by 11 there damage is abysmal, but from level 5 onward its subpar.
Monk essentially maxes out at level 8, at which level you have enough discipline points that you can assume FoB every turn, giving a base damage of 4d8+20 (38); with a +1 weapon that increases to 40. For comparison, a polearm master fighter (+1 polearm) is at 3d8+17 (30.5), which gets increased by maybe 5 for action surge. That's perfectly adequate damage in tier 2. The problem is that damage barely increases after level 8.
monks don't have dual wielder early teir in 5e (5e dual wielder gives AC and two d8s not to mention its trash compared to gwm/ss), and in UA, anyone with two attacks can make 4 attacks per round with PAM. by level 5., and once you consider rage, reckless, multiple fighting styles, extra feats, hunters mark, divine favor, etc, monk is far behind, and only getting worse later on. Not to mention better use of masteries.
Can any of you honestly explain to me why you want them to be mechanically bad at damage in all honesty(you only play level 5)? especially after ss nerf I really don't get you guys. honestly the problems with monk are everything costs ki, low damage , low ac , mad ,cant get benefits from feats . so my fix is give them better damage, more ac, less ki cost and acces to feats, yawl like no way that's broken. meanwhile battle master , berserker barb and pali feasting ,and crickets on that side of course.
Fob blocking the features is only an acceptable design if your full damage makes up for bad damage. Dodge basically halves your damage for a round, thats almost always a bad idea in 5e's design. Especially since monk's all out damage with flurry is lower to other guys normal turns with better armor, hit points, and recovery. So using dodge to lower your subpar damage by half, because the enemy MIGHT try to hit you, is a fairly poor idea.
Meanwhile the barbarian is doing like 2 times the damage, with resistance to damage and substantially more hp
In onednd, which this is a thread about, a fighter would be making 4 attacks per round. they would like have twf, pam and another feat of choice, gwm, or maybe charger... They can also take a fighting style as a part of char creation, so they can also have gwf.
so a round looks like (d6+5)x2 +d10+5+ d4(or higher based on gwm crit)+5+ 3(gwm)or 4.5(charger) action surge can be any weapon, so likely it would be a GS with GWF, so basically that adds 6+ assuming 4 round encounters. total there is about 44-46. and thats not counting the subclasses which give superior damage to fighter. And fighter is still in its awkward phase.
this gets reduced due to accuracy, but since monk probably has same accuracy we can ignore it
barbarian is doing 41+ but they have reckless attack, so while the monk 38 becomes 24.7, the barbarians 41 becomes 35. not to mention berserk gives +4d6 per round in addition to that. And at lvl 9, barbarian gets a rage bonus increase,
note, monk best increases from subclass are a martial arts die, and many don't get that before 10
paladin also has access to concentration based buffs, AND smites now. so they can take the same 4 hit combo and add 2.5 per attack from divine favor, and however much smites they desire to do.
this ignores being able to use vex, graze, topple, flex to increase damage, while monk has no masteries on unarmed strikes.
Basically other martials have way more possible interactions from feats, features, spells, weapons, etc that add up to more dmg than monks can dish out. It already starts by 5, when every martial gets access to 4 attacks, if they want it, (not always most efficient) And
IMHO remove the MAD from Unarmored Defense, and like the Fighter make the monk Str or Dex main stat instead only Dex. So the player can choose between an agile and stealthy or power and athletic character, instead being forced to always the same.
No, it really isn't. Monks have quite good damage until tier 3 -- unless their damage is reduced to zero by reducing their hit points to zero.
It used to be, but Weapon Masteries have increased the damage of all characters using martial weapons by ~15-20% but the monk's unarmed strikes do not benefit from them at all. All that is needed is for monk's unarmed strikes to be able to benefit from any weapon mastery they want to bring them back up to parity in tiers 1 & 2.
"No, it really isn't. Monks have quite good damage until tier 3" you even admit it sucks after tier 3 that needs repair, see even when you are arguing against me your agreeing lol . now I think it falls off earlier but ya lol.
"No, it really isn't. Monks have quite good damage until tier 3" you even admit it sucks after tier 3 that needs repair, see even when you are arguing against me your agreeing lol .
I'm disagreeing with certain specifics. A number of martial classes, including the monk, have grossly inadequate damage increases after tier 2, but you're not doing anyone any favors by exaggerating the problem.
