Again, the WHOLE POINT is that Hold Person requires TWO saves for it to last as long as a single Stunning Strike (once on the Monk's turn, once again on the paralyzed creature's turn).
Unfortunately it's a lot more complicated than that; while yes, the creature can potentially save the second time at the end of its turn (so you don't get another full Monk turn out of it) it can also fail in which case the effect lasts longer than Stunning Strike does with no further investment of resources. Stunning Strike also requires you to hit the target first, whereas Hold Person can potentially work against a target that is very difficult to hit (very high AC, dodging etc.). I think it's probably best to try and summarise the similarities and differences:
Costs 3 Ki for a chance to inflict paralyzed (stunned plus auto-crits) on a single target.
Can upcast to affect multiple targets at 1 Ki per additional target (subject to level restriction on Ki spend).
Has a sixty foot range.
Lasts up to 10 rounds.
Target(s) can re-take save at the end of their turn to interrupt the effect.
Requires concentration.
While I'd tend to agree that triple the cost for a similar effect isn't necessarily great value, Hold Person's range is important if you can't actually get to a target (doesn't happen often for Monks, but it can), or you don't want to be in melee range with the target (or more likely anything next to it). But what matters more is that Hold Person can be upcast, at which point it can affect multiple targets without being in melee range of any of them (or their allies) and its value increases considerably as you do this.
In general I feel like the costing of Four Elements abilities are intentionally weighted to discourage spamming lower level spells; i.e- you're encouraged to either upcast to improve the value of a spell, or to use the higher level spells, for example Flames of the Phoenix (4 Ki Fireball) versus Sweeping Cinder Strike (2 Ki Burning Hands). I tend to agree with that design philosophy, as Ki is after all a resource that fully replenishes on a short rest; the problem is more that at early levels it feels like you can't do much (though Fangs of the Fire Snake is a serviceable early discipline to take), which is why a bit of extra room for casting makes sense, but it mustn't go overboard as Four Elements actually do hold up okay against third casters (Arcane Trickster and Eldritch Knight), the main issue is that unlike these their casting resource isn't in addition to what they already have.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
What I said: "There are exactly three humanoid creatures in all of 5e with WIS <10 and CR >3, and all are from Ravnica. (I figure lower CR monsters are not worth targeting with Hold Person anyways.) That means for the vast majority of humanoids to fail two consecutive WIS throws, you're already talking about a 40% chance only."
The one thing I left out was save DC, which I was measuring against DC 14 (8 + 3 + 3, figuring most Monks are going to push max DEX first).
I stated WIS <10, as in, a reduction to WIS saving throws. You somehow took that to mean WIS of 0. I stated CR >3, figuring that using Hold Person against a minion of CR 3 or less is probably a moot point, and the better bet is to save your ki for more useful enemies. Yet you included creatures under CR 3 in your analysis, it looks like.
Again, the WHOLE POINT is that Hold Person requires TWO saves for it to last as long as a single Stunning Strike (once on the Monk's turn, once again on the paralyzed creature's turn). Using an average (CR >3) humanoid's WIS bonus to saves, which is just about +3, and a DC 15 to align with your numbers, that means that creature will fail the save on 55% of rolls (11 or below). But that only paralyzes them until their next turn -- they get a save at the end of their turn, and the odds that they fail BOTH saving throws (55% * 55%) is only 30%.
(This is different from my initial numbers, which were assuming +0 WIS save, DC 14. That means 65% failure on one save, and 42.25% chance of failing BOTH saves. I rounded down to 40%, figuring DC 14 is likely the minimum barrier for DC for a level five monk. If we use +0 against DC 15, the odds of failing twice are 49%.)
So, to clarify what this all means before we hit the Stunning Strike numbers: Hold Person will only successfully last for an entire round around 30-49% of the time (variance due to changing DC and WIS saves). In other words: The Monk who paralyzed a single enemy is going to have a <50% chance to take advantage of that effect on their next turn.
Let's compare this with CON saves against Stunning Strike, and for comparison's sake let's say we are willing to spend the same amount of ki attempting to stun the enemy (so once on each of our attack actions, then the unarmed strike from martial arts). It gets complicated by ability to hit. Here's the assumptions I'll make: CR >3, Monk DEX +4. Therefore that translates to an average 17 AC to hit, and +7 to hit. So our Monk has a 55% to hit and therefore proc Stunning Strike.
