesn't actually say whether or not you could just add another ki point to the equation if you still missed. Rule of cool would say you could. RAI is who knows?
But since you like math, let's do some. Here is what we know:
There is a 10% chance that using 1 ki point will turn your d20 roll from a miss into a hit. For example, if you need an 11 or higher to hit, using 1 ki point basically means you need a 9 or higher. This is a bastardization of the actual math but it's nice and simple.
When you use Focused Aim, you can use Ki-Fueled Attack.
So if we look at all possible rolls for your first 2 attacks (let's ignore the bonus action attacks for now because we're analyzing the combination of Focused Aim and Ki-Fueled Attack) against all possible rolls required to succeed the attack roll on the D20 (2-20, 1 always misses), you're looking at this being useful in 16.64% of turns. Obviously 1s always miss and if all you need to roll is a 2 to hit something, this ability doesn't help you turn your critical miss into a hit. If you need a 3 or higher to hit, this will come in handy 9.75% of turns. If you need 4-20, this will come in handy 19% of turns. (The actual math is too complicated to show here but I can throw it up on Google Sheets if you really wanted to see it.)
Now that we see how often it's useful, let's look at the effects of when you get to use it. Let's assume you are only going to spend 1 ki point this turn - either on Focused Aim or Flurry of Blows. Let's simplify it and only look at what happens after the first attack has missed, and assume a level 5 18 dex monk with a 1d8 (4.5 average) staff and the 1d6 (3.5 average) punch. Let's also assume you need an 11 or higher on the D20 (50% chance to hit).
Scenario 1: When you get to use it, you do. You effectively get 1 hit and 2 more opportunities to attack:
100%(4.5+4)+50%(4.5+4)+50%(3.5+4) = 17 average damage
Scenario 2: When you get to use it, but use Flurry of Blows instead. You effectively get 3 more opportunities to attack having missed your first attack:
50%(4.5+4)+50%(4.5+4)+50%(3.5+4) = 11.75 average damage
As you can see, from 2 to 1 that is an increase in damage of just almost 45%. That's fairly substantial in this case. As your chance to hit increases, the disparity decreases but it will always exist due to 1s always missing and unarmed attacks doing less damage (until later levels). At 90% chance to hit, the numbers are 23.8 and 21.15, respectively. Also worth mentioning, magic weapons are good so scenario 1 will only get better as you gain cool items. I think there are only 1 or 2 official magic items that impact unarmed strikes although this could be mitigated by homebrew magic items.
Its niche, and all of these builds saying monks are strong cause they can spam this combo every round of every fight to basically have 3 attacks at level 5 with a weapon pretend ki is limitless and that magic weapons or guns to make it obviously better than unarmed fighting are a given.
Honestly that whole "requires it to land" thing is always why I am torn between Going + dex vs + wisdom with ASI. The average Con Save between CR 5-7 is 3.6,3.3,3.6 respectively. While the average AC is for 5 to 7 is 15. If you keep your dex at 16 through level 4-8 and pump your wis to 18 your save dc is 15 instead of 14 and your to hit is +6 instead of +7 at +6 you hit on a 9 or better so you have a 60% chance to hit compared to a 65% at +7, while your DC at 14 would fail against a +4 55% of the time and against a +3 50% of the time. Meanwhile at 15 your DC would only fail against a +4 50% and a +3 45% of the time. The sad thing is your odds never really get better than this either. If you pump Wisdom for level 4 and 8 you keep up with Con Saves at around 50% the whole way through, but if you don't it gets worse. Same with Dex vs AC, it starts at 65% and if you level your dex each time it kind of just stays there, any time you ignore it, it gets worse. So far my habit is to go dex first (no stunning strike until level 5 anyway) and then go wisdom, then wisdom, then dex.
You don't spend Ki on stunning strike if you miss though. Your chance of stunning an enemy with an attack is level but the chance of stunning when you spend the ki is higher if you boost wisdom.
