I can see only three situations in which it would really make a difference on whether or not a monk's unarmed strikes counted as finesse weapons potentially triggering sneak attack.
1) The monk has somehow been unarmed (as in he lost his weapons). If unarmed strikes counted as finesse weapons, the monk/rogue would really not be any worse off than if he still had his dagger.
2) Bludgeoning damage. Someone already pointed out that all the finesse weapons available to a monk/rogue are, in fact, piercing weapons. The only weapon rogues get that can trigger sneak attack and do a different damage type is the sling (ranged bludgeoning).
3) The monk/rogue misses with his finesse weapon. If the monk/rogue misses with his first attack which uses his monk weapon (shortsword, dagger) then he loses out on his ability to inflict sneak attack that round. If his unarmed strikes also counted as finesse weapons he could flurry of blows to get two more chances to inflict sneak attack.
I actually play a rogue/monk in one campaign so I looked at this long and hard to see how it would impact the game.
1) The paragraph stating that you can use dex gives this ability to both unarmed strikes and weapons. That means many more weapons would gain the finesse property. Mechanically, it actually wouldn't matter because none break the 1d8 threashold.
2) I think they were worried about unforseen consequences of this mixture. They were terrified of the monk being a breakout powerhouse and knee capped it a ton. I know others have said it, and I'm just adding to their vote.
3) The other problem related to this is based on complexity. In 5e, they REALLY like to keep the same dice with each attack. If I remember correctly, RAW, Flametongues are Shortswords or Greatswords that deal 1d6 (or 2d6) slashing and 2d6 fire. All d6's. Paladins are EXPECTED to use a shield, so their damage caps at 1d8. Wouldn't you know it, but their divine strikes are d8's. Icebrand is a Longsword which deals 1d8 slashing and d8 cold. Most ranged weapons deal 1d6 and so does sneak attack. The Monk's unarmed strike grows and only uses d6's for a short time, and I suspect they want to prevent the players from mixing and matching dice. Lastly, I think only one spell has options of dice and it's Toll the Dead.
I was surprised this ran as long as it did before someone mentioned a short sword, which would allow your monk 2 swipes to land a sneak attack, first one that lands is sneak bonus. This puts the monk ahead of the rogue in chances to land a sneak attack anyway. I built a monk/rogue, and running him through several combat scenarios, he fared quite well and got a decent boost to his DPR. Grab a short sword and let 'er rip!
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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.
I know this is an old thread, but I think everyone has been looking at this from the wrong angle. Maybe instead we modify the Rogue's Sneak Attack feature to:
The attack must be made using a finesse or a ranged weapon. Unarmed Strikes made using a Martial Arts die count as finesse weapons for the purposes of Sneak Attack (see Monk's Martial Arts feature).
This limits, but does not completely alleviate, concerns of unintended combinations to only Monk subclass features like the Way of the Astral Self and some other Ki abilities.
I know this is an old thread, but I think everyone has been looking at this from the wrong angle. Maybe instead we modify the Rogue's Sneak Attack feature to:
The attack must be made using a finesse or a ranged weapon. Unarmed Strikes made using a Martial Arts die count as finesse weapons for the purposes of Sneak Attack (see Monk's Martial Arts feature).
This limits, but does not completely alleviate, concerns of unintended combinations to only Monk subclass features like the Way of the Astral Self and some other Ki abilities.
Nah. A class feature shouldn't need to reference features of an entirely different class.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Helpful rewriter of Japanese->English translation and delver into software codebases (she/e/they)
It's great to see people were talking about this, and I was looking back on one of my old characters that 8 played for about 2 years in a PF1 game. He was a Brawler (fight and monk mixed class) with the sky alt class features of snakebite striker, which gave him sneak attack, who then used the prestige class assassin (because of the character I based him off was an assassin) ... So I've always liked the combo of unarmed strikes and sneak attack.
Also "sneak attack" didn't mean being sneaky to me per say... Because of growing up playing 3.5, it was classified as precision damage so I've always thought of sneak attack as persistent damage even in 5th edition rules. And so to me, a monk who uses a fist can land precision damage...
Also I personally think that a monk's unarmed strike can be any of the three damages of budgeting piercing or slashing.... Just look at the tiger style martial arts from China that's about ripping and clawing people (slashing). And I can't think of a specific style, but you have gouging attacks which are poking your fingers into eyes and other soft tissue (pricing)...
For 5E I kind of interpret it as not just precision damage (I kind of lump all dex based attacks into precision over force), but rather exploiting a weakness in an enemy's defenses, which fits pretty well with 'precision damage.' You either need advantage on the attack, indicating a clean, favorable shot whether this from the enemy being unawares or some other source. Or you need another enemy of the target next to it, dividing the enemy's attention and giving you a distraction to exploit.
