I would argue that the problem is no one really knows what the Monk's job is.
"unarmed fighting" isn't a job, it is a description of how a job iis done. "high damage" isn't a job, but how it is done.
So, what is the Monk's Job? What is it they bring to the world as a whole, and how do they fit into it?
Looking at the features, much like the fighter, their job is combat. They don't have the skills for much of anything outside of combat. It seems that putting the same questions to the Fighter will yield similar answers. Or am I wrong?
I have yet to see a full throated endorsement of the core Monk class from UA6 from any high profile D&D commentors except for XP to Level 3, and his chat was actively disagreeing with him and showing their math for the entirety of that livestream.
I was there. During that same livestream he adamantly denied the effectiveness of the lance, so his opinion was invalidated pretty much as soon as he held it.
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With access to a level 1 dip, or the Lightly Armored feat, every class in the game is capable of starting with scale mail and shield (or better) for 18AC for 60 gold.
Except the Monk. If it's relying on unarmored defense the best AC it can get at level 1 (unless you're rolling for stats and roll godly) is 16AC.
The fact that the monk an average and perhaps even low AC for being a frontline warrior does not shock me. The main problem is its inadequate skirmishing ability. If the monk could move more freely it could use its movements to end the turn in a safe place. This is clearly without affecting its bonus action and thus its potential DPR.
step of the wind is thematic out of combat (zoom!), but seems ridiculous or cowardly used defensively in combat (where fleeing every battle to find cover doesn't feel right). monk needs a front-line gimmick to retreat a cautious step back and/or exclude a few foes from the squares around it. and honestly i think it should be limited to humanoid foes (until perhaps later levels). perhaps a single reaction halts the movement of three goblins just out of standard melee range, but the same monk might choose to 'step' away from a carrion crawler. why? one monk cliche is sparring. with humanoids. rangers have experience fending off claws and teeth, monks have experience fending off fists and feet. give the dm some breathing room to challenge you and let you shine in turns.
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I would argue that the problem is no one really knows what the Monk's job is.
"unarmed fighting" isn't a job, it is a description of how a job iis done. "high damage" isn't a job, but how it is done.
So, what is the Monk's Job? What is it they bring to the world as a whole, and how do they fit into it?
Looking at the features, much like the fighter, their job is combat. They don't have the skills for much of anything outside of combat. It seems that putting the same questions to the Fighter will yield similar answers. Or am I wrong?
Again, I wouldn't say that is a job but a way of doing the job.
An example: when I tink of a fighter, I think of someone who could just as easily be marching in an Army or commanding a battalion, or holding the door against maruading foes. THey are a defender, a warrior, someone hwho has taken the role in society as the one that does the violence so the farmer doesn't have to.
THey are soldiers, essentially, in my mind, and they treat the art of fighting as a profession.
When I think of a Monk, I think of all the wuxia and real life crap that I (an USian that has traveled) have been inundated all my life, including the core archetype of a mytiscal unarmed fighter who only battles when it is necessary and tries to do no harm so that they can live in peace and follow the teachings.
Except that imagery is A) super orientalist and icky, B) not very exciting as a D&D role (to me), C) kinda the same as a fighter.
So what separate them from a fighter? I mean, toss a few things into some sub-classes and you really could just make the basic D&D Monk a sub-class of fighter, if they are just going to be soldiers and warriors who choose to fight mostly unarmed. That *is* the most common way of avoiding the orientalist tropes in Western fiction that features an unarmed combat specialist.
And that still includes all the special abilities that draw from the Wuxia films that ultimately hare the likely inspiration foremost of the folks here. But none of us want todo that. We don't want to play Bruce Lee, the unarmed fighter with fists of fury. We want to play a warrior monk (orientalism and all), a Chiang-Shi, Kwai Chang flashing back to Master Po (ok, now I am dating the hell out of myself, lol)
Or if we do want to play Bruce Lee, well, then we have to be honest and recognize that Bruce lee played a fighter who specialized in unarmed combat -- and I will note that such is a glaring gap in the Fighter subclasses.
So what we need to do is understand how the Monk is grounded in the world that we are playing in. For baseline 5e (and One D&D) that means FR is the base. What role in FR do monks play there? -- When Oriental Adventures was first released, they introduced a different kind of Monk from the one that was in the PHB at the time (and this was what, late 1e, early 2e?). That monk is the one that influenced the current stuff, so that would mean that in FR all the monks are from Kara-tur.
That long travel by ship must have been a bad one, lol. And that brings us back to the Kung-Fu (oG) model with Kwai Chang (Caine) wandering around the West, and the positioning of a Monk not as a combat fighter seeking to do damage, but instead as a Defensive fighter that prefers the way of peace and so shuns weapons for the most part.
Want to go into the warring states period and just be a wandering monk? Well, again, the Monk part comes into play -- now you are there to right wrongs or, more likely, get dragged into righting wrongs in a circumstance where weapons are only used by bad guys to show your bravery and competence. Then you are going to go back to your temple and get in trouble for breakign the rules. THe thirty six whatevers and special abilities are what you spend a lifetime mastering -- the five point palm tecnique is a last ditch effort because for a monk to use it means they are abandoning their core goals.
And so on.
What is the role of the monk? What is their social job, how do they fit into the broader society.
I am not asking lightly -- in my next campaign I both combined the monk with a different class and then almost completely erased them until a 14 year old girl looked at me and asked for Mortal Kombat in the game world. The Video game slash films (more films). And in doing so gave me a starting point that I was able to run with to give Moks a place and to start looking at them as an important part of the whole.
I don't think that base Monks (UA, basic rules, even published sub-classes) have that. THey feel tacked on, adrift, and I don't think they appeal or inspire the designers of the game, and so they don't get that love.
And as different as all those examples I gave above are, I have seen mixes of eachof them i the responses that I have been reading here -- and no one here really seems to agree on what the monk is about.
All they keep talking about is damage and combat and if that's what they want to focus on, then they are really talking about a fighter who does unarmed combat.
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Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
Except the Monk. If it's relying on unarmored defense the best AC it can get at level 1 (unless you're rolling for stats and roll godly) is 16AC.
16 AC is standard for offensive melee builds --it's what you wind up with for most two weapon or great weapon builds (some great weapon builds will choose armored fighting style for 17 AC). However, other than the melee rogue (which is... usually not a great option) they can all do it with either a single stat of 16, or a 16 and a 14, and will have a d10 or d12 hit die. The monk needs a 16 and a 16 with a d8 hit die.
I would argue that the problem is no one really knows what the Monk's job is.
"unarmed fighting" isn't a job, it is a description of how a job iis done. "high damage" isn't a job, but how it is done.
So, what is the Monk's Job? What is it they bring to the world as a whole, and how do they fit into it?
Looking at the features, much like the fighter, their job is combat. They don't have the skills for much of anything outside of combat. It seems that putting the same questions to the Fighter will yield similar answers. Or am I wrong?
maybe try thinking in terms of a heist: why would the crew seek to recruit a monk? for what role? ...acrobat? wall scaling? stealth take-downs? non-lethal muscle? someone small to fit in the suitcase?? certainly not for a monk's well known love for dungeoneering, disguise, and animal handling. that group is looking for a thief and a thug. but maybe what they have is a monk.
maybe the missed point of a monk is that no group or job is asking for them. they don't have a common job description they could fall back on like thief or thug. with a dungeon, stronghold, or heist on deck there's just no call for a monk specifically. but must there be? is playing a 'less than optimal' role in a dungeon any different when it's a monk rather than a second rogue or sorcerer? when it comes down to it, we often take the crew that the story gives us rather than hand picking for jobs. seems like monk can be a fun class to inhabit and that be enough as long as they're not an active detriment to their party. i'd be more interested in things to make the monk more interesting and less like fighters. even if fighters are more popular in the realms equivalent of LFG chat.
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unhappy at the way in which we lost individual purchases for one-off subclasses, magic items, and monsters?
tell them you don't like features disappeared quietly in the night: providefeedback!
I would argue that the problem is no one really knows what the Monk's job is.
"unarmed fighting" isn't a job, it is a description of how a job iis done. "high damage" isn't a job, but how it is done.
So, what is the Monk's Job? What is it they bring to the world as a whole, and how do they fit into it?
Looking at the features, much like the fighter, their job is combat. They don't have the skills for much of anything outside of combat. It seems that putting the same questions to the Fighter will yield similar answers. Or am I wrong?
Again, I wouldn't say that is a job but a way of doing the job.
An example: when I tink of a fighter, I think of someone who could just as easily be marching in an Army or commanding a battalion, or holding the door against maruading foes. THey are a defender, a warrior, someone hwho has taken the role in society as the one that does the violence so the farmer doesn't have to.
THey are soldiers, essentially, in my mind, and they treat the art of fighting as a profession.
When I think of a Monk, I think of all the wuxia and real life crap that I (an USian that has traveled) have been inundated all my life, including the core archetype of a mytiscal unarmed fighter who only battles when it is necessary and tries to do no harm so that they can live in peace and follow the teachings.
Except that imagery is A) super orientalist and icky, B) not very exciting as a D&D role (to me), C) kinda the same as a fighter.
So what separate them from a fighter? I mean, toss a few things into some sub-classes and you really could just make the basic D&D Monk a sub-class of fighter, if they are just going to be soldiers and warriors who choose to fight mostly unarmed. That *is* the most common way of avoiding the orientalist tropes in Western fiction that features an unarmed combat specialist.
And that still includes all the special abilities that draw from the Wuxia films that ultimately hare the likely inspiration foremost of the folks here. But none of us want todo that. We don't want to play Bruce Lee, the unarmed fighter with fists of fury. We want to play a warrior monk (orientalism and all), a Chiang-Shi, Kwai Chang flashing back to Master Po (ok, now I am dating the hell out of myself, lol)
Or if we do want to play Bruce Lee, well, then we have to be honest and recognize that Bruce lee played a fighter who specialized in unarmed combat -- and I will note that such is a glaring gap in the Fighter subclasses.
So what we need to do is understand how the Monk is grounded in the world that we are playing in. For baseline 5e (and One D&D) that means FR is the base. What role in FR do monks play there? -- When Oriental Adventures was first released, they introduced a different kind of Monk from the one that was in the PHB at the time (and this was what, late 1e, early 2e?). That monk is the one that influenced the current stuff, so that would mean that in FR all the monks are from Kara-tur.
That long travel by ship must have been a bad one, lol. And that brings us back to the Kung-Fu (oG) model with Kwai Chang (Caine) wandering around the West, and the positioning of a Monk not as a combat fighter seeking to do damage, but instead as a Defensive fighter that prefers the way of peace and so shuns weapons for the most part.
Want to go into the warring states period and just be a wandering monk? Well, again, the Monk part comes into play -- now you are there to right wrongs or, more likely, get dragged into righting wrongs in a circumstance where weapons are only used by bad guys to show your bravery and competence. Then you are going to go back to your temple and get in trouble for breakign the rules. THe thirty six whatevers and special abilities are what you spend a lifetime mastering -- the five point palm tecnique is a last ditch effort because for a monk to use it means they are abandoning their core goals.
And so on.
What is the role of the monk? What is their social job, how do they fit into the broader society.
I am not asking lightly -- in my next campaign I both combined the monk with a different class and then almost completely erased them until a 14 year old girl looked at me and asked for Mortal Kombat in the game world. The Video game slash films (more films). And in doing so gave me a starting point that I was able to run with to give Moks a place and to start looking at them as an important part of the whole.
I don't think that base Monks (UA, basic rules, even published sub-classes) have that. THey feel tacked on, adrift, and I don't think they appeal or inspire the designers of the game, and so they don't get that love.
And as different as all those examples I gave above are, I have seen mixes of eachof them i the responses that I have been reading here -- and no one here really seems to agree on what the monk is about.
All they keep talking about is damage and combat and if that's what they want to focus on, then they are really talking about a fighter who does unarmed combat.
some of what you describe is just the characters background (soldier, etc..). If you want to think of the Fighter as a defender then the monk is a striker. If you meant defender in the "does the violence so the farmer doesn't have to" sense, the same could be said of the monk. That seems more RP than job. A fighter can start out as a soldier, sure, but they could be just some farmer's child who struck out on their own to see the world or is forced into the world after their family farm was destroyed by marauding <insert villain or monster here>.
What is an adventurer's role in the world? Because that's what all of our characters are. And classes are left up to the player to decide how they fit in. Fighters shouldn't be shoehorned into some arbitrary role because you think of them as soldiers or commanders on the battlefield. They could just be some bozo who's good at whacking things with pointy things. And although I agree monks feel like they are lacking, I don't necessarily think it is because they don't have the right job title.
I would argue that the problem is no one really knows what the Monk's job is.
"unarmed fighting" isn't a job, it is a description of how a job iis done. "high damage" isn't a job, but how it is done.
So, what is the Monk's Job? What is it they bring to the world as a whole, and how do they fit into it?
Looking at the features, much like the fighter, their job is combat. They don't have the skills for much of anything outside of combat. It seems that putting the same questions to the Fighter will yield similar answers. Or am I wrong?
maybe try thinking in terms of a heist: why would the crew seek to recruit a monk? for what role? ...acrobat? wall scaling? stealth take-downs? non-lethal muscle? someone small to fit in the suitcase?? certainly not for a monk's well known love for dungeoneering, disguise, and animal handling. that group is looking for a thief and a thug. but maybe what they have is a monk.
maybe the missed point of a monk is that no group or job is asking for them. they don't have a common job description they could fall back on like thief or thug. with a dungeon, stronghold, or heist on deck there's just no call for a monk specifically. but must there be? is playing a 'less than optimal' role in a dungeon any different when it's a monk rather than a second rogue or sorcerer? when it comes down to it, we often take the crew that the story gives us rather than hand picking for jobs. seems like monk can be a fun class to inhabit and that be enough as long as they're not an active detriment to their party. i'd be more interested in things to make the monk more interesting and less like fighters. even if fighters are more popular in the realms equivalent of LFG chat.
If your campaign is D&D Ocean's Eleven, sure. But you can build a monk to fill a role there, just like you could build a fighter, cleric, druid, barbarian, etc... Monks can be stealthy (shadow monks can teleport around in dim light or darkness. I think this is where looking at a class name and thinking why would we need a monk? or what is the monks job? doesn't really fit as you can build pretty much any class to fit most roles, especially RP ones.
Edit: "certainly not for a monk's well known love for dungeoneering, disguise, and animal handling." Why couldn't a monk have a love of those things? Is it because you have to stick to the strict adherence of monks must be from monasteries and meditate all the time contemplating their Koan? Part of the monk description is focusing on honing their physical and mental discipline to push themselves beyond what average people can do. Kind of like Olympic athletes. Some hermit out in the wilderness can be a monk. Some urchin from the streets, tired of being dismissed as being lesser, can be a monk. You name it, that can be a monk. Or any other class, for that matter.
If your campaign is D&D Ocean's Eleven, sure. But you can build a monk to fill a role there, just like you could build a fighter, cleric, druid, barbarian, etc... Monks can be stealthy (shadow monks can teleport around in dim light or darkness. I think this is where looking at a class name and thinking why would we need a monk? or what is the monks job? doesn't really fit as you can build pretty much any class to fit most roles, especially RP ones.
Well, *now* you can, lol. Hasn't always been that way, and is one of the reason old farts like me get cranky about there not being any real division between the classes anymore, and we don't like that.
There is a way around that problem that I am using (not the only, not the best, just a way) that still retains that whole flexibility thing that allows you to craft a character that is similar in that way, but it still leaves each class distinct and unique and works super well with 5e.
More pointedly, htough, if that is the case, then why don't they just turn the Monk class into a fighter? Why don' thtey just get rid of it entirely and just make unarmed combat a collection of feats that people can choose if they want?
The point of the classes is to be an archetype -- well, "unarmed combat" isn't an archetype it is something that an archetype does. Same basic principle in play.
What's the archetype? If you don't know that, then you don't have a class, you have a subclass for all the others.
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Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
I would argue that the problem is no one really knows what the Monk's job is.
"unarmed fighting" isn't a job, it is a description of how a job iis done. "high damage" isn't a job, but how it is done.
So, what is the Monk's Job? What is it they bring to the world as a whole, and how do they fit into it?
Looking at the features, much like the fighter, their job is combat. They don't have the skills for much of anything outside of combat. It seems that putting the same questions to the Fighter will yield similar answers. Or am I wrong?
maybe try thinking in terms of a heist: why would the crew seek to recruit a monk? for what role? ...acrobat? wall scaling? stealth take-downs? non-lethal muscle? someone small to fit in the suitcase?? certainly not for a monk's well known love for dungeoneering, disguise, and animal handling. that group is looking for a thief and a thug. but maybe what they have is a monk.
maybe the missed point of a monk is that no group or job is asking for them. they don't have a common job description they could fall back on like thief or thug. with a dungeon, stronghold, or heist on deck there's just no call for a monk specifically. but must there be? is playing a 'less than optimal' role in a dungeon any different when it's a monk rather than a second rogue or sorcerer? when it comes down to it, we often take the crew that the story gives us rather than hand picking for jobs. seems like monk can be a fun class to inhabit and that be enough as long as they're not an active detriment to their party. i'd be more interested in things to make the monk more interesting and less like fighters. even if fighters are more popular in the realms equivalent of LFG chat.
a second rogue is highly effective in a heist. in fact pure rogue team can do things others probably can't. like kill people and leave initiative, or be totally unseen. Sorcerer can basically do almost anything well. invisible, illusions, teleports. They aren't suboptimal.
its fine not to have a unique niche if you are effective, the problem isn't monk not having a niche, the problem is monk is bad. Some people say the monk is supposed to be a mobile assassin or disruptor who sucks at surviving (this is the rogues identity but worse) But they are bad at this. Weak offense, poor disruption ability in UA6. low survival, low resource stamina.
I think they were supposed to be a highly mobile character, able to lockdown a single enemy anywhere(farther than normal) on the field, or harass multiple enemies. But they messed up. I think most of their testing assumes rolled stats, and was played in t1-t2. Giving room for con, or strength, or both, with a higher AC. Monk is super MAD and benefits a lot from Rolled odds. in 5e.
here are their narrative examples of monk
"Her fists a blur as they deflect an incoming hail of arrows, a half-elf springs over a barricade and throws herself into the massed ranks of hobgoblins on the other side. She whirls among them, knocking their blows aside and sending them reeling, until at last she stands alone.". Can't do this, probably could, if dodge wasn't A BA and AC didnt scale poorly.
"Taking a deep breath, a human covered in tattoos settles into a battle stance. As the first charging orcs reach him, he exhales and a blast of fire roars from his mouth, engulfing his foes." First on the field, check, Breath fire, sometimes, survive after this? nope.
"Moving with the silence of the night, a black-clad halfling steps into a shadow beneath an arch and emerges from another inky shadow on a balcony a stone’s throw away. She slides her blade free of its cloth-wrapped scabbard and peers through the open window at the tyrant prince, so vulnerable in the grip of sleep." This is the one they are the most capable of, but their alpha damage isnt great. Their blade is now weak t3-t4
I think they felt like monk was going to be more survivable in melee than it is, And stunning strike should have been an option in competition with other good/useful/economical things.Likely they didnt consider the opportunity cost for dodge disengage was as high as it is. And they figured people would SR after every encounter, if able.
All they keep talking about is damage and combat and if that's what they want to focus on, then they are really talking about a fighter who does unarmed combat.
In practice, all D&D classes do combat, it's mostly a question of their style of combat. In terms of combat role, monks are single-target melee dps, and has a fairly standard setup for that -- high damage, low defense. If we look at level 1 dpr, the monk is pretty clearly in the lead -- as far as I know the top 5 are
The problem this creates is that 5e doesn't have tanking baked into the game, so the combination of high dpr, low defense, and melee adds up to 'first to die'; in fact, of those five builds, I would say only two (the barbarian and the fighter) are particularly viable, because they have durability enhancements from rage and second wind. People just don't complain as much about the rogue and the ranger because they can be played as archers instead, whereas monks don't have any particularly good ranged options.
The problem this creates is that 5e doesn't have tanking baked into the game, so the combination of high dpr, low defense, and melee adds up to 'first to die'; in fact, of those five builds, I would say only two (the barbarian and the fighter) are particularly viable, because they have durability enhancements from rage and second wind. People just don't complain as much about the rogue and the ranger because they can be played as archers instead, whereas monks don't have any particularly good ranged options.
Don't play as if the game requires, or even expects, "tanking" to be a thing. That was true for 4E, and only 4E, because every class was pigeonholed into roles: Controller, Defender, Leader, and Striker.
No other edition had operated under that assumption. MMO-think is simply anathema to playing modern D&D.
I would argue that the problem is no one really knows what the Monk's job is.
"unarmed fighting" isn't a job, it is a description of how a job iis done. "high damage" isn't a job, but how it is done.
So, what is the Monk's Job? What is it they bring to the world as a whole, and how do they fit into it?
Looking at the features, much like the fighter, their job is combat. They don't have the skills for much of anything outside of combat. It seems that putting the same questions to the Fighter will yield similar answers. Or am I wrong?
maybe try thinking in terms of a heist: why would the crew seek to recruit a monk? for what role? ...acrobat? wall scaling? stealth take-downs? non-lethal muscle? someone small to fit in the suitcase?? certainly not for a monk's well known love for dungeoneering, disguise, and animal handling. that group is looking for a thief and a thug. but maybe what they have is a monk.
maybe the missed point of a monk is that no group or job is asking for them. they don't have a common job description they could fall back on like thief or thug. with a dungeon, stronghold, or heist on deck there's just no call for a monk specifically. but must there be? is playing a 'less than optimal' role in a dungeon any different when it's a monk rather than a second rogue or sorcerer? when it comes down to it, we often take the crew that the story gives us rather than hand picking for jobs. seems like monk can be a fun class to inhabit and that be enough as long as they're not an active detriment to their party. i'd be more interested in things to make the monk more interesting and less like fighters. even if fighters are more popular in the realms equivalent of LFG chat.
If your campaign is D&D Ocean's Eleven, sure. But you can build a monk to fill a role there, just like you could build a fighter, cleric, druid, barbarian, etc... Monks can be stealthy (shadow monks can teleport around in dim light or darkness. I think this is where looking at a class name and thinking why would we need a monk? or what is the monks job? doesn't really fit as you can build pretty much any class to fit most roles, especially RP ones.
my comment was in the context of picking teams more than describing a heist specifically, just trying to spark the moment. same goes for a dungeon raid or to clear a stronghold or a diplomatic mission to the underdark. the group might ask for a shadow monk but they're not asking for a closest-to-hand monk. which is not to say they can't be looped into the story in a "monk"-accessible fashion: group needs a hand-to-hand prize fight ringer, bodyguard to a big-wig drawn into intrigue, teacher sends them out to seek an omen, enticed by the challenge, etc etc. it's just that no one prying the gems out of an ancient statue above a pool of lava finds themselves thinking "if only a monk was holding my rope, we could have gone with plan A!"
Edit: "certainly not for a monk's well known love for dungeoneering, disguise, and animal handling." Why couldn't a monk have a love of those things? Is it because you have to stick to the strict adherence of monks must be from monasteries and meditate all the time contemplating their Koan? Part of the monk description is focusing on honing their physical and mental discipline to push themselves beyond what average people can do. Kind of like Olympic athletes. Some hermit out in the wilderness can be a monk. Some urchin from the streets, tired of being dismissed as being lesser, can be a monk. You name it, that can be a monk. Or any other class, for that matter.
i think we both agree they're not known for being experts at those things. additionally, as a MAD class they're encouraged to lack the INT and CHA for the first two and then there's always a ranger, druid, or horse-lover nearby already occupying the space of animal expert despite the monk's WIS. i do appreciate asking the question, however, of whether a monk must be from a distant cloister, must be removed and remote. in that sense we should wonder why they're not given a choice of either typical farming skills or survivalist skills. or stealth and criminality.
having said that, was (cartoon) Aladdin a rogue or, by choice, a monk? he certainly had some claim to animal handling, disguise, AND dungeoneering... (edit: before he multiclass'd warlock ("a little of column 'a,' try all of column 'b'!") )
The problem this creates is that 5e doesn't have tanking baked into the game, so the combination of high dpr, low defense, and melee adds up to 'first to die'; in fact, of those five builds, I would say only two (the barbarian and the fighter) are particularly viable, because they have durability enhancements from rage and second wind. People just don't complain as much about the rogue and the ranger because they can be played as archers instead, whereas monks don't have any particularly good ranged options.
Wow really? I'll have to tell my level 17 shortsword using Rogue-Warlock that they are completely non-viable and must have died in session 1, because they had AC 16, and d8 hit die, 14 con, and fought in melee. I mean, it's completely impossible for them have survived the whole level 2-17 campaign only being knocked unconscious 3-4 times since their AC was never higher than an 18 and they only use ranged attacks 3 times in the whole campaign.
All they keep talking about is damage and combat and if that's what they want to focus on, then they are really talking about a fighter who does unarmed combat.
In practice, all D&D classes do combat, it's mostly a question of their style of combat. In terms of combat role, monks are single-target melee dps, and has a fairly standard setup for that -- high damage, low defense. If we look at level 1 dpr, the monk is pretty clearly in the lead -- as far as I know the top 5 are
The problem this creates is that 5e doesn't have tanking baked into the game, so the combination of high dpr, low defense, and melee adds up to 'first to die'; in fact, of those five builds, I would say only two (the barbarian and the fighter) are particularly viable, because they have durability enhancements from rage and second wind. People just don't complain as much about the rogue and the ranger because they can be played as archers instead, whereas monks don't have any particularly good ranged options.
Which takes me back to the response I gave a short while ago: We know the archetypes for Rogues is not "dpr", we know the archetype for fighters is basically Dpr, we know the archetype for barbarians is essentially big guy smash, and the archetype for Rangers is some kind of weird Aragorn meets the green man but light.
And while we can look at all those dprs, what we see is, yet again, that the monk is really just a fighter subclass because once you step out from beyond the dpr into utility and other capabilities, they lose their basis, their archetype, their job.
I mean, again, if all you want to do is or mesure is dpr, well, then all of those are fighter variants.
So it isn't about *just* combat (except for fighter, lol), it is about more than that. it is the more about it part that is missing and I am saying that is why the class is sorta ignored by the developers. It's just blah in terms of a foundation and a purpose. Not a Role in the sense of 4e, but I mean in the bigger picture -- what makes a Monk a monk that isn't their dpr?
Toss in Paladins and Warlocks and Sorcerers and Wizards into that mix, and you will still be able to say the exact same thing -- but you will also start to recall that what folks will say is "well, they don't do combat" and I will point out as you jut did that they all do combat. They do it differently. Yet we won't confuse any of them for a fighter because they all have fairly strong archetypes that the designers understand (and almost certainly have an interest in).
I mean, from a mechanical standpoint, in my mind, a Monk and a Bard should sit at roughly the same level , with monk edging slightly ahead. Next would be paladin and ranger, with the slightly ahead variable on what they are facing. Then barbarian and Fighter, and the variable 'edge" goes to the circumstances of their fighting.
zbut that also means that the special abilities of the monk should at least be a match for the bard.
And how do I get that? That archetype -- the Kwai Chang bit, specifically. The wandering peacemaker who fights only as a last resort and prefers to create harmony and help others. A far cry from the archetype I ended up using: a mortal kombat participant, drawing on the video game and bruce lee's Enter the Dragon, using what hey encounter in the world as a way to improve their unarmed combat abilities in order to take out literal nightmares in ritualized one on one combat.
That's two different takes. They could be subclasses, but one doesn't rely on crazy special abilities to rip spines out or teleport across a room. THe other relies on dodge and evade as action, and would likely use them as reactions, with simple effective grappling and low damage.
Again, the archetype determines the capabilities, and based on the current (non UA) subclasses, they are going for the horribly vague, poorly structured "warring states" with "38 steps" kind of monk, where there are styles of martial arts but again the focus in on not getting hit while hitting -- but they screwed up the not getting hit part, lol.
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my comment was in the context of picking teams more than describing a heist specifically, just trying to spark the moment. same goes for a dungeon raid or to clear a stronghold or a diplomatic mission to the underdark. the group might ask for a shadow monk but they're not asking for a closest-to-hand monk.
Problem though, is that I'm not asking for a warlock or a fighter or a ranger either. Sorcerer and Cleric are marginal as well, cleric is only on my list if we're probably fighting undead, and Sorcerer only for their Subtle spell.
My core party is: a Paladin, Bard, Wizard, Barbarian and a Druid. That will handle any and all challenges, you don't really need any other classes.
The problem this creates is that 5e doesn't have tanking baked into the game, so the combination of high dpr, low defense, and melee adds up to 'first to die'; in fact, of those five builds, I would say only two (the barbarian and the fighter) are particularly viable, because they have durability enhancements from rage and second wind. People just don't complain as much about the rogue and the ranger because they can be played as archers instead, whereas monks don't have any particularly good ranged options.
Wow really? I'll have to tell my level 17 shortsword using Rogue-Warlock that they are completely non-viable and must have died in session 1, because they had AC 16, and d8 hit die, 14 con, and fought in melee. I mean, it's completely impossible for them have survived the whole level 2-17 campaign only being knocked unconscious 3-4 times since their AC was never higher than an 18 and they only use ranged attacks 3 times in the whole campaign.
i fully support the idea that dnd neither asks for nor requires high AC, but i can only groan at "my iron-clad proof is in this anecdote!" :D
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Don't play as if the game requires, or even expects, "tanking" to be a thing.
I'm not. My point is that, given tanking isn't a thing, 'melee glass cannon' is a bad design choice.
If a DM has enemies focus-fire on the Monk because of (real or perceived) lower AC/HP, they're not only being a horrible DM to the Monk, they're also being a horrible DM to the high-AC Fighter because they're refusing to let the player take advantage of the strengths of their character, to the point of punishing other players for their character choices.
If an enemy has a choice between a completely unarmored and relatively skinny martial artist who (according to you) is doing off-the-charts damage and a big dude in full plate who (according to you) is doing mediocre damage...
no, wait, I change my mind, you were right all along. Giving enemies half a brain is being a horrible DM to everyone, no matter the situation.
How come all of a sudden the argument shifted from "Monks are more survivable than you think" to "Monks aren't survivable, but this core flaw isn't actually a problem because any DM who doesn't defy logic to protect the Monk is punishing the player for their class being bad"?
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Look at what you've done. You spoiled it. You have nobody to blame but yourself. Go sit and think about your actions.
Don't be mean. Rudeness is a vicious cycle, and it has to stop somewhere. Exceptions for things that are funny. Go to the current Competition of the Finest 'Brews! It's a cool place where cool people make cool things.
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my comment was in the context of picking teams more than describing a heist specifically, just trying to spark the moment. same goes for a dungeon raid or to clear a stronghold or a diplomatic mission to the underdark. the group might ask for a shadow monk but they're not asking for a closest-to-hand monk.
Problem though, is that I'm not asking for a warlock or a fighter or a ranger either. Sorcerer and Cleric are marginal as well, cleric is only on my list if we're probably fighting undead, and Sorcerer only for their Subtle spell.
My core party is: a Paladin, Bard, Wizard, Barbarian and a Druid. That will handle any and all challenges, you don't really need any other classes.
You do know a lot of DM's would read that as a challenge, right?
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Looking at the features, much like the fighter, their job is combat. They don't have the skills for much of anything outside of combat. It seems that putting the same questions to the Fighter will yield similar answers. Or am I wrong?
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I was there. During that same livestream he adamantly denied the effectiveness of the lance, so his opinion was invalidated pretty much as soon as he held it.
Look at what you've done. You spoiled it. You have nobody to blame but yourself. Go sit and think about your actions.
Don't be mean. Rudeness is a vicious cycle, and it has to stop somewhere. Exceptions for things that are funny.
Go to the current Competition of the Finest 'Brews! It's a cool place where cool people make cool things.
How I'm posting based on text formatting: Mod Hat Off - Mod Hat Also Off (I'm not a mod)
step of the wind is thematic out of combat (zoom!), but seems ridiculous or cowardly used defensively in combat (where fleeing every battle to find cover doesn't feel right). monk needs a front-line gimmick to retreat a cautious step back and/or exclude a few foes from the squares around it. and honestly i think it should be limited to humanoid foes (until perhaps later levels). perhaps a single reaction halts the movement of three goblins just out of standard melee range, but the same monk might choose to 'step' away from a carrion crawler. why? one monk cliche is sparring. with humanoids. rangers have experience fending off claws and teeth, monks have experience fending off fists and feet. give the dm some breathing room to challenge you and let you shine in turns.
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Again, I wouldn't say that is a job but a way of doing the job.
An example: when I tink of a fighter, I think of someone who could just as easily be marching in an Army or commanding a battalion, or holding the door against maruading foes. THey are a defender, a warrior, someone hwho has taken the role in society as the one that does the violence so the farmer doesn't have to.
THey are soldiers, essentially, in my mind, and they treat the art of fighting as a profession.
When I think of a Monk, I think of all the wuxia and real life crap that I (an USian that has traveled) have been inundated all my life, including the core archetype of a mytiscal unarmed fighter who only battles when it is necessary and tries to do no harm so that they can live in peace and follow the teachings.
Except that imagery is A) super orientalist and icky, B) not very exciting as a D&D role (to me), C) kinda the same as a fighter.
So what separate them from a fighter? I mean, toss a few things into some sub-classes and you really could just make the basic D&D Monk a sub-class of fighter, if they are just going to be soldiers and warriors who choose to fight mostly unarmed. That *is* the most common way of avoiding the orientalist tropes in Western fiction that features an unarmed combat specialist.
And that still includes all the special abilities that draw from the Wuxia films that ultimately hare the likely inspiration foremost of the folks here. But none of us want todo that. We don't want to play Bruce Lee, the unarmed fighter with fists of fury. We want to play a warrior monk (orientalism and all), a Chiang-Shi, Kwai Chang flashing back to Master Po (ok, now I am dating the hell out of myself, lol)
Or if we do want to play Bruce Lee, well, then we have to be honest and recognize that Bruce lee played a fighter who specialized in unarmed combat -- and I will note that such is a glaring gap in the Fighter subclasses.
So what we need to do is understand how the Monk is grounded in the world that we are playing in. For baseline 5e (and One D&D) that means FR is the base. What role in FR do monks play there? -- When Oriental Adventures was first released, they introduced a different kind of Monk from the one that was in the PHB at the time (and this was what, late 1e, early 2e?). That monk is the one that influenced the current stuff, so that would mean that in FR all the monks are from Kara-tur.
That long travel by ship must have been a bad one, lol. And that brings us back to the Kung-Fu (oG) model with Kwai Chang (Caine) wandering around the West, and the positioning of a Monk not as a combat fighter seeking to do damage, but instead as a Defensive fighter that prefers the way of peace and so shuns weapons for the most part.
Want to go into the warring states period and just be a wandering monk? Well, again, the Monk part comes into play -- now you are there to right wrongs or, more likely, get dragged into righting wrongs in a circumstance where weapons are only used by bad guys to show your bravery and competence. Then you are going to go back to your temple and get in trouble for breakign the rules. THe thirty six whatevers and special abilities are what you spend a lifetime mastering -- the five point palm tecnique is a last ditch effort because for a monk to use it means they are abandoning their core goals.
And so on.
What is the role of the monk? What is their social job, how do they fit into the broader society.
I am not asking lightly -- in my next campaign I both combined the monk with a different class and then almost completely erased them until a 14 year old girl looked at me and asked for Mortal Kombat in the game world. The Video game slash films (more films). And in doing so gave me a starting point that I was able to run with to give Moks a place and to start looking at them as an important part of the whole.
I don't think that base Monks (UA, basic rules, even published sub-classes) have that. THey feel tacked on, adrift, and I don't think they appeal or inspire the designers of the game, and so they don't get that love.
And as different as all those examples I gave above are, I have seen mixes of eachof them i the responses that I have been reading here -- and no one here really seems to agree on what the monk is about.
All they keep talking about is damage and combat and if that's what they want to focus on, then they are really talking about a fighter who does unarmed combat.
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16 AC is standard for offensive melee builds --it's what you wind up with for most two weapon or great weapon builds (some great weapon builds will choose armored fighting style for 17 AC). However, other than the melee rogue (which is... usually not a great option) they can all do it with either a single stat of 16, or a 16 and a 14, and will have a d10 or d12 hit die. The monk needs a 16 and a 16 with a d8 hit die.
maybe try thinking in terms of a heist: why would the crew seek to recruit a monk? for what role? ...acrobat? wall scaling? stealth take-downs? non-lethal muscle? someone small to fit in the suitcase?? certainly not for a monk's well known love for dungeoneering, disguise, and animal handling. that group is looking for a thief and a thug. but maybe what they have is a monk.
maybe the missed point of a monk is that no group or job is asking for them. they don't have a common job description they could fall back on like thief or thug. with a dungeon, stronghold, or heist on deck there's just no call for a monk specifically. but must there be? is playing a 'less than optimal' role in a dungeon any different when it's a monk rather than a second rogue or sorcerer? when it comes down to it, we often take the crew that the story gives us rather than hand picking for jobs. seems like monk can be a fun class to inhabit and that be enough as long as they're not an active detriment to their party. i'd be more interested in things to make the monk more interesting and less like fighters. even if fighters are more popular in the realms equivalent of LFG chat.
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some of what you describe is just the characters background (soldier, etc..). If you want to think of the Fighter as a defender then the monk is a striker. If you meant defender in the "does the violence so the farmer doesn't have to" sense, the same could be said of the monk. That seems more RP than job. A fighter can start out as a soldier, sure, but they could be just some farmer's child who struck out on their own to see the world or is forced into the world after their family farm was destroyed by marauding <insert villain or monster here>.
What is an adventurer's role in the world? Because that's what all of our characters are. And classes are left up to the player to decide how they fit in. Fighters shouldn't be shoehorned into some arbitrary role because you think of them as soldiers or commanders on the battlefield. They could just be some bozo who's good at whacking things with pointy things. And although I agree monks feel like they are lacking, I don't necessarily think it is because they don't have the right job title.
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If your campaign is D&D Ocean's Eleven, sure. But you can build a monk to fill a role there, just like you could build a fighter, cleric, druid, barbarian, etc... Monks can be stealthy (shadow monks can teleport around in dim light or darkness. I think this is where looking at a class name and thinking why would we need a monk? or what is the monks job? doesn't really fit as you can build pretty much any class to fit most roles, especially RP ones.
Edit: "certainly not for a monk's well known love for dungeoneering, disguise, and animal handling." Why couldn't a monk have a love of those things? Is it because you have to stick to the strict adherence of monks must be from monasteries and meditate all the time contemplating their Koan? Part of the monk description is focusing on honing their physical and mental discipline to push themselves beyond what average people can do. Kind of like Olympic athletes. Some hermit out in the wilderness can be a monk. Some urchin from the streets, tired of being dismissed as being lesser, can be a monk. You name it, that can be a monk. Or any other class, for that matter.
EZD6 by DM Scotty
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Well, *now* you can, lol. Hasn't always been that way, and is one of the reason old farts like me get cranky about there not being any real division between the classes anymore, and we don't like that.
There is a way around that problem that I am using (not the only, not the best, just a way) that still retains that whole flexibility thing that allows you to craft a character that is similar in that way, but it still leaves each class distinct and unique and works super well with 5e.
More pointedly, htough, if that is the case, then why don't they just turn the Monk class into a fighter? Why don' thtey just get rid of it entirely and just make unarmed combat a collection of feats that people can choose if they want?
The point of the classes is to be an archetype -- well, "unarmed combat" isn't an archetype it is something that an archetype does. Same basic principle in play.
What's the archetype? If you don't know that, then you don't have a class, you have a subclass for all the others.
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Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
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a second rogue is highly effective in a heist. in fact pure rogue team can do things others probably can't. like kill people and leave initiative, or be totally unseen. Sorcerer can basically do almost anything well. invisible, illusions, teleports. They aren't suboptimal.
its fine not to have a unique niche if you are effective, the problem isn't monk not having a niche, the problem is monk is bad. Some people say the monk is supposed to be a mobile assassin or disruptor who sucks at surviving (this is the rogues identity but worse) But they are bad at this. Weak offense, poor disruption ability in UA6. low survival, low resource stamina.
I think they were supposed to be a highly mobile character, able to lockdown a single enemy anywhere(farther than normal) on the field, or harass multiple enemies. But they messed up. I think most of their testing assumes rolled stats, and was played in t1-t2. Giving room for con, or strength, or both, with a higher AC. Monk is super MAD and benefits a lot from Rolled odds. in 5e.
here are their narrative examples of monk
"Her fists a blur as they deflect an incoming hail of arrows, a half-elf springs over a barricade and throws herself into the massed ranks of hobgoblins on the other side. She whirls among them, knocking their blows aside and sending them reeling, until at last she stands alone.". Can't do this, probably could, if dodge wasn't A BA and AC didnt scale poorly.
"Taking a deep breath, a human covered in tattoos settles into a battle stance. As the first charging orcs reach him, he exhales and a blast of fire roars from his mouth, engulfing his foes." First on the field, check, Breath fire, sometimes, survive after this? nope.
"Moving with the silence of the night, a black-clad halfling steps into a shadow beneath an arch and emerges from another inky shadow on a balcony a stone’s throw away. She slides her blade free of its cloth-wrapped scabbard and peers through the open window at the tyrant prince, so vulnerable in the grip of sleep." This is the one they are the most capable of, but their alpha damage isnt great. Their blade is now weak t3-t4
I think they felt like monk was going to be more survivable in melee than it is, And stunning strike should have been an option in competition with other good/useful/economical things.Likely they didnt consider the opportunity cost for dodge disengage was as high as it is. And they figured people would SR after every encounter, if able.
In practice, all D&D classes do combat, it's mostly a question of their style of combat. In terms of combat role, monks are single-target melee dps, and has a fairly standard setup for that -- high damage, low defense. If we look at level 1 dpr, the monk is pretty clearly in the lead -- as far as I know the top 5 are
The problem this creates is that 5e doesn't have tanking baked into the game, so the combination of high dpr, low defense, and melee adds up to 'first to die'; in fact, of those five builds, I would say only two (the barbarian and the fighter) are particularly viable, because they have durability enhancements from rage and second wind. People just don't complain as much about the rogue and the ranger because they can be played as archers instead, whereas monks don't have any particularly good ranged options.
Don't play as if the game requires, or even expects, "tanking" to be a thing. That was true for 4E, and only 4E, because every class was pigeonholed into roles: Controller, Defender, Leader, and Striker.
No other edition had operated under that assumption. MMO-think is simply anathema to playing modern D&D.
I'm not. My point is that, given tanking isn't a thing, 'melee glass cannon' is a bad design choice.
my comment was in the context of picking teams more than describing a heist specifically, just trying to spark the moment. same goes for a dungeon raid or to clear a stronghold or a diplomatic mission to the underdark. the group might ask for a shadow monk but they're not asking for a closest-to-hand monk. which is not to say they can't be looped into the story in a "monk"-accessible fashion: group needs a hand-to-hand prize fight ringer, bodyguard to a big-wig drawn into intrigue, teacher sends them out to seek an omen, enticed by the challenge, etc etc. it's just that no one prying the gems out of an ancient statue above a pool of lava finds themselves thinking "if only a monk was holding my rope, we could have gone with plan A!"
i think we both agree they're not known for being experts at those things. additionally, as a MAD class they're encouraged to lack the INT and CHA for the first two and then there's always a ranger, druid, or horse-lover nearby already occupying the space of animal expert despite the monk's WIS. i do appreciate asking the question, however, of whether a monk must be from a distant cloister, must be removed and remote. in that sense we should wonder why they're not given a choice of either typical farming skills or survivalist skills. or stealth and criminality.
having said that, was (cartoon) Aladdin a rogue or, by choice, a monk? he certainly had some claim to animal handling, disguise, AND dungeoneering... (edit: before he multiclass'd warlock ("a little of column 'a,' try all of column 'b'!") )
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Wow really? I'll have to tell my level 17 shortsword using Rogue-Warlock that they are completely non-viable and must have died in session 1, because they had AC 16, and d8 hit die, 14 con, and fought in melee. I mean, it's completely impossible for them have survived the whole level 2-17 campaign only being knocked unconscious 3-4 times since their AC was never higher than an 18 and they only use ranged attacks 3 times in the whole campaign.
Which takes me back to the response I gave a short while ago: We know the archetypes for Rogues is not "dpr", we know the archetype for fighters is basically Dpr, we know the archetype for barbarians is essentially big guy smash, and the archetype for Rangers is some kind of weird Aragorn meets the green man but light.
And while we can look at all those dprs, what we see is, yet again, that the monk is really just a fighter subclass because once you step out from beyond the dpr into utility and other capabilities, they lose their basis, their archetype, their job.
I mean, again, if all you want to do is or mesure is dpr, well, then all of those are fighter variants.
So it isn't about *just* combat (except for fighter, lol), it is about more than that. it is the more about it part that is missing and I am saying that is why the class is sorta ignored by the developers. It's just blah in terms of a foundation and a purpose. Not a Role in the sense of 4e, but I mean in the bigger picture -- what makes a Monk a monk that isn't their dpr?
Toss in Paladins and Warlocks and Sorcerers and Wizards into that mix, and you will still be able to say the exact same thing -- but you will also start to recall that what folks will say is "well, they don't do combat" and I will point out as you jut did that they all do combat. They do it differently. Yet we won't confuse any of them for a fighter because they all have fairly strong archetypes that the designers understand (and almost certainly have an interest in).
I mean, from a mechanical standpoint, in my mind, a Monk and a Bard should sit at roughly the same level , with monk edging slightly ahead. Next would be paladin and ranger, with the slightly ahead variable on what they are facing. Then barbarian and Fighter, and the variable 'edge" goes to the circumstances of their fighting.
zbut that also means that the special abilities of the monk should at least be a match for the bard.
And how do I get that? That archetype -- the Kwai Chang bit, specifically. The wandering peacemaker who fights only as a last resort and prefers to create harmony and help others. A far cry from the archetype I ended up using: a mortal kombat participant, drawing on the video game and bruce lee's Enter the Dragon, using what hey encounter in the world as a way to improve their unarmed combat abilities in order to take out literal nightmares in ritualized one on one combat.
That's two different takes. They could be subclasses, but one doesn't rely on crazy special abilities to rip spines out or teleport across a room. THe other relies on dodge and evade as action, and would likely use them as reactions, with simple effective grappling and low damage.
Again, the archetype determines the capabilities, and based on the current (non UA) subclasses, they are going for the horribly vague, poorly structured "warring states" with "38 steps" kind of monk, where there are styles of martial arts but again the focus in on not getting hit while hitting -- but they screwed up the not getting hit part, lol.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
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An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
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i fully support the idea that dnd neither asks for nor requires high AC, but i can only groan at "my iron-clad proof is in this anecdote!" :D
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If an enemy has a choice between a completely unarmored and relatively skinny martial artist who (according to you) is doing off-the-charts damage and a big dude in full plate who (according to you) is doing mediocre damage...
no, wait, I change my mind, you were right all along. Giving enemies half a brain is being a horrible DM to everyone, no matter the situation.
How come all of a sudden the argument shifted from "Monks are more survivable than you think" to "Monks aren't survivable, but this core flaw isn't actually a problem because any DM who doesn't defy logic to protect the Monk is punishing the player for their class being bad"?
Look at what you've done. You spoiled it. You have nobody to blame but yourself. Go sit and think about your actions.
Don't be mean. Rudeness is a vicious cycle, and it has to stop somewhere. Exceptions for things that are funny.
Go to the current Competition of the Finest 'Brews! It's a cool place where cool people make cool things.
How I'm posting based on text formatting: Mod Hat Off - Mod Hat Also Off (I'm not a mod)
You do know a lot of DM's would read that as a challenge, right?
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds