See, the utility and social encounter arguments never really make sense to me. Because in play at a table, it is the player's mental stats not the character's mental stats that matter the most in a social encounter because.. honestly.. it's just so much more fun to figure out the NPC you are talking to is lying, than to have the DM say: roll insight, Oh I got a 23, ok you notice the NPC is lying to you. Likewise it is so much more fun to think up a convincing argument to appeal to the NPC to get what you need from them, than to say: "I try to convince NPC to give me what I want" "Roll Persuasion" "I got a 16" "Ok it doesn't work the NPC tells you to go away."
In addition, the personality of your character can matter a lot more than their stats in a social situation. A noble chivalrous knight who treats NPCs with respect and courteousy will be more successful in social encounters than a slimy, lying, underhanded rogue, regardless of what their persuasion bonuses are. E.g. my Swashbuckler Rogue with +9 Persuasion stole a priceless heirloom from a noble family and got a bounty put on the party's head that resulted in one of our allies being kidnapped, whereas the Ranger with +0 Persuasion managed to convince their academic mentor to give the party 500 gp for expenses in exchange for regular reports back on our encounters with dragons for their research project.
Every table runs social encounters differently. For some its the roll that matters as just like they don't expect you to be a expert fighter in order for your character to fight they dont expect fantastic social skills from the player of the bard, other tables its on the player to do it right.
Great Weapon Master lets you add your proficiency bonus to the damage that one attack does on each of your turns. Sharpshooter lets you attack at long range without disadvantage and ignore full half and three-quarters cover. Are they really both so broken that taking one automatically makes you a "power-gamer"?
Power gamer has morphed into person who is passably familiar with the rules and does not make actively mechanically bad choices.
Tell me about it. My gaming group had to run a 3 week session when I was away on business trips and the GM had everyone run "characters that weren't optimized" for a side campaign. Those characters were: an Eldritch Knight with a 10 intelligence, a Ranger without the Survival proficiency, and an Arcane Trickster without Mage Hand. When notified that at least 2 of them were unable to even use subclass features he fell back on "Not every character needs to be optimised!"
Every table runs social encounters differently. For some its the roll that matters as just like they don't expect you to be a expert fighter in order for your character to fight they dont expect fantastic social skills from the player of the bard, other tables its on the player to do it right.
Pretty much this - the wallflower player who is barely coming out of their shell and is dealing with people in a social setting for the first time might not be able to even begin to describe what they are doing. Forcing them to do so can be seen as forcing them to metagame in order to create a disadvantage.
The fact that people keep insisting "Great Weapon Master!" to insist that Monk is bad (ignoring that the same argument highlights that Monk is entirely comparable if not superior than a Fighter without GWM) rather than suggesting that Great Weapon Master (and Sharpshooter) be rebalanced really drives home priorities.
It's not "we want classes to be balanced", it's "we want every class to allow power-gamers to break the game's balance so we can have higher numbers than Other Players".
Imagine misconstruing all of the criticism of how poorly designed monk is this badly. Monk is a jack of no trades besides movement speed and doesn't hold up when compared to any class. If it falls behind all of the others then it needs to be buffed. Also this is a strawman argument? Classes will be "power-gamed" regardless of what state they are in. The game isn't balanced as is, comparison matters because what is the point of even seeking balance if there is no baseline. And many people have already proven that monk falls far behind the baseline.
Power gamer has morphed into person who is passably familiar with the rules and does not make actively mechanically bad choices.
And that's what people complaining about Monk really want: the game to be designed in a way that makes them feel superior to other players because they make the "mechanically good" choices that give them bigger numbers than other players' PCs. Literally nothing else matters except those big numbers, and if a class can't make them feel OP with their choices, then it is completely worthless.
If a Fighter averages 1 DPR more than the Monk, the Monk is absolutely worthless. This is how people complaining about the Monk think, but this thought has never crossed the minds of 99% of people playing the game. And that's why OneD&D isn't going to turn the Monk into something that has all the strengths of another class and all of its own unique strengths, just because the former is the only thing a tiny portion of players care about.