Kind of want to do the math for Astral self monk over 6 rounds (2 combats of 3 rounds each), at level 5 and 11. At 5 it shouldn't be much different from Open Hand, minus the ability to also make people trip. Though if you are within 10 feet of like 3 creatures forcing a dex save vs 2d6 on 3 targets if 1 fails you do an average of 7 damage at 5. If 2 fail that is an average of 14. Considering a 60% chance to hit with 2 bonus action attacks from flurry of blows each doing 1d6+3 (since astral monks are more likely to bump their wisdom first.) is average damage of 7.8 it is definitely a good trade. At 11 going into astral body takes 1 bonus action and 2 ki, you deal 2d8 instead of 2d8+10 (or +8 if you focused on wisdom like the astral would) on 2 flurry of blows. The average dex save at CR 11-13 is only about 3 making them fail the save of 18 70% of the time so average damage of going into astral body is 6.3 against a single target vs flurry with max dex doing an average of 12.35. But in addition thanks to empowered arms you will do an average of an extra 4.5 damage on an attack that hits for that turn and both of your subsequent turns.
Ya i am just going to do the math. Going to assume 2 combats 3 rounds each and start both with astral body and flurry of blows the other 2. This leaves 3 rounds of stunning strike available. With these assumptions, not including the stuns I get an average of 27.18 per round. (If 2 targets are there when you first enter, which probably is achievable, it becomes an average of 29.28 per round.) This does put you a bit above the open hand, (the more targets you can get with the AOE activation the better you are) but it still doesn't put you above the fighter.
Mercy monk is of course going to do plenty of damage by comparison to open hand at 11. It is basically just an extra 1d8+3 more per round. So basically take the 26.6 and add 7.5 making it deal 34.1 points of damage per round actually putting it above the fighter, and still being able to stunning strike or 1 ki on focused aim basically every round. The issue is, mercy has to spend more resources for defensive side of things, because it's healing hands is its primary survival tool, and it doesn't get open hands wholeness of body self heal or sanctuary ability so the fighter takes the edge in self defense again, but just goes to show tasha's monk subclasses aren't bad.
I mean I don't know if I would even call the Ascendant dragon all that bad. I mean if you assume you can open every fight with an attempt at stunning strike + breath + flurry of blows at level 11 you have a 65% chance to hit with the first attack, 75% if you choose to spend 1 ki on focused aim. Followed by a 40% chance of fail for a con save against stun, giving them a 30% chance of being forced to auto fail their save against your breath weapon which means the fail chance of your breath weapon goes from 60% to 72%, with the size of the cone or line you can probably get at least 1 other creature in it that will have a 60% chance of failure. They still take half damage on a successful save. (you get 4 free breaths a day and 11 ki per short rest with 2 being able to be used for a breath weapon, if we assume 2 fights per short rest and 2 short rests per day this means a total of 6 fights per day and 4 ki spent on breath leaving you with 7 more ki to burn for 6 rounds of combat..... yep plenty for breath and flurry every round and 1 stun. So you miss a starting stun on one of the combats or you just don't breath weapon one of them) So breath weapon round damage is around 41. So average damage per round total is a little under 30.13 and, of course, it gets better if you can get more in your breath.
at 5 this is probably a lot less since you are probably only breath weaponing every other fight and it only does 2d6, but that probably means you are aiming for 3 people if you use it. And at CR5-8 the enemy has a 60% chance to fail with a wis of 16 and still take half damage on a successful save. Against 3 people that is 16.8 average damage + flurry of blows + 1 weapon attack = 32 damage average in a single round at level 5. So ya that is just value, but you really need 3 people to be in a 20 foot cone or 30 foot line, which is definitely easier to achieve with monk mobility, so that is a thing.
Anyway interesting thought experiments.
Edit: doing calculations for "baseline" for me. Warlock agonizing blast + hex level 5 = 16.9 average. level 11= 27.3.
If you think you've narrowly missed, turn it into a hit. That's better than anything else you're going to do with a ki point. Then you get a free attack with your weapon as a bonus action. All that for potentially 1 ki point. That is not overhyped. You're just looking for ways to hate on the monk.
Well, 1-2 damage increase is not nothing. If your using a magic weapon the benefit only increases.
Metagame? Kinda. But you can also RP it. "Oh jeez my attack narrowly missed! Wait, let me use my superpower that let's me turn a narrow miss into a hit!" As metagaming goes, this one is not that bad.
"That's like, your opinion, man." It added more options for spending ki that can have a big impact.
Turning misses into hits is literally making your damage output more consistent.
If you figure out the enemy ac is 15, you aren’t using focused aim for anything less than a 12 or more than a 15. So unless you use it needlessly to activate ki fueled strike, it’s not consistent. It isn’t even turning every miss into a hit, just a narrow range of near hits. And potentially for the price of 3 rounds worth of fury of blows for one use.
That isn’t just my opinion, it’s just math. My opinion based on that math is that it isn’t some world of difference for the monk.
Note focused aim is +2 per 1 ki point. So 2 would be +4 and 3 is +6. Honestly though you usually don't spend more than 1 or maybe 2 ki at higher levels. At 11 you have enough ki to flurry every round and still hae like another ki per round for stunning or a nice +2 without losing anything. Spending 2 for a +4 costs you 1 extra attack from flurry for a miss turned into a hit so one attack with chance to hit, for 1 hit trade.
But the biggest thing is it isnt +1 per ki it is +2 per ki.
Yes, "Focused Aim" is a useful feature, but it is not obvious. Ki is not easy to handle and this ability is like a poisonous candy. Useful according to the right situations, but it is also a quick way to run out of ki. Several players say that ki is always poor and this feature, although useful is a double-edged sword. Useful but difficult to manage for less experienced players. This skill will only lead to more players complaining that the monk doesn't have enough ki to be playable. Honestly, I would have preferred a different power, something that is used more often and is easier to use. Then it depends a lot on the player's taste.
I think the issue with focused aim is that monks don't benefit from single attack heavy damage. Paladin, rogue, fighters/barbs with SS/GWM it's all super helpful to have that aim. Monk... Not so much as their individual attacks are weak.
They only thing I can think of is you really need to hit so that you can attempt to stun. In which case that's the main reason to use it
Beyond that you are almost always better spending the point on Stun or for FoB.
It's really nice if you know that you will kill the enemy if you hit but in every other situation it's better to use the ki for something else.
Honestly stunning is sometimes underrated when looking at the monk. It makes it hard for me to choose dex or wisdom sometimes. Stunning gives you and all of your allies advantages which is huge, but con saves scale like AC does. So if you pump wis to make them fail the save more often then you miss more often and thus have less opportunities to make them save, but if you pump dex instead of wisdom they are more likely to succeed the save.
I mean when calculating damage
Thats cause its pretty outstanding when calculating damage, especially when including the damage of allies.
But that requires stunning strike to actually land. Which means something like a 50% chance or worse against strong enemies, depends on not having ki stores depleted, still pulls on your ki... its good, but its still tied into the whole deal with a ki pool that feels too small.
I am thinking of making a Monk-Sorcerer build to help with this. It is a level 1-20 campaign.
Go half elf shadow Monk 8 (starting with 16Dex, 17Wisdom, 14 Charisma) maxing wisdom with a half feat and ASI. Then multiclass to sorcerer and pick up silvery barbs (and shield).
Then you can make him reroll when he makes his save using silvery barbs and give yourself advantage on your next attack.
As you gain sorcerer levels you can pick up protection from good and evil, blur and invisibility and maybe have a lot going for you.
I am also considering the build with 1 level of fighter to start for martial weapons and unarmed fighting style.
I am not sure it is going to work though.
Honestly that whole "requires it to land" thing is always why I am torn between Going + dex vs + wisdom with ASI. The average Con Save between CR 5-7 is 3.6,3.3,3.6 respectively. While the average AC is for 5 to 7 is 15. If you keep your dex at 16 through level 4-8 and pump your wis to 18 your save dc is 15 instead of 14 and your to hit is +6 instead of +7 at +6 you hit on a 9 or better so you have a 60% chance to hit compared to a 65% at +7, while your DC at 14 would fail against a +4 55% of the time and against a +3 50% of the time. Meanwhile at 15 your DC would only fail against a +4 50% and a +3 45% of the time. The sad thing is your odds never really get better than this either. If you pump Wisdom for level 4 and 8 you keep up with Con Saves at around 50% the whole way through, but if you don't it gets worse. Same with Dex vs AC, it starts at 65% and if you level your dex each time it kind of just stays there, any time you ignore it, it gets worse. So far my habit is to go dex first (no stunning strike until level 5 anyway) and then go wisdom, then wisdom, then dex.
Well by all means enlighten us with your math.
I've said before, but their single attacks aren't that weak; even if we assume the least favourable comparison at early levels when Martial Arts is a d4 and a Paladin might have a greatsword, the difference on average is 4.5 (average for greatsword is 7, for a d4 is 2.5), and if you're hitting when the Paladin doesn't then that closes the gap even without using a bonus action attack or Flurry of Blows.
