You don't need to have less subclass variation as long as devs build more subclasses of Monkish Fighter and the Monkish Rogue. Right now you have several subclasses of Monk that are completely half-baked anyway b/c the devs don't understand that their own cultural upbringing prevents them from seeing that "Monk" is really just a variation of Fighter or a variation of Rogue. If we start from the standpoint that some Fighter subclasses will wear less armor, have more mobility, and build their Ki instead of weapon skills, you can easily get something like the 5e Monk, but with more hit points while also being less MAD. If we start from the view that some Rogue subclasses will have access to specific magic abilities inherently and sometimes hit more than once a round, you also get something like the 5e Monk, but with better skill progression and less reliance on being in melee range where that d8 hit dice leads to quick trip to unconsciousness/death. And being less reliant on melee attacks will make building a Rogue Monk easier b/c also less MAD.
classes are not designed based on similar mechanics, classes are created based on what type of fantasy they represent.
this is evidenced by wizard and sorcerer being different classes, paladin being neither cleric, nor fighter subclasses, ranger being neither fighter nor druid subclasses. Bard being neither cleric nor wizard subclasses.
Classes are identity/fantasy/concept first, and they create and use whatever mechanics they build to represent that identifty/fantasy/concept.
subclasses are sub identities, and concepts.
Monk represents a different subset of fantasy than the fighter does, or the rogue.
Here is the problem, though. The fantasy superhuman that mostly uses punching/kicking and attains their super-ness via self-perfecting blend of mind/body/spirit is very much NOT a West European cultural construct. If you look at movies made in Hollywood (the global purveyor of West European pop culture), people who punch, kick, headbutt, etc. as their main form of attack are either genetically enhanced (Capt. America), born with superpowers (Colossus), or got their powers through sheer accident (Thing from FF4 franchise). Are boxers superpowered in Hollywood fiction? No. Are wrestlers superpowered in Hollywood fiction? No.
The only prominent examples you can arguably give for non-European superpowered punch/kick + mind/body/spirit perfection theme being executed well are Avatar: the Last Bender and Avatar: the Legend of Korra, which are basically part of the same Intellectual Property. Notice, however, clothing, food, artistic renditions of bodies, etc. for both of those series are much closer to an East Asian cultural aesthetic than a West European cultural aesthetic for the prominent recurring characters (aside from some clear borrowing of aesthetics from indigenous cultures). And notice, also, that the live action version of Avatar the Last Airbender has become a meme of crappitude based both on its cost:profit ratio and general plot/characterization issues.
So where does the superpowered punch/kick + mind/body/spirit paradigm come from? For ease of refence, let's call this the "Holistic PK" model. East Asian pop culture. Whether it's anime, Hong Kong kung fu movies, or wuxia films, the aesthetic and framing for the this paradigm is East Asian.
However, D&D was designed by Gary Gygax based mostly on W.European cultural themes. Which were the primary classes when D&D first came out? Fighter, Cleric, Thief, Wizard. Let's call this these the "Classic Core." These factors are all important to our examination of the Monk class b/c the Holistic PK model is both A) not W.European fantasy in origin and B) is not a Fighter, Cleric, Thief, or Wizard. Therefore, the design team at WotC (which continues to be headed by people who grew up primarily with W.European ideas of what is inspiring fantasy fiction), will generally prioritize the best experience for players who want to play a Fighter, Rogue (name-swapped Thief), Cleric, or Wizard. This means that classes that are not the Classic Core will always be secondary in their design priorities. This is important because the game has mechanics, and class/subclass features must be based on mechanics, not just the imagination (even though the imagination is what brings the game to life for the players). However, because the Classic Core was designed first and is favored by the game devs, non-Classic Core classes become add-ons. This prioritization schema, intentional or not, will almost always prioritize giving nice things to the Classic Core, even at the expense of secondary classes.
If you look at your examples of different themes, we notice a pattern once we take the Classic Core design priority into consideration. The PHB Sorcerer is generally sub-optimal compared to the Wizard, right? Based on DPS, the Ranger is generally sub-optimal compared to the Fighter, correct? So we see that Classic Core is supported by the devs moreso than the non-Classic Core classes.
The problem for the Monk class is that it is both not a Classic Core class and not inspired by W.European cultural milieu. And as AEDorsay pointed out in a much earlier post on this same thread, weapons + armor is a mechanical choice that has to be noticeably different from unarmored, punching/kicking. As such, game design decisions re: optimization potential, feats, magic items, etc. will generally favor the Classic Core (and those classes designed most like the Classic Core) than something like the Monk, because the Holistic PK model is conceptually not W.European and was developed as a supplemental class, not a primary class by Gygax and co. This is why I proposed that the only real solution to this problem is getting rid of the conceptual barrier between Monk and Fighter, as well as between Monk and Rogue. As long as Monk design is treated as being both mechanically and thematically separate from the Classic Core, it will never get much in terms of Nice Things both because the design space for classes will generally favor the Common Core and b/c if you borrow features from Fighter or Rogue and give them to the Monk, the Fighter/Rogue fanbase will yell and holler about it, leading to the devs to backpedal, since the devs care more pleasing the Classic Core's fanbase more than the Holistic PK fanbase.
You don't need to have less subclass variation as long as devs build more subclasses of Monkish Fighter and the Monkish Rogue. Right now you have several subclasses of Monk that are completely half-baked anyway b/c the devs don't understand that their own cultural upbringing prevents them from seeing that "Monk" is really just a variation of Fighter or a variation of Rogue. If we start from the standpoint that some Fighter subclasses will wear less armor, have more mobility, and build their Ki instead of weapon skills, you can easily get something like the 5e Monk, but with more hit points while also being less MAD. If we start from the view that some Rogue subclasses will have access to specific magic abilities inherently and sometimes hit more than once a round, you also get something like the 5e Monk, but with better skill progression and less reliance on being in melee range where that d8 hit dice leads to quick trip to unconsciousness/death. And being less reliant on melee attacks will make building a Rogue Monk easier b/c also less MAD.
classes are not designed based on similar mechanics, classes are created based on what type of fantasy they represent.
this is evidenced by wizard and sorcerer being different classes, paladin being neither cleric, nor fighter subclasses, ranger being neither fighter nor druid subclasses. Bard being neither cleric nor wizard subclasses.
Classes are identity/fantasy/concept first, and they create and use whatever mechanics they build to represent that identifty/fantasy/concept.
subclasses are sub identities, and concepts.
Monk represents a different subset of fantasy than the fighter does, or the rogue.
Here is the problem, though. The fantasy superhuman that mostly uses punching/kicking and attains their super-ness via self-perfecting blend of mind/body/spirit is very much NOT a West European cultural construct. If you look at movies made in Hollywood (the global purveyor of West European pop culture), people who punch, kick, headbutt, etc. as their main form of attack are either genetically enhanced (Capt. America), born with superpowers (Colossus), or got their powers through sheer accident (Thing from FF4 franchise). Are boxers superpowered in Hollywood fiction? No. Are wrestlers superpowered in Hollywood fiction? No.
The only prominent examples you can arguably give for non-European superpowered punch/kick + mind/body/spirit perfection theme being executed well are Avatar: the Last Bender and Avatar: the Legend of Korra, which are basically part of the same Intellectual Property. Notice, however, clothing, food, artistic renditions of bodies, etc. for both of those series are much closer to an East Asian cultural aesthetic than a West European cultural aesthetic for the prominent recurring characters (aside from some clear borrowing of aesthetics from indigenous cultures). And notice, also, that the live action version of Avatar the Last Airbender has become a meme of crappitude based both on its cost:profit ratio and general plot/characterization issues.
Maybe not Hollywood exactly but wrestlers in Wrestling fiction are often super powered. The Undertaker has been killed in the ring lord knows how many times and has self-resurrected every time. He is, according to the lore, virtually unable to permanently die. I don’t believe a non-western trope has ever been mentioned related to his superhuman ability to will himself back to life, but I have lost touch with wrestling since I hit adulthood…
You don't need to have less subclass variation as long as devs build more subclasses of Monkish Fighter and the Monkish Rogue. Right now you have several subclasses of Monk that are completely half-baked anyway b/c the devs don't understand that their own cultural upbringing prevents them from seeing that "Monk" is really just a variation of Fighter or a variation of Rogue. If we start from the standpoint that some Fighter subclasses will wear less armor, have more mobility, and build their Ki instead of weapon skills, you can easily get something like the 5e Monk, but with more hit points while also being less MAD. If we start from the view that some Rogue subclasses will have access to specific magic abilities inherently and sometimes hit more than once a round, you also get something like the 5e Monk, but with better skill progression and less reliance on being in melee range where that d8 hit dice leads to quick trip to unconsciousness/death. And being less reliant on melee attacks will make building a Rogue Monk easier b/c also less MAD.
classes are not designed based on similar mechanics, classes are created based on what type of fantasy they represent.
this is evidenced by wizard and sorcerer being different classes, paladin being neither cleric, nor fighter subclasses, ranger being neither fighter nor druid subclasses. Bard being neither cleric nor wizard subclasses.
Classes are identity/fantasy/concept first, and they create and use whatever mechanics they build to represent that identifty/fantasy/concept.
subclasses are sub identities, and concepts.
Monk represents a different subset of fantasy than the fighter does, or the rogue.
Here is the problem, though. The fantasy superhuman that mostly uses punching/kicking and attains their super-ness via self-perfecting blend of mind/body/spirit is very much NOT a West European cultural construct. If you look at movies made in Hollywood (the global purveyor of West European pop culture), people who punch, kick, headbutt, etc. as their main form of attack are either genetically enhanced (Capt. America), born with superpowers (Colossus), or got their powers through sheer accident (Thing from FF4 franchise). Are boxers superpowered in Hollywood fiction? No. Are wrestlers superpowered in Hollywood fiction? No.
The only prominent examples you can arguably give for non-European superpowered punch/kick + mind/body/spirit perfection theme being executed well are Avatar: the Last Bender and Avatar: the Legend of Korra, which are basically part of the same Intellectual Property. Notice, however, clothing, food, artistic renditions of bodies, etc. for both of those series are much closer to an East Asian cultural aesthetic than a West European cultural aesthetic for the prominent recurring characters (aside from some clear borrowing of aesthetics from indigenous cultures). And notice, also, that the live action version of Avatar the Last Airbender has become a meme of crappitude based both on its cost:profit ratio and general plot/characterization issues.
So where does the superpowered punch/kick + mind/body/spirit paradigm come from? For ease of refence, let's call this the "Holistic PK" model. East Asian pop culture. Whether it's anime, Hong Kong kung fu movies, or wuxia films, the aesthetic and framing for the this paradigm is East Asian.
However, D&D was designed by Gary Gygax based mostly on W.European cultural themes. Which were the primary classes when D&D first came out? Fighter, Cleric, Thief, Wizard. Let's call this these the "Classic Core." These factors are all important to our examination of the Monk class b/c the Holistic PK model is both A) not W.European fantasy in origin and B) is not a Fighter, Cleric, Thief, or Wizard. Therefore, the design team at WotC (which continues to be headed by people who grew up primarily with W.European ideas of what is inspiring fantasy fiction), will generally prioritize the best experience for players who want to play a Fighter, Rogue (name-swapped Thief), Cleric, or Wizard. This means that classes that are not the Classic Core will always be secondary in their design priorities. This is important because the game has mechanics, and class/subclass features must be based on mechanics, not just the imagination (even though the imagination is what brings the game to life for the players). However, because the Classic Core was designed first and is favored by the game devs, non-Classic Core classes become add-ons. This prioritization schema, intentional or not, will almost always prioritize giving nice things to the Classic Core, even at the expense of secondary classes.
If you look at your examples of different themes, we notice a pattern once we take the Classic Core design priority into consideration. The PHB Sorcerer is generally sub-optimal compared to the Wizard, right? Based on DPS, the Ranger is generally sub-optimal compared to the Fighter, correct? So we see that Classic Core is supported by the devs moreso than the non-Classic Core classes.
The problem for the Monk class is that it is both not a Classic Core class and not inspired by W.European cultural milieu. And as AEDorsay pointed out in a much earlier post on this same thread, weapons + armor is a mechanical choice that has to be noticeably different from unarmored, punching/kicking. As such, game design decisions re: optimization potential, feats, magic items, etc. will generally favor the Classic Core (and those classes designed most like the Classic Core) than something like the Monk, because the Holistic PK model is conceptually not W.European and was developed as a supplemental class, not a primary class by Gygax and co. This is why I proposed that the only real solution to this problem is getting rid of the conceptual barrier between Monk and Fighter, as well as between Monk and Rogue. As long as Monk design is treated as being both mechanically and thematically separate from the Classic Core, it will never get much in terms of Nice Things both because the design space for classes will generally favor the Common Core and b/c if you borrow features from Fighter or Rogue and give them to the Monk, the Fighter/Rogue fanbase will yell and holler about it, leading to the devs to backpedal, since the devs care more pleasing the Classic Core's fanbase more than the Holistic PK fanbase.
Why does dnd need to only draw from one culture? Dnd draws from tons of different cultures; genies, djinns, raksashas, oni, planes,
Asian martial arts literally existed at the same time period. And Europe was aware of Asia, Rome, middle east, etc even before the dark ages. There was trade between these nations.
even if dnd was only supposed to be a very limited closed setting (which monk was added fairly early, so probably not) By now dnd incorporates space, Astral seas, Multiple planes.
The fact that monk fantasy is based on Asian pop culture is largely irrelevant.
also, the weapon problem is largely just because of lack of thinking or rushing Unarmed last minute. That discrepancy can, and has been solved in a couple homebrew rules. Its just dnd revision cycle is 5 years generally, and 10 years for 5e. Its not a deep inherent problem with design paradigms.
Monks needs to be making FOB every round, 3 attacks is BASELINE for any shieldless martial, either through PAM or General TWF rules. And EVERY other martial has means of boosting their damage beyond the 3 attack baseline. divine favor, smite, blessed strikes, hunting mark, rage, brutal critical, dueling, twf, great weapon master. extra attack 2-3 That doesnt even count feats.
Okay, let's look at this for one second...
Polearm Master for three attacks is 2d10 + 1d4 + Mod*3, so 3-24 + Mod*3.
Monks at Level 5 for three attacks is 1d8 + Mod*3...which is equal to Polearm Master. Their damage output is the same without relying on a feat, and they have Flurry of Blows to go beyond that, as well as subclass features...
The math is incredibly easy and obvious, despite the condescension.
yes, monks lvl 1 class feature is basically a weaker version of twf. or One third of polearm master. (which also gives reaction attacks when enemies enter range and +1 attribute)
you know who else gets TWF as a class feature? Ranger paladin and Fighter.
you know who can pick up feats as a class feature? rogues and fighters
not sure how pointing that out makes monks some how OK, that just puts them sub par with people who have access to martial weapons.
But every other class can boost that 3 attacks via bonus action that every martial has access to, via damage boosts available to the class.
making 3 attacks via BA is not special. Its baseline.
monk has answer for this, because they know that MA is primarily a more limited flavor feature for twf. Its flurry of blows. that extra attack is supposed to make up for other classes per round/hit damage bonuses.
You don't have to take my word for it, compare monks 3 attacks round to any other martial, it will lose.
it loses with 4 attacks, not sure why you think doing 3 attacks is going to be acceptable
I think outbeat, treant monk and pack tactics under stand the strength and weakness of the class .a lot of the people saying monk is fine don’t seem to understand the rules or how to build characters optimally
if you don’t optimize .your arguments for how a strong class can be .sound like someone who likes martial arts but never actually practiced .
It’s been a while since I watched Treantmonk’s monks suck videos (I think there were two?) but I’m pretty sure he did say if you are not playing at an optimized table they are probably fine.
Not everyone optimizes and those who do can do it to varying degrees.
True kreen but I think it’s a design flaw to have them weak and against class fantasy. Saying they can work is one thing to say they are in balance with other classes would be a lie however. They need proper damage ,better ac or better health dice , less ki dependence or proper power exchanged for the ki and full access to warrior feats . They could use some asis as well . Crazy that rogue gets more and is less mad
I’m not sure what you mean by “against class fantasy” but I would like to see comparisons now that GWM no longer does -5/+10 while monks martial arts die increased.
I do think Stunning Strike was part of the reason monks damage output is lower. Stunned is a powerful condition. Put on top of that fall damage mitigation, extra movement (plus on vertical and liquid surfaces), proficiency in all saving throws (and we both know how Treantmonk likes saving throw bonuses) etc and these types of features cut into the monk’s “power budget” that isn’t taken into account while comparing it to the damage baseline he uses.
Treantmonk put out videos comparing races/species where he assigned point values to traits. Some races he thought would be high on the list ended up near the bottom. So much for how he thought “optimized” racial traits were compared to the actual numbers when he drilled down. Wonder how monk would compare if he did similar analysis of all class features via a similar point system?
Against class fantasy as in being weaker then barb or fighter in combat they fight in different flavors but should be closer to each other. and if monks need resource to keep doing damage then they should do more damage then classes when they have to actually expend a resource .
. Stunning strike is a gamble and shouldn’t be the noose that people justify to keep monks weak , they are already nerfing it which I’m fine with . But now the argument has gotten weak.
and yes I will argue that people who don’t want monk to be stronger are against balance . Or are simply ignorant of the capabilities of other classes.
I've never once argued that the monk should be weak or even that it is fine how it is. I have many post and multiple threads where I've put forth improvements I would like to see for the monk (like this thread). It's my favorite class, much like Colby in the videos you linked, since I played them in AD&D in the early to mid 80's. I do think monks need improvements from both the 2014 version and especially the UA version. My hope is it will get similar treatment that the Rogue got. The first version of Rogue got little changes, mostly negative. Then the revision had some negative changes reversed and Cunning Strikes added.
You don't need to have less subclass variation as long as devs build more subclasses of Monkish Fighter and the Monkish Rogue. Right now you have several subclasses of Monk that are completely half-baked anyway b/c the devs don't understand that their own cultural upbringing prevents them from seeing that "Monk" is really just a variation of Fighter or a variation of Rogue. If we start from the standpoint that some Fighter subclasses will wear less armor, have more mobility, and build their Ki instead of weapon skills, you can easily get something like the 5e Monk, but with more hit points while also being less MAD. If we start from the view that some Rogue subclasses will have access to specific magic abilities inherently and sometimes hit more than once a round, you also get something like the 5e Monk, but with better skill progression and less reliance on being in melee range where that d8 hit dice leads to quick trip to unconsciousness/death. And being less reliant on melee attacks will make building a Rogue Monk easier b/c also less MAD.
classes are not designed based on similar mechanics, classes are created based on what type of fantasy they represent.
this is evidenced by wizard and sorcerer being different classes, paladin being neither cleric, nor fighter subclasses, ranger being neither fighter nor druid subclasses. Bard being neither cleric nor wizard subclasses.
Classes are identity/fantasy/concept first, and they create and use whatever mechanics they build to represent that identifty/fantasy/concept.
subclasses are sub identities, and concepts.
Monk represents a different subset of fantasy than the fighter does, or the rogue.
Here is the problem, though. The fantasy superhuman that mostly uses punching/kicking and attains their super-ness via self-perfecting blend of mind/body/spirit is very much NOT a West European cultural construct. If you look at movies made in Hollywood (the global purveyor of West European pop culture), people who punch, kick, headbutt, etc. as their main form of attack are either genetically enhanced (Capt. America), born with superpowers (Colossus), or got their powers through sheer accident (Thing from FF4 franchise). Are boxers superpowered in Hollywood fiction? No. Are wrestlers superpowered in Hollywood fiction? No.
The only prominent examples you can arguably give for non-European superpowered punch/kick + mind/body/spirit perfection theme being executed well are Avatar: the Last Bender and Avatar: the Legend of Korra, which are basically part of the same Intellectual Property. Notice, however, clothing, food, artistic renditions of bodies, etc. for both of those series are much closer to an East Asian cultural aesthetic than a West European cultural aesthetic for the prominent recurring characters (aside from some clear borrowing of aesthetics from indigenous cultures). And notice, also, that the live action version of Avatar the Last Airbender has become a meme of crappitude based both on its cost:profit ratio and general plot/characterization issues.
So where does the superpowered punch/kick + mind/body/spirit paradigm come from? For ease of refence, let's call this the "Holistic PK" model. East Asian pop culture. Whether it's anime, Hong Kong kung fu movies, or wuxia films, the aesthetic and framing for the this paradigm is East Asian.
However, D&D was designed by Gary Gygax based mostly on W.European cultural themes. Which were the primary classes when D&D first came out? Fighter, Cleric, Thief, Wizard. Let's call this these the "Classic Core." These factors are all important to our examination of the Monk class b/c the Holistic PK model is both A) not W.European fantasy in origin and B) is not a Fighter, Cleric, Thief, or Wizard. Therefore, the design team at WotC (which continues to be headed by people who grew up primarily with W.European ideas of what is inspiring fantasy fiction), will generally prioritize the best experience for players who want to play a Fighter, Rogue (name-swapped Thief), Cleric, or Wizard. This means that classes that are not the Classic Core will always be secondary in their design priorities. This is important because the game has mechanics, and class/subclass features must be based on mechanics, not just the imagination (even though the imagination is what brings the game to life for the players). However, because the Classic Core was designed first and is favored by the game devs, non-Classic Core classes become add-ons. This prioritization schema, intentional or not, will almost always prioritize giving nice things to the Classic Core, even at the expense of secondary classes.
If you look at your examples of different themes, we notice a pattern once we take the Classic Core design priority into consideration. The PHB Sorcerer is generally sub-optimal compared to the Wizard, right? Based on DPS, the Ranger is generally sub-optimal compared to the Fighter, correct? So we see that Classic Core is supported by the devs moreso than the non-Classic Core classes.
The problem for the Monk class is that it is both not a Classic Core class and not inspired by W.European cultural milieu. And as AEDorsay pointed out in a much earlier post on this same thread, weapons + armor is a mechanical choice that has to be noticeably different from unarmored, punching/kicking. As such, game design decisions re: optimization potential, feats, magic items, etc. will generally favor the Classic Core (and those classes designed most like the Classic Core) than something like the Monk, because the Holistic PK model is conceptually not W.European and was developed as a supplemental class, not a primary class by Gygax and co. This is why I proposed that the only real solution to this problem is getting rid of the conceptual barrier between Monk and Fighter, as well as between Monk and Rogue. As long as Monk design is treated as being both mechanically and thematically separate from the Classic Core, it will never get much in terms of Nice Things both because the design space for classes will generally favor the Common Core and b/c if you borrow features from Fighter or Rogue and give them to the Monk, the Fighter/Rogue fanbase will yell and holler about it, leading to the devs to backpedal, since the devs care more pleasing the Classic Core's fanbase more than
Why does dnd need to only draw from one culture? Dnd draws from tons of different cultures; genies, djinns, raksashas, oni, planes,
Asian martial arts literally existed at the same time period. And Europe was aware of Asia, Rome, middle east, etc even before the dark ages. There was trade between these nations.
even if dnd was only supposed to be a very limited closed setting (which monk was added fairly early, so probably not) By now dnd incorporates space, Astral seas, Multiple planes.
The fact that monk fantasy is based on Asian pop culture is largely irrelevant.
also, the weapon problem is largely just because of lack of thinking or rushing Unarmed last minute. That discrepancy can, and has been solved in a couple homebrew rules. Its just dnd revision cycle is 5 years generally, and 10 years for 5e. Its not a deep inherent problem with design paradigms.
Oh my. Lot’s here to dig into, soo…
All classes *are* designed using the same mechanics. That’s part of why they are called mechanics — it is right there in the core concept, because “class is one of the mechanics involved. One of those mechanics is the underlying archetype and another is the play fantasy (note, that’s two distinct mechanics).
Note that when initially introduced, Paladin and Ranger were both subclasses. It wasn’t until 2e that they stopped being such, and as a point of reference, it caused quite a stir (thanks, Dave Cook).
It should be noted that Gygax did not want to include Monk in AD&D because he felt it conflicted with the north and west European basis of mainstream D&D and he wanted the Monk and other classes to exist in a different space because the cultural archetypes did not work well with the established ones. Which is why he took the notes of one person, added his own notes, let Dave Cook write the whole damn thing (same guy who did 2e), and then slapped his name on the cover when it published. THat was Oriental Adventures, no that was *exactly* what he was thinking of when he talked about it. OA is literally a completely separate Player’s Handbook created to support Warring States, Shogunate, and mid-century Korean cultural archetypes because regular D&D was not able to do so.
Would Gygax have used some of the aspects of western unarmed or limited armed combat had he been aware of it? Probably. But he wasn’t, and so he didn’t (and there are several different western styles of unarmed combat that no class ever officially created has made use of). Irish stick fighting, Bartitsu, and others came at different periods of time (from 4th century CE through 15th century, then again in the 1800’s as they tried to bring up older models and create new ones following the re-opening of Japan such as Bartitsu) but one thing to keep in mind is that in Western Culture, aside from boxing, fisticuffs was considered beneath even the peasant — and in large part due tothe official stance of the nobility who didn’t want people learning how to fight back (and that includes the church).
Culturally, there was no equivalent, and it was looked down on and considered beneath people — and that Gygax did know, but he was pressured and put it in anyway. IN other words, yes, it was supposed to be focused on a very particular kind of vague medieval Western European fantasy — and not be inclusive of anything outside of that, which should have had its own sourcebook, different classes (not the same ones as western D&D, so not fighter, wizard, cleric, rogue, but separate ones) and Oriental Advnetures was the exemplar for that.
btw, my earlier suggestions are literally the OA monk changed for 5e.
It should also be noted that D&D does not actually draw from “tons of cultures”. Actual djinn, rakshasa, and oni are not drawing from those cultures — they took a name, a rough appearance, and then made the rest up. For example, djinn are only ever able to speak the truth, traditionally, and it is with the truth that they trap people through their own failings. Rakshasa are not strictly evil, and don’t fit into an alignment system because they are tied to a structure that value not good and evil in the western sense but rather materiality and selfishness, as well as ties to family and unwavering opposition to enemies.
Neither of those things sound like Djinn or Rakshasa in D&D because it didn’t take them from there.
Also, the Planes are explicitly stolen, intentionally, from Roger Zelazny, modified by Moorcock’s Eternal Warrior Saga, and then made to fit with some casual reference sin Vance’s work. All of it western based. And I won’t even begin to get into the plane’s structure itself (which owes more to Dante’s inferno and 7th century ideas of Greco-Roman afterlife than anything resembling their actual conquer parts).
What it steals are western ideas *about* those things, mostly from books written by western folks who used it to make their western stuff seem less western. Sorry if that shatters a dream, but it is the truth, and it is why people now whine and complain about how D&D is getting all boring in other threads. ANd I want to note that while OA was a huge seller, the follow up sort of systems — Maztica and others — did not sell nearly as well because the game was still mostly being played by Western audiences who didn’t understand those weird cultures.
So the monk being based on Asian pop culture is not irrelevant, because by calling it so, you are calling the monk irrelevant, even though it was basically slapped on and not reall dealt with until later.
Now, Gygax claimed he was going to bring a lot of the stuff from OA into 2e, in order to examine possibility, but he also left TSR before that and thus is born the reason that Dave Cook wrote the 2nd Edition and then did not do that (because, oddly, he too felt that Kensei and Shukenja and others didn’t belong in main line D&D). THen he left. THen Wizards bought it — the ultimate hilarity being that a bunch of die hard players who homebrewed the hell out of their game to create Magic the Gathering suddenly had the keys to the kingdom and have been mucking around in it ever since.
A class is an Archetype — true. THe basis of that archetype is inextricably linked to the cultural understanding of that archetype — and people get this, which is why all the arguments are about monks being totally mystical warriors who kick ass without really using weapons often. WHy did they become that way? Because unlike in Western Europe, the peasants did fight back, and they were forbidden weapons and you all know the rest of that story. What you may not realize is that monks and their temples and their spaces were constantly being attacked burned down, and treated like crap because the warlords did not want them to exist.
But that probably doesn’t play well with the class fantasy — although it is part of the archetype.
A subclass is a variant of that archetype, one of the ways that the game uses to make some archetypes fit into the class system it has now. If I had been doing the design, the Brawler would be a subclass of monk. So would a Bartitsu fighter (ever seen that Sherlock Holmes with Robert Downey Jr as Sherlock? The way he fought? Bartitsu. Because That’s what Doyle had the book guy use, although he spelled it differently). But I would do that because the archetype that I see for a Monk is strictly “unarmed fighter”, and so all the different kind of unarmed fighter are going to be subclasses (and no, I am not saying that’s how WotC should do it).
D&D Revision cycle is usually about 10 years. Two years for expansions if you average it all out, but OA, the original Unearthed Arcana (the book) , Deities and Demigods (and whatever they change the name to), and s forth are expansions. It was 10 years for 2e (bit more, actually — around 12), about 8 for 3, then two more for 3e (I think), then ‘04 gave us 4e, 14 gave us 5e, so yeah, it is 10 years.
So, that said, it should be noted that “Classic Core” for AD&D (which is what Wizards counts as 1e) are Fighter, Thief, Magic-user, Cleric. Note that leaves out Bards and Monks. *Both of them were tack ons*, and the way that Bards worked originally was you had to take so many levels in two other classes first. THey were the oddballs. Assassin, Ranger, Paladin, Illusionist were all the subclasses, and they only applied to the Classic Core — which were the development out of Arneson’s notes form the earliest versions of the games in the very early 70’s before there even was “the fantasy game”.
Those four are always going to be the most important. They are the only 4 classes that appeared in “basic” D&D compared to until the merger of the two lines in the mid 90’s that essentially created 3.5. The Mentzer BECMI side stepped this issue by doing a Mystic, which was a westernized unarmed warrior, as well, so it can be and has been done that Monks can be westernized — but that means calling them monks gives a false impression, because if you sa fighting monk to most people they think of the martial arts films of Hong Kong.
None of which does a damn think to settle your displeasure over the way the 5e monk is treated, but do please understand that in all the years of D&D, the Monk is easily the least loved class from a design point, and that has everything to do with the western basis for D&D.
Because, again, in the mechanics of the system, an unarmed fist must be treated as a weapon attack without a weapon, lol. A while back in the thread, someone was going on about how D&D is this way because it came out of war gaming (which is partially true, and I will give it to the, but that hasn’t been true of the game since 1989, when Cook pretty much killed the entire war gaming basis and it has never come back (not even in the battle set or the Krynn thing they did), but that ignores the foundational things that separates D&D from wargaming: 1, it is fantasy, not recreation, and 2, it is role playing, which isn’t a wargaming thing of the time.
And that wasn’t Gygax, that was Arneson.
most of what design around the monk involves is trying to fix the combat system as a whole to make Monks work, That’s been going on since 1977, and no one has apparently ever gotten it right, though personally I think OA did a bang up job. But note, 5e monks still don’t use ofuda, lack the honor structure that is important even in the Wuxi’s films, ignore Tao and Buddhist basic magic systems, and other factors.
So it isn’t right to call them “Asian style Unarmed Fighters”, since they are really “western perception of Asian unarmed fighters without a damn bit of understanding of what that actually means”. Otherwise, all you are doing is highlighting something no one wants to point out, which is the outright appropriation stuff, because that will send all the politics flare ups into overdrive.
And ain’t none f us got time for that.
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Is it really weaker, though? At 1st-level, 1d8+1d4 is functionally the same as 2d6. At 5th-level, 2d8+1d6 is better than 3d6; and only slightly behind the 3d8 that is possible in the 2014 PH. But then, monks will eventually dish out 3d10. Magic items can enhance that, and monks aren't expending resources like a ranger might on Hunter's Mark. Monks are also less dependent on magic items. That ranger is going to want two magic weapons. The monk only needs one.
Of course, then we get into the nitty-gritty of the OneD&D playtest (specifically Playtest 6) and...both can merge TWF into the Attack. Which means a 1st-level monk can attack for 15.5 (2d6+1d4+6) at the cost of a bonus action. The ranger can outpace them, but they're spending one of their measly two spell slots to dish out upwards of 16 (3d6+1d4+3). But that comes with (a) being forced to attack in melee and (b) land blows against two targets; which the ranger can do if it uses its bonus action to move Hunter's Mark.
Expensive, situationally competitive, and risky. The ranger needs to be in melee. That increases the odds of getting hit and losing concentration. It gets better after Favored Enemy at 2nd-level, because it's no longer dependent on spell slots, but just barely.
A 5th-level ranger could hit for a mean of 30.5 (2d8+2d6+1d4+12), but that once again comes with the caveat of needing to hit two targets. If they only hit one, the mean drops to 27. A 5th-level monk, on the other hand, can smack enemies for a mean of roughly 26 (2d6+1d4+1d8+12). And that's without access to Fighting Style: Two-Weapon Fighting; which could change. They're expending their bonus action, sure, but not any other resources. Which means they can throttle up hard.
I don't think I need to go into how fighter and paladin match up. Both are better off with Fighting Style: Dueling and a shield, and paladins can't pick up TWF as a style without a feat at 4th-level or higher. That's giving up a lot of power for a tiny gain. An 11th-level paladin with Radiant Strikes could hit for a mean of 37 (5d8+1d4+12), but that's both of their feats with nothing else having been improved. Actually, that's also with the playtest version of Dual Wielder from the Expert packet. Which is technically no longer valid, but I'm including it for the sake of generosity. They could easily dish out 30 (4d8+12) while still carrying a shield, which might have its own magic bonuses and feat.
Meanwhile, an 11th-level monk could hit for 30 (2d6+1d4+1d10+15), or 29.5 (2d8+1d10+15) if they have a versatile weapon in two hands, without a fighting style or expending a Discipline Point. Yes, a monk with 20 Dexterity has parity with a paladin with 18 Strength. And the extra hit from Flurry of Blows hits harder than a Divine Strike using a 1st-level spell slot. Even if we lowball the monk to only having 18 Dexterity, that's potentially 36.5 (2d6+1d4+2d10+16), or 36 (2d8+2d10+16) if they have a versatile weapon in two hands, versus 39 (6d8+12).
You don't need to have less subclass variation as long as devs build more subclasses of Monkish Fighter and the Monkish Rogue. Right now you have several subclasses of Monk that are completely half-baked anyway b/c the devs don't understand that their own cultural upbringing prevents them from seeing that "Monk" is really just a variation of Fighter or a variation of Rogue. If we start from the standpoint that some Fighter subclasses will wear less armor, have more mobility, and build their Ki instead of weapon skills, you can easily get something like the 5e Monk, but with more hit points while also being less MAD. If we start from the view that some Rogue subclasses will have access to specific magic abilities inherently and sometimes hit more than once a round, you also get something like the 5e Monk, but with better skill progression and less reliance on being in melee range where that d8 hit dice leads to quick trip to unconsciousness/death. And being less reliant on melee attacks will make building a Rogue Monk easier b/c also less MAD.
classes are not designed based on similar mechanics, classes are created based on what type of fantasy they represent.
this is evidenced by wizard and sorcerer being different classes, paladin being neither cleric, nor fighter subclasses, ranger being neither fighter nor druid subclasses. Bard being neither cleric nor wizard subclasses.
Classes are identity/fantasy/concept first, and they create and use whatever mechanics they build to represent that identifty/fantasy/concept.
subclasses are sub identities, and concepts.
Monk represents a different subset of fantasy than the fighter does, or the rogue.
Here is the problem, though. The fantasy superhuman that mostly uses punching/kicking and attains their super-ness via self-perfecting blend of mind/body/spirit is very much NOT a West European cultural construct. If you look at movies made in Hollywood (the global purveyor of West European pop culture), people who punch, kick, headbutt, etc. as their main form of attack are either genetically enhanced (Capt. America), born with superpowers (Colossus), or got their powers through sheer accident (Thing from FF4 franchise). Are boxers superpowered in Hollywood fiction? No. Are wrestlers superpowered in Hollywood fiction? No.
The only prominent examples you can arguably give for non-European superpowered punch/kick + mind/body/spirit perfection theme being executed well are Avatar: the Last Bender and Avatar: the Legend of Korra, which are basically part of the same Intellectual Property. Notice, however, clothing, food, artistic renditions of bodies, etc. for both of those series are much closer to an East Asian cultural aesthetic than a West European cultural aesthetic for the prominent recurring characters (aside from some clear borrowing of aesthetics from indigenous cultures). And notice, also, that the live action version of Avatar the Last Airbender has become a meme of crappitude based both on its cost:profit ratio and general plot/characterization issues.
So where does the superpowered punch/kick + mind/body/spirit paradigm come from? For ease of refence, let's call this the "Holistic PK" model. East Asian pop culture. Whether it's anime, Hong Kong kung fu movies, or wuxia films, the aesthetic and framing for the this paradigm is East Asian.
However, D&D was designed by Gary Gygax based mostly on W.European cultural themes. Which were the primary classes when D&D first came out? Fighter, Cleric, Thief, Wizard. Let's call this these the "Classic Core." These factors are all important to our examination of the Monk class b/c the Holistic PK model is both A) not W.European fantasy in origin and B) is not a Fighter, Cleric, Thief, or Wizard. Therefore, the design team at WotC (which continues to be headed by people who grew up primarily with W.European ideas of what is inspiring fantasy fiction), will generally prioritize the best experience for players who want to play a Fighter, Rogue (name-swapped Thief), Cleric, or Wizard. This means that classes that are not the Classic Core will always be secondary in their design priorities. This is important because the game has mechanics, and class/subclass features must be based on mechanics, not just the imagination (even though the imagination is what brings the game to life for the players). However, because the Classic Core was designed first and is favored by the game devs, non-Classic Core classes become add-ons. This prioritization schema, intentional or not, will almost always prioritize giving nice things to the Classic Core, even at the expense of secondary classes.
If you look at your examples of different themes, we notice a pattern once we take the Classic Core design priority into consideration. The PHB Sorcerer is generally sub-optimal compared to the Wizard, right? Based on DPS, the Ranger is generally sub-optimal compared to the Fighter, correct? So we see that Classic Core is supported by the devs moreso than the non-Classic Core classes.
The problem for the Monk class is that it is both not a Classic Core class and not inspired by W.European cultural milieu. And as AEDorsay pointed out in a much earlier post on this same thread, weapons + armor is a mechanical choice that has to be noticeably different from unarmored, punching/kicking. As such, game design decisions re: optimization potential, feats, magic items, etc. will generally favor the Classic Core (and those classes designed most like the Classic Core) than something like the Monk, because the Holistic PK model is conceptually not W.European and was developed as a supplemental class, not a primary class by Gygax and co. This is why I proposed that the only real solution to this problem is getting rid of the conceptual barrier between Monk and Fighter, as well as between Monk and Rogue. As long as Monk design is treated as being both mechanically and thematically separate from the Classic Core, it will never get much in terms of Nice Things both because the design space for classes will generally favor the Common Core and b/c if you borrow features from Fighter or Rogue and give them to the Monk, the Fighter/Rogue fanbase will yell and holler about it, leading to the devs to backpedal, since the devs care more pleasing the Classic Core's fanbase more than
Why does dnd need to only draw from one culture? Dnd draws from tons of different cultures; genies, djinns, raksashas, oni, planes,
Asian martial arts literally existed at the same time period. And Europe was aware of Asia, Rome, middle east, etc even before the dark ages. There was trade between these nations.
even if dnd was only supposed to be a very limited closed setting (which monk was added fairly early, so probably not) By now dnd incorporates space, Astral seas, Multiple planes.
The fact that monk fantasy is based on Asian pop culture is largely irrelevant.
also, the weapon problem is largely just because of lack of thinking or rushing Unarmed last minute. That discrepancy can, and has been solved in a couple homebrew rules. Its just dnd revision cycle is 5 years generally, and 10 years for 5e. Its not a deep inherent problem with design paradigms.
Oh my. Lot’s here to dig into, soo…
All classes *are* designed using the same mechanics. That’s part of why they are called mechanics — it is right there in the core concept, because “class is one of the mechanics involved. One of those mechanics is the underlying archetype and another is the play fantasy (note, that’s two distinct mechanics).
Note that when initially introduced, Paladin and Ranger were both subclasses. It wasn’t until 2e that they stopped being such, and as a point of reference, it caused quite a stir (thanks, Dave Cook).
It should be noted that Gygax did not want to include Monk in AD&D because he felt it conflicted with the north and west European basis of mainstream D&D and he wanted the Monk and other classes to exist in a different space because the cultural archetypes did not work well with the established ones. Which is why he took the notes of one person, added his own notes, let Dave Cook write the whole damn thing (same guy who did 2e), and then slapped his name on the cover when it published. THat was Oriental Adventures, no that was *exactly* what he was thinking of when he talked about it. OA is literally a completely separate Player’s Handbook created to support Warring States, Shogunate, and mid-century Korean cultural archetypes because regular D&D was not able to do so.
Would Gygax have used some of the aspects of western unarmed or limited armed combat had he been aware of it? Probably. But he wasn’t, and so he didn’t (and there are several different western styles of unarmed combat that no class ever officially created has made use of). Irish stick fighting, Bartitsu, and others came at different periods of time (from 4th century CE through 15th century, then again in the 1800’s as they tried to bring up older models and create new ones following the re-opening of Japan such as Bartitsu) but one thing to keep in mind is that in Western Culture, aside from boxing, fisticuffs was considered beneath even the peasant — and in large part due tothe official stance of the nobility who didn’t want people learning how to fight back (and that includes the church).
Culturally, there was no equivalent, and it was looked down on and considered beneath people — and that Gygax did know, but he was pressured and put it in anyway. IN other words, yes, it was supposed to be focused on a very particular kind of vague medieval Western European fantasy — and not be inclusive of anything outside of that, which should have had its own sourcebook, different classes (not the same ones as western D&D, so not fighter, wizard, cleric, rogue, but separate ones) and Oriental Advnetures was the exemplar for that.
btw, my earlier suggestions are literally the OA monk changed for 5e.
It should also be noted that D&D does not actually draw from “tons of cultures”. Actual djinn, rakshasa, and oni are not drawing from those cultures — they took a name, a rough appearance, and then made the rest up. For example, djinn are only ever able to speak the truth, traditionally, and it is with the truth that they trap people through their own failings. Rakshasa are not strictly evil, and don’t fit into an alignment system because they are tied to a structure that value not good and evil in the western sense but rather materiality and selfishness, as well as ties to family and unwavering opposition to enemies.
Neither of those things sound like Djinn or Rakshasa in D&D because it didn’t take them from there.
Also, the Planes are explicitly stolen, intentionally, from Roger Zelazny, modified by Moorcock’s Eternal Warrior Saga, and then made to fit with some casual reference sin Vance’s work. All of it western based. And I won’t even begin to get into the plane’s structure itself (which owes more to Dante’s inferno and 7th century ideas of Greco-Roman afterlife than anything resembling their actual conquer parts).
What it steals are western ideas *about* those things, mostly from books written by western folks who used it to make their western stuff seem less western. Sorry if that shatters a dream, but it is the truth, and it is why people now whine and complain about how D&D is getting all boring in other threads. ANd I want to note that while OA was a huge seller, the follow up sort of systems — Maztica and others — did not sell nearly as well because the game was still mostly being played by Western audiences who didn’t understand those weird cultures.
So the monk being based on Asian pop culture is not irrelevant, because by calling it so, you are calling the monk irrelevant, even though it was basically slapped on and not reall dealt with until later.
Now, Gygax claimed he was going to bring a lot of the stuff from OA into 2e, in order to examine possibility, but he also left TSR before that and thus is born the reason that Dave Cook wrote the 2nd Edition and then did not do that (because, oddly, he too felt that Kensei and Shukenja and others didn’t belong in main line D&D). THen he left. THen Wizards bought it — the ultimate hilarity being that a bunch of die hard players who homebrewed the hell out of their game to create Magic the Gathering suddenly had the keys to the kingdom and have been mucking around in it ever since.
A class is an Archetype — true. THe basis of that archetype is inextricably linked to the cultural understanding of that archetype — and people get this, which is why all the arguments are about monks being totally mystical warriors who kick ass without really using weapons often. WHy did they become that way? Because unlike in Western Europe, the peasants did fight back, and they were forbidden weapons and you all know the rest of that story. What you may not realize is that monks and their temples and their spaces were constantly being attacked burned down, and treated like crap because the warlords did not want them to exist.
But that probably doesn’t play well with the class fantasy — although it is part of the archetype.
A subclass is a variant of that archetype, one of the ways that the game uses to make some archetypes fit into the class system it has now. If I had been doing the design, the Brawler would be a subclass of monk. So would a Bartitsu fighter (ever seen that Sherlock Holmes with Robert Downey Jr as Sherlock? The way he fought? Bartitsu. Because That’s what Doyle had the book guy use, although he spelled it differently). But I would do that because the archetype that I see for a Monk is strictly “unarmed fighter”, and so all the different kind of unarmed fighter are going to be subclasses (and no, I am not saying that’s how WotC should do it).
D&D Revision cycle is usually about 10 years. Two years for expansions if you average it all out, but OA, the original Unearthed Arcana (the book) , Deities and Demigods (and whatever they change the name to), and s forth are expansions. It was 10 years for 2e (bit more, actually — around 12), about 8 for 3, then two more for 3e (I think), then ‘04 gave us 4e, 14 gave us 5e, so yeah, it is 10 years.
So, that said, it should be noted that “Classic Core” for AD&D (which is what Wizards counts as 1e) are Fighter, Thief, Magic-user, Cleric. Note that leaves out Bards and Monks. *Both of them were tack ons*, and the way that Bards worked originally was you had to take so many levels in two other classes first. THey were the oddballs. Assassin, Ranger, Paladin, Illusionist were all the subclasses, and they only applied to the Classic Core — which were the development out of Arneson’s notes form the earliest versions of the games in the very early 70’s before there even was “the fantasy game”.
Those four are always going to be the most important. They are the only 4 classes that appeared in “basic” D&D compared to until the merger of the two lines in the mid 90’s that essentially created 3.5. The Mentzer BECMI side stepped this issue by doing a Mystic, which was a westernized unarmed warrior, as well, so it can be and has been done that Monks can be westernized — but that means calling them monks gives a false impression, because if you sa fighting monk to most people they think of the martial arts films of Hong Kong.
None of which does a damn think to settle your displeasure over the way the 5e monk is treated, but do please understand that in all the years of D&D, the Monk is easily the least loved class from a design point, and that has everything to do with the western basis for D&D.
Because, again, in the mechanics of the system, an unarmed fist must be treated as a weapon attack without a weapon, lol. A while back in the thread, someone was going on about how D&D is this way because it came out of war gaming (which is partially true, and I will give it to the, but that hasn’t been true of the game since 1989, when Cook pretty much killed the entire war gaming basis and it has never come back (not even in the battle set or the Krynn thing they did), but that ignores the foundational things that separates D&D from wargaming: 1, it is fantasy, not recreation, and 2, it is role playing, which isn’t a wargaming thing of the time.
And that wasn’t Gygax, that was Arneson.
most of what design around the monk involves is trying to fix the combat system as a whole to make Monks work, That’s been going on since 1977, and no one has apparently ever gotten it right, though personally I think OA did a bang up job. But note, 5e monks still don’t use ofuda, lack the honor structure that is important even in the Wuxi’s films, ignore Tao and Buddhist basic magic systems, and other factors.
So it isn’t right to call them “Asian style Unarmed Fighters”, since they are really “western perception of Asian unarmed fighters without a damn bit of understanding of what that actually means”. Otherwise, all you are doing is highlighting something no one wants to point out, which is the outright appropriation stuff, because that will send all the politics flare ups into overdrive.
And ain’t none f us got time for that.
We can agree to disagree on whether gygaxes original concepts in 74 have any real bearing on this issue.
Mechanics, combat, and flavor wise,
Many people have solved monks combat (there are MANY different solutions) and design issues in the context of dnd, they just aren't the ones who publish dnd officially.
this isnt an impossible task, its been done. The goal of this thread is for Wotc to officially make monk up to snuff, and not actually worse than 2014 5e. Not really a debate of whether its possible
You don't need to have less subclass variation as long as devs build more subclasses of Monkish Fighter and the Monkish Rogue. Right now you have several subclasses of Monk that are completely half-baked anyway b/c the devs don't understand that their own cultural upbringing prevents them from seeing that "Monk" is really just a variation of Fighter or a variation of Rogue. If we start from the standpoint that some Fighter subclasses will wear less armor, have more mobility, and build their Ki instead of weapon skills, you can easily get something like the 5e Monk, but with more hit points while also being less MAD. If we start from the view that some Rogue subclasses will have access to specific magic abilities inherently and sometimes hit more than once a round, you also get something like the 5e Monk, but with better skill progression and less reliance on being in melee range where that d8 hit dice leads to quick trip to unconsciousness/death. And being less reliant on melee attacks will make building a Rogue Monk easier b/c also less MAD.
classes are not designed based on similar mechanics, classes are created based on what type of fantasy they represent.
this is evidenced by wizard and sorcerer being different classes, paladin being neither cleric, nor fighter subclasses, ranger being neither fighter nor druid subclasses. Bard being neither cleric nor wizard subclasses.
Classes are identity/fantasy/concept first, and they create and use whatever mechanics they build to represent that identifty/fantasy/concept.
subclasses are sub identities, and concepts.
Monk represents a different subset of fantasy than the fighter does, or the rogue.
Here is the problem, though. The fantasy superhuman that mostly uses punching/kicking and attains their super-ness via self-perfecting blend of mind/body/spirit is very much NOT a West European cultural construct. If you look at movies made in Hollywood (the global purveyor of West European pop culture), people who punch, kick, headbutt, etc. as their main form of attack are either genetically enhanced (Capt. America), born with superpowers (Colossus), or got their powers through sheer accident (Thing from FF4 franchise). Are boxers superpowered in Hollywood fiction? No. Are wrestlers superpowered in Hollywood fiction? No.
The only prominent examples you can arguably give for non-European superpowered punch/kick + mind/body/spirit perfection theme being executed well are Avatar: the Last Bender and Avatar: the Legend of Korra, which are basically part of the same Intellectual Property. Notice, however, clothing, food, artistic renditions of bodies, etc. for both of those series are much closer to an East Asian cultural aesthetic than a West European cultural aesthetic for the prominent recurring characters (aside from some clear borrowing of aesthetics from indigenous cultures). And notice, also, that the live action version of Avatar the Last Airbender has become a meme of crappitude based both on its cost:profit ratio and general plot/characterization issues.
So where does the superpowered punch/kick + mind/body/spirit paradigm come from? For ease of refence, let's call this the "Holistic PK" model. East Asian pop culture. Whether it's anime, Hong Kong kung fu movies, or wuxia films, the aesthetic and framing for the this paradigm is East Asian.
However, D&D was designed by Gary Gygax based mostly on W.European cultural themes. Which were the primary classes when D&D first came out? Fighter, Cleric, Thief, Wizard. Let's call this these the "Classic Core." These factors are all important to our examination of the Monk class b/c the Holistic PK model is both A) not W.European fantasy in origin and B) is not a Fighter, Cleric, Thief, or Wizard. Therefore, the design team at WotC (which continues to be headed by people who grew up primarily with W.European ideas of what is inspiring fantasy fiction), will generally prioritize the best experience for players who want to play a Fighter, Rogue (name-swapped Thief), Cleric, or Wizard. This means that classes that are not the Classic Core will always be secondary in their design priorities. This is important because the game has mechanics, and class/subclass features must be based on mechanics, not just the imagination (even though the imagination is what brings the game to life for the players). However, because the Classic Core was designed first and is favored by the game devs, non-Classic Core classes become add-ons. This prioritization schema, intentional or not, will almost always prioritize giving nice things to the Classic Core, even at the expense of secondary classes.
If you look at your examples of different themes, we notice a pattern once we take the Classic Core design priority into consideration. The PHB Sorcerer is generally sub-optimal compared to the Wizard, right? Based on DPS, the Ranger is generally sub-optimal compared to the Fighter, correct? So we see that Classic Core is supported by the devs moreso than the non-Classic Core classes.
The problem for the Monk class is that it is both not a Classic Core class and not inspired by W.European cultural milieu. And as AEDorsay pointed out in a much earlier post on this same thread, weapons + armor is a mechanical choice that has to be noticeably different from unarmored, punching/kicking. As such, game design decisions re: optimization potential, feats, magic items, etc. will generally favor the Classic Core (and those classes designed most like the Classic Core) than something like the Monk, because the Holistic PK model is conceptually not W.European and was developed as a supplemental class, not a primary class by Gygax and co. This is why I proposed that the only real solution to this problem is getting rid of the conceptual barrier between Monk and Fighter, as well as between Monk and Rogue. As long as Monk design is treated as being both mechanically and thematically separate from the Classic Core, it will never get much in terms of Nice Things both because the design space for classes will generally favor the Common Core and b/c if you borrow features from Fighter or Rogue and give them to the Monk, the Fighter/Rogue fanbase will yell and holler about it, leading to the devs to backpedal, since the devs care more pleasing the Classic Core's fanbase more than
Why does dnd need to only draw from one culture? Dnd draws from tons of different cultures; genies, djinns, raksashas, oni, planes,
Asian martial arts literally existed at the same time period. And Europe was aware of Asia, Rome, middle east, etc even before the dark ages. There was trade between these nations.
even if dnd was only supposed to be a very limited closed setting (which monk was added fairly early, so probably not) By now dnd incorporates space, Astral seas, Multiple planes.
The fact that monk fantasy is based on Asian pop culture is largely irrelevant.
also, the weapon problem is largely just because of lack of thinking or rushing Unarmed last minute. That discrepancy can, and has been solved in a couple homebrew rules. Its just dnd revision cycle is 5 years generally, and 10 years for 5e. Its not a deep inherent problem with design paradigms.
Oh my. Lot’s here to dig into, soo…
All classes *are* designed using the same mechanics. That’s part of why they are called mechanics — it is right there in the core concept, because “class is one of the mechanics involved. One of those mechanics is the underlying archetype and another is the play fantasy (note, that’s two distinct mechanics).
Note that when initially introduced, Paladin and Ranger were both subclasses. It wasn’t until 2e that they stopped being such, and as a point of reference, it caused quite a stir (thanks, Dave Cook).
It should be noted that Gygax did not want to include Monk in AD&D because he felt it conflicted with the north and west European basis of mainstream D&D and he wanted the Monk and other classes to exist in a different space because the cultural archetypes did not work well with the established ones. Which is why he took the notes of one person, added his own notes, let Dave Cook write the whole damn thing (same guy who did 2e), and then slapped his name on the cover when it published. THat was Oriental Adventures, no that was *exactly* what he was thinking of when he talked about it. OA is literally a completely separate Player’s Handbook created to support Warring States, Shogunate, and mid-century Korean cultural archetypes because regular D&D was not able to do so.
Would Gygax have used some of the aspects of western unarmed or limited armed combat had he been aware of it? Probably. But he wasn’t, and so he didn’t (and there are several different western styles of unarmed combat that no class ever officially created has made use of). Irish stick fighting, Bartitsu, and others came at different periods of time (from 4th century CE through 15th century, then again in the 1800’s as they tried to bring up older models and create new ones following the re-opening of Japan such as Bartitsu) but one thing to keep in mind is that in Western Culture, aside from boxing, fisticuffs was considered beneath even the peasant — and in large part due tothe official stance of the nobility who didn’t want people learning how to fight back (and that includes the church).
Culturally, there was no equivalent, and it was looked down on and considered beneath people — and that Gygax did know, but he was pressured and put it in anyway. IN other words, yes, it was supposed to be focused on a very particular kind of vague medieval Western European fantasy — and not be inclusive of anything outside of that, which should have had its own sourcebook, different classes (not the same ones as western D&D, so not fighter, wizard, cleric, rogue, but separate ones) and Oriental Advnetures was the exemplar for that.
btw, my earlier suggestions are literally the OA monk changed for 5e.
It should also be noted that D&D does not actually draw from “tons of cultures”. Actual djinn, rakshasa, and oni are not drawing from those cultures — they took a name, a rough appearance, and then made the rest up. For example, djinn are only ever able to speak the truth, traditionally, and it is with the truth that they trap people through their own failings. Rakshasa are not strictly evil, and don’t fit into an alignment system because they are tied to a structure that value not good and evil in the western sense but rather materiality and selfishness, as well as ties to family and unwavering opposition to enemies.
Neither of those things sound like Djinn or Rakshasa in D&D because it didn’t take them from there.
Also, the Planes are explicitly stolen, intentionally, from Roger Zelazny, modified by Moorcock’s Eternal Warrior Saga, and then made to fit with some casual reference sin Vance’s work. All of it western based. And I won’t even begin to get into the plane’s structure itself (which owes more to Dante’s inferno and 7th century ideas of Greco-Roman afterlife than anything resembling their actual conquer parts).
What it steals are western ideas *about* those things, mostly from books written by western folks who used it to make their western stuff seem less western. Sorry if that shatters a dream, but it is the truth, and it is why people now whine and complain about how D&D is getting all boring in other threads. ANd I want to note that while OA was a huge seller, the follow up sort of systems — Maztica and others — did not sell nearly as well because the game was still mostly being played by Western audiences who didn’t understand those weird cultures.
So the monk being based on Asian pop culture is not irrelevant, because by calling it so, you are calling the monk irrelevant, even though it was basically slapped on and not reall dealt with until later.
Now, Gygax claimed he was going to bring a lot of the stuff from OA into 2e, in order to examine possibility, but he also left TSR before that and thus is born the reason that Dave Cook wrote the 2nd Edition and then did not do that (because, oddly, he too felt that Kensei and Shukenja and others didn’t belong in main line D&D). THen he left. THen Wizards bought it — the ultimate hilarity being that a bunch of die hard players who homebrewed the hell out of their game to create Magic the Gathering suddenly had the keys to the kingdom and have been mucking around in it ever since.
A class is an Archetype — true. THe basis of that archetype is inextricably linked to the cultural understanding of that archetype — and people get this, which is why all the arguments are about monks being totally mystical warriors who kick ass without really using weapons often. WHy did they become that way? Because unlike in Western Europe, the peasants did fight back, and they were forbidden weapons and you all know the rest of that story. What you may not realize is that monks and their temples and their spaces were constantly being attacked burned down, and treated like crap because the warlords did not want them to exist.
But that probably doesn’t play well with the class fantasy — although it is part of the archetype.
A subclass is a variant of that archetype, one of the ways that the game uses to make some archetypes fit into the class system it has now. If I had been doing the design, the Brawler would be a subclass of monk. So would a Bartitsu fighter (ever seen that Sherlock Holmes with Robert Downey Jr as Sherlock? The way he fought? Bartitsu. Because That’s what Doyle had the book guy use, although he spelled it differently). But I would do that because the archetype that I see for a Monk is strictly “unarmed fighter”, and so all the different kind of unarmed fighter are going to be subclasses (and no, I am not saying that’s how WotC should do it).
D&D Revision cycle is usually about 10 years. Two years for expansions if you average it all out, but OA, the original Unearthed Arcana (the book) , Deities and Demigods (and whatever they change the name to), and s forth are expansions. It was 10 years for 2e (bit more, actually — around 12), about 8 for 3, then two more for 3e (I think), then ‘04 gave us 4e, 14 gave us 5e, so yeah, it is 10 years.
So, that said, it should be noted that “Classic Core” for AD&D (which is what Wizards counts as 1e) are Fighter, Thief, Magic-user, Cleric. Note that leaves out Bards and Monks. *Both of them were tack ons*, and the way that Bards worked originally was you had to take so many levels in two other classes first. THey were the oddballs. Assassin, Ranger, Paladin, Illusionist were all the subclasses, and they only applied to the Classic Core — which were the development out of Arneson’s notes form the earliest versions of the games in the very early 70’s before there even was “the fantasy game”.
Those four are always going to be the most important. They are the only 4 classes that appeared in “basic” D&D compared to until the merger of the two lines in the mid 90’s that essentially created 3.5. The Mentzer BECMI side stepped this issue by doing a Mystic, which was a westernized unarmed warrior, as well, so it can be and has been done that Monks can be westernized — but that means calling them monks gives a false impression, because if you sa fighting monk to most people they think of the martial arts films of Hong Kong.
None of which does a damn think to settle your displeasure over the way the 5e monk is treated, but do please understand that in all the years of D&D, the Monk is easily the least loved class from a design point, and that has everything to do with the western basis for D&D.
Because, again, in the mechanics of the system, an unarmed fist must be treated as a weapon attack without a weapon, lol. A while back in the thread, someone was going on about how D&D is this way because it came out of war gaming (which is partially true, and I will give it to the, but that hasn’t been true of the game since 1989, when Cook pretty much killed the entire war gaming basis and it has never come back (not even in the battle set or the Krynn thing they did), but that ignores the foundational things that separates D&D from wargaming: 1, it is fantasy, not recreation, and 2, it is role playing, which isn’t a wargaming thing of the time.
And that wasn’t Gygax, that was Arneson.
most of what design around the monk involves is trying to fix the combat system as a whole to make Monks work, That’s been going on since 1977, and no one has apparently ever gotten it right, though personally I think OA did a bang up job. But note, 5e monks still don’t use ofuda, lack the honor structure that is important even in the Wuxi’s films, ignore Tao and Buddhist basic magic systems, and other factors.
So it isn’t right to call them “Asian style Unarmed Fighters”, since they are really “western perception of Asian unarmed fighters without a damn bit of understanding of what that actually means”. Otherwise, all you are doing is highlighting something no one wants to point out, which is the outright appropriation stuff, because that will send all the politics flare ups into overdrive.
And ain’t none f us got time for that.
We can agree to disagree on whether gygaxes original concepts in 74 have any real bearing on this issue.
Mechanics, combat, and flavor wise,
Many people have solved monks combat (there are MANY different solutions) and design issues in the context of dnd, they just aren't the ones who publish dnd officially.
this isnt an impossible task, its been done. The goal of this thread is for Wotc to officially make monk up to snuff, and not actually worse than 2014 5e. Not really a debate of whether its possible
um, Gygax didn’t do the PHB for AD&D until 77/78. And AD&D was very much removed from the 1974 stuff, so not sure where you get that from.
While they did simplify combat for d20 and so for 5e, the core combat mechanics remain the same, but flavor has changed with edition and version.
of course many people have solved it. Hell, I have several times, for each edition; I not only know the mechanics, I have a strong archetype to use that I dig deeply. Other people solving it doesn’t matter.
we agree that WotC needs to do the solving. My point has not been that it is impossible.
my point is that what a lot of folks think a monk should be and do here is not what WotC wants, and because there is no common baseline across all the elements of a class (which is a LOT more than just damage done), nobody is going to get anything they want because everyone is coming at it from different points of view.
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You don't need to have less subclass variation as long as devs build more subclasses of Monkish Fighter and the Monkish Rogue. Right now you have several subclasses of Monk that are completely half-baked anyway b/c the devs don't understand that their own cultural upbringing prevents them from seeing that "Monk" is really just a variation of Fighter or a variation of Rogue. If we start from the standpoint that some Fighter subclasses will wear less armor, have more mobility, and build their Ki instead of weapon skills, you can easily get something like the 5e Monk, but with more hit points while also being less MAD. If we start from the view that some Rogue subclasses will have access to specific magic abilities inherently and sometimes hit more than once a round, you also get something like the 5e Monk, but with better skill progression and less reliance on being in melee range where that d8 hit dice leads to quick trip to unconsciousness/death. And being less reliant on melee attacks will make building a Rogue Monk easier b/c also less MAD.
classes are not designed based on similar mechanics, classes are created based on what type of fantasy they represent.
this is evidenced by wizard and sorcerer being different classes, paladin being neither cleric, nor fighter subclasses, ranger being neither fighter nor druid subclasses. Bard being neither cleric nor wizard subclasses.
Classes are identity/fantasy/concept first, and they create and use whatever mechanics they build to represent that identifty/fantasy/concept.
subclasses are sub identities, and concepts.
Monk represents a different subset of fantasy than the fighter does, or the rogue.
Here is the problem, though. The fantasy superhuman that mostly uses punching/kicking and attains their super-ness via self-perfecting blend of mind/body/spirit is very much NOT a West European cultural construct. If you look at movies made in Hollywood (the global purveyor of West European pop culture), people who punch, kick, headbutt, etc. as their main form of attack are either genetically enhanced (Capt. America), born with superpowers (Colossus), or got their powers through sheer accident (Thing from FF4 franchise). Are boxers superpowered in Hollywood fiction? No. Are wrestlers superpowered in Hollywood fiction? No.
The only prominent examples you can arguably give for non-European superpowered punch/kick + mind/body/spirit perfection theme being executed well are Avatar: the Last Bender and Avatar: the Legend of Korra, which are basically part of the same Intellectual Property. Notice, however, clothing, food, artistic renditions of bodies, etc. for both of those series are much closer to an East Asian cultural aesthetic than a West European cultural aesthetic for the prominent recurring characters (aside from some clear borrowing of aesthetics from indigenous cultures). And notice, also, that the live action version of Avatar the Last Airbender has become a meme of crappitude based both on its cost:profit ratio and general plot/characterization issues.
So where does the superpowered punch/kick + mind/body/spirit paradigm come from? For ease of refence, let's call this the "Holistic PK" model. East Asian pop culture. Whether it's anime, Hong Kong kung fu movies, or wuxia films, the aesthetic and framing for the this paradigm is East Asian.
However, D&D was designed by Gary Gygax based mostly on W.European cultural themes. Which were the primary classes when D&D first came out? Fighter, Cleric, Thief, Wizard. Let's call this these the "Classic Core." These factors are all important to our examination of the Monk class b/c the Holistic PK model is both A) not W.European fantasy in origin and B) is not a Fighter, Cleric, Thief, or Wizard. Therefore, the design team at WotC (which continues to be headed by people who grew up primarily with W.European ideas of what is inspiring fantasy fiction), will generally prioritize the best experience for players who want to play a Fighter, Rogue (name-swapped Thief), Cleric, or Wizard. This means that classes that are not the Classic Core will always be secondary in their design priorities. This is important because the game has mechanics, and class/subclass features must be based on mechanics, not just the imagination (even though the imagination is what brings the game to life for the players). However, because the Classic Core was designed first and is favored by the game devs, non-Classic Core classes become add-ons. This prioritization schema, intentional or not, will almost always prioritize giving nice things to the Classic Core, even at the expense of secondary classes.
If you look at your examples of different themes, we notice a pattern once we take the Classic Core design priority into consideration. The PHB Sorcerer is generally sub-optimal compared to the Wizard, right? Based on DPS, the Ranger is generally sub-optimal compared to the Fighter, correct? So we see that Classic Core is supported by the devs moreso than the non-Classic Core classes.
The problem for the Monk class is that it is both not a Classic Core class and not inspired by W.European cultural milieu. And as AEDorsay pointed out in a much earlier post on this same thread, weapons + armor is a mechanical choice that has to be noticeably different from unarmored, punching/kicking. As such, game design decisions re: optimization potential, feats, magic items, etc. will generally favor the Classic Core (and those classes designed most like the Classic Core) than something like the Monk, because the Holistic PK model is conceptually not W.European and was developed as a supplemental class, not a primary class by Gygax and co. This is why I proposed that the only real solution to this problem is getting rid of the conceptual barrier between Monk and Fighter, as well as between Monk and Rogue. As long as Monk design is treated as being both mechanically and thematically separate from the Classic Core, it will never get much in terms of Nice Things both because the design space for classes will generally favor the Common Core and b/c if you borrow features from Fighter or Rogue and give them to the Monk, the Fighter/Rogue fanbase will yell and holler about it, leading to the devs to backpedal, since the devs care more pleasing the Classic Core's fanbase more than
Why does dnd need to only draw from one culture? Dnd draws from tons of different cultures; genies, djinns, raksashas, oni, planes,
Asian martial arts literally existed at the same time period. And Europe was aware of Asia, Rome, middle east, etc even before the dark ages. There was trade between these nations.
even if dnd was only supposed to be a very limited closed setting (which monk was added fairly early, so probably not) By now dnd incorporates space, Astral seas, Multiple planes.
The fact that monk fantasy is based on Asian pop culture is largely irrelevant.
also, the weapon problem is largely just because of lack of thinking or rushing Unarmed last minute. That discrepancy can, and has been solved in a couple homebrew rules. Its just dnd revision cycle is 5 years generally, and 10 years for 5e. Its not a deep inherent problem with design paradigms.
Oh my. Lot’s here to dig into, soo…
All classes *are* designed using the same mechanics. That’s part of why they are called mechanics — it is right there in the core concept, because “class is one of the mechanics involved. One of those mechanics is the underlying archetype and another is the play fantasy (note, that’s two distinct mechanics).
Note that when initially introduced, Paladin and Ranger were both subclasses. It wasn’t until 2e that they stopped being such, and as a point of reference, it caused quite a stir (thanks, Dave Cook).
It should be noted that Gygax did not want to include Monk in AD&D because he felt it conflicted with the north and west European basis of mainstream D&D and he wanted the Monk and other classes to exist in a different space because the cultural archetypes did not work well with the established ones. Which is why he took the notes of one person, added his own notes, let Dave Cook write the whole damn thing (same guy who did 2e), and then slapped his name on the cover when it published. THat was Oriental Adventures, no that was *exactly* what he was thinking of when he talked about it. OA is literally a completely separate Player’s Handbook created to support Warring States, Shogunate, and mid-century Korean cultural archetypes because regular D&D was not able to do so.
Would Gygax have used some of the aspects of western unarmed or limited armed combat had he been aware of it? Probably. But he wasn’t, and so he didn’t (and there are several different western styles of unarmed combat that no class ever officially created has made use of). Irish stick fighting, Bartitsu, and others came at different periods of time (from 4th century CE through 15th century, then again in the 1800’s as they tried to bring up older models and create new ones following the re-opening of Japan such as Bartitsu) but one thing to keep in mind is that in Western Culture, aside from boxing, fisticuffs was considered beneath even the peasant — and in large part due tothe official stance of the nobility who didn’t want people learning how to fight back (and that includes the church).
Culturally, there was no equivalent, and it was looked down on and considered beneath people — and that Gygax did know, but he was pressured and put it in anyway. IN other words, yes, it was supposed to be focused on a very particular kind of vague medieval Western European fantasy — and not be inclusive of anything outside of that, which should have had its own sourcebook, different classes (not the same ones as western D&D, so not fighter, wizard, cleric, rogue, but separate ones) and Oriental Advnetures was the exemplar for that.
btw, my earlier suggestions are literally the OA monk changed for 5e.
It should also be noted that D&D does not actually draw from “tons of cultures”. Actual djinn, rakshasa, and oni are not drawing from those cultures — they took a name, a rough appearance, and then made the rest up. For example, djinn are only ever able to speak the truth, traditionally, and it is with the truth that they trap people through their own failings. Rakshasa are not strictly evil, and don’t fit into an alignment system because they are tied to a structure that value not good and evil in the western sense but rather materiality and selfishness, as well as ties to family and unwavering opposition to enemies.
Neither of those things sound like Djinn or Rakshasa in D&D because it didn’t take them from there.
Also, the Planes are explicitly stolen, intentionally, from Roger Zelazny, modified by Moorcock’s Eternal Warrior Saga, and then made to fit with some casual reference sin Vance’s work. All of it western based. And I won’t even begin to get into the plane’s structure itself (which owes more to Dante’s inferno and 7th century ideas of Greco-Roman afterlife than anything resembling their actual conquer parts).
What it steals are western ideas *about* those things, mostly from books written by western folks who used it to make their western stuff seem less western. Sorry if that shatters a dream, but it is the truth, and it is why people now whine and complain about how D&D is getting all boring in other threads. ANd I want to note that while OA was a huge seller, the follow up sort of systems — Maztica and others — did not sell nearly as well because the game was still mostly being played by Western audiences who didn’t understand those weird cultures.
So the monk being based on Asian pop culture is not irrelevant, because by calling it so, you are calling the monk irrelevant, even though it was basically slapped on and not reall dealt with until later.
Now, Gygax claimed he was going to bring a lot of the stuff from OA into 2e, in order to examine possibility, but he also left TSR before that and thus is born the reason that Dave Cook wrote the 2nd Edition and then did not do that (because, oddly, he too felt that Kensei and Shukenja and others didn’t belong in main line D&D). THen he left. THen Wizards bought it — the ultimate hilarity being that a bunch of die hard players who homebrewed the hell out of their game to create Magic the Gathering suddenly had the keys to the kingdom and have been mucking around in it ever since.
A class is an Archetype — true. THe basis of that archetype is inextricably linked to the cultural understanding of that archetype — and people get this, which is why all the arguments are about monks being totally mystical warriors who kick ass without really using weapons often. WHy did they become that way? Because unlike in Western Europe, the peasants did fight back, and they were forbidden weapons and you all know the rest of that story. What you may not realize is that monks and their temples and their spaces were constantly being attacked burned down, and treated like crap because the warlords did not want them to exist.
But that probably doesn’t play well with the class fantasy — although it is part of the archetype.
A subclass is a variant of that archetype, one of the ways that the game uses to make some archetypes fit into the class system it has now. If I had been doing the design, the Brawler would be a subclass of monk. So would a Bartitsu fighter (ever seen that Sherlock Holmes with Robert Downey Jr as Sherlock? The way he fought? Bartitsu. Because That’s what Doyle had the book guy use, although he spelled it differently). But I would do that because the archetype that I see for a Monk is strictly “unarmed fighter”, and so all the different kind of unarmed fighter are going to be subclasses (and no, I am not saying that’s how WotC should do it).
D&D Revision cycle is usually about 10 years. Two years for expansions if you average it all out, but OA, the original Unearthed Arcana (the book) , Deities and Demigods (and whatever they change the name to), and s forth are expansions. It was 10 years for 2e (bit more, actually — around 12), about 8 for 3, then two more for 3e (I think), then ‘04 gave us 4e, 14 gave us 5e, so yeah, it is 10 years.
So, that said, it should be noted that “Classic Core” for AD&D (which is what Wizards counts as 1e) are Fighter, Thief, Magic-user, Cleric. Note that leaves out Bards and Monks. *Both of them were tack ons*, and the way that Bards worked originally was you had to take so many levels in two other classes first. THey were the oddballs. Assassin, Ranger, Paladin, Illusionist were all the subclasses, and they only applied to the Classic Core — which were the development out of Arneson’s notes form the earliest versions of the games in the very early 70’s before there even was “the fantasy game”.
Those four are always going to be the most important. They are the only 4 classes that appeared in “basic” D&D compared to until the merger of the two lines in the mid 90’s that essentially created 3.5. The Mentzer BECMI side stepped this issue by doing a Mystic, which was a westernized unarmed warrior, as well, so it can be and has been done that Monks can be westernized — but that means calling them monks gives a false impression, because if you sa fighting monk to most people they think of the martial arts films of Hong Kong.
None of which does a damn think to settle your displeasure over the way the 5e monk is treated, but do please understand that in all the years of D&D, the Monk is easily the least loved class from a design point, and that has everything to do with the western basis for D&D.
Because, again, in the mechanics of the system, an unarmed fist must be treated as a weapon attack without a weapon, lol. A while back in the thread, someone was going on about how D&D is this way because it came out of war gaming (which is partially true, and I will give it to the, but that hasn’t been true of the game since 1989, when Cook pretty much killed the entire war gaming basis and it has never come back (not even in the battle set or the Krynn thing they did), but that ignores the foundational things that separates D&D from wargaming: 1, it is fantasy, not recreation, and 2, it is role playing, which isn’t a wargaming thing of the time.
And that wasn’t Gygax, that was Arneson.
most of what design around the monk involves is trying to fix the combat system as a whole to make Monks work, That’s been going on since 1977, and no one has apparently ever gotten it right, though personally I think OA did a bang up job. But note, 5e monks still don’t use ofuda, lack the honor structure that is important even in the Wuxi’s films, ignore Tao and Buddhist basic magic systems, and other factors.
So it isn’t right to call them “Asian style Unarmed Fighters”, since they are really “western perception of Asian unarmed fighters without a damn bit of understanding of what that actually means”. Otherwise, all you are doing is highlighting something no one wants to point out, which is the outright appropriation stuff, because that will send all the politics flare ups into overdrive.
And ain’t none f us got time for that.
We can agree to disagree on whether gygaxes original concepts in 74 have any real bearing on this issue.
Mechanics, combat, and flavor wise,
Many people have solved monks combat (there are MANY different solutions) and design issues in the context of dnd, they just aren't the ones who publish dnd officially.
this isnt an impossible task, its been done. The goal of this thread is for Wotc to officially make monk up to snuff, and not actually worse than 2014 5e. Not really a debate of whether its possible
um, Gygax didn’t do the PHB for AD&D until 77/78. And AD&D was very much removed from the 1974 stuff, so not sure where you get that from.
While they did simplify combat for d20 and so for 5e, the core combat mechanics remain the same, but flavor has changed with edition and version.
of course many people have solved it. Hell, I have several times, for each edition; I not only know the mechanics, I have a strong archetype to use that I dig deeply. Other people solving it doesn’t matter.
we agree that WotC needs to do the solving. My point has not been that it is impossible.
my point is that what a lot of folks think a monk should be and do here is not what WotC wants, and because there is no common baseline across all the elements of a class (which is a LOT more than just damage done), nobody is going to get anything they want because everyone is coming at it from different points of view.
yeah, I might talk about my vision for monk and what I want out of it.
but realistically, if monk was self consistent (with whomever's design) and competitive, and fun. I could enjoy it. There are many versions and concepts of martial artist. As much as I don't see monk as a hit and run specialist, if it was well executed, I don't think as many people would be complaining. At worst they'd be asking for a new class/subclass to fill their desire.
I think the issue isnt everyone agreeing, I think the issue is that the monk currently is poorly executed and relatively bad at everything useful to the group in 90% of situations. Perhaps Wotc is making it poorly because they don't know what they want it to be, but they have tons of suggestions, their job is to decide on one, and make it actually work.
We are just sharing are own perspectives, and sometimes analysis of various designs. Its always the designers job to take a vision and run with it. There is never a universal answer for all people, and I don't think we expect that really.
I mean, "no" is a great response to someone genuinely making the argument that two-weapon fighting is superior to a Monk's bonus strike. Let's look at that math.
At levels 1-3, the two-weapon Fighter/Ranger is swinging two d6 weapons per turn, that's 2-12 damage plus Mod*2. Meanwhile, the Monk is using a quarterstaff for 1d8 plus their 1d4 unarmed strike for...2-12 damage plus Mod*2. Equal damage.
At level 4, the Fighter/Ranger can take Dual Wielder to let them dual-wield d8 weapons, while the Monk takes +2 DEX. Let's say both started at a +3. The Fighter/Ranger now does 8-22 damage while the Monk does 10-20 damage. They average out the same.
Then at level 5, the Fighter/Ranger can do three d8 attacks, 12-33 (or 15-33 if they stuck with light weapons...). Meanwhile, the Monk does 15-34 due to higher modifier.
So yep, the Monk all but keeps pace with two-weapon fighting, with the advantage of Flurry of Blows. And remember, this is without OneD&D's Martial Arts die buff. Once you factor that in, the Monk outpaces a two-weapon fighter consistently, without the need for feat investment.
It really serves to drive home the point that when people say "Monk is inferior to [x] class with [y] feats", what they effectively mean is "[x] class needs feats to outpace Monk".
It still has lower hp and AC. You keep pointing out that monk barely keeps up with other martials. While having lower HP and AC and no other class features to lean on that don’t draw from its offensive resource, and being so MAD that taking feats cripples you while fighter, ranger, paladin, and barbarian are free to use them.
2d6 plus 6 averages out at 13. 1d8 plus 1d4 plus 6 averages out at 13. Identical at those levels, though monk has essentially no ki to use. When it gets one additional d4+mod unarmed strike per short rest, fighter gets action surge.
At level 4, Monk has 17 AC. If the fighter is STR based, it has 17 also (if they haven’t found any magic armour), and if it’s DEX-based, it has 17. Fighter has action surge and second wind and higher HP. Fighter average DPR becomes 2d8+6, or 15. Monk becomes 1d8+1d4+8, or also 15. That’s assuming dual wielder, however. If the fighter took +2 DEX also, it edges out monk by two points while keeping the same AC.
At level 5, fighter becomes 3d6+12 (assuming the same ASIs previous level) or 22. Monk has 2d8+1d6+12, or 24.5. Same AC, but fighter has more HP. And action surge. Monk has 5 ki at this point, and access to stunning strike, but it has a Ki DC of only 14. Fighter can also attack at range without crippling itself.
...
You repeatedly bring up Action Surge, as if this confers some insurmountable benefit to the Fighter that Flurry of Blows doesn't match and further exceeds with every level after an extra-attack threshold, because Flurry of Blows gets more and more uses as opposed to Action Surge getting one use in the same interval.
So again, in order to say Monk bad, people have to both a.) ignore the Monk's most basic features and b.) point to feats other classes need in order to reach parity with Monks' most basic features.
At those levels, action surge is better than flurry of blows. It gives you a higher damage attack compared to flurry of blows giving you one extra monk punch, and it doesn’t draw from the same resource as all your other options. I’m not sure you even read my post. Those feats are always on. Sure, in the first combat of the day, with no magic items whatsoever, with the fighter using an abysmal build, monk edges out fighter. If it uses all its ki in that combat. Feats are always on. Ki is not.
Is it really weaker, though? At 1st-level, 1d8+1d4 is functionally the same as 2d6. At 5th-level, 2d8+1d6 is better than 3d6; and only slightly behind the 3d8 that is possible in the 2014 PH. But then, monks will eventually dish out 3d10. Magic items can enhance that, and monks aren't expending resources like a ranger might on Hunter's Mark. Monks are also less dependent on magic items. That ranger is going to want two magic weapons. The monk only needs one.
Of course, then we get into the nitty-gritty of the OneD&D playtest (specifically Playtest 6) and...both can merge TWF into the Attack. Which means a 1st-level monk can attack for 15.5 (2d6+1d4+6) at the cost of a bonus action. The ranger can outpace them, but they're spending one of their measly two spell slots to dish out upwards of 16 (3d6+1d4+3). But that comes with (a) being forced to attack in melee and (b) land blows against two targets; which the ranger can do if it uses its bonus action to move Hunter's Mark.
Expensive, situationally competitive, and risky. The ranger needs to be in melee. That increases the odds of getting hit and losing concentration. It gets better after Favored Enemy at 2nd-level, because it's no longer dependent on spell slots, but just barely.
A 5th-level ranger could hit for a mean of 30.5 (2d8+2d6+1d4+12), but that once again comes with the caveat of needing to hit two targets. If they only hit one, the mean drops to 27. A 5th-level monk, on the other hand, can smack enemies for a mean of roughly 26 (2d6+1d4+1d8+12). And that's without access to Fighting Style: Two-Weapon Fighting; which could change. They're expending their bonus action, sure, but not any other resources. Which means they can throttle up hard.
I don't think I need to go into how fighter and paladin match up. Both are better off with Fighting Style: Dueling and a shield, and paladins can't pick up TWF as a style without a feat at 4th-level or higher. That's giving up a lot of power for a tiny gain. An 11th-level paladin with Radiant Strikes could hit for a mean of 37 (5d8+1d4+12), but that's both of their feats with nothing else having been improved. Actually, that's also with the playtest version of Dual Wielder from the Expert packet. Which is technically no longer valid, but I'm including it for the sake of generosity. They could easily dish out 30 (4d8+12) while still carrying a shield, which might have its own magic bonuses and feat.
Meanwhile, an 11th-level monk could hit for 30 (2d6+1d4+1d10+15), or 29.5 (2d8+1d10+15) if they have a versatile weapon in two hands, without a fighting style or expending a Discipline Point. Yes, a monk with 20 Dexterity has parity with a paladin with 18 Strength. And the extra hit from Flurry of Blows hits harder than a Divine Strike using a 1st-level spell slot. Even if we lowball the monk to only having 18 Dexterity, that's potentially 36.5 (2d6+1d4+2d10+16), or 36 (2d8+2d10+16) if they have a versatile weapon in two hands, versus 39 (6d8+12).
That's...not too shabby.
The only reason accuracy wasn’t accounted for in my maths is that fighter and monk were making the same amount of attacks and no magic items were involved. Differing numbers off attacks means you need to account for accuracy.. and the monk is the one making more, smaller attacks.
I mean, "no" is a great response to someone genuinely making the argument that two-weapon fighting is superior to a Monk's bonus strike. Let's look at that math.
At levels 1-3, the two-weapon Fighter/Ranger is swinging two d6 weapons per turn, that's 2-12 damage plus Mod*2. Meanwhile, the Monk is using a quarterstaff for 1d8 plus their 1d4 unarmed strike for...2-12 damage plus Mod*2. Equal damage.
At level 4, the Fighter/Ranger can take Dual Wielder to let them dual-wield d8 weapons, while the Monk takes +2 DEX. Let's say both started at a +3. The Fighter/Ranger now does 8-22 damage while the Monk does 10-20 damage. They average out the same.
