I believe there are a few different versions of the damage calculator floating around. The last one I downloaded was version 2.3 I believe?
it is incredibly useful to see if features are balanced, especially when unearthed arcana comes out. If people used tools like this instead of trusting YouTube personalities jumping to conclusions about balance, we might have received an astral monk that isn’t trash.
What’s wrong with Astral Monk? Monks are already decent rogue-level damage dealers, and the Astral Monk lets them be primary Wisdom? What more or less did you want from Astral, that you think math would have suggested?
My definition of "normal" is a Player's Handbook build that doesn't use feats and started with a +3 modifier on its offensive ability. Except for the Champion, because the Champion is objectively super weak compared to pretty much all of the alternatives. My idea of a "normal" Fighter is the Battle Master.
All of the "top tier" martial damage builds I see people making online with the big martial feats have some kind of resource heavy and/or situational method of gaining advantage or double advantage.
Assuming your friends are willing to help, it's super easy to set up constant advantage. Faerie Fire is only a first level spell and gets relatively cheaper the higher level you get. It lasts a whole minute (no save every turn) and if you're fighting multiple enemies (which should be the norm outside of fighting a Legendary Monster) you're statistically likely to tag at least 1. There's also the old shove-and-grapple method for melee characters, which works extraordinarily well since the grapple and shove rules are kinda broken and super skewed in the players' favor. And for Paladins there's Oath of Vengeance which gives you guaranteed advantage against one target, and while that's not as readily available as the alternatives, it does make Paladins incredibly dangerous in high-stakes encounters where they're willing to burn through all of their spell slots and they have increased chances to crit smite.
The thing that makes Sharpshooter way over the top isn't the -5/+10 effect (it's nice, worth a feat, but not super), it's combining that with ignore cover and long range.
The -5/+10 is pretty super if your hit rate gets high enough. The thing about GWM and SS is that they let you convert excess hit rate into big damage. That alone is enough to cause it to punch well above its weight as a feat in my opinion. As your post-advantage hit rate gets above 85%, the gap between your hit rate with and without the -5 penalty starts to shrink. With advantage, the gap between +8 and +3 against 13 AC is 96% vs 80%. That's only a 16 percentage point difference instead of the 25 you'd normally see without advantage.
Even if Sharpshooter didn't ignore cover or extend your range it'd still be pretty OP if for no other reason than ranged attackers having a free +2 from Archery fighting style and not having to move much to attack their next target. The long range benefit on its own is pretty harmless in most dungeon situations until you pair it with Crossbow Expert and now you've got 3 attacks, no disadvantage in melee range and still have a reasonably long range.
The astral monk seemed as though it was going to be the wisdom based opinion monk. It also seemed like it was going to be a damage focused monk.
after the UA came out, the astral monk was nerfed so hard that from levels 1-10, a base class monk with no subclass features using martial monk weapons out damages the astral monk.
Not sure what you're talking about. An Astral Self monk is less MAD than a normal monk and can not only attack, but also grapple and shove with their Wisdom modifier. Other monk subclasses can't afford to invest in STR for grappling and shoving because DEX, WIS and CON take higher priority. This one not only doesn't need STR in the first place but also gets to partially forego DEX in favor of WIS.
Please explain...I'm not seeing how it is "worse" than a standard monk
Nothing says you have to use WIS to make the strikes
Nothing changes your martial damage dice
you gain reach with your unarmed strikes
the Bonus Action to Activate the arms deals twice the damage as the "standard" bonus action unarmed strike, and to potentially multiple targets, and then the same as "standard" afterwards except its force and has reach
The damage type is one that is only rarely resisted, and from levels 3-6 is better than standard monks because it will bypass resistance to Non-magical bludgeoning damage
you can still use your main arms for attacks.
So wielding the same weapons as your "standard" monk, at (for example, level 5):
You can bonus action summon the astral hands for potential 2d(ma dice) force damage to all enemies within 10 feet of you (with DEX saves, vs bonus action unarmed strike against one target)
You can make two strikes with a monk weapon in your main hands (extra attack)
You can flurry of blows for two unarmed strikes with your astral hands (force damage with reach, bypassing resistance to non-magical bludgeoning damage that normal ua strikes would have).
That seems quite a bit better than your "standard" monk, even with the extra ki point spent to summon the arms.
Yeah, I’m with Coder, even if you ignored every other feature, Astral Monks are objectively the strongest melee subclass for Monk because they can be SAD on wisdom. That means they have the best stunning strike DC in Tier 1-3, and can meaningfully grapple and shove, while being no lower in to-hit or damage than a traditional Dex Monk. All their other complicated features are just cherries on top of their core gimmick, which is being streamlined for wisdom.
The weakness is that it’s limited to unarmed strikes to use its benefits. Base dex monk using 1d10s with a versatile weapon out damages the astral monk with all of its features until level 11 when empowered arms comes online. This is true with or without ki expenditure.
like i said, base class monk features are better than an astral monk until astral hits level 11. And then is ever so slightly passes DPR of a martial weapon using base class monk.
The weakness is that it’s limited to unarmed strikes to use its benefits. Base dex monk using 1d10s with a versatile weapon out damages the astral monk with all of its features until level 11 when empowered arms comes online. This is true with or without ki expenditure.
like i said, base class monk features are better than an astral monk until astral hits level 11. And then is ever so slightly passes DPR of a martial weapon using base class monk.
…you realize the astral monk has full use of its corporeal arms while the astral ones are active right? So it can wield that same weapon and make the exact same attacks and still use the astral arms for its unarmed strikes.
basically, I have no idea where you are coming from…provide a damage breakdown to help us understand your POV
If you’ve made a wisdom-based astral monk, your Dex is probably +3 or lower until at least T3. Weapon attacks remain Dex based, astral self only gets wisdom punches, that’s what they mean.
Its true that new monk optional rule opens up d10 versatile, instead of d8. It’s incorrect that that matters much for DPR, it’s about 2-3 DPR in tier 1, or 4 DPR in T2. in T3, you catch up, matching DPR as soon as you hit 11. DPR at T4 exceeds versatile, it rockets way ahead by 17ish damage.
Having Reach, and wisdom-based Athletics, and Stunning Strikes that actually succeed, is probably worth that very minor DPR dip in T1 and T2, putting aside that Astral catches up or exceeds plain monk in T3 and T4. It’s a good subclass, just very ki dependent, doesn’t want to multiclass like some others can.
If you’ve made a wisdom-based astral monk, your Dex is probably +3 or lower until at least T3. Weapon attacks remain Dex based, astral self only gets wisdom punches, that’s what they mean.
Its true that new monk optional rule opens up d10 versatile, instead of d8. It’s incorrect that that matters much for DPR, it’s about 2-3 DPR in tier 1, or 4 DPR in T2. in T3, you catch up, matching DPR as soon as you hit 11. DPR at T4 exceeds versatile, it rockets way ahead by 17ish damage.
Having Reach, and wisdom-based Athletics, and Stunning Strikes that actually succeed, is probably worth that very minor DPR dip in T1 and T2, putting aside that Astral catches up or exceeds plain monk in T3 and T4. It’s a good subclass, just very ki dependent, doesn’t want to multiclass like some others can.
If DPR is your only goal, all of the uses of WIS Mods for the strikes are optional; you can use Dex for the arms and weapons. You can still start with a primary DEX base and increase wisdom later in time for the 11th level class ability.
I’m not posting any math. Every time I do I get told accuracy doesn’t matter among other things. I know you all have access to the same damage profiles and calculators I do, there was even a thread on it. If you’re not willing to plug in a few numbers to test a different play style I’m not going to do it for you.
i believe in your abilities.
to clarify things a bit further, I think the bonus action to activate the arms dealing a small AOE of damage should be where the change happens to “fix” the early subclass. I think it should be half of your damage on a pass instead of no damage.
it would be a slight damage boost, and the activation can’t be spammed effectively to step on the toes of other players.
the activation dealing AOE is cool and all, but the damage of a focused flurry of blows focusing damage on a particular enemy seems to be more valuable when looking at the numbers as they are now.
I’m not posting any math. Every time I do I get told accuracy doesn’t matter among other things. I know you all have access to the same damage profiles and calculators I do, there was even a thread on it. If you’re not willing to plug in a few numbers to test a different play style I’m not going to do it for you.
to clarify things a bit further, I think the bonus action to activate the arms dealing a small AOE of f damage should be where the change happens to “fix” the early subclass. I think it should be half of your damage on a pass instead of no damage.
I mean, you were the one posting the opinion. If you aren't willing to back it up, then I don't know what to tell you. My point was that I did do a rough damage profile (in my post above) and did not find the Astral Monk lagging behind, so I was not sure where you were coming from.
Having the ability to use your bonus action on subsequent turns to deactivate the small AOE would be a boost actually now that I think about it. It’s a bit of what I wanted the drunken master to be able to do with the level 17 ability.
Like neji from narutos heavenly palm spin.
I’d also like to say that I value the utilities provided by this class more than treantmonk does in the video.
He lost me at the point he declared that stunning strike sucks. Let's be honest, the reason you do a Wisdom primary monk is maximizing stunning strike.
The reasoning that “stunning strike sucks” is based on a few factors that aren’t mentioned in the video. His assessment is that when you take into account resources use and recharge then the monk doesn’t seem to be as strong as other classes. Along with his observations about how it being based on a Con save makes it less effective by roughly 10% across the averages of actual creature statistics when compared to other saves. Also every ki point you spend for a stunning strike is one that you’re not using for your other abilities that are all ki based like flurry of blows. a few features being bottlenecked by bonus action clog factors in too. Tashas makes this better for most monk classes, but doesn’t seem to effect the astral monk very much.
As you can probably tell I don’t enjoy the mechanics of the monk. I am going to play it to see how it stands up to real gameplay the next chance I get. I’m even going to play a way of the four elements to see how that is now after tashas.
The thing about stunning strike is that you can in principle force as many as four saves a turn (as you can do it every hit) and stun is a quite severe condition. However, this comes down to the monk being quite late-level weighted; their strong defensive features don't appear until pretty late level (evasion at 7, purity of body at 10, diamond soul at 14), and chi points are a pretty limited resource at low level.
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Wow, Ir0ns0ul. That is one heck of a spreadsheet. I'm going to have to give that a close look. Thanks for bringing that to our attention.
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
At first seems complicated but it’s quite easy and it considers pretty every variable. It’s super reliable.
I believe there are a few different versions of the damage calculator floating around. The last one I downloaded was version 2.3 I believe?
it is incredibly useful to see if features are balanced, especially when unearthed arcana comes out. If people used tools like this instead of trusting YouTube personalities jumping to conclusions about balance, we might have received an astral monk that isn’t trash.
What’s wrong with Astral Monk? Monks are already decent rogue-level damage dealers, and the Astral Monk lets them be primary Wisdom? What more or less did you want from Astral, that you think math would have suggested?
dndbeyond.com forum tags
I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
My definition of "normal" is a Player's Handbook build that doesn't use feats and started with a +3 modifier on its offensive ability. Except for the Champion, because the Champion is objectively super weak compared to pretty much all of the alternatives. My idea of a "normal" Fighter is the Battle Master.
Assuming your friends are willing to help, it's super easy to set up constant advantage. Faerie Fire is only a first level spell and gets relatively cheaper the higher level you get. It lasts a whole minute (no save every turn) and if you're fighting multiple enemies (which should be the norm outside of fighting a Legendary Monster) you're statistically likely to tag at least 1. There's also the old shove-and-grapple method for melee characters, which works extraordinarily well since the grapple and shove rules are kinda broken and super skewed in the players' favor. And for Paladins there's Oath of Vengeance which gives you guaranteed advantage against one target, and while that's not as readily available as the alternatives, it does make Paladins incredibly dangerous in high-stakes encounters where they're willing to burn through all of their spell slots and they have increased chances to crit smite.
The -5/+10 is pretty super if your hit rate gets high enough. The thing about GWM and SS is that they let you convert excess hit rate into big damage. That alone is enough to cause it to punch well above its weight as a feat in my opinion. As your post-advantage hit rate gets above 85%, the gap between your hit rate with and without the -5 penalty starts to shrink. With advantage, the gap between +8 and +3 against 13 AC is 96% vs 80%. That's only a 16 percentage point difference instead of the 25 you'd normally see without advantage.
Even if Sharpshooter didn't ignore cover or extend your range it'd still be pretty OP if for no other reason than ranged attackers having a free +2 from Archery fighting style and not having to move much to attack their next target. The long range benefit on its own is pretty harmless in most dungeon situations until you pair it with Crossbow Expert and now you've got 3 attacks, no disadvantage in melee range and still have a reasonably long range.
The Forum Infestation (TM)
The astral monk seemed as though it was going to be the wisdom based opinion monk. It also seemed like it was going to be a damage focused monk.
after the UA came out, the astral monk was nerfed so hard that from levels 1-10, a base class monk with no subclass features using martial monk weapons out damages the astral monk.
It’s trash.
Not sure what you're talking about. An Astral Self monk is less MAD than a normal monk and can not only attack, but also grapple and shove with their Wisdom modifier. Other monk subclasses can't afford to invest in STR for grappling and shoving because DEX, WIS and CON take higher priority. This one not only doesn't need STR in the first place but also gets to partially forego DEX in favor of WIS.
The Forum Infestation (TM)
Please explain...I'm not seeing how it is "worse" than a standard monk
So wielding the same weapons as your "standard" monk, at (for example, level 5):
That seems quite a bit better than your "standard" monk, even with the extra ki point spent to summon the arms.