If it were my game I'd probably house rule it to allow a monk to get sneak attack off their unarmed strikes, it doesn't strike me as OP or anything and it would make sense to let said punches take advantage of an enemy's opening too. I suspect that the way it is RAW is just a matter of them focusing just on what rogues can do without really taking into account monk multiclassing.
Spear and Quarterstaff are versatile base 1d6 and 1d8 when two handed, but still the highest damage weapons available to a monk. They don't technically gain the finesse property through the monk class though, the monk class features just allow them to use dex for the attack without the finesse property. So RAW it wouldn't work for a rogue, but myself and a lot of DMs would probably allow it.
People are coming at it from the angle of "it doesn't seem to be OP so I'll allow it," but I much prefer the angle of "well, it's not really needed so I'm going to stick with the RAW." If you want to Sneak Attack you can just equip a compatible weapon like everyone else. And that's coming from someone who loves multiclassing and monks.
To me this thread is no different from arguing that a Rogue/Barbarian should get to SA with a greataxe or a Rogue/Druid should get to SA when Wild Shaped. Rogues use a particular set of weapons. It's kind of their thing. And whether you're a full rogue or multiclassed, you need to respect the restrictions of the class.
Mechanically, the only real reason you might even want to use unarmed strikes for your Sneak Attack is so you can still Sneak Attack if you don't have a weapon on you at the time, and I can't imagine that's a terribly common occurrence.
If it's a flavor issue, then I guess you could just flavor your shortsword attack as a "knife-hand strike" of sorts. It's a bit of an awkward way to go about it, admittedly, but not the end of the world, and possibly simpler than introducing a homebrew rule.
Mechanically, the only real reason you might even want to use unarmed strikes for your Sneak Attack is so you can still Sneak Attack if you don't have a weapon on you at the time, and I can't imagine that's a terribly common occurrence.
If it's a flavor issue, then I guess you could just flavor your shortsword attack as a "knife-hand strike" of sorts. It's a bit of an awkward way to go about it, admittedly, but not the end of the world, and possibly simpler than introducing a homebrew rule.
More like the only reason mechanically someone would want to use unarmed strikes for sneak attacking is a monk could get 3 chances (4 at 5th level with FoB and extra attack) to land that sneak attack where a rogue gets 1 (or 2 dual wielding)
Mechanically, the only real reason you might even want to use unarmed strikes for your Sneak Attack is so you can still Sneak Attack if you don't have a weapon on you at the time, and I can't imagine that's a terribly common occurrence.
If it's a flavor issue, then I guess you could just flavor your shortsword attack as a "knife-hand strike" of sorts. It's a bit of an awkward way to go about it, admittedly, but not the end of the world, and possibly simpler than introducing a homebrew rule.
More like the only reason mechanically someone would want to use unarmed strikes for sneak attacking is a monk could get 3 chances (4 at 5th level with FoB and extra attack) to land that sneak attack where a rogue gets 1 (or 2 dual wielding)
Okay, that's a fair point... and also exactly why you would specifically write the rules so you can't do that.
Mechanically, the only real reason you might even want to use unarmed strikes for your Sneak Attack is so you can still Sneak Attack if you don't have a weapon on you at the time, and I can't imagine that's a terribly common occurrence.
If it's a flavor issue, then I guess you could just flavor your shortsword attack as a "knife-hand strike" of sorts. It's a bit of an awkward way to go about it, admittedly, but not the end of the world, and possibly simpler than introducing a homebrew rule.
More like the only reason mechanically someone would want to use unarmed strikes for sneak attacking is a monk could get 3 chances (4 at 5th level with FoB and extra attack) to land that sneak attack where a rogue gets 1 (or 2 dual wielding)
Okay, that's a fair point... and also exactly why you would specifically write the rules so you can't do that.
Isn't that exactly what they did? They made unarmed strikes and monk weapons "finesse" without making the Finesse. Basically, they are finesse in everything but name to avoid this.
Maybe I am misunderstanding what people are looking for, but let's turn the question around. Why should monks unarmed strikes (and weapons) counted as finesse?
Mechanically, the only real reason you might even want to use unarmed strikes for your Sneak Attack is so you can still Sneak Attack if you don't have a weapon on you at the time, and I can't imagine that's a terribly common occurrence.
If it's a flavor issue, then I guess you could just flavor your shortsword attack as a "knife-hand strike" of sorts. It's a bit of an awkward way to go about it, admittedly, but not the end of the world, and possibly simpler than introducing a homebrew rule.
More like the only reason mechanically someone would want to use unarmed strikes for sneak attacking is a monk could get 3 chances (4 at 5th level with FoB and extra attack) to land that sneak attack where a rogue gets 1 (or 2 dual wielding)
Okay, that's a fair point... and also exactly why you would specifically write the rules so you can't do that.
Isn't that exactly what they did? They made unarmed strikes and monk weapons "finesse" without making the Finesse. Basically, they are finesse in everything but name to avoid this.
Maybe I am misunderstanding what people are looking for, but let's turn the question around. Why should monks unarmed strikes (and weapons) counted as finesse?
Why should a monk/rogue be able to make strikes precise enough to get bonus (sneak attack) damage with a dagger or shortsword, but not with a hand strike that can be in and of itself just as carefully placed (finessed, as it were), and can eventually be more lethal (d8 or d10 damage at higher levels) as the blade is, leaving sneak attack out?
One reason could be most finesse weapons are Piercing weapons, with 2 (scimitar and whip) as slashing damage. Unarmed strikes are bludgeoning so don't penetrate the target like the others, therefore not getting that extra damage. And if you are using a monk weapon, like the dagger and shortsword that you mentioned, that is finesse (and still getting your d6, d8, or d10 damage at later levels) you can sneak attack as they meet the requirements. Edit: strikethrough'd as it wasn't needed.
And I already mentioned in my post you quoted why I think they don't allow it. And a link in Post #3 also states why, from WotC's point of view.
Where's the Shaolin Kung Fu subclasses? Where's the actual Ninja subclass? Where is anything that makes the Monk a viable class that has anything to contribute to a party other than PERSONAL survivability and movement. If you want to play a monk for the "fun" of it, I sure hope that you're in a high RP game with little to no combat or you will fall behind in every way leaving a tremendous gap in action economy. Sure you get stunning fist and it does slap, but like every other monk skill, it cost Ki and toward higher levels that's really going to suck. If you really just want to play a monk for the "fun" of it, there are dozens of other ways to build others classes that can actually contribute to a party and you can just write yourself as someone with a monk-like aesthetic background. You grew up in a monastery; adopted by a hermit in a mountain; possessed by an ancient monk spirit trying to use you to complete his own martial art style (that one is mine, haunted one background) I made a soulknife rogue that fights like he is a Shaolin Disciple that uses a Snake-like fighting aesthetic. Sneak attack with my psy blades that "you can shape anyway you want and counts as blah blah blah..." are shaped like acupuncture needles. Can flick from a distance or fight in close while still being able to gtfo when needed. You can build a Fighter that specializes in the Spear with all the extra feats that a fighter gets and extra attacks, there's your flurry and you can build into Resilient for all your saves and still get Sentinel and all those other fun feats and play it like a badass, spear-fighting monk. AESTHETIC. You can "flavor" your character any way you want and if your DM is like, nah that's a BS story, find a new DM.
Where's the Shaolin Kung Fu subclasses? Where's the actual Ninja subclass? Where is anything that makes the Monk a viable class that has anything to contribute to a party other than PERSONAL survivability and movement. If you want to play a monk for the "fun" of it, I sure hope that you're in a high RP game with little to no combat or you will fall behind in every way leaving a tremendous gap in action economy. Sure you get stunning fist and it does slap, but like every other monk skill, it cost Ki and toward higher levels that's really going to suck. If you really just want to play a monk for the "fun" of it, there are dozens of other ways to build others classes that can actually contribute to a party and you can just write yourself as someone with a monk-like aesthetic background. You grew up in a monastery; adopted by a hermit in a mountain; possessed by an ancient monk spirit trying to use you to complete his own martial art style (that one is mine, haunted one background) I made a soulknife rogue that fights like he is a Shaolin Disciple that uses a Snake-like fighting aesthetic. Sneak attack with my psy blades that "you can shape anyway you want and counts as blah blah blah..." are shaped like acupuncture needles. Can flick from a distance or fight in close while still being able to gtfo when needed. You can build a Fighter that specializes in the Spear with all the extra feats that a fighter gets and extra attacks, there's your flurry and you can build into Resilient for all your saves and still get Sentinel and all those other fun feats and play it like a badass, spear-fighting monk. AESTHETIC. You can "flavor" your character any way you want and if your DM is like, nah that's a BS story, find a new DM.
Not sure what point you are trying to make other than monks need work, which we hope will happen with the One D&D Unearthed Arcana. But that waits to be seen. And many of us have been asking for improvements to the monk for quite a while now. There are some other threads here that you might find interesting. Or wait and see what the One D&D UA for the warrior group has in store for the monk in the new 2024 edition, and if it isn't to your liking add that to the playtest feedback.
Shaolin Monk?, well Open Hand has that covered fairly well. Ninja?, shadow monk is a decent choice, but really any subclass can do that as well. You can just as easily flavor any of the monk subclasses to fit whatever "build" you are going for. And you are correct that monk has issues. And many other classes can be flavored as a "monk" if you like, too.
I can see only three situations in which it would really make a difference on whether or not a monk's unarmed strikes counted as finesse weapons potentially triggering sneak attack.
1) The monk has somehow been unarmed (as in he lost his weapons). If unarmed strikes counted as finesse weapons, the monk/rogue would really not be any worse off than if he still had his dagger.
2) Bludgeoning damage. Someone already pointed out that all the finesse weapons available to a monk/rogue are, in fact, piercing weapons. The only weapon rogues get that can trigger sneak attack and do a different damage type is the sling (ranged bludgeoning).
3) The monk/rogue misses with his finesse weapon. If the monk/rogue misses with his first attack which uses his monk weapon (shortsword, dagger) then he loses out on his ability to inflict sneak attack that round. If his unarmed strikes also counted as finesse weapons he could flurry of blows to get two more chances to inflict sneak attack.
I actually play a rogue/monk in one campaign so I looked at this long and hard to see how it would impact the game.
Three quick points I'd like to make:
1) The paragraph stating that you can use dex gives this ability to both unarmed strikes and weapons. That means many more weapons would gain the finesse property. Mechanically, it actually wouldn't matter because none break the 1d8 threashold.
2) I think they were worried about unforseen consequences of this mixture. They were terrified of the monk being a breakout powerhouse and knee capped it a ton. I know others have said it, and I'm just adding to their vote.
3) The other problem related to this is based on complexity. In 5e, they REALLY like to keep the same dice with each attack. If I remember correctly, RAW, Flametongues are Shortswords or Greatswords that deal 1d6 (or 2d6) slashing and 2d6 fire. All d6's. Paladins are EXPECTED to use a shield, so their damage caps at 1d8. Wouldn't you know it, but their divine strikes are d8's. Icebrand is a Longsword which deals 1d8 slashing and d8 cold. Most ranged weapons deal 1d6 and so does sneak attack. The Monk's unarmed strike grows and only uses d6's for a short time, and I suspect they want to prevent the players from mixing and matching dice. Lastly, I think only one spell has options of dice and it's Toll the Dead.
I was surprised this ran as long as it did before someone mentioned a short sword, which would allow your monk 2 swipes to land a sneak attack, first one that lands is sneak bonus. This puts the monk ahead of the rogue in chances to land a sneak attack anyway. I built a monk/rogue, and running him through several combat scenarios, he fared quite well and got a decent boost to his DPR. Grab a short sword and let 'er rip!
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.
I know this is an old thread, but I think everyone has been looking at this from the wrong angle. Maybe instead we modify the Rogue's Sneak Attack feature to:
The attack must be made using a finesse or a ranged weapon. Unarmed Strikes made using a Martial Arts die count as finesse weapons for the purposes of Sneak Attack (see Monk's Martial Arts feature).
This limits, but does not completely alleviate, concerns of unintended combinations to only Monk subclass features like the Way of the Astral Self and some other Ki abilities.
Nah. A class feature shouldn't need to reference features of an entirely different class.
Helpful rewriter of Japanese->English translation and delver into software codebases (she/e/they)
For 5E I kind of interpret it as not just precision damage (I kind of lump all dex based attacks into precision over force), but rather exploiting a weakness in an enemy's defenses, which fits pretty well with 'precision damage.' You either need advantage on the attack, indicating a clean, favorable shot whether this from the enemy being unawares or some other source. Or you need another enemy of the target next to it, dividing the enemy's attention and giving you a distraction to exploit.
If it were my game I'd probably house rule it to allow a monk to get sneak attack off their unarmed strikes, it doesn't strike me as OP or anything and it would make sense to let said punches take advantage of an enemy's opening too. I suspect that the way it is RAW is just a matter of them focusing just on what rogues can do without really taking into account monk multiclassing.
Spear and Quarterstaff are versatile base 1d6 and 1d8 when two handed, but still the highest damage weapons available to a monk. They don't technically gain the finesse property through the monk class though, the monk class features just allow them to use dex for the attack without the finesse property. So RAW it wouldn't work for a rogue, but myself and a lot of DMs would probably allow it.
People are coming at it from the angle of "it doesn't seem to be OP so I'll allow it," but I much prefer the angle of "well, it's not really needed so I'm going to stick with the RAW." If you want to Sneak Attack you can just equip a compatible weapon like everyone else. And that's coming from someone who loves multiclassing and monks.
To me this thread is no different from arguing that a Rogue/Barbarian should get to SA with a greataxe or a Rogue/Druid should get to SA when Wild Shaped. Rogues use a particular set of weapons. It's kind of their thing. And whether you're a full rogue or multiclassed, you need to respect the restrictions of the class.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
Or just have a section in the multiclass part of that one chapter in PHB
Seems like you'd get more mileage combining a Kensai Monk with Rogue.
I agree with scatterbraind. Just pull out a dagger or something, no big deal.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
Mechanically, the only real reason you might even want to use unarmed strikes for your Sneak Attack is so you can still Sneak Attack if you don't have a weapon on you at the time, and I can't imagine that's a terribly common occurrence.
If it's a flavor issue, then I guess you could just flavor your shortsword attack as a "knife-hand strike" of sorts. It's a bit of an awkward way to go about it, admittedly, but not the end of the world, and possibly simpler than introducing a homebrew rule.
More like the only reason mechanically someone would want to use unarmed strikes for sneak attacking is a monk could get 3 chances (4 at 5th level with FoB and extra attack) to land that sneak attack where a rogue gets 1 (or 2 dual wielding)
EZD6 by DM Scotty
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/397599/EZD6-Core-Rulebook?
Okay, that's a fair point... and also exactly why you would specifically write the rules so you can't do that.
Isn't that exactly what they did? They made unarmed strikes and monk weapons "finesse" without making the Finesse. Basically, they are finesse in everything but name to avoid this.
Maybe I am misunderstanding what people are looking for, but let's turn the question around. Why should monks unarmed strikes (and weapons) counted as finesse?
EZD6 by DM Scotty
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/397599/EZD6-Core-Rulebook?
One reason could be most finesse weapons are Piercing weapons, with 2 (scimitar and whip) as slashing damage. Unarmed strikes are bludgeoning so don't penetrate the target like the others, therefore not getting that extra damage.
And if you are using a monk weapon, like the dagger and shortsword that you mentioned, that is finesse (and still getting your d6, d8, or d10 damage at later levels) you can sneak attack as they meet the requirements.Edit: strikethrough'd as it wasn't needed.And I already mentioned in my post you quoted why I think they don't allow it. And a link in Post #3 also states why, from WotC's point of view.
EZD6 by DM Scotty
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/397599/EZD6-Core-Rulebook?
Where's the Shaolin Kung Fu subclasses? Where's the actual Ninja subclass? Where is anything that makes the Monk a viable class that has anything to contribute to a party other than PERSONAL survivability and movement. If you want to play a monk for the "fun" of it, I sure hope that you're in a high RP game with little to no combat or you will fall behind in every way leaving a tremendous gap in action economy. Sure you get stunning fist and it does slap, but like every other monk skill, it cost Ki and toward higher levels that's really going to suck. If you really just want to play a monk for the "fun" of it, there are dozens of other ways to build others classes that can actually contribute to a party and you can just write yourself as someone with a monk-like aesthetic background. You grew up in a monastery; adopted by a hermit in a mountain; possessed by an ancient monk spirit trying to use you to complete his own martial art style (that one is mine, haunted one background) I made a soulknife rogue that fights like he is a Shaolin Disciple that uses a Snake-like fighting aesthetic. Sneak attack with my psy blades that "you can shape anyway you want and counts as blah blah blah..." are shaped like acupuncture needles. Can flick from a distance or fight in close while still being able to gtfo when needed. You can build a Fighter that specializes in the Spear with all the extra feats that a fighter gets and extra attacks, there's your flurry and you can build into Resilient for all your saves and still get Sentinel and all those other fun feats and play it like a badass, spear-fighting monk. AESTHETIC. You can "flavor" your character any way you want and if your DM is like, nah that's a BS story, find a new DM.
Not sure what point you are trying to make other than monks need work, which we hope will happen with the One D&D Unearthed Arcana. But that waits to be seen. And many of us have been asking for improvements to the monk for quite a while now. There are some other threads here that you might find interesting. Or wait and see what the One D&D UA for the warrior group has in store for the monk in the new 2024 edition, and if it isn't to your liking add that to the playtest feedback.
Shaolin Monk?, well Open Hand has that covered fairly well. Ninja?, shadow monk is a decent choice, but really any subclass can do that as well. You can just as easily flavor any of the monk subclasses to fit whatever "build" you are going for. And you are correct that monk has issues. And many other classes can be flavored as a "monk" if you like, too.
EZD6 by DM Scotty
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/397599/EZD6-Core-Rulebook?