IMHO remove the MAD from Unarmored Defense, and like the Fighter make the monk Str or Dex main stat instead only Dex. So the player can choose between an agile and stealthy or power and athletic character, instead being forced to always the same.
One question, and where do you put wisdom? Even if you switch from dexterity to strength the wisdom always remains there and so it still remains MAD. In fact strength is a less useful ability score than dexterity. No, the problem is between constitution and wisdom. Strength only brings athletic and grab. While constitution brings hit points which is a more relevant issue.
If MAD is the problem (which I disagree with, Paladin is MAD and works just fine, Ranger is MAD and works just fine, Sorcerers, Wizards, Bards, and Warlocks are MAD and work just fine).. then the solution is making Monk SAD using Wisdom - give them the Astral Monk's Wis-based unarmed strikes as a base class feature, use Wis for their DC, and make their unarmoured defense exclusively Wis : AC = 10+2*Wis.
Then people can choose if they want CON for more hit points, DEX for more initiative and skills, or STR for grappling & carry capacity, depending on what kind of theme they want for their monk.
If MAD is the problem (which I disagree with, Paladin is MAD and works just fine, Ranger is MAD and works just fine, Sorcerers, Wizards, Bards, and Warlocks are MAD and work just fine).
None of these are MAD to the same degree; Paladin and Ranger can function just fine with a low casting score because in terms of combat performance often your spellcasting is to supplement the martial side, and you can avoid using too much that's save based. Paladins can straight up get by without casting a single spell and using all their slots for Divine Smite, in which case Charisma is more for things like Aura of Protection (though it's not like "only" +2 to all saves makes that a bad feature). So really they're STR/DEX priority + some CON, so they've a good amount of freedom in what else they do.
Bards, Sorcerers, Warlocks and Wizards are absolutely not MAD; the only score most need to prioritise is their casting stat, Dexterity is nice to have if you actually need better AC, and Constitution is useful for concentration and hit-points, but casters have so many options to avoid taking hits in the first place they don't necessarily need either of these to be all that high, plus most will fight at range anyway so again, less critical.
Monks however really needs Dexterity and Wisdom, meanwhile with a d8 hit-dice compared to other martials they're already behind on hit-points, which makes Constitution or the Tough feat more important, depending upon the party (if you have a barbarian taking most of the hits maybe less important). While there are options to build a Monk who never stays on the front line for long (or even an archery monk if you really want) most are going to need to be able to take some punishment, much more so than your average full caster at range who can throw up shield or whatever if they need to.
Current Monk is pretty much DEX/CON/WIS as high as you can get them, though you can fiddle with the mix a bit you really don't want any of these low.
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neither ranger, nor paladin "MAD' Ness is tied to defense/survivability.
for a character who has 50% of its damage tied to being close to enemies, they can't ignore AC, especially with low HP and HP recovery. A paladin or ranger who let's wis sit at 16 has 10% less effectiveness at certain spells. A monk has less effective spells, effects, and defense.
sorcerers/wizards/bards/warlocks aren't required to be MAD, to be clear just benefiting from constitution doesnt make you 'mad'
making them wis dependent would work, though I think most would prefer a dif stat thematicly
If MAD is the problem (which I disagree with, Paladin is MAD and works just fine, Ranger is MAD and works just fine, Sorcerers, Wizards, Bards, and Warlocks are MAD and work just fine).
None of these are MAD to the same degree; Paladin and Ranger can function just fine with a low casting score because in terms of combat performance often your spellcasting is to supplement the martial side, and you can avoid using too much that's save based. Paladins can straight up get by without casting a single spell and using all their slots for Divine Smite, in which case Charisma is more for things like Aura of Protection (though it's not like "only" +2 to all saves makes that a bad feature). So really they're STR/DEX priority + some CON, so they've a good amount of freedom in what else they do.
Bards, Sorcerers, Warlocks and Wizards are absolutely not MAD; the only score most need to prioritise is their casting stat, Dexterity is nice to have if you actually need better AC, and Constitution is useful for concentration and hit-points, but casters have so many options to avoid taking hits in the first place they don't necessarily need either of these to be all that high, plus most will fight at range anyway so again, less critical.
Monks however really needs Dexterity and Wisdom, meanwhile with a d8 hit-dice compared to other martials they're already behind on hit-points, which makes Constitution or the Tough feat more important, depending upon the party (if you have a barbarian taking most of the hits maybe less important). While there are options to build a Monk who never stays on the front line for long (or even an archery monk if you really want) most are going to need to be able to take some punishment, much more so than your average full caster at range who can throw up shield or whatever if they need to.
Current Monk is pretty much DEX/CON/WIS as high as you can get them, though you can fiddle with the mix a bit you really don't want any of these low.
Bards and Warlocks cannot throw up Shield they don't have access to it, nor do they have Absorb Elements, they both desperately want CON because they need to keep concentration (Warlock b/c they only get 2 spells per combat, and Bard b/c all their good spells are concentration). They both also get nothing but light armour proficiency meaning even with 14 DEX (which is MAD to get) they are at AC13-14 making them extremely squishy. Plus they both have subclasses / class options for fighting in melee (which must be the worse option possible b/c they have only a d8 hit die)! Yet somehow Hexblade and Swords Bards are considered S-tier despite being just as MAD as Monk.
Paladins can't dump CHA without crippling themselves, sure they don't need to cast spells but their whole party is going to scream at them if they don't have at minimum a +2 Aura of Protection. Most Paladins I've played with try to get at least a +3 CHA which they bump up to +4 fairly quickly.
Bards and Warlocks cannot throw up Shield they don't have access to it, nor do they have Absorb Elements, they both desperately want CON because they need to keep concentration (Warlock b/c they only get 2 spells per combat, and Bard b/c all their good spells are concentration).
Both do, though Bards would be via magical secrets or a feat, Warlock is Hexblade or a feat, but they have other options as well. And both have an extremely powerful defensive option for both preventing hits and concentration, it's called being in cover and/or not being a target.
Melee fighters by their very nature are almost always where they're at risk of being getting hit; simply being more easily built for range is a major defensive buff, which is why it's always been so ridiculous that ranged isn't inherently weaker than melee (hell, Archery is hands down the best core fighting style, and arguably the best even if you include the expanded ones).
While you can build a Bard or Warlock for melee, they can still switch to ranged support/damage if needed (and will still be good at it), and they would be choosing to build for that so the extra MADness is a choice. Monks' core class is MAD by default.
They both also get nothing but light armour proficiency meaning even with 14 DEX (which is MAD to get) they are at AC13-14 making them extremely squishy.
Not limited to, because unlike Monks they have the option of wearing attunement-free magic armours.
Plus they both have subclasses / class options for fighting in melee (which must be the worse option possible b/c they have only a d8 hit die)! Yet somehow Hexblade and Swords Bards are considered S-tier despite being just as MAD as Monk.
Hexblade and Swords Bards are still casters, and contrary to their name aren't limited to melee in the slightest; in fact they're both excellent (arguably better) at range. Hexblade as I say does get access to shield, and medium armor which takes the edge of any MADness considerably, while Swords Bard has defensive flourish which they can use on top of other defensive spells.
I ran a Swords Bard once who charged into a fight with enlarge/reduce and mirror image active using defensive flourish and he took barely any damage despite being the only target in range for two full rounds.
Paladins can't dump CHA without crippling themselves, sure they don't need to cast spells but their whole party is going to scream at them if they don't have at minimum a +2 Aura of Protection. Most Paladins I've played with try to get at least a +3 CHA which they bump up to +4 fairly quickly.
I literally said +2, which is easy to still get after prioritising Strength and Constitution, and bumping it can wait until later. +2 is already a substantial buff for the Paladin and party, even magic items usually only give a +1.
And "only" having +2 won't even remotely cripple a Paladin; it's one of the strongest classes in 5e, and still is in OneD&D despite some nerfs.
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So how is the MAD issue resolved? The simplest fix is another Feat/ASI at level 10 to get some breathing room on stats. The next simplest fix is to help Monk's survivability by changing Deflect Missiles to Deflect Attack.
What are other proposed fixes? A new Unarmored Defense AC computation. Attacking with WIS to become SAD. They are just not personal preference.
So how is the MAD issue resolved? The simplest fix is another Feat/ASI at level 10 to get some breathing room on stats.
The simplest fix is to eliminate it, at least with respect to AC. Using wisdom scaling for attacks doesn't actually solve anything, because the problem is AC; a higher save DC is nice to have but not a requirement for a functional character (without the AC contribution, monks become about as MAD as rangers, which isn't very).