Yeah, I’m with Coder, even if you ignored every other feature, Astral Monks are objectively the strongest melee subclass for Monk because they can be SAD on wisdom. That means they have the best stunning strike DC in Tier 1-3, and can meaningfully grapple and shove, while being no lower in to-hit or damage than a traditional Dex Monk. All their other complicated features are just cherries on top of their core gimmick, which is being streamlined for wisdom.
dndbeyond.com forum tags
I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
The weakness is that it’s limited to unarmed strikes to use its benefits. Base dex monk using 1d10s with a versatile weapon out damages the astral monk with all of its features until level 11 when empowered arms comes online. This is true with or without ki expenditure.
like i said, base class monk features are better than an astral monk until astral hits level 11. And then is ever so slightly passes DPR of a martial weapon using base class monk.
…you realize the astral monk has full use of its corporeal arms while the astral ones are active right? So it can wield that same weapon and make the exact same attacks and still use the astral arms for its unarmed strikes.
basically, I have no idea where you are coming from…provide a damage breakdown to help us understand your POV
If you’ve made a wisdom-based astral monk, your Dex is probably +3 or lower until at least T3. Weapon attacks remain Dex based, astral self only gets wisdom punches, that’s what they mean.
Its true that new monk optional rule opens up d10 versatile, instead of d8. It’s incorrect that that matters much for DPR, it’s about 2-3 DPR in tier 1, or 4 DPR in T2. in T3, you catch up, matching DPR as soon as you hit 11. DPR at T4 exceeds versatile, it rockets way ahead by 17ish damage.
Having Reach, and wisdom-based Athletics, and Stunning Strikes that actually succeed, is probably worth that very minor DPR dip in T1 and T2, putting aside that Astral catches up or exceeds plain monk in T3 and T4. It’s a good subclass, just very ki dependent, doesn’t want to multiclass like some others can.
dndbeyond.com forum tags
I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
If DPR is your only goal, all of the uses of WIS Mods for the strikes are optional; you can use Dex for the arms and weapons. You can still start with a primary DEX base and increase wisdom later in time for the 11th level class ability.
I’m not posting any math. Every time I do I get told accuracy doesn’t matter among other things. I know you all have access to the same damage profiles and calculators I do, there was even a thread on it. If you’re not willing to plug in a few numbers to test a different play style I’m not going to do it for you.
i believe in your abilities.
to clarify things a bit further, I think the bonus action to activate the arms dealing a small AOE of damage should be where the change happens to “fix” the early subclass. I think it should be half of your damage on a pass instead of no damage.
it would be a slight damage boost, and the activation can’t be spammed effectively to step on the toes of other players.
the activation dealing AOE is cool and all, but the damage of a focused flurry of blows focusing damage on a particular enemy seems to be more valuable when looking at the numbers as they are now.
I mean, you were the one posting the opinion. If you aren't willing to back it up, then I don't know what to tell you. My point was that I did do a rough damage profile (in my post above) and did not find the Astral Monk lagging behind, so I was not sure where you were coming from.
That’s my bad, I really thought the damage discussion already happened on these forums but couldn’t find any references to it.
Treantmonk monk has a video going over some of the classes limitations.
https://youtu.be/aPUBoWAOCRA
Having the ability to use your bonus action on subsequent turns to deactivate the small AOE would be a boost actually now that I think about it. It’s a bit of what I wanted the drunken master to be able to do with the level 17 ability.
Like neji from narutos heavenly palm spin.
I’d also like to say that I value the utilities provided by this class more than treantmonk does in the video.
He lost me at the point he declared that stunning strike sucks. Let's be honest, the reason you do a Wisdom primary monk is maximizing stunning strike.
The reasoning that “stunning strike sucks” is based on a few factors that aren’t mentioned in the video. His assessment is that when you take into account resources use and recharge then the monk doesn’t seem to be as strong as other classes. Along with his observations about how it being based on a Con save makes it less effective by roughly 10% across the averages of actual creature statistics when compared to other saves. Also every ki point you spend for a stunning strike is one that you’re not using for your other abilities that are all ki based like flurry of blows. a few features being bottlenecked by bonus action clog factors in too. Tashas makes this better for most monk classes, but doesn’t seem to effect the astral monk very much.
As you can probably tell I don’t enjoy the mechanics of the monk. I am going to play it to see how it stands up to real gameplay the next chance I get. I’m even going to play a way of the four elements to see how that is now after tashas.
The thing about stunning strike is that you can in principle force as many as four saves a turn (as you can do it every hit) and stun is a quite severe condition. However, this comes down to the monk being quite late-level weighted; their strong defensive features don't appear until pretty late level (evasion at 7, purity of body at 10, diamond soul at 14), and chi points are a pretty limited resource at low level.