Many people have thought about how bad monk is. It is a constant debate all over the internet. You can go to the monk forum to see the discourse if you don't believe me. You can pretend this isn't a real issue at all but that's because you're the one burying your head in the sand and plugging your ears because you are mad at people for pointing out issues you'd rather ignore. There is nothing wrong with wanting a mechanically functional character, how is one looking to be "superior" by doing what the game encourages you to do. Maybe you have had bad experiences with actual power gamers in the past but at this point you are confusing any and all critique of flaws in the game as pure optimization talk. Wotc wants feedback for One DnD and that is what people are giving. I can imagine you've already stopped reading at this point though.
And that's what people complaining about Monk really want: the game to be designed in a way that makes them feel superior to other players because they make the "mechanically good" choices that give them bigger numbers than other players' PCs. Literally nothing else matters except those big numbers, and if a class can't make them feel OP with their choices, then it is completely worthless.
This doesn't follow at all; you are choosing to be needlessly antagonistic to people for wanting improvements to the Monk class. If you're 100% happy with the way the game is right now, and literally want nothing changed, why are you in the Unearthed Arcana sub-forum?
As much as I've enjoyed playing Monks in 5e, I'm also not blind to the classes' problems; while yes, there are people who are too obsessed with the DPR and just want Monks to be Fighters for some reason, those of us that don't need Monks to have loads more damage still want to see improvements and changes to how they operate.
We recognise that Monks being reliant on Stunning Strike is detrimental to the class because it's simultaneously both an overly powerful ability, and an overly unreliable one, meaning Monks can spend turns just burning Ki to no effect, or get lucky on a few hits and render a boss fight entirely pointless. Some of us want a middle ground where Monks can consistently do more without spoiling what should be intense, high stakes challenge.
And this is literally a sub-forum about upcoming changes to the game, so people have every right to say what changes they'd like to see to the game. While I'll discuss the specifics of what people want to see (e.g- DPS vs. control/utility) we're all supposed to want the same things here, i.e- changes.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
Power gamer has morphed into person who is passably familiar with the rules and does not make actively mechanically bad choices.
And that's what people complaining about Monk really want: the game to be designed in a way that makes them feel superior to other players because they make the "mechanically good" choices that give them bigger numbers than other players' PCs. Literally nothing else matters except those big numbers, and if a class can't make them feel OP with their choices, then it is completely worthless.
If a Fighter averages 1 DPR more than the Monk, the Monk is absolutely worthless. This is how people complaining about the Monk think, but this thought has never crossed the minds of 99% of people playing the game. And that's why OneD&D isn't going to turn the Monk into something that has all the strengths of another class and all of its own unique strengths, just because the former is the only thing a tiny portion of players care about.
Just curious. Do you think the monk in the UA is perfect the way it is? Is it better or worse than the 2014 monk?
And to reply to the quote above. There are a lot of tables that don’t focus on DPR, true. There are a lot of tables who don’t participate in any D&D forums at all. There perspectives are probably not overly expressed on these forums. You can see people who have been members for 5 years with only 10 posts. My personal experience is out of the 6 players in my group (myself, the DM, and 4 other players) I am the only one following 1DD. I am the only one that is on any D&D forums. And I know tables that spend 70+% of the game RPing so they don’t care that the wizard has a 15 INT and barely casts a spell. They’re having fun.
I do want the monk to be buffed, it’s my favorite class since I played AD&D in the early 80’s. I look at how many of the classes in this UA have been treated and wish the same for the monk. Barbarian got buffed but monk did not. The fighter got buffed, but not the monk. And these three classes are all supposed to be Warriors. The first version of Rogue was meh. This new version is much better. And I hope monk gets similar treatment when the next iteration comes out. And that’s why I post here about them.
There's already a whole thread dedicated to people who don't like Monks suggesting ideas to "improve" Monks, and the suggestions include:
Allowing a Monk to easily surpass in AC a Fighter in heavy armour at low levels (or alternate AC calculations that make the Monk's AC lower at either low or high levels)
Giving a Monk significantly more resources at lower levels, at a point when all classes are limited in resources (which somehow isn't a problem for other classes, such as a Fighter's one use of Action Surge when two Monk points gives more flexibility)
Insisting a Monk needs effectively one more point of HP per level to be viable (despite other classes being perfectly fine with a d8 hit die or even Bladesingers at d6)
Giving Stunning Strike an effect on save success, which 95% of condition-inflicting effects do not have (and the initial attack still does damage anyway)
Allowing ten or more uses of Monk features for one single Monk point
Treating a Monk's bonus unarmed strike as part of the regular action a la the Nick mastery, despite it not being balanced as Nick weapons are with low damage dice (d4, compared to Martial Arts starting at d6)
Wholly remove resource management altogether from the Monk, when such is a pillar of the game design for all classes
And I've seen folks' thoughts on Monks. Things like how they're supposedly terrible at DPR at low levels (they're comparable to Fighters with their bonus strike), have terrible AC (can easily start with 16 via point-buy), have limited resources (as mentioned above, the Monk's starting two points gives them more flexibility and roughly equivalent damage as a Fighter's one use of Action Surge), are MAD (which isn't a problem for other classes), etc. I've done the (often very simple) math where other people insisted something that turned out to not be true at all. And I've seen numerous complaints that expect the Monk to be on absolute parity (or either superior to) another class's capabilities in certain areas, without any compromise to the Monk's individual strengths.
Are there things I'd change about the Monk, in 5e or OneD&D? Absolutely. But that applies to every class, in some form or another. Giving Bards unlimited access to every group of magic at 10th level is the most absurd thing in the recent playtest in my opinion, but you have a group of people who are hyped for the idea because...well, they're Bard players, mainly. They want Bard to be OP. But there's a world of difference between "improvements" and "breaking the class for people who feel like it's useless because a specific number isn't as high as another class's number".
I will say some good points are made here while marks are missed throughout as well.
1. Monk in early levels AREN'T bad. Level 1 through 5 isn't bad compared to other martials.
The problem is still how poorly monk scales.
They get subclass feature at 6 same as most and their damage type changes, which we have no way of knowing that is just a ribbon feature. At 7 they just get evasion at 8 the same ASI everyone else gets. 9 they get the movement that allows them to solve issues that everyone else already solved. 10 they get to use their bonus action (the thing they need to use to keep up with other martial characters) to shrug off moderate effects (the worse versions wont let you use a bonus action any more than they let you use an action) and finally the nail in the coffin 11 when fighters are getting a whole extra attack, Paladins are getting an extra d8 on every attack, warlocks are getting an extra blast, rogues are getting more cunning strikes and their sneak attack has been scaling every other level this whole time, every class is getting some big spike, monks are getting 1 damage per hit with unarmed strikes only. And it never actually gets better.
Monks are good in the early game, but they fall off hard by the end of t2 and start of t3 and they never recover.
Edit: btw any character that gets access to martial weapons can get a d6 weapon with nick at level 1 AND have two weapon fighting style. So asking monk's martial arts bonus action attack to just be part of the attack like with nick wouldn't let monk do what others aren't able to at this level. It would need to make flurry of blows only 1 attack though for the bonus action and it would help scaling a small amount, mostly just making non-flurry of blows options more appealing.
Edit 2: the other question is, would it be too strong if monks didn't need to use ki for their abilities except stunning strike and subclass features? Is the only issue flurry at early levels? If so can we just make flurry later.
Example at level 2 would it be too strong to be able to either attack and bonus action attack, attack and dodge, attack and dash, or finally attack and disengage every turn. At 3 being able to just throw back that weapon you used your reaction on.
With this ki wouldn't need to recover on a short because there would be so little competing for your ki. Heightened metabolism wouldn't be needed as a band aid feature and they could put a real feature there. The number of attacks you make with your martials arts feature could just scale to 2 at higher monk level, when you are basically expected to have enough ki to flurry, dodge, or step every turn.
There's already a whole thread dedicated to people who don't like Monks suggesting ideas to "improve" Monks, and the suggestions include:
Allowing a Monk to easily surpass in AC a Fighter in heavy armour at low levels (or alternate AC calculations that make the Monk's AC lower at either low or high levels)
Giving a Monk significantly more resources at lower levels, at a point when all classes are limited in resources (which somehow isn't a problem for other classes, such as a Fighter's one use of Action Surge when two Monk points gives more flexibility)
Insisting a Monk needs effectively one more point of HP per level to be viable (despite other classes being perfectly fine with a d8 hit die or even Bladesingers at d6)
Giving Stunning Strike an effect on save success, which 95% of condition-inflicting effects do not have (and the initial attack still does damage anyway)
Allowing ten or more uses of Monk features for one single Monk point
Treating a Monk's bonus unarmed strike as part of the regular action a la the Nick mastery, despite it not being balanced as Nick weapons are with low damage dice (d4, compared to Martial Arts starting at d6)
Wholly remove resource management altogether from the Monk, when such is a pillar of the game design for all classes
And I've seen folks' thoughts on Monks. Things like how they're supposedly terrible at DPR at low levels (they're comparable to Fighters with their bonus strike), have terrible AC (can easily start with 16 via point-buy), have limited resources (as mentioned above, the Monk's starting two points gives them more flexibility and roughly equivalent damage as a Fighter's one use of Action Surge), are MAD (which isn't a problem for other classes), etc. I've done the (often very simple) math where other people insisted something that turned out to not be true at all. And I've seen numerous complaints that expect the Monk to be on absolute parity (or either superior to) another class's capabilities in certain areas, without any compromise to the Monk's individual strengths.
Are there things I'd change about the Monk, in 5e or OneD&D? Absolutely. But that applies to every class, in some form or another. Giving Bards unlimited access to every group of magic at 10th level is the most absurd thing in the recent playtest in my opinion, but you have a group of people who are hyped for the idea because...well, they're Bard players, mainly. They want Bard to be OP. But there's a world of difference between "improvements" and "breaking the class for people who feel like it's useless because a specific number isn't as high as another class's number".
What would you change about monk?
I'm not one of those who like the Bard getting access to every spell in the game and I will mention that in the survey. I was not a fan of Wizards Modify/Create spells. I think they are broken as written. They're good ideas, but you can create a multi effect spell that uses the same spell slot, etc... So they need a rewrite or removal. Or sorcerers being able to cast Wish twice (once casting an 8th level spell or lower using that spell slot and not the 9th. And casting it again with the 9th level slot with no ill effects. So they can make an entire party resistant to all damage given enough time.).
But it's playtest and we are supposed to give our feedback. And we are giving it here.
Allowing a Monk to easily surpass in AC a Fighter in heavy armour at low levels (or alternate AC calculations that make the Monk's AC lower at either low or high levels)
&
... <snip> are MAD (which isn't a problem for other classes)
The only time I believe I've suggested an alternate AC calculation is to reduce the MADness of monk. Only the Monk, Paladin, and Ranger require two stats to be 13 when multiclassing. And I would say Monks depend more on needing a minimum of two stats (Dex and Wis) to be viable. Their AC and Monk DC are dependent on them. And pretty much all melee characters could use a good Con, so I'm leaving that out. A paladin can keep Cha lower because they can use spells that don't requires Cha to be effective, like Bless or use their spell slots for smites. So Paladin only needs to focus on Str. Same with Ranger and Dex.
And you can start a monk with 16 AC with 16 in both Dex and Wis. A fighter can start with 18 AC (starting equipment Chain mail/Shield) with 16 Str and 14 Dex, and never have to touch Dex ever again and focus on Str.
Giving a Monk significantly more resources at lower levels, at a point when all classes are limited in resources (which somehow isn't a problem for other classes, such as a Fighter's one use of Action Surge when two Monk points gives more flexibility)
I don't think giving monks significantly more resources at low levels is necessary, but a bump would be helpful (It's why I like Heightened Metabolism moved to 2nd level). You compare it to one use of Action Surge. But Action Surge is more powerful than two ki points. Optimizers dip fighter for this feature. No optimizer is dipping monk for the ki points. And a Fighter doesn't have a resource that Action Surge needs to function. And a Fighter doesn't need Action Surge to be effective. But although Ki points give greater flexibility to the monk, because it is a requirement in order to use that flexibility, you quickly lose that flexibility once they are gone. A monk who wants to move in, take the Attack Action and hit once, and move away either has to use that resource to avoid the OA or take the OA. Doing that two or three times is ok, but if a fight takes longer than 3 rounds (or you don't get a short rest after) you are out of luck with all that flexibility. And monks are not designed to go toe-to-toe with enemies typically.
Insisting a Monk needs effectively one more point of HP per level to be viable (despite other classes being perfectly fine with a d8 hit die or even Bladesingers at d6)
I'm not one of those people. I don't recall asking for this, but if I did it was a long time ago.
Giving Stunning Strike an effect on save success, which 95% of condition-inflicting effects do not have (and the initial attack still does damage anyway)
I definitely am one of these people. I've suggested it for a while. And now that the monk UA is out, and it was changed to 1/turn, I feel just as strongly for it. As I mentioned before, this idea was floated by the Devs themselves in the first Paladins Abjure Foes feature. But I am open to alternatives.
And this ties back to MAD. If you don't have that Wis score built up your DC is low, Con saves are typically good especially as you level up and getting it to stick gets harder.
Personally, I had thought that when they introduced the Dazed condition (and the Slowed condition in the first UA but it has since been removed) that this could be an alternative to Stunning Strike or a method of starting with this condition at 5th level and at a higher level getting Stun. Or some variation of that. Stunned condition is very powerful and I thought that this was a reason why monks were held back in other areas to compensate.
Treating a Monk's bonus unarmed strike as part of the regular action a la the Nick mastery, despite it not being balanced as Nick weapons are with low damage dice (d4, compared to Martial Arts starting at d6)
Wholly remove resource management altogether from the Monk, when such is a pillar of the game design for all classes
I'll take these two together since this response is getting long enough. I'm on the fence about this. And the more I look at it, I think it isn't necessary. I don't like the idea that weapons don't get the MA die for damage. This kind of forces monks to be Unarmed Strikes only, especially as you gain levels. If you have an idea for a character that uses sickles (reflavored as Kama) you quickly find yourself further behind when you see your unarmed damage go from d6 to d8 to d10 to d12 and your thematic weapon is d4 but has Nick. I'm not quite sure how to address this without it turning the other way and disadvantaging characters that want to stay unarmed, but those masteries and magic weapons look so much better because they have more to offer.
Actually, I really think that if they allowed Monks to use Dex or their monk DC for Unarmed Strikes to Shove/prone or Grapple, with maybe an additional option (and this is replacing damage not in addition to the damage, like Masteries) it would help. Maybe that is asking too much.
As for Resource Management, I'm fine with how it is. And I could see a way to get rid of it. I have suggested in the past that maybe the Base monk could go Ki-less with Ki used only in subclasses. Or the other way around and the Base class uses Ki, but Subclasses don't. It's not typical for a class with a limited resource to need it for both the base class and the subclass, but I could be wrong.
And I don't think it is such a pillar of the game for all classes. Not all classes have resources. Until now I don't think Rogues had resources to manage (Cunning Strikes changes that. Sneak attack die are the resource). Classes might have features to track with limited use (Fighters Action Surge/Indomitable) but that's not a resource.
I am agree with @LilithFairen about the annoying math obsession around D&D, but probably how the game is designed and the way it head set it even worse in time. Classes and subclasses features focused in combat, plus premade adventures even more focused in combat.
Sometime ago I read at social networks talking about D&D as merely a wargame with unnecessary complicated rules. At first I was shocked and argued much against it, but as you go deeper and read thing in time, you notice that more tables than recommended does not differ much from that.
The skills are very very important, using the player mental or social stats? No way!. The player decides how to use the character abilities, but is not the character itself. The player can suspect that NPC is lying, but using the character Insight determines what the character thinks about it, as the Deception from the NPC and the Insight from the character has nothing to do with the corresponding from the GM and the player. If the player decides to ignore the character Insight and rely on its own intuition, OK, but your are not using the character abilities then.
You can talk with manners and eloquence, but does has nothing to do with how your character does the same. If you put a 4 in Cha, you can talk as nicely as you want, but that only determines the way taken by your character to talk about, but if you put that 4 in Cha, your character is rude and irritating. I.e. you put a very low Cha to your character, then you have to negotiate, you could do that offering something, DC15, trying a Persuasion:
- You: <put here your talk about offering something sounding like persuading>.
Roll 5, your Cha is -1 and have no skill proficiency. Result: 4.
- Your character: "you fool take this f*cking sh*t and stop bothering me".
Just the same than when you want to climb and use the character Str and Athletics, instead you showing your GM how good are you climbing.
That is the reason one of my fixes for the Monk, due that seems than MA cannot be as good as armed combat, is to make it a half-expertise like the Ranger with access to thieves' tools from class. Exchange some combat numbers by versatility.
Actually, I really think that if they allowed Monks to use Dex or their monk DC for Unarmed Strikes to Shove/prone or Grapple, with maybe an additional option (and this is replacing damage not in addition to the damage, like Masteries) it would help. Maybe that is asking too much.
I can all but guarantee it would not. It is truly bizarre to me that some people think allowing a monk to be good at grappling would be some kind of magical buff that makes people like them, when: (1) people complain about how bad grappling is in general in 5e and (2) OneD&D has significantly nerfed grappling
Sure One D&D could make monks on par with barbarians for grappling, but that won't make them a good class, because even less people are going to use grappling in One D&D than who use it now in 5e because it has been nerfed so hard.
Even if Monk grapple/shove DC was based off of their DEX almost nobody is going to use it, because only chumps in OneD&D would give up damage to Shove when anyone with a weapon mastery can do it without sacrificing anything (another reason why monk unarmed strikes desperately need to have access to weapon masteries), and to grapple you are giving up all your damage for something that 50% of the time will do nothing b/c the enemy saves from it and the other 50% of the time does very little to hamper the enemy.
But Action Surge is more powerful than two ki points.
Action Surge gives 1 additional attack per short rest at level 1-4, an 2 additional attacks per short rest at level 5-11, or the option to Dash, Disengage, or Dodge once. Two ki points give 2 additional attacks per short rest from level 2 onwards or the option to Dash, Disengage or Dodge twice. Why do you believe Action Surge is more powerful?
Hint: it has nothing to do with the mechanics of Action Surge vs Monk ki abilities, and has everything to do with the poor DPR that monks do with their attacks.
It would be so simple to fix Monk, it's just a shame it will never happen b/c the community insists on obsessing over 1-2 points of AC and 1-2 points of HP, and having there be STR-monks, when none of those things are truly the problem with Monk. The problem with Monk is their in-combat DPR sucks (significantly below all weapon-focused classes), their battlefield control is too limited (just stunning strike), and their out-of-combat utility is mediocre at best (not even close to ranger or rogue).
Action Surge is favored as a dip because (currently) you can stack it with things like spellcasting and Paladin smites. Going forward it will only be usable for attack, dash, disengage, and dodge. Its popularity will likely drop off significantly. Two levels of Monk will still not be taken.
Monk AC being locked to Dex and Wis, and having only normal ASI progression, means it takes 16 levels to get their AC to 20. Other melee fighters can get 20AC at level 1 (with enough gold). Monks also can't wear magical armor, so at higher levels they're dependent on things like Bracers of Defense which require attunement, limiting what they can carry. Being limited to simple weapons, and unable to use their martial arts dice with weapons, means that magical weapons are almost useless to them.
Bladesingers have insane AC, and they're also Wizards, the most powerful class in the game. Their d6 hit dice rarely comes up unless they get clobbered with splash damage.
Other d8 classes are usually casters, with the exception of Rogue (which can be casters) and most have access to medium armor and shields. Only Bards, Warlocks and Rogues are limited to light armor, and both Bard and Warlock have subclasses with medium armor and shield. Clerics are... Clerics, and Druids currently have the largest ability to soak damage in the game.
Martial classes, characters that want to be in melee, Fighters, Rangers, Paladins, and Barbarians, are d10 classes, except for the Barbarian who gets d12.
The proposed Monk has no martial weapon proficiency, and no heavy weapon proficiency, limiting their feat options significantly, especially among those associated with the Warrior class. Even if they could afford to spare the ASIs to take feats, there's a shortage of feats to take. The Speedster feat, which replaces Mobile, no longer allows automatic disengage, so a feat that was a cornerstone of many Monk builds is significantly degraded. Nonetheless, as a feat that can boost dexterity, it's probably still a good choice. Start with 17 dexterity and make it 18 at level 4. A Wood Elf with six levels in Monk with the Speedster feat will have a basic move of 60 feat, and has the racial spell Longstrider that can add another 10 feet. With move, action dash, bonus action dash, that's 210 feet in 6 seconds, which is pretty darn quick.
The class proficiencies selection is poor. Why can get Alchemist tools but not Herbalism kit? And why the hell that obsession with Music Instrument, even without Performance? It has no sense at all. Much better those Thieves’ tools, Herbalism, Disguise, or many others.
An important miss, why not Perception?
The issue with that racial Longstrider is that it can only use once per Long Rest, and the Monk isn’t a 1/3 caster, that could be a solution to many issues grating it some cantrips plus very few spells plus those got by feats and racial and be used with its limited spell slots, but at least more than once per Long Rest. It uses Wis so it could perfectly be a 1/3 caster Divine or Primal.
I am agree with @LilithFairen about the annoying math obsession around D&D, but probably how the game is designed and the way it head set it even worse in time. Classes and subclasses features focused in combat, plus premade adventures even more focused in combat.
Sometime ago I read at social networks talking about D&D as merely a wargame with unnecessary complicated rules. At first I was shocked and argued much against it, but as you go deeper and read thing in time, you notice that more tables than recommended does not differ much from that.
The skills are very very important, using the player mental or social stats? No way!. The player decides how to use the character abilities, but is not the character itself. The player can suspect that NPC is lying, but using the character Insight determines what the character thinks about it, as the Deception from the NPC and the Insight from the character has nothing to do with the corresponding from the GM and the player. If the player decides to ignore the character Insight and rely on its own intuition, OK, but your are not using the character abilities then.
You can talk with manners and eloquence, but does has nothing to do with how your character does the same. If you put a 4 in Cha, you can talk as nicely as you want, but that only determines the way taken by your character to talk about, but if you put that 4 in Cha, your character is rude and irritating. I.e. you put a very low Cha to your character, then you have to negotiate, you could do that offering something, DC15, trying a Persuasion:
- You: <put here your talk about offering something sounding like persuading>.
Roll 5, your Cha is -1 and have no skill proficiency. Result: 4.