So how is the MAD issue resolved? The simplest fix is another Feat/ASI at level 10 to get some breathing room on stats. The next simplest fix is to help Monk's survivability by changing Deflect Missiles to Deflect Attack.
What are other proposed fixes? A new Unarmored Defense AC computation. Attacking with WIS to become SAD. They are just not personal preference.
All good options, and as Pantagruel666 says, tweaking how Unarmored Defense is calculated could work too. Another option is bumping the hit-dice to d10, as this reduces the pressure to increase Constitution. In fact when you think about it, a slightly higher hit dice is roughly equivalent to a free ability score increase, as it would mean Monks no longer need to increase Constitution just to have the same hit-points as an identically specced Fighter/Paladin/Ranger. It's something you don't always see factored into balance discussions so much, but a Barbarian's toughness isn't just from Rage, it's from effectively having a CON modifier that's +1 higher than other front-line martials.
As to which mix of these options (and probably others) is the correct solution, that's a lot harder. My personal preference is the extra ASI/feat at 10, bringing some features forward and making the Monk less resource bound so you feel more free to use more features, in particular Step of the Wind to disengage, so instead of being tougher we properly skirmish to avoid taking too much punishment, but it's a very tricky balancing act. The key point for me is that I'm still pissed off that despite being the last class to get a OneD&D playtest it seems like Wizards still don't have the first clue what the Monk class' problems even are. Being able to Dash and Disengage for 1 Ki Discipline didn't somehow fix it. 😉
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I think the solution that allows the player to choose between dexterity or wisdom instead of strength for unarmed attacks should not be discarded. This would allow the monk to progress steadily with wisdom up to 20 and then continue with dexterity to add to AC.
WIS (Att-DC-AC) / DEX (AC)
I would add ASI at 6th level (4/6/8/12/16/19). I would make disengagement and bonus attack more practical. I would link everything to a technique (Iron Strike) so it would be simplified and cheaper. Read below.
Soft Technique. You can use Dexterity or Wisdom instead of Strength for the attack and damage rolls of your Unarmed Strikes and Simple Weapons, except those that have the Two Handed property.
Quick Strike. When you use the Attack action with an Unarmed Strike or a Simple Weapon on your turn, you can make one Unarmed Strike as a Bonus Action on the same turn. If you use a force point during your turn, you can decide to move your Bonus Unarmed Strike as part of the Attack action. It is still possible to make this extra attack only once per turn. (Inner force replace ki)
Iron Strike (replace FoB:).Once per turn, when you hit a creature with an unarmed strike, you can choose to spend 1 Force point and add a Martial Arts die to the damage roll. If you have advantage over a creature, you can decide to sacrifice it to perform an Iron Strike without having to spend Force points. The additional damage is of the same type as your unarmed attacks. (Inner force replace ki)
To get advantage there are the unarmed techniques that replace Weapon Mastery/ and thus are free.
2nd: Unarmored Movement
Your speed increases by 10 feet while you aren’t wearing armor or wielding a Shield. This bonus increases when you reach certain Ascetic levels, as shown in the Unarmed table. Additionally, while you aren’t wearing armor or wielding a Shield, you can take the Dash or Disengage actionas as a bonus action on your turn. When you use one of this actions your jump distance is doubled.
5th: Stunning Strike
When you hit a creature with Iron Strike feature, you can attempt a Stunning Strike. The target must succeed on a Constitution saving throw or have the Stunned condition until the end of your next turn. You cannot use this feature in combination with another unarmed techniques. At 14th level you can decide to affect your opponent’s mind, by spending 1 additional force point you can change the saving throw on Constitution to Wisdom.
11th: Flurry of Blows
Your Martial Arts feature now confers two extra Quick Strike Strikes rather than one. If you spend 1 force point or more as an action that is not an attack action on your turn, you can make the Flurry of Blow as a bonus action before the end of the turn.
18th: Flurry of Iron Strikes
Your unarmed attacks have never been more powerful. Now Iron Strike is no longer limited to once per turn,but that is only if you sacrifice advantage to execute it.
It really is . its okish at low levels but quickly falls off. the math is out there . dont argue with me argue with math.