Again, DC 15 to save, and average creature CON saves are about 3.3 (you can find this quickly with a web search). Let's round up, for sake of argument, to +4 to these CON saves, meaning a monster is straight 50/50 to succeed their Stunning Strike save.
The math here gets a little wonky. Here's what we will do: look at each attack, one by one, to figure out the odds that our target doesn't get stunned on the Monk's turn. First attack: 55% to hit alongside 50% chance to stun means that 27.5% of the time we stun on our first swing. Second attack: If we missed or failed to stun, same numbers here ... 27.5% of the remaining instances (aka the 72.5% of times when we failed to stun before) the creature gets stunned, so there's a 19.9% chance we stun on our second turn, and a 47.4% chance we have stunned our target after our attack action. Third (martial arts) attack: Same numbers again, but this time against 52.5% chance our target isn't already stunned. That same 27.5% to stun of 52.5% of scenarios is another 14.4% chance that we finally stun on our bonus action attack. Grand total: A monk with +7 to attack rolls will successfully stun a creature with 17 AC and +4 CON saves about 62% of the time, assuming we are willing to spend 3 ki to do so.
So to summarize: Same cost (3ki), but with Hold Person we have somewhere between a 30-49% chance of paralyzing an enemy until the Monk's following turn. With Stunning Strike, we have a 62% chance of stunning the enemy until the Monk's following turn. And there's a solid chance that we could stun with fewer ki spent, meaning we either conserve ki or we can attempt to stun even more creatures on our turn.
Except your Numbers are wrong. Your trying very hard to make the numbers seem better. But here is something your not taking into acount either while your trying to make hitting better than them rolling saves twice. Using Standard Array to get that +7 to hit. This means that you've prioritized dexterity in your level up in some fashion and likely neglected Wis somewhat. So while you might have a +4 in your dexterity and a +3 proficiency your Wis is only a +2 or maybe a +3 meaning that your DC for that Stunning strike is instead more like 12 to 13 depending on if you got your Wis to that 16 threshold. DC 14 is far from even close to the minimum save DC's found on many monks precisely because so many guides that make do actually prioritize Dex almost exclusively until it's maxed out and even tend to pick race choices that build up dex over choices that build up wisdom. So that Save that your trying to say happens 62% percent of the time isn't 62% of the time. There is only a 40-45% chance on that save failing on any one particular usage of stunning strike. since you sacrificed Wisdom and thus Save DC to get that to hit up to try and maximize your successful attacks which is totally ignored by your math because of your white room assumptions that do not actually reflect practical application.
Also. Your needing to Hit to even applying stun. That's effectively the same thing as failing 2 saves to even get confirmation that stunning strike was successful even once effectively. You keep adding up these likely-hoods to make it seem more and more likely that your going to stun the enemy but they are offset by the need of hitting the enemy in the first place. The reality is that against AC 17 you have a 50/50 chance to then get a less than 50% chance to have them fail the stun for Stunning Strike to take effect. So your math is actually going to have to go lower. This puts your Chance over 3 ki closer to maybe 55% of getting that vital stun off on that target for your 3 ki on average against that opponent.
also. Again your DC 14 is potentially wrong. It's very easy to a monk to have an 18 Wis at level 6. This is a DC 15. If your going to optimize your to hit percentage for the attack rolls the fair comparison is against a Wis Priority monk and equivalent DC. This means a DC of 15. +3 from Proficiency and +4 from Ability modifier just like your giving the Dex based Monk. If your looking for a middle ground it would be a +6 attack monk with a +14 DC because of equal priority of the 2 stats. But this is not what you used in your examples.
If your using a DC 15. The majority of Humanoids do not have a +4 Wis Bonus. By your own admission at best you can round up to +3 with the reality that many of them are still likely +2 or less despite your claims otherwise. This is despite the fact that I proved there are actually humanoid targets over CR 3 that do not meet your attempted standards (There are even some that do not come from Ravnica that have a +0 Wisdom Save modifier in the game. Flamewrath was just one of them Being from Princes of Apocalypse from 5e. But that's besides the point really. Another just happens to be the Assassin (a level 8 CR humanoid from the basic rules). But ignoring that I can name specifics. This means that there are plenty of targets that the ranges for Hold Person for those Same 3 ki is more like 40% up to 55-60% depending on which way you want to round the numbers.