- Your character: "you fool take this f*cking sh*t and stop bothering me".
Just the same than when you want to climb and use the character Str and Athletics, instead you showing your GM how good are you climbing.
That is the reason one of my fixes for the Monk, due that seems than MA cannot be as good as armed combat, is to make it a half-expertise like the Ranger with access to thieves' tools from class. Exchange some combat numbers by versatility.
D&D is literally a spinoff from wargaming, so it makes sense for the game to be heavily math focused. That's also why so many people focus on 'only' one HP per level, or a couple extra AC making you 15% harder to hit, etc... They want the core of each class/subclass to be roughly equal mathematically so that players can be free to add whatever RP they want on top of that without the pressure to pick one class over another because they know that once they start playing it could mean the difference between life and death when they are putting out numbers that are consistently lower if they make the 'wrong' choice.
D&D is literally a spinoff from wargaming, so it makes sense for the game to be heavily math focused. That's also why so many people focus on 'only' one HP per level, or a couple extra AC making you 15% harder to hit, etc... They want the core of each class/subclass to be roughly equal mathematically so that players can be free to add whatever RP they want on top of that without the pressure to pick one class over another because they know that once they start playing it could mean the difference between life and death when they are putting out numbers that are consistently lower if they make the 'wrong' choice.
Durability is NOT what makes or breaks a character in D&D, otherwise it would be literally impossible to play a Bard, Warlock, Wizard or Sorcerer because TONS of enemies do AoE and/or ranged attacks and can easily attack the casters at the back rather than the fighter in their face. And conversely, the Moon Druid would be by far the most powerful / best front-liner in the game at any and every level. But this isn't the case because just taking hits is completely pointless in D&D. To take a ridiculous example: If Character A deals 0 damage, but can survive 1000X more hits than Character B (who deals 10 DPR) then Character B will still out survive Character A because Character A will just keep taking hits until they are dead because they are unable to kill the enemy that is attacking them.
What makes a good martial character in D&D is their Defensive*Offense score, because the total damage taken by a character in any given combat = Enemy Offense / Character Defense * Number of Rounds Enemy is alive. This means that if Character A kills an enemy 2x as fast as Character B they will take half the damage that Character B takes given the same defenses. Even if we acquiesce to all the "give monks AC & HP to match a Fighter", monks will still be significantly substandard to a Fighter in terms of survivability because they deal less damage which means they are taking hits for longer than the Fighter is which means more total damage taken.
PS AC is not the be-all-and-end-all of Defense. More than 30% of damage dealt by monster of CR 5+ is not dealt by things that have attack rolls, it is Auras, spells, AoE effects, special abilities like Heated body, or are single-target save-based abilities. You can have an AC of 35 and still be easily killed by any appropriate CR dragon.
Flurry of Blows. Immediately after you take the Attack action on your turn, you can spend 1 Discipline Point to make two Unarmed Strikes as a Bonus Action.
“take the Attack action”? Means when you already did the attacks, or just after declaring it? As the Open Hand Technique is:
Whenever you hit a creature with one of the attacks granted by your Flurry of Blows
Can change a lot from all your attacks in that round or only the 2 granted if means after dealing the attacks of the Attack action.
Flurry of Blows. Immediately after you take the Attack action on your turn, you can spend 1 Discipline Point to make two Unarmed Strikes as a Bonus Action.
“take the Attack action”? Means when you already did the attacks, or just after declaring it? As the Open Hand Technique is:
Whenever you hit a creature with one of the attacks granted by your Flurry of Blows
Can change a lot from all your attacks in that round or only the 2 granted if means after dealing the attacks of the Attack action.
Immediately after you take the Attack action. You take the Attack action, and then you can use your bonus action to do an unarmed strike or, by spending a ki point, you can do a Flurry of Blows, which is two unarmed strikes.
It is only the attacks from your Flurry of Blows that triggers the effect for the