Then at level 5, the Fighter/Ranger can do three d8 attacks, 12-33 (or 15-33 if they stuck with light weapons...). Meanwhile, the Monk does 15-34 due to higher modifier.
So yep, the Monk all but keeps pace with two-weapon fighting, with the advantage of Flurry of Blows. And remember, this is without OneD&D's Martial Arts die buff. Once you factor that in, the Monk outpaces a two-weapon fighter consistently, without the need for feat investment.
It really serves to drive home the point that when people say "Monk is inferior to [x] class with [y] feats", what they effectively mean is "[x] class needs feats to outpace Monk".
It still has lower hp and AC. You keep pointing out that monk barely keeps up with other martials. While having lower HP and AC and no other class features to lean on that don’t draw from its offensive resource, and being so MAD that taking feats cripples you while fighter, ranger, paladin, and barbarian are free to use them.
2d6 plus 6 averages out at 13. 1d8 plus 1d4 plus 6 averages out at 13. Identical at those levels, though monk has essentially no ki to use. When it gets one additional d4+mod unarmed strike per short rest, fighter gets action surge.
At level 4, Monk has 17 AC. If the fighter is STR based, it has 17 also (if they haven’t found any magic armour), and if it’s DEX-based, it has 17. Fighter has action surge and second wind and higher HP. Fighter average DPR becomes 2d8+6, or 15. Monk becomes 1d8+1d4+8, or also 15. That’s assuming dual wielder, however. If the fighter took +2 DEX also, it edges out monk by two points while keeping the same AC.
At level 5, fighter becomes 3d6+12 (assuming the same ASIs previous level) or 22. Monk has 2d8+1d6+12, or 24.5. Same AC, but fighter has more HP. And action surge. Monk has 5 ki at this point, and access to stunning strike, but it has a Ki DC of only 14. Fighter can also attack at range without crippling itself.
...
You repeatedly bring up Action Surge, as if this confers some insurmountable benefit to the Fighter that Flurry of Blows doesn't match and further exceeds with every level after an extra-attack threshold, because Flurry of Blows gets more and more uses as opposed to Action Surge getting one use in the same interval.
So again, in order to say Monk bad, people have to both a.) ignore the Monk's most basic features and b.) point to feats other classes need in order to reach parity with Monks' most basic features.
Combat feats are all half-feats now so cost nothing in terms of primary stat progression and they are no longer an optional feature but part of the base game so there is absolutely no reason for martials not to take them. So I don't know why you keep going on about others "needing" feats to keep up, those characters are taking those feats regardless because it is the most obvious and logical thing to do. It's like saying a fighter "needs" a particular fighting style to exceed monk - yeah they do but they get one as part of their class.
Also you keep constantly ignoring Fighting Styles and Weapon Masteries which both increase a Fighter's damage on every attack, which means no, monk is not doing equal damage they are doing less.
Lastly, why do you keep bringing up level 1? Hardly anyone plays at level 1 and those that do aren't playing more than 1 combat at level 1, so it doesn't matter how good monk is at level 1, if they suck at level 7 because you are going to play 5-20x more at level 7 than at level 1.
Is it really weaker, though? At 1st-level, 1d8+1d4 is functionally the same as 2d6. At 5th-level, 2d8+1d6 is better than 3d6; and only slightly behind the 3d8 that is possible in the 2014 PH. But then, monks will eventually dish out 3d10. Magic items can enhance that, and monks aren't expending resources like a ranger might on Hunter's Mark. Monks are also less dependent on magic items. That ranger is going to want two magic weapons. The monk only needs one.
Of course, then we get into the nitty-gritty of the OneD&D playtest (specifically Playtest 6) and...both can merge TWF into the Attack. Which means a 1st-level monk can attack for 15.5 (2d6+1d4+6) at the cost of a bonus action. The ranger can outpace them, but they're spending one of their measly two spell slots to dish out upwards of 16 (3d6+1d4+3). But that comes with (a) being forced to attack in melee and (b) land blows against two targets; which the ranger can do if it uses its bonus action to move Hunter's Mark.
Expensive, situationally competitive, and risky. The ranger needs to be in melee. That increases the odds of getting hit and losing concentration. It gets better after Favored Enemy at 2nd-level, because it's no longer dependent on spell slots, but just barely.
A 5th-level ranger could hit for a mean of 30.5 (2d8+2d6+1d4+12), but that once again comes with the caveat of needing to hit two targets. If they only hit one, the mean drops to 27. A 5th-level monk, on the other hand, can smack enemies for a mean of roughly 26 (2d6+1d4+1d8+12). And that's without access to Fighting Style: Two-Weapon Fighting; which could change. They're expending their bonus action, sure, but not any other resources. Which means they can throttle up hard.
I don't think I need to go into how fighter and paladin match up. Both are better off with Fighting Style: Dueling and a shield, and paladins can't pick up TWF as a style without a feat at 4th-level or higher. That's giving up a lot of power for a tiny gain. An 11th-level paladin with Radiant Strikes could hit for a mean of 37 (5d8+1d4+12), but that's both of their feats with nothing else having been improved. Actually, that's also with the playtest version of Dual Wielder from the Expert packet. Which is technically no longer valid, but I'm including it for the sake of generosity. They could easily dish out 30 (4d8+12) while still carrying a shield, which might have its own magic bonuses and feat.
Meanwhile, an 11th-level monk could hit for 30 (2d6+1d4+1d10+15), or 29.5 (2d8+1d10+15) if they have a versatile weapon in two hands, without a fighting style or expending a Discipline Point. Yes, a monk with 20 Dexterity has parity with a paladin with 18 Strength. And the extra hit from Flurry of Blows hits harder than a Divine Strike using a 1st-level spell slot. Even if we lowball the monk to only having 18 Dexterity, that's potentially 36.5 (2d6+1d4+2d10+16), or 36 (2d8+2d10+16) if they have a versatile weapon in two hands, versus 39 (6d8+12).
That's...not too shabby.
The only reason accuracy wasn’t accounted for in my maths is that fighter and monk were making the same amount of attacks and no magic items were involved. Differing numbers off attacks means you need to account for accuracy.. and the monk is the one making more, smaller attacks.
Accuracy is only a meaningful concern if their to-hit chance per blow is different. If the chance of each blow landing is the same, say 65%, then the same multiplier is applied universally. It's either that or we start making tactical assumptions; like holding Divine Smite in reserve until a Critical Hit is realized because it's a force multiplier. And that technically has two different variables which can be applied.
If we were including advantage, or an expanded critical hit range, then I'd be inclined to agree. But as this math is simply assuming (a) the blow lands and (b) a reliable damage result per hit, I'm not concerned. Because, if the to-hit chance is 65%, 92% of the blows which land aren't going to be critical hits.
Like, seriously, the damage reduction from calculating to-hit chance is going to negatively impact the higher totals more than the lower totals. It narrows the gap.
The problem with ignoring the chance to hit, is that several Weapon Masteries affect it - Topple and Vex provide a source of Adv, and Graze has greater benefit the lower your chance to hit is.
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Here is the problem, though. The fantasy superhuman that mostly uses punching/kicking and attains their super-ness via self-perfecting blend of mind/body/spirit is very much NOT a West European cultural construct. If you look at movies made in Hollywood (the global purveyor of West European pop culture), people who punch, kick, headbutt, etc. as their main form of attack are either genetically enhanced (Capt. America), born with superpowers (Colossus), or got their powers through sheer accident (Thing from FF4 franchise). Are boxers superpowered in Hollywood fiction? No. Are wrestlers superpowered in Hollywood fiction? No.
The only prominent examples you can arguably give for non-European superpowered punch/kick + mind/body/spirit perfection theme being executed well are Avatar: the Last Bender and Avatar: the Legend of Korra, which are basically part of the same Intellectual Property. Notice, however, clothing, food, artistic renditions of bodies, etc. for both of those series are much closer to an East Asian cultural aesthetic than a West European cultural aesthetic for the prominent recurring characters (aside from some clear borrowing of aesthetics from indigenous cultures). And notice, also, that the live action version of Avatar the Last Airbender has become a meme of crappitude based both on its cost:profit ratio and general plot/characterization issues.
So where does the superpowered punch/kick + mind/body/spirit paradigm come from? For ease of refence, let's call this the "Holistic PK" model. East Asian pop culture. Whether it's anime, Hong Kong kung fu movies, or wuxia films, the aesthetic and framing for the this paradigm is East Asian.
However, D&D was designed by Gary Gygax based mostly on W.European cultural themes. Which were the primary classes when D&D first came out? Fighter, Cleric, Thief, Wizard. Let's call this these the "Classic Core." These factors are all important to our examination of the Monk class b/c the Holistic PK model is both A) not W.European fantasy in origin and B) is not a Fighter, Cleric, Thief, or Wizard. Therefore, the design team at WotC (which continues to be headed by people who grew up primarily with W.European ideas of what is inspiring fantasy fiction), will generally prioritize the best experience for players who want to play a Fighter, Rogue (name-swapped Thief), Cleric, or Wizard. This means that classes that are not the Classic Core will always be secondary in their design priorities. This is important because the game has mechanics, and class/subclass features must be based on mechanics, not just the imagination (even though the imagination is what brings the game to life for the players). However, because the Classic Core was designed first and is favored by the game devs, non-Classic Core classes become add-ons. This prioritization schema, intentional or not, will almost always prioritize giving nice things to the Classic Core, even at the expense of secondary classes.
If you look at your examples of different themes, we notice a pattern once we take the Classic Core design priority into consideration. The PHB Sorcerer is generally sub-optimal compared to the Wizard, right? Based on DPS, the Ranger is generally sub-optimal compared to the Fighter, correct? So we see that Classic Core is supported by the devs moreso than the non-Classic Core classes.
The problem for the Monk class is that it is both not a Classic Core class and not inspired by W.European cultural milieu. And as AEDorsay pointed out in a much earlier post on this same thread, weapons + armor is a mechanical choice that has to be noticeably different from unarmored, punching/kicking. As such, game design decisions re: optimization potential, feats, magic items, etc. will generally favor the Classic Core (and those classes designed most like the Classic Core) than something like the Monk, because the Holistic PK model is conceptually not W.European and was developed as a supplemental class, not a primary class by Gygax and co. This is why I proposed that the only real solution to this problem is getting rid of the conceptual barrier between Monk and Fighter, as well as between Monk and Rogue. As long as Monk design is treated as being both mechanically and thematically separate from the Classic Core, it will never get much in terms of Nice Things both because the design space for classes will generally favor the Common Core and b/c if you borrow features from Fighter or Rogue and give them to the Monk, the Fighter/Rogue fanbase will yell and holler about it, leading to the devs to backpedal, since the devs care more pleasing the Classic Core's fanbase more than the Holistic PK fanbase.
Maybe not Hollywood exactly but wrestlers in Wrestling fiction are often super powered. The Undertaker has been killed in the ring lord knows how many times and has self-resurrected every time. He is, according to the lore, virtually unable to permanently die. I don’t believe a non-western trope has ever been mentioned related to his superhuman ability to will himself back to life, but I have lost touch with wrestling since I hit adulthood…
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Why does dnd need to only draw from one culture? Dnd draws from tons of different cultures; genies, djinns, raksashas, oni, planes,
Asian martial arts literally existed at the same time period. And Europe was aware of Asia, Rome, middle east, etc even before the dark ages. There was trade between these nations.
even if dnd was only supposed to be a very limited closed setting (which monk was added fairly early, so probably not) By now dnd incorporates space, Astral seas, Multiple planes.
The fact that monk fantasy is based on Asian pop culture is largely irrelevant.
also, the weapon problem is largely just because of lack of thinking or rushing Unarmed last minute. That discrepancy can, and has been solved in a couple homebrew rules. Its just dnd revision cycle is 5 years generally, and 10 years for 5e. Its not a deep inherent problem with design paradigms.
@kreen ya man , I know ya rooting for monk too, I appreciate ya kreen.
yes, monks lvl 1 class feature is basically a weaker version of twf. or One third of polearm master. (which also gives reaction attacks when enemies enter range and +1 attribute)
you know who else gets TWF as a class feature? Ranger paladin and Fighter.
you know who can pick up feats as a class feature? rogues and fighters
not sure how pointing that out makes monks some how OK, that just puts them sub par with people who have access to martial weapons.
But every other class can boost that 3 attacks via bonus action that every martial has access to, via damage boosts available to the class.
making 3 attacks via BA is not special. Its baseline.
monk has answer for this, because they know that MA is primarily a more limited flavor feature for twf. Its flurry of blows. that extra attack is supposed to make up for other classes per round/hit damage bonuses.
You don't have to take my word for it, compare monks 3 attacks round to any other martial, it will lose.
it loses with 4 attacks, not sure why you think doing 3 attacks is going to be acceptable
you make some good points gwar.
I think they need to at least do more when using a resource and then not be to far behind in damage when out of ki to be in a good place.
Makes 0 sense for fighter or barb to do more if you need to spend resource,
and many half casters can squeeze more damage out of concertation spells .
well an extra unarmed attack is part of the monk . should we tax fighter for action surge and paladin for smite ?
and ya anyone can use twf it wont get the modifier damage but they will get another attack.
and if they are fighter or rogue they already get extra feats so it wouldn't be too hard to grab it. I hear what your trying to say though.
we have a little bit to wait on the next ua it seems. Hoping kensei will be added .
thanks kreen . im glad ya like colby as well . hopefully good news in next ua huh?
Oh my. Lot’s here to dig into, soo…
All classes *are* designed using the same mechanics. That’s part of why they are called mechanics — it is right there in the core concept, because “class is one of the mechanics involved. One of those mechanics is the underlying archetype and another is the play fantasy (note, that’s two distinct mechanics).
Note that when initially introduced, Paladin and Ranger were both subclasses. It wasn’t until 2e that they stopped being such, and as a point of reference, it caused quite a stir (thanks, Dave Cook).
It should be noted that Gygax did not want to include Monk in AD&D because he felt it conflicted with the north and west European basis of mainstream D&D and he wanted the Monk and other classes to exist in a different space because the cultural archetypes did not work well with the established ones. Which is why he took the notes of one person, added his own notes, let Dave Cook write the whole damn thing (same guy who did 2e), and then slapped his name on the cover when it published. THat was Oriental Adventures, no that was *exactly* what he was thinking of when he talked about it. OA is literally a completely separate Player’s Handbook created to support Warring States, Shogunate, and mid-century Korean cultural archetypes because regular D&D was not able to do so.