Monk essentially maxes out at level 8, at which level you have enough discipline points that you can assume FoB every turn, giving a base damage of 4d8+20 (38); with a +1 weapon that increases to 40. For comparison, a polearm master fighter (+1 polearm) is at 3d8+17 (30.5), which gets increased by maybe 5 for action surge. That's perfectly adequate damage in tier 2. The problem is that damage barely increases after level 8.
monks don't have dual wielder early teir in 5e (5e dual wielder gives AC and two d8s not to mention its trash compared to gwm/ss), and in UA, anyone with two attacks can make 4 attacks per round with PAM. by level 5., and once you consider rage, reckless, multiple fighting styles, extra feats, hunters mark, divine favor, etc, monk is far behind, and only getting worse later on. Not to mention better use of masteries.
Can any of you honestly explain to me why you want them to be mechanically bad at damage in all honesty(you only play level 5)? especially after ss nerf I really don't get you guys. honestly the problems with monk are everything costs ki, low damage , low ac , mad ,cant get benefits from feats . so my fix is give them better damage, more ac, less ki cost and acces to feats, yawl like no way that's broken. meanwhile battle master , berserker barb and pali feasting ,and crickets on that side of course.
Fob blocking the features is only an acceptable design if your full damage makes up for bad damage. Dodge basically halves your damage for a round, thats almost always a bad idea in 5e's design. Especially since monk's all out damage with flurry is lower to other guys normal turns with better armor, hit points, and recovery. So using dodge to lower your subpar damage by half, because the enemy MIGHT try to hit you, is a fairly poor idea.
Meanwhile the barbarian is doing like 2 times the damage, with resistance to damage and substantially more hp
you are missing a lot of factors
In onednd, which this is a thread about, a fighter would be making 4 attacks per round. they would like have twf, pam and another feat of choice, gwm, or maybe charger... They can also take a fighting style as a part of char creation, so they can also have gwf.
so a round looks like (d6+5)x2 +d10+5+ d4(or higher based on gwm crit)+5+ 3(gwm)or 4.5(charger) action surge can be any weapon, so likely it would be a GS with GWF, so basically that adds 6+ assuming 4 round encounters. total there is about 44-46. and thats not counting the subclasses which give superior damage to fighter. And fighter is still in its awkward phase.
this gets reduced due to accuracy, but since monk probably has same accuracy we can ignore it
barbarian is doing 41+ but they have reckless attack, so while the monk 38 becomes 24.7, the barbarians 41 becomes 35. not to mention berserk gives +4d6 per round in addition to that. And at lvl 9, barbarian gets a rage bonus increase,
note, monk best increases from subclass are a martial arts die, and many don't get that before 10
paladin also has access to concentration based buffs, AND smites now. so they can take the same 4 hit combo and add 2.5 per attack from divine favor, and however much smites they desire to do.
this ignores being able to use vex, graze, topple, flex to increase damage, while monk has no masteries on unarmed strikes.
Basically other martials have way more possible interactions from feats, features, spells, weapons, etc that add up to more dmg than monks can dish out. It already starts by 5, when every martial gets access to 4 attacks, if they want it, (not always most efficient) And
IMHO remove the MAD from Unarmored Defense, and like the Fighter make the monk Str or Dex main stat instead only Dex. So the player can choose between an agile and stealthy or power and athletic character, instead being forced to always the same.
It used to be, but Weapon Masteries have increased the damage of all characters using martial weapons by ~15-20% but the monk's unarmed strikes do not benefit from them at all. All that is needed is for monk's unarmed strikes to be able to benefit from any weapon mastery they want to bring them back up to parity in tiers 1 & 2.
"No, it really isn't. Monks have quite good damage until tier 3" you even admit it sucks after tier 3 that needs repair, see even when you are arguing against me your agreeing lol . now I think it falls off earlier but ya lol.
I'm disagreeing with certain specifics. A number of martial classes, including the monk, have grossly inadequate damage increases after tier 2, but you're not doing anyone any favors by exaggerating the problem.
One question, and where do you put wisdom? Even if you switch from dexterity to strength the wisdom always remains there and so it still remains MAD. In fact strength is a less useful ability score than dexterity. No, the problem is between constitution and wisdom. Strength only brings athletic and grab. While constitution brings hit points which is a more relevant issue.