While, sure, the Paladin can do a lot more damage on a hit using Divine Smite, that uses an more limited resources than the Monk's Ki points. A Monk spending a few Ki here and there to make sure their attacks land isn't going to make them bursty like a Paladin, but then it's not supposed to, it just keeps their damage consistent, gives more than opportunities to use Stunning Strike (which you need vs. targets with higher CON saves) and opportunities to use Ki-fuelled Attack.
You need to stop falling into the trap of thinking that something isn't good on a Monk because it doesn't make them better at being another class, that's not the point; the point of landing more blows is dealing consistent damage, and what else you can do with those hits. Most Monk sub-classes have added benefits on a hit (or abilities that trigger on a hit), so ensuring you get one is crucial to using them, plus the Crusher feat (which most Monks should be considering over Mobile) triggers on a hit and so-on.
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I'm just making a comparison between classes and even have the pros of where the ability is good.
Their attacks are weak when compared to these other classes....
Barbs have heavy weapons and rage damage.
Rogue has sneak attack
Fighter has fighting styles and more than likely one of the damage feats
Paladin has smites
All of these have significantly higher single attack damage.
It's ok to look at something and call out the weakness in it
It's great for them when you need to hit to stun tho which is the best use IMO.
I forgot that the ki invested didn't directly correlate to the bonus, but the point still stands.
You have to spend some attacks figuring out the AC, so using Focused Aim to use Ki empowered strike starts off a bit inconsistent.
But from there, you're attack rolls will dictate if its even worthwhile. If you roll so high you know you'll hit, or so low you know you'll miss, you are just spending a ki just for another weapon attack (a ki that can just be spent for fury of blows).
Its niche, and all of these builds saying monks are strong cause they can spam this combo every round of every fight to basically have 3 attacks at level 5 with a weapon pretend ki is limitless and that magic weapons or guns to make it obviously better than unarmed fighting are a given.
Something I'd like to point out as an idea, is that monks are a caster's best friend.
1. Monk's ability to repeatedly force saving throws against a round of stun (which is a brutal condition any dm would hate to have happen), means that they are also very good at forcing the use of legendary resistances. Burning off those for your dedicated casters to land some nasty more lasting debuffs can make certain fights a lot easier.
2. Monks with options that let them move enemies (Bludgeoner feat, Astral Self, Open Hand) have very strong synergy with spells that lay down dangerous terrain. Spike Growth, Cloud of Daggers, Stinking Cloud, Sickening Radiance, etc. get exponentially more dangerous when you have actual party synergy to work with them. It also helps that they can just try and keep melee enemies from getting too close to your vulnerable party members.
3. Monks are good for harassing enemy spellcasters, and removing the threat of counter spells and guaranteed half damage spells from whittling down your friendly squishies.
You get to use it after the DM has told you you've missed. It should be fairly easy to figure out the AC without even trying after 1 round. Also, RAW it doesn't actually say whether or not you could just add another ki point to the equation if you still missed. Rule of cool would say you could. RAI is who knows?
But since you like math, let's do some. Here is what we know:
So if we look at all possible rolls for your first 2 attacks (let's ignore the bonus action attacks for now because we're analyzing the combination of Focused Aim and Ki-Fueled Attack) against all possible rolls required to succeed the attack roll on the D20 (2-20, 1 always misses), you're looking at this being useful in 16.64% of turns. Obviously 1s always miss and if all you need to roll is a 2 to hit something, this ability doesn't help you turn your critical miss into a hit. If you need a 3 or higher to hit, this will come in handy 9.75% of turns. If you need 4-20, this will come in handy 19% of turns. (The actual math is too complicated to show here but I can throw it up on Google Sheets if you really wanted to see it.)
Now that we see how often it's useful, let's look at the effects of when you get to use it. Let's assume you are only going to spend 1 ki point this turn - either on Focused Aim or Flurry of Blows. Let's simplify it and only look at what happens after the first attack has missed, and assume a level 5 18 dex monk with a 1d8 (4.5 average) staff and the 1d6 (3.5 average) punch. Let's also assume you need an 11 or higher on the D20 (50% chance to hit).
Scenario 1: When you get to use it, you do. You effectively get 1 hit and 2 more opportunities to attack:
Scenario 2: When you get to use it, but use Flurry of Blows instead. You effectively get 3 more opportunities to attack having missed your first attack:
As you can see, from 2 to 1 that is an increase in damage of just almost 45%. That's fairly substantial in this case. As your chance to hit increases, the disparity decreases but it will always exist due to 1s always missing and unarmed attacks doing less damage (until later levels). At 90% chance to hit, the numbers are 23.8 and 21.15, respectively. Also worth mentioning, magic weapons are good so scenario 1 will only get better as you gain cool items. I think there are only 1 or 2 official magic items that impact unarmed strikes although this could be mitigated by homebrew magic items.
Literally no one is saying this.
You don't spend Ki on stunning strike if you miss though. Your chance of stunning an enemy with an attack is level but the chance of stunning when you spend the ki is higher if you boost wisdom.
Kind of want to do the math for Astral self monk over 6 rounds (2 combats of 3 rounds each), at level 5 and 11. At 5 it shouldn't be much different from Open Hand, minus the ability to also make people trip. Though if you are within 10 feet of like 3 creatures forcing a dex save vs 2d6 on 3 targets if 1 fails you do an average of 7 damage at 5. If 2 fail that is an average of 14. Considering a 60% chance to hit with 2 bonus action attacks from flurry of blows each doing 1d6+3 (since astral monks are more likely to bump their wisdom first.) is average damage of 7.8 it is definitely a good trade. At 11 going into astral body takes 1 bonus action and 2 ki, you deal 2d8 instead of 2d8+10 (or +8 if you focused on wisdom like the astral would) on 2 flurry of blows. The average dex save at CR 11-13 is only about 3 making them fail the save of 18 70% of the time so average damage of going into astral body is 6.3 against a single target vs flurry with max dex doing an average of 12.35. But in addition thanks to empowered arms you will do an average of an extra 4.5 damage on an attack that hits for that turn and both of your subsequent turns.
Ya i am just going to do the math. Going to assume 2 combats 3 rounds each and start both with astral body and flurry of blows the other 2. This leaves 3 rounds of stunning strike available. With these assumptions, not including the stuns I get an average of 27.18 per round.
(If 2 targets are there when you first enter, which probably is achievable, it becomes an average of 29.28 per round.) This does put you a bit above the open hand, (the more targets you can get with the AOE activation the better you are) but it still doesn't put you above the fighter.
Mercy monk is of course going to do plenty of damage by comparison to open hand at 11. It is basically just an extra 1d8+3 more per round. So basically take the 26.6 and add 7.5 making it deal 34.1 points of damage per round actually putting it above the fighter, and still being able to stunning strike or 1 ki on focused aim basically every round. The issue is, mercy has to spend more resources for defensive side of things, because it's healing hands is its primary survival tool, and it doesn't get open hands wholeness of body self heal or sanctuary ability so the fighter takes the edge in self defense again, but just goes to show tasha's monk subclasses aren't bad.
I mean I don't know if I would even call the Ascendant dragon all that bad. I mean if you assume you can open every fight with an attempt at stunning strike + breath + flurry of blows at level 11 you have a 65% chance to hit with the first attack, 75% if you choose to spend 1 ki on focused aim. Followed by a 40% chance of fail for a con save against stun, giving them a 30% chance of being forced to auto fail their save against your breath weapon which means the fail chance of your breath weapon goes from 60% to 72%, with the size of the cone or line you can probably get at least 1 other creature in it that will have a 60% chance of failure. They still take half damage on a successful save. (you get 4 free breaths a day and 11 ki per short rest with 2 being able to be used for a breath weapon, if we assume 2 fights per short rest and 2 short rests per day this means a total of 6 fights per day and 4 ki spent on breath leaving you with 7 more ki to burn for 6 rounds of combat..... yep plenty for breath and flurry every round and 1 stun. So you miss a starting stun on one of the combats or you just don't breath weapon one of them) So breath weapon round damage is around 41. So average damage per round total is a little under 30.13 and, of course, it gets better if you can get more in your breath.
at 5 this is probably a lot less since you are probably only breath weaponing every other fight and it only does 2d6, but that probably means you are aiming for 3 people if you use it. And at CR5-8 the enemy has a 60% chance to fail with a wis of 16 and still take half damage on a successful save. Against 3 people that is 16.8 average damage + flurry of blows + 1 weapon attack = 32 damage average in a single round at level 5. So ya that is just value, but you really need 3 people to be in a 20 foot cone or 30 foot line, which is definitely easier to achieve with monk mobility, so that is a thing.
Anyway interesting thought experiments.
Edit: doing calculations for "baseline" for me. Warlock agonizing blast + hex level 5 = 16.9 average. level 11= 27.3.