But then it should be noted that I never said that one was strictly better in all situations. If you bothered to read you might notice that I pointedly called out that it's almost entirely special NPC's and mock up casters that have the good Wis Saves at CR 6 (and this holds true for all the other CR's that's just a good comparison point in specific). You might want to ask yourself why? The Biggest reason is that almost all of those caster types actually have Weak or non-existant con saves instead. These are actually where the average gets lowered a bit when it comes to Constitution while it actually raises to some extent the Wisdom Save average. A smart player is going to realize that non-pc made Casters tend to have low con and are easily disrupted by Stunning Strike over Hold person. This means that your going to want to hit them with Stunning Strike instead even if you have Hold Person available to use.
Monks as I have said all along are all about Adaptation to the Combat at hand. Which is getting heavily ignored in attempts to try to create This seeming list of superior abilities that you should lean back on in all situations. The Practical reality for Stunning Strike is that there are plenty of times with what are considered Standard Monk Builds and prefered subclasses (i.e. Dex primary and Wis only increased around level 12 or so) Where Stunning Strike is not going to be the best use of you Ki. Despite many guides heavy reliance on it as a go to ability. You may actually be better served in other capacities when it comes to your ki expenditures.
Optimization of Strategies and abilities should be a skill that is worked on by all monk Players. There are ways to Optimize turns of Hold Person. Particularly in a multi-party group that simply either are not possible or are impractical in this white room scenario mathing. But there are also things that the Monk Can do that I have made mention of such as holding your casting of Hold Person until after the Enemy that you want to use it on has taken their turn. thus maximizing the amount of turns that you get benefit from the Paralyze effect and potentially making room for the Monk or other party members to use other tactics to increase the viability of Hold Person lasting. For example... if I were going to put off getting that DC 15 to my saves as a 4 elements monk at level 4. I could always do something like take certain feats to pick up an ability that gives me something like the cantrip Mind Sliver. If my turn is the turn right before the BBEG. That particular cantrip would be a powerful way to help ensure i got the most rounds out of Hold Person that I could by potentially inflicting turn after turn of -1d4 on it's wisdom saves when saving against Hold person. Just as one out of the box example. Increasing the likelyhood they are going to fail by 5-20% on each turn I can successfully inflict it and it's a rare save that the BBEG is even less likely to have a good save in if they do not possess some kind of caster imitating statblock.
turning away from the 4Elements/Sun Soul specific questions, it seems like Focused Aim is a big boon to multi-classed monks with spell attacks?
---
Focused Aim
5th-level monk feature
When you miss with an attack roll, you can spend 1 to 3 ki points to increase your attack roll by 2 for each of these ki points you spend, potentially turning the miss into a hit.
---
by the language of this ability, if you have a cleric level and fire off a Guiding Bolt, or if you have the Magic Initiate feat and shoot a Firebolt or Eldritch blast, you can use your ki to apply focused aim to that spell attack roll, right?
turning away from the 4Elements/Sun Soul specific questions, it seems like Focused Aim is a big boon to multi-classed monks with spell attacks?
---
Focused Aim
5th-level monk feature
When you miss with an attack roll, you can spend 1 to 3 ki points to increase your attack roll by 2 for each of these ki points you spend, potentially turning the miss into a hit.
---
by the language of this ability, if you have a cleric level and fire off a Guiding Bolt, or if you have the Magic Initiate feat and shoot a Firebolt or Eldritch blast, you can use your ki to apply focused aim to that spell attack roll, right?
Its pretty legit I wont lie....I just think its a bit prohibitive if your main focus is spell attacks as you need to go Monk 5 to get it. Likely you can get spells/features that allows you to get ADV on spell attacks without having to MC that far into monk.
However, as you stated, a monk that uses spell attacks gets some benefit from it. A warlock 2/shadow monk X build would love it for sure!
sweet! yeah, i wouldn't think it would be worth a primary caster taking up 1/4 of its levels with monk just for it, but it does give a cool extra bump to a primary monk with a caster dip or feat.
sweet! yeah, i wouldn't think it would be worth a primary caster taking up 1/4 of its levels with monk just for it, but it does give a cool extra bump to a primary monk with a caster dip or feat.
My thoughts as well!
I really want to do a Warlock 2/Shadow Monk X build to get Devil sight/Agonizing Blast just to have those kinda options
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Unfortunately it's a lot more complicated than that; while yes, the creature can potentially save the second time at the end of its turn (so you don't get another full Monk turn out of it) it can also fail in which case the effect lasts longer than Stunning Strike does with no further investment of resources. Stunning Strike also requires you to hit the target first, whereas Hold Person can potentially work against a target that is very difficult to hit (very high AC, dodging etc.). I think it's probably best to try and summarise the similarities and differences:
Stunning Strike:
Hold Person:
While I'd tend to agree that triple the cost for a similar effect isn't necessarily great value, Hold Person's range is important if you can't actually get to a target (doesn't happen often for Monks, but it can), or you don't want to be in melee range with the target (or more likely anything next to it). But what matters more is that Hold Person can be upcast, at which point it can affect multiple targets without being in melee range of any of them (or their allies) and its value increases considerably as you do this.
In general I feel like the costing of Four Elements abilities are intentionally weighted to discourage spamming lower level spells; i.e- you're encouraged to either upcast to improve the value of a spell, or to use the higher level spells, for example Flames of the Phoenix (4 Ki Fireball) versus Sweeping Cinder Strike (2 Ki Burning Hands). I tend to agree with that design philosophy, as Ki is after all a resource that fully replenishes on a short rest; the problem is more that at early levels it feels like you can't do much (though Fangs of the Fire Snake is a serviceable early discipline to take), which is why a bit of extra room for casting makes sense, but it mustn't go overboard as Four Elements actually do hold up okay against third casters (Arcane Trickster and Eldritch Knight), the main issue is that unlike these their casting resource isn't in addition to what they already have.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
Except your Numbers are wrong. Your trying very hard to make the numbers seem better. But here is something your not taking into acount either while your trying to make hitting better than them rolling saves twice. Using Standard Array to get that +7 to hit. This means that you've prioritized dexterity in your level up in some fashion and likely neglected Wis somewhat. So while you might have a +4 in your dexterity and a +3 proficiency your Wis is only a +2 or maybe a +3 meaning that your DC for that Stunning strike is instead more like 12 to 13 depending on if you got your Wis to that 16 threshold. DC 14 is far from even close to the minimum save DC's found on many monks precisely because so many guides that make do actually prioritize Dex almost exclusively until it's maxed out and even tend to pick race choices that build up dex over choices that build up wisdom. So that Save that your trying to say happens 62% percent of the time isn't 62% of the time. There is only a 40-45% chance on that save failing on any one particular usage of stunning strike. since you sacrificed Wisdom and thus Save DC to get that to hit up to try and maximize your successful attacks which is totally ignored by your math because of your white room assumptions that do not actually reflect practical application.
Also. Your needing to Hit to even applying stun. That's effectively the same thing as failing 2 saves to even get confirmation that stunning strike was successful even once effectively. You keep adding up these likely-hoods to make it seem more and more likely that your going to stun the enemy but they are offset by the need of hitting the enemy in the first place. The reality is that against AC 17 you have a 50/50 chance to then get a less than 50% chance to have them fail the stun for Stunning Strike to take effect. So your math is actually going to have to go lower. This puts your Chance over 3 ki closer to maybe 55% of getting that vital stun off on that target for your 3 ki on average against that opponent.
also. Again your DC 14 is potentially wrong. It's very easy to a monk to have an 18 Wis at level 6. This is a DC 15. If your going to optimize your to hit percentage for the attack rolls the fair comparison is against a Wis Priority monk and equivalent DC. This means a DC of 15. +3 from Proficiency and +4 from Ability modifier just like your giving the Dex based Monk. If your looking for a middle ground it would be a +6 attack monk with a +14 DC because of equal priority of the 2 stats. But this is not what you used in your examples.
If your using a DC 15. The majority of Humanoids do not have a +4 Wis Bonus. By your own admission at best you can round up to +3 with the reality that many of them are still likely +2 or less despite your claims otherwise. This is despite the fact that I proved there are actually humanoid targets over CR 3 that do not meet your attempted standards (There are even some that do not come from Ravnica that have a +0 Wisdom Save modifier in the game. Flamewrath was just one of them Being from Princes of Apocalypse from 5e. But that's besides the point really. Another just happens to be the Assassin (a level 8 CR humanoid from the basic rules). But ignoring that I can name specifics. This means that there are plenty of targets that the ranges for Hold Person for those Same 3 ki is more like 40% up to 55-60% depending on which way you want to round the numbers.
But then it should be noted that I never said that one was strictly better in all situations. If you bothered to read you might notice that I pointedly called out that it's almost entirely special NPC's and mock up casters that have the good Wis Saves at CR 6 (and this holds true for all the other CR's that's just a good comparison point in specific). You might want to ask yourself why? The Biggest reason is that almost all of those caster types actually have Weak or non-existant con saves instead. These are actually where the average gets lowered a bit when it comes to Constitution while it actually raises to some extent the Wisdom Save average. A smart player is going to realize that non-pc made Casters tend to have low con and are easily disrupted by Stunning Strike over Hold person. This means that your going to want to hit them with Stunning Strike instead even if you have Hold Person available to use.
Monks as I have said all along are all about Adaptation to the Combat at hand. Which is getting heavily ignored in attempts to try to create This seeming list of superior abilities that you should lean back on in all situations. The Practical reality for Stunning Strike is that there are plenty of times with what are considered Standard Monk Builds and prefered subclasses (i.e. Dex primary and Wis only increased around level 12 or so) Where Stunning Strike is not going to be the best use of you Ki. Despite many guides heavy reliance on it as a go to ability. You may actually be better served in other capacities when it comes to your ki expenditures.
Optimization of Strategies and abilities should be a skill that is worked on by all monk Players. There are ways to Optimize turns of Hold Person. Particularly in a multi-party group that simply either are not possible or are impractical in this white room scenario mathing. But there are also things that the Monk Can do that I have made mention of such as holding your casting of Hold Person until after the Enemy that you want to use it on has taken their turn. thus maximizing the amount of turns that you get benefit from the Paralyze effect and potentially making room for the Monk or other party members to use other tactics to increase the viability of Hold Person lasting. For example... if I were going to put off getting that DC 15 to my saves as a 4 elements monk at level 4. I could always do something like take certain feats to pick up an ability that gives me something like the cantrip Mind Sliver. If my turn is the turn right before the BBEG. That particular cantrip would be a powerful way to help ensure i got the most rounds out of Hold Person that I could by potentially inflicting turn after turn of -1d4 on it's wisdom saves when saving against Hold person. Just as one out of the box example. Increasing the likelyhood they are going to fail by 5-20% on each turn I can successfully inflict it and it's a rare save that the BBEG is even less likely to have a good save in if they do not possess some kind of caster imitating statblock.
turning away from the 4Elements/Sun Soul specific questions, it seems like Focused Aim is a big boon to multi-classed monks with spell attacks?
---
Focused Aim
5th-level monk feature
When you miss with an attack roll, you can spend 1 to 3 ki points to increase your attack roll by 2 for each of these ki points you spend, potentially turning the miss into a hit.
---
by the language of this ability, if you have a cleric level and fire off a Guiding Bolt, or if you have the Magic Initiate feat and shoot a Firebolt or Eldritch blast, you can use your ki to apply focused aim to that spell attack roll, right?
Its pretty legit I wont lie....I just think its a bit prohibitive if your main focus is spell attacks as you need to go Monk 5 to get it. Likely you can get spells/features that allows you to get ADV on spell attacks without having to MC that far into monk.
However, as you stated, a monk that uses spell attacks gets some benefit from it. A warlock 2/shadow monk X build would love it for sure!
sweet! yeah, i wouldn't think it would be worth a primary caster taking up 1/4 of its levels with monk just for it, but it does give a cool extra bump to a primary monk with a caster dip or feat.
My thoughts as well!
I really want to do a Warlock 2/Shadow Monk X build to get Devil sight/Agonizing Blast just to have those kinda options