Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
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So I personally think that Tavern Brawler should add a 1d4 instead of its wording "When you hit with your Unarmed Strike and deal damage, you can deal 1d4 plus Strength Bludgeoning damage instead of the normal damage of an Unarmed Strike." or if you have a Species Trait that says "If you hit a target with an Unarmed Strike, you can deal bludgeoning damage equal to 1d4 plus Strength." should also be reworded to add 1d4. Like does 2d4 really do that much and break the game?
Like I made a level 20 monk, gave them a 20 in Dexterity, and gave them Wraps of Unarmed Power, +3 and the unarmed strike is 1d12 + 10 so its a low of 11 damage, a average of 16 damage and a max of 22 damage but if it was 1d12 + 2d4 (from Tavern Brawler and a Species Trait) + 10 it would be a low of 13 damage, a average of 20 damage and max of 30 damage.
To me this doesn't seem like to much especially with what you are facing at level 20 or am I wrong on this? or is it just to broken for the early game and because of that it got cut? Like could say "When you hit with your Unarmed Strike and deal damage, you can deal 1d4 plus Strength Bludgeoning damage instead of the normal damage of an Unarmed Strike" and starting at level 5 add a 1d4 to any unarmed strike you make.
So please tell me your thoughts on this. For me personally I feel like they used the wording in one place and then felt like they had to keep it going or redo some other stuff, so never thought of changing it.
I think if you're a monk, then you're specifically trained in unarmed combat. The fact that you got into drunken tavern fights before you became a trained monk probably wouldn't add anything that your training didn't already cover. If you were a wizard with no training whatsoever in hand to hand fighting, but you did partake in fisticuffs in the past, it would give you an advantage in using your fists. So the feat seems to handle those situations in a believable way. The same goes for species traits. When all else is equal, a species with harder fists should do more damage. But when you start talking about trained combatants, all else is no longer equal.
I don't think that origin feats should scale as you level up. As your character gets further away from their origins, they should matter less and less. Scaling up is what your regular class levels are for.
But if your campaign is very much dependent on the trope of drunken bar fighters or a specific species being a lot tougher than others, feel free to homebrew it in.
At level 20 your Monk should probably have at least a 24 in Dexterity due to Body and Mind (your Dex should have been at least 20 by level 19 due to ASIs and Magic Items, then you will raise it up to 4 points as long as that doesn't take you over 25).
That takes you to the 1d12+10 you were talking about before, however, so I'm guessing that you simply messed up the number and not the idea.
Now, an average of 16.5 points of damage per hit might not seem like a lot, but let's remember that you are making 5 of those attacks and the odds of them all landing are really ridiculously good (You have a +16 to your attacks. Throw in circumstances giving you Advantage such as a Prone opponent and you almost have to try to miss).
So, 82.5 points of average damage on a single round. That can be Force damage, one of the hardest damages to resist, or one of a number of other types depending on your subclass.
Now add in the DC 19 Constitution Save that they have to make against your Stunning Strike. If they fail the save they are really screwed because they don't get to attack back and all the attacks from your friends are made at Advantage.
Got the Grappler feat? You should, because on every attack that landed the opponent needed to make a DC 21 Strength save to avoid being Grappled. Ok, Grappling doesn't automatically do additional damage, but I suspect with your 60' of movement you can probably come up with some creative ways to increase the damage they take (e.g. using Acrobatic Movement to run up a 50' wall and drop them for an additional 17.5 (5d6) points of damage.
And, of course, since you are so focused on your damage numbers I am assuming you are a Way of the Open Hand monk. One of your Unarmed Attacks can also set up the deadly vibrations of the Quivering Palm. Sure, you won't do any additional damage this round and next round you will only get 4 attacks, but you are looking at 66 damage from attacks plus an additional 32 or 65 average points of damage depending on whether they succeed in DC 19 Constitution Save.
If that much damage seems too low, toss on a Potion of Pugilism. It's an Uncommon magic item worth about 200 gp. If your DM allows people to craft magic items it can be made for 100 and 5 days of work. An additional 17.5 points of Force damage.
All of this is without crits. Slap some Elven Accuracy on top of that and as soon as you get Advantage on your target you are rolling 3 d20's to hit with every attack. You have over a 50% chance of landing a crit with your 5 attacks at that point.
I really don't see such a character needing a damage bump.