Would Gygax have used some of the aspects of western unarmed or limited armed combat had he been aware of it? Probably. But he wasn’t, and so he didn’t (and there are several different western styles of unarmed combat that no class ever officially created has made use of). Irish stick fighting, Bartitsu, and others came at different periods of time (from 4th century CE through 15th century, then again in the 1800’s as they tried to bring up older models and create new ones following the re-opening of Japan such as Bartitsu) but one thing to keep in mind is that in Western Culture, aside from boxing, fisticuffs was considered beneath even the peasant — and in large part due tothe official stance of the nobility who didn’t want people learning how to fight back (and that includes the church).
Culturally, there was no equivalent, and it was looked down on and considered beneath people — and that Gygax did know, but he was pressured and put it in anyway. IN other words, yes, it was supposed to be focused on a very particular kind of vague medieval Western European fantasy — and not be inclusive of anything outside of that, which should have had its own sourcebook, different classes (not the same ones as western D&D, so not fighter, wizard, cleric, rogue, but separate ones) and Oriental Advnetures was the exemplar for that.
btw, my earlier suggestions are literally the OA monk changed for 5e.
It should also be noted that D&D does not actually draw from “tons of cultures”. Actual djinn, rakshasa, and oni are not drawing from those cultures — they took a name, a rough appearance, and then made the rest up. For example, djinn are only ever able to speak the truth, traditionally, and it is with the truth that they trap people through their own failings. Rakshasa are not strictly evil, and don’t fit into an alignment system because they are tied to a structure that value not good and evil in the western sense but rather materiality and selfishness, as well as ties to family and unwavering opposition to enemies.
Neither of those things sound like Djinn or Rakshasa in D&D because it didn’t take them from there.
Also, the Planes are explicitly stolen, intentionally, from Roger Zelazny, modified by Moorcock’s Eternal Warrior Saga, and then made to fit with some casual reference sin Vance’s work. All of it western based. And I won’t even begin to get into the plane’s structure itself (which owes more to Dante’s inferno and 7th century ideas of Greco-Roman afterlife than anything resembling their actual conquer parts).
What it steals are western ideas *about* those things, mostly from books written by western folks who used it to make their western stuff seem less western. Sorry if that shatters a dream, but it is the truth, and it is why people now whine and complain about how D&D is getting all boring in other threads. ANd I want to note that while OA was a huge seller, the follow up sort of systems — Maztica and others — did not sell nearly as well because the game was still mostly being played by Western audiences who didn’t understand those weird cultures.
So the monk being based on Asian pop culture is not irrelevant, because by calling it so, you are calling the monk irrelevant, even though it was basically slapped on and not reall dealt with until later.
Now, Gygax claimed he was going to bring a lot of the stuff from OA into 2e, in order to examine possibility, but he also left TSR before that and thus is born the reason that Dave Cook wrote the 2nd Edition and then did not do that (because, oddly, he too felt that Kensei and Shukenja and others didn’t belong in main line D&D). THen he left. THen Wizards bought it — the ultimate hilarity being that a bunch of die hard players who homebrewed the hell out of their game to create Magic the Gathering suddenly had the keys to the kingdom and have been mucking around in it ever since.
A class is an Archetype — true. THe basis of that archetype is inextricably linked to the cultural understanding of that archetype — and people get this, which is why all the arguments are about monks being totally mystical warriors who kick ass without really using weapons often. WHy did they become that way? Because unlike in Western Europe, the peasants did fight back, and they were forbidden weapons and you all know the rest of that story. What you may not realize is that monks and their temples and their spaces were constantly being attacked burned down, and treated like crap because the warlords did not want them to exist.
But that probably doesn’t play well with the class fantasy — although it is part of the archetype.
A subclass is a variant of that archetype, one of the ways that the game uses to make some archetypes fit into the class system it has now. If I had been doing the design, the Brawler would be a subclass of monk. So would a Bartitsu fighter (ever seen that Sherlock Holmes with Robert Downey Jr as Sherlock? The way he fought? Bartitsu. Because That’s what Doyle had the book guy use, although he spelled it differently). But I would do that because the archetype that I see for a Monk is strictly “unarmed fighter”, and so all the different kind of unarmed fighter are going to be subclasses (and no, I am not saying that’s how WotC should do it).
D&D Revision cycle is usually about 10 years. Two years for expansions if you average it all out, but OA, the original Unearthed Arcana (the book) , Deities and Demigods (and whatever they change the name to), and s forth are expansions. It was 10 years for 2e (bit more, actually — around 12), about 8 for 3, then two more for 3e (I think), then ‘04 gave us 4e, 14 gave us 5e, so yeah, it is 10 years.
So, that said, it should be noted that “Classic Core” for AD&D (which is what Wizards counts as 1e) are Fighter, Thief, Magic-user, Cleric. Note that leaves out Bards and Monks. *Both of them were tack ons*, and the way that Bards worked originally was you had to take so many levels in two other classes first. THey were the oddballs. Assassin, Ranger, Paladin, Illusionist were all the subclasses, and they only applied to the Classic Core — which were the development out of Arneson’s notes form the earliest versions of the games in the very early 70’s before there even was “the fantasy game”.
Those four are always going to be the most important. They are the only 4 classes that appeared in “basic” D&D compared to until the merger of the two lines in the mid 90’s that essentially created 3.5. The Mentzer BECMI side stepped this issue by doing a Mystic, which was a westernized unarmed warrior, as well, so it can be and has been done that Monks can be westernized — but that means calling them monks gives a false impression, because if you sa fighting monk to most people they think of the martial arts films of Hong Kong.
None of which does a damn think to settle your displeasure over the way the 5e monk is treated, but do please understand that in all the years of D&D, the Monk is easily the least loved class from a design point, and that has everything to do with the western basis for D&D.
Because, again, in the mechanics of the system, an unarmed fist must be treated as a weapon attack without a weapon, lol. A while back in the thread, someone was going on about how D&D is this way because it came out of war gaming (which is partially true, and I will give it to the, but that hasn’t been true of the game since 1989, when Cook pretty much killed the entire war gaming basis and it has never come back (not even in the battle set or the Krynn thing they did), but that ignores the foundational things that separates D&D from wargaming: 1, it is fantasy, not recreation, and 2, it is role playing, which isn’t a wargaming thing of the time.
And that wasn’t Gygax, that was Arneson.
most of what design around the monk involves is trying to fix the combat system as a whole to make Monks work, That’s been going on since 1977, and no one has apparently ever gotten it right, though personally I think OA did a bang up job. But note, 5e monks still don’t use ofuda, lack the honor structure that is important even in the Wuxi’s films, ignore Tao and Buddhist basic magic systems, and other factors.
So it isn’t right to call them “Asian style Unarmed Fighters”, since they are really “western perception of Asian unarmed fighters without a damn bit of understanding of what that actually means”. Otherwise, all you are doing is highlighting something no one wants to point out, which is the outright appropriation stuff, because that will send all the politics flare ups into overdrive.
And ain’t none f us got time for that.
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Is it really weaker, though? At 1st-level, 1d8+1d4 is functionally the same as 2d6. At 5th-level, 2d8+1d6 is better than 3d6; and only slightly behind the 3d8 that is possible in the 2014 PH. But then, monks will eventually dish out 3d10. Magic items can enhance that, and monks aren't expending resources like a ranger might on Hunter's Mark. Monks are also less dependent on magic items. That ranger is going to want two magic weapons. The monk only needs one.
Of course, then we get into the nitty-gritty of the OneD&D playtest (specifically Playtest 6) and...both can merge TWF into the Attack. Which means a 1st-level monk can attack for 15.5 (2d6+1d4+6) at the cost of a bonus action. The ranger can outpace them, but they're spending one of their measly two spell slots to dish out upwards of 16 (3d6+1d4+3). But that comes with (a) being forced to attack in melee and (b) land blows against two targets; which the ranger can do if it uses its bonus action to move Hunter's Mark.
Expensive, situationally competitive, and risky. The ranger needs to be in melee. That increases the odds of getting hit and losing concentration. It gets better after Favored Enemy at 2nd-level, because it's no longer dependent on spell slots, but just barely.
A 5th-level ranger could hit for a mean of 30.5 (2d8+2d6+1d4+12), but that once again comes with the caveat of needing to hit two targets. If they only hit one, the mean drops to 27. A 5th-level monk, on the other hand, can smack enemies for a mean of roughly 26 (2d6+1d4+1d8+12). And that's without access to Fighting Style: Two-Weapon Fighting; which could change. They're expending their bonus action, sure, but not any other resources. Which means they can throttle up hard.
I don't think I need to go into how fighter and paladin match up. Both are better off with Fighting Style: Dueling and a shield, and paladins can't pick up TWF as a style without a feat at 4th-level or higher. That's giving up a lot of power for a tiny gain. An 11th-level paladin with Radiant Strikes could hit for a mean of 37 (5d8+1d4+12), but that's both of their feats with nothing else having been improved. Actually, that's also with the playtest version of Dual Wielder from the Expert packet. Which is technically no longer valid, but I'm including it for the sake of generosity. They could easily dish out 30 (4d8+12) while still carrying a shield, which might have its own magic bonuses and feat.
Meanwhile, an 11th-level monk could hit for 30 (2d6+1d4+1d10+15), or 29.5 (2d8+1d10+15) if they have a versatile weapon in two hands, without a fighting style or expending a Discipline Point. Yes, a monk with 20 Dexterity has parity with a paladin with 18 Strength. And the extra hit from Flurry of Blows hits harder than a Divine Strike using a 1st-level spell slot. Even if we lowball the monk to only having 18 Dexterity, that's potentially 36.5 (2d6+1d4+2d10+16), or 36 (2d8+2d10+16) if they have a versatile weapon in two hands, versus 39 (6d8+12).
That's...not too shabby.
We can agree to disagree on whether gygaxes original concepts in 74 have any real bearing on this issue.
Mechanics, combat, and flavor wise,
Many people have solved monks combat (there are MANY different solutions) and design issues in the context of dnd, they just aren't the ones who publish dnd officially.
this isnt an impossible task, its been done. The goal of this thread is for Wotc to officially make monk up to snuff, and not actually worse than 2014 5e. Not really a debate of whether its possible
um, Gygax didn’t do the PHB for AD&D until 77/78. And AD&D was very much removed from the 1974 stuff, so not sure where you get that from.
While they did simplify combat for d20 and so for 5e, the core combat mechanics remain the same, but flavor has changed with edition and version.
of course many people have solved it. Hell, I have several times, for each edition; I not only know the mechanics, I have a strong archetype to use that I dig deeply. Other people solving it doesn’t matter.
we agree that WotC needs to do the solving. My point has not been that it is impossible.
my point is that what a lot of folks think a monk should be and do here is not what WotC wants, and because there is no common baseline across all the elements of a class (which is a LOT more than just damage done), nobody is going to get anything they want because everyone is coming at it from different points of view.
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Yes, the Monk is weaker. The Ranger has greater AC and HP for being in melee and so does the Paladin. You deal no damage when you are unconscious.
yeah, I might talk about my vision for monk and what I want out of it.
but realistically, if monk was self consistent (with whomever's design) and competitive, and fun. I could enjoy it. There are many versions and concepts of martial artist. As much as I don't see monk as a hit and run specialist, if it was well executed, I don't think as many people would be complaining. At worst they'd be asking for a new class/subclass to fill their desire.
I think the issue isnt everyone agreeing, I think the issue is that the monk currently is poorly executed and relatively bad at everything useful to the group in 90% of situations. Perhaps Wotc is making it poorly because they don't know what they want it to be, but they have tons of suggestions, their job is to decide on one, and make it actually work.
We are just sharing are own perspectives, and sometimes analysis of various designs. Its always the designers job to take a vision and run with it. There is never a universal answer for all people, and I don't think we expect that really.
At those levels, action surge is better than flurry of blows. It gives you a higher damage attack compared to flurry of blows giving you one extra monk punch, and it doesn’t draw from the same resource as all your other options. I’m not sure you even read my post. Those feats are always on. Sure, in the first combat of the day, with no magic items whatsoever, with the fighter using an abysmal build, monk edges out fighter. If it uses all its ki in that combat. Feats are always on. Ki is not.
I can’t remember what’s supposed to go here.
The only reason accuracy wasn’t accounted for in my maths is that fighter and monk were making the same amount of attacks and no magic items were involved. Differing numbers off attacks means you need to account for accuracy.. and the monk is the one making more, smaller attacks.
I can’t remember what’s supposed to go here.
Combat feats are all half-feats now so cost nothing in terms of primary stat progression and they are no longer an optional feature but part of the base game so there is absolutely no reason for martials not to take them. So I don't know why you keep going on about others "needing" feats to keep up, those characters are taking those feats regardless because it is the most obvious and logical thing to do. It's like saying a fighter "needs" a particular fighting style to exceed monk - yeah they do but they get one as part of their class.
Also you keep constantly ignoring Fighting Styles and Weapon Masteries which both increase a Fighter's damage on every attack, which means no, monk is not doing equal damage they are doing less.
Lastly, why do you keep bringing up level 1? Hardly anyone plays at level 1 and those that do aren't playing more than 1 combat at level 1, so it doesn't matter how good monk is at level 1, if they suck at level 7 because you are going to play 5-20x more at level 7 than at level 1.
This is 5eR, every caster will have access to healing word, so nobody is staying unconscious for more than a moment.
Accuracy is only a meaningful concern if their to-hit chance per blow is different. If the chance of each blow landing is the same, say 65%, then the same multiplier is applied universally. It's either that or we start making tactical assumptions; like holding Divine Smite in reserve until a Critical Hit is realized because it's a force multiplier. And that technically has two different variables which can be applied.
If we were including advantage, or an expanded critical hit range, then I'd be inclined to agree. But as this math is simply assuming (a) the blow lands and (b) a reliable damage result per hit, I'm not concerned. Because, if the to-hit chance is 65%, 92% of the blows which land aren't going to be critical hits.
Like, seriously, the damage reduction from calculating to-hit chance is going to negatively impact the higher totals more than the lower totals. It narrows the gap.
The problem with ignoring the chance to hit, is that several Weapon Masteries affect it - Topple and Vex provide a source of Adv, and Graze has greater benefit the lower your chance to hit is.