So, I’ve looked at a different thread about this, asking if the unarmed fighting style from Tasha’s interacts with the monk’s martial arts feature. They were all concerned about if it was OP or not, but I really couldn’t care less. What I’d like to know is:
Would you allow the monk to use the unarmed fighting style with dex if they had it at level 1?
Would you allow the d8 to be used for both attacks granted by martial arts at level 1?
By RAW, yes to both. I'd say that the DEX variant is the "specific" rule, since all unarmed strikes generically use STR -- the "specific" change in the Unarmed Fighting style is the damage dice.
No reason you couldn't use the d8 on all attacks at level one.
Anyways, it's been a rough day. Problems with the project I'm working on, then the delivery I was waiting on took another 2 hours out of my day. But thank you for asking.
there is nothing op about using the D8. It's not significantly more damage than what the monk can already do. Monks can already do d8 damage with certain monk weapons and it only affects damage on the bonus attack or flurry of blows. It's useful damage but it's not actually significant and is even made possible by optional rules of the monk class for the single bonus attack already. And there is no reason for them not to work together because the MA ability of monks makes allowances for other damage dice. And it's MA that is working in specificity of allowing Dexterity to be used with unarmed strikes. The fighting style is just using the general wording to describe the damage.
On top of that the number of characters that actually can do this at level 1 is very small. Custom Lineage from tasha's makes the pool slightly larger but people over value custom lineage far too much so that's more a matter of popularity than any kind of actual balance issue since custom lineage basically cuts out most if not all unique bonuses that most races have. And the other optional rules for changing certain details of subraces doesn't actually give you access to the level 1 feat so anybody that tries to use it for that is doing so even more homebrew than the optional material from Tasha's.
I think in general the Unarmed Feat makes the Monk pointless. Why not just keep going with the Unarmed Fighter going forward? You'll get more attacks. You'll do more damage than the Monk for 10 LVLS in Unarmed combat. You will be able to switch over to another class and gain additional feats. The designers have made the Monk redundant now and it is a subclass of Fighter.
I think in general the Unarmed Feat makes the Monk pointless. Why not just keep going with the Unarmed Fighter going forward? You'll get more attacks. You'll do more damage than the Monk for 10 LVLS in Unarmed combat. You will be able to switch over to another class and gain additional feats. The designers have made the Monk redundant now and it is a subclass of Fighter.
You don't actually deal more damage than a monk in unarmed combat. The monk actually has more attacks to make up the difference in damage. This does not make the Monk Redundant. There is also a bunch of other stuff the Monk does that the Fighter cannot do.
My Dwarf Monk swings a Warhammer thanks to dedicated weapon monk class feature at lvl 2, also from Tasha's. So my main attacks are D10+dex and then theres my unarmed strikes...safe to say I'm very on par with any fighter with unarmed strikes.
...hoping to avoid the long argument of useful vs not useful..
But No... it's not OP, as you have to spend a level or feat to get the damage upgrade, which isn't ground breaking, if they want to spend the resources to do so, it's an investment that could have been spent elsewhere
YES, you can take the Unarmed Fighting style and it would apply to your Monk unarmed strikes, using dexterity... even at level 1
Yes, it would apply to any and ALL unarmed strikes, with the D8 damage only triggering if you were not wielding a weapon in either hand. You could argue carrying an item versus wielding, but obviously none of your attacks that round could be done with a weapon in hand.
How is my day? It's one day closer to Friday.. thanks for asking :-)
My Dwarf Monk swings a Warhammer thanks to dedicated weapon monk class feature at lvl 2, also from Tasha's. So my main attacks are D10+dex and then theres my unarmed strikes...safe to say I'm very on par with any fighter with unarmed strikes.
Most elves get the longsword to do the same thing. There are things like the Feat that lets you be proficient in a few new weapons (I'm blanking on the name.) There is the Kensai monk. Yeah. It really is nothing special and the Monk has had various was to match or beat it either since inception or since Xanathar's depending on just what your going for. Technically 2 d10 attacks combined with 1 or 2 d6 attacks exceeds or meets the average damage of 3 d8 attacks being made, meeting at 4 if you flurry of blows respectively.
Most races do not get gain this benefit, so it would behove them to take the Unarmed Fighting Feat that some races can get around by using their racial weapons they are trained in.
Most races do not get gain this benefit, so it would behove them to take the Unarmed Fighting Feat that some races can get around by using their racial weapons they are trained in.
like with the monk. it's not enough of a bonus to really go out and spend the resources to get. Particularly since in most instances racial weapons tend to be a secondary weapon at best. it's something to pick up if it's in their path and it fits their build anyway primarily (like if they were a fighter to begin with). otherwise there is usually a entire list of much better things and ways to get the same damage or better on all of their main attacks based upon whatever class that they are. That doesn't change just because they happen to be a Tabaxi or Aarakocra or centaur or something.
Truthfully there is little reason to go after most feats based upon ones race over ones class unless that particular feat is racial only.
I am curious, since this has now come up twice, are folks using the variant human, or the Tasha's "take whatever you want" process on creation? That's the only 2 methods of having that feat until 4. I think if you're using the free reign to pick skills and perks for your character, it might look/work ok, but if you're using the original character design, only the variant human could do it reasonably without hindering the actual character growth.
ASI's are more useful to Monk than any of the feats, so slipping a feat in to give a tiny (if any, as per lengthy calculations in the other thread) increase in DPS isn't likely your best choice. It's all part of the new reign, where folks are determined that all character races and classes need to be able to do the same thing.
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Talk to your Players.Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
Some are talking about either/both variant human and the very generic custom stuff from Tasha's. Some are just speaking in general about taking the fighting Initiate Feat at some early level point such as level 4.
My daughter made a grung monk, took the unarmed fighting style at level 4 and it's a bit OP for damage honestly between the poison, longsword equal damage, and Dex for damage dice modifier.
So with two hits of a long sword my 3rd level monk was nearly cut in half. I think that turns out to be another big argument for going with a front line class that actually has a real hit point die.... Still against playing the monk.
So with two hits of a long sword my 3rd level monk was nearly cut in half. I think that turns out to be another big argument for going with a front line class that actually has a real hit point die.... Still against playing the monk.
Did you not use their disengage ability or Patient defense? Were you out of Ki? Did you use it all in FoB and feel like that if all you do is just "More Damage" then that's better than defense? (the last is actually one of the most common misconceptions going around 5e as popular opinion being presented as fact these days)
Granted the truth is many characters suffer from hits being fairly devestating at level 3. Not just monks.
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So, I’ve looked at a different thread about this, asking if the unarmed fighting style from Tasha’s interacts with the monk’s martial arts feature. They were all concerned about if it was OP or not, but I really couldn’t care less. What I’d like to know is:
Would you allow the monk to use the unarmed fighting style with dex if they had it at level 1?
Would you allow the d8 to be used for both attacks granted by martial arts at level 1?
(Optional) How are you doing today?
By RAW, yes to both. I'd say that the DEX variant is the "specific" rule, since all unarmed strikes generically use STR -- the "specific" change in the Unarmed Fighting style is the damage dice.
No reason you couldn't use the d8 on all attacks at level one.
Anyways, it's been a rough day. Problems with the project I'm working on, then the delivery I was waiting on took another 2 hours out of my day. But thank you for asking.
there is nothing op about using the D8. It's not significantly more damage than what the monk can already do. Monks can already do d8 damage with certain monk weapons and it only affects damage on the bonus attack or flurry of blows. It's useful damage but it's not actually significant and is even made possible by optional rules of the monk class for the single bonus attack already. And there is no reason for them not to work together because the MA ability of monks makes allowances for other damage dice. And it's MA that is working in specificity of allowing Dexterity to be used with unarmed strikes. The fighting style is just using the general wording to describe the damage.
On top of that the number of characters that actually can do this at level 1 is very small. Custom Lineage from tasha's makes the pool slightly larger but people over value custom lineage far too much so that's more a matter of popularity than any kind of actual balance issue since custom lineage basically cuts out most if not all unique bonuses that most races have. And the other optional rules for changing certain details of subraces doesn't actually give you access to the level 1 feat so anybody that tries to use it for that is doing so even more homebrew than the optional material from Tasha's.
I think in general the Unarmed Feat makes the Monk pointless. Why not just keep going with the Unarmed Fighter going forward? You'll get more attacks. You'll do more damage than the Monk for 10 LVLS in Unarmed combat. You will be able to switch over to another class and gain additional feats. The designers have made the Monk redundant now and it is a subclass of Fighter.
You don't actually deal more damage than a monk in unarmed combat. The monk actually has more attacks to make up the difference in damage. This does not make the Monk Redundant. There is also a bunch of other stuff the Monk does that the Fighter cannot do.
My Dwarf Monk swings a Warhammer thanks to dedicated weapon monk class feature at lvl 2, also from Tasha's. So my main attacks are D10+dex and then theres my unarmed strikes...safe to say I'm very on par with any fighter with unarmed strikes.
...hoping to avoid the long argument of useful vs not useful..
But No... it's not OP, as you have to spend a level or feat to get the damage upgrade, which isn't ground breaking, if they want to spend the resources to do so, it's an investment that could have been spent elsewhere
YES, you can take the Unarmed Fighting style and it would apply to your Monk unarmed strikes, using dexterity... even at level 1
Yes, it would apply to any and ALL unarmed strikes, with the D8 damage only triggering if you were not wielding a weapon in either hand. You could argue carrying an item versus wielding, but obviously none of your attacks that round could be done with a weapon in hand.
How is my day? It's one day closer to Friday.. thanks for asking :-)
Most elves get the longsword to do the same thing. There are things like the Feat that lets you be proficient in a few new weapons (I'm blanking on the name.) There is the Kensai monk. Yeah. It really is nothing special and the Monk has had various was to match or beat it either since inception or since Xanathar's depending on just what your going for. Technically 2 d10 attacks combined with 1 or 2 d6 attacks exceeds or meets the average damage of 3 d8 attacks being made, meeting at 4 if you flurry of blows respectively.
Most races do not get gain this benefit, so it would behove them to take the Unarmed Fighting Feat that some races can get around by using their racial weapons they are trained in.
like with the monk. it's not enough of a bonus to really go out and spend the resources to get. Particularly since in most instances racial weapons tend to be a secondary weapon at best. it's something to pick up if it's in their path and it fits their build anyway primarily (like if they were a fighter to begin with). otherwise there is usually a entire list of much better things and ways to get the same damage or better on all of their main attacks based upon whatever class that they are. That doesn't change just because they happen to be a Tabaxi or Aarakocra or centaur or something.
Truthfully there is little reason to go after most feats based upon ones race over ones class unless that particular feat is racial only.
I am curious, since this has now come up twice, are folks using the variant human, or the Tasha's "take whatever you want" process on creation? That's the only 2 methods of having that feat until 4. I think if you're using the free reign to pick skills and perks for your character, it might look/work ok, but if you're using the original character design, only the variant human could do it reasonably without hindering the actual character growth.
ASI's are more useful to Monk than any of the feats, so slipping a feat in to give a tiny (if any, as per lengthy calculations in the other thread) increase in DPS isn't likely your best choice. It's all part of the new reign, where folks are determined that all character races and classes need to be able to do the same thing.
Talk to your Players. Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
Some are talking about either/both variant human and the very generic custom stuff from Tasha's. Some are just speaking in general about taking the fighting Initiate Feat at some early level point such as level 4.
My daughter made a grung monk, took the unarmed fighting style at level 4 and it's a bit OP for damage honestly between the poison, longsword equal damage, and Dex for damage dice modifier.
So with two hits of a long sword my 3rd level monk was nearly cut in half. I think that turns out to be another big argument for going with a front line class that actually has a real hit point die.... Still against playing the monk.
Did you not use their disengage ability or Patient defense? Were you out of Ki? Did you use it all in FoB and feel like that if all you do is just "More Damage" then that's better than defense? (the last is actually one of the most common misconceptions going around 5e as popular opinion being presented as fact these days)
Granted the truth is many characters suffer from hits being fairly devestating at level 3. Not just monks.