If MAD is the problem (which I disagree with, Paladin is MAD and works just fine, Ranger is MAD and works just fine, Sorcerers, Wizards, Bards, and Warlocks are MAD and work just fine).. then the solution is making Monk SAD using Wisdom - give them the Astral Monk's Wis-based unarmed strikes as a base class feature, use Wis for their DC, and make their unarmoured defense exclusively Wis : AC = 10+2*Wis.
Then people can choose if they want CON for more hit points, DEX for more initiative and skills, or STR for grappling & carry capacity, depending on what kind of theme they want for their monk.
None of these are MAD to the same degree; Paladin and Ranger can function just fine with a low casting score because in terms of combat performance often your spellcasting is to supplement the martial side, and you can avoid using too much that's save based. Paladins can straight up get by without casting a single spell and using all their slots for Divine Smite, in which case Charisma is more for things like Aura of Protection (though it's not like "only" +2 to all saves makes that a bad feature). So really they're STR/DEX priority + some CON, so they've a good amount of freedom in what else they do.
Bards, Sorcerers, Warlocks and Wizards are absolutely not MAD; the only score most need to prioritise is their casting stat, Dexterity is nice to have if you actually need better AC, and Constitution is useful for concentration and hit-points, but casters have so many options to avoid taking hits in the first place they don't necessarily need either of these to be all that high, plus most will fight at range anyway so again, less critical.
Monks however really needs Dexterity and Wisdom, meanwhile with a d8 hit-dice compared to other martials they're already behind on hit-points, which makes Constitution or the Tough feat more important, depending upon the party (if you have a barbarian taking most of the hits maybe less important). While there are options to build a Monk who never stays on the front line for long (or even an archery monk if you really want) most are going to need to be able to take some punishment, much more so than your average full caster at range who can throw up shield or whatever if they need to.
Current Monk is pretty much DEX/CON/WIS as high as you can get them, though you can fiddle with the mix a bit you really don't want any of these low.
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neither ranger, nor paladin "MAD' Ness is tied to defense/survivability.
for a character who has 50% of its damage tied to being close to enemies, they can't ignore AC, especially with low HP and HP recovery. A paladin or ranger who let's wis sit at 16 has 10% less effectiveness at certain spells. A monk has less effective spells, effects, and defense.
sorcerers/wizards/bards/warlocks aren't required to be MAD, to be clear just benefiting from constitution doesnt make you 'mad'
making them wis dependent would work, though I think most would prefer a dif stat thematicly
Bards and Warlocks cannot throw up Shield they don't have access to it, nor do they have Absorb Elements, they both desperately want CON because they need to keep concentration (Warlock b/c they only get 2 spells per combat, and Bard b/c all their good spells are concentration). They both also get nothing but light armour proficiency meaning even with 14 DEX (which is MAD to get) they are at AC13-14 making them extremely squishy. Plus they both have subclasses / class options for fighting in melee (which must be the worse option possible b/c they have only a d8 hit die)! Yet somehow Hexblade and Swords Bards are considered S-tier despite being just as MAD as Monk.
Paladins can't dump CHA without crippling themselves, sure they don't need to cast spells but their whole party is going to scream at them if they don't have at minimum a +2 Aura of Protection. Most Paladins I've played with try to get at least a +3 CHA which they bump up to +4 fairly quickly.
Both do, though Bards would be via magical secrets or a feat, Warlock is Hexblade or a feat, but they have other options as well. And both have an extremely powerful defensive option for both preventing hits and concentration, it's called being in cover and/or not being a target.
Melee fighters by their very nature are almost always where they're at risk of being getting hit; simply being more easily built for range is a major defensive buff, which is why it's always been so ridiculous that ranged isn't inherently weaker than melee (hell, Archery is hands down the best core fighting style, and arguably the best even if you include the expanded ones).
While you can build a Bard or Warlock for melee, they can still switch to ranged support/damage if needed (and will still be good at it), and they would be choosing to build for that so the extra MADness is a choice. Monks' core class is MAD by default.
Not limited to, because unlike Monks they have the option of wearing attunement-free magic armours.
Hexblade and Swords Bards are still casters, and contrary to their name aren't limited to melee in the slightest; in fact they're both excellent (arguably better) at range. Hexblade as I say does get access to shield, and medium armor which takes the edge of any MADness considerably, while Swords Bard has defensive flourish which they can use on top of other defensive spells.
I ran a Swords Bard once who charged into a fight with enlarge/reduce and mirror image active using defensive flourish and he took barely any damage despite being the only target in range for two full rounds.
I literally said +2, which is easy to still get after prioritising Strength and Constitution, and bumping it can wait until later. +2 is already a substantial buff for the Paladin and party, even magic items usually only give a +1.
And "only" having +2 won't even remotely cripple a Paladin; it's one of the strongest classes in 5e, and still is in OneD&D despite some nerfs.
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So how is the MAD issue resolved? The simplest fix is another Feat/ASI at level 10 to get some breathing room on stats. The next simplest fix is to help Monk's survivability by changing Deflect Missiles to Deflect Attack.
What are other proposed fixes? A new Unarmored Defense AC computation. Attacking with WIS to become SAD. They are just not personal preference.
The simplest fix is to eliminate it, at least with respect to AC. Using wisdom scaling for attacks doesn't actually solve anything, because the problem is AC; a higher save DC is nice to have but not a requirement for a functional character (without the AC contribution, monks become about as MAD as rangers, which isn't very).
All good options, and as Pantagruel666 says, tweaking how Unarmored Defense is calculated could work too. Another option is bumping the hit-dice to d10, as this reduces the pressure to increase Constitution. In fact when you think about it, a slightly higher hit dice is roughly equivalent to a free ability score increase, as it would mean Monks no longer need to increase Constitution just to have the same hit-points as an identically specced Fighter/Paladin/Ranger. It's something you don't always see factored into balance discussions so much, but a Barbarian's toughness isn't just from Rage, it's from effectively having a CON modifier that's +1 higher than other front-line martials.
As to which mix of these options (and probably others) is the correct solution, that's a lot harder. My personal preference is the extra ASI/feat at 10, bringing some features forward and making the Monk less resource bound so you feel more free to use more features, in particular Step of the Wind to disengage, so instead of being tougher we properly skirmish to avoid taking too much punishment, but it's a very tricky balancing act. The key point for me is that I'm still pissed off that despite being the last class to get a OneD&D playtest it seems like Wizards still don't have the first clue what the Monk class' problems even are. Being able to Dash and Disengage for 1
KiDiscipline didn't somehow fix it. 😉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.
I think the solution that allows the player to choose between dexterity or wisdom instead of strength for unarmed attacks should not be discarded. This would allow the monk to progress steadily with wisdom up to 20 and then continue with dexterity to add to AC.
WIS (Att-DC-AC) / DEX (AC)
I would add ASI at 6th level (4/6/8/12/16/19). I would make disengagement and bonus attack more practical. I would link everything to a technique (Iron Strike) so it would be simplified and cheaper. Read below.
Iron Strike (replace FoB:). Once per turn, when you hit a creature with an unarmed strike, you can choose to spend 1 Force point and add a Martial Arts die to the damage roll. If you have advantage over a creature, you can decide to sacrifice it to perform an Iron Strike without having to spend Force points. The additional damage is of the same type as your unarmed attacks. (Inner force replace ki)
To get advantage there are the unarmed techniques that replace Weapon Mastery/ and thus are free.
2nd: Unarmored Movement
Your speed increases by 10 feet while you aren’t wearing armor or wielding a Shield. This bonus increases when you reach certain Ascetic levels, as shown in the Unarmed table. Additionally, while you aren’t wearing armor or wielding a Shield, you can take the Dash or Disengage actionas as a bonus action on your turn. When you use one of this actions your jump distance is doubled.
5th: Stunning Strike
When you hit a creature with Iron Strike feature, you can attempt a Stunning Strike. The target must succeed on a Constitution saving throw or have the Stunned condition until the end of your next turn. You cannot use this feature in combination with another unarmed techniques. At 14th level you can decide to affect your opponent’s mind, by spending 1 additional force point you can change the saving throw on Constitution to Wisdom.
11th: Flurry of Blows
Your Martial Arts feature now confers two extra Quick Strike Strikes rather than one. If you spend 1 force point or more as an action that is not an attack action on your turn, you can make the Flurry of Blow as a bonus action before the end of the turn.
18th: Flurry of Iron Strikes
Your unarmed attacks have never been more powerful. Now Iron Strike is no longer limited to once per turn, but that is only if you sacrifice advantage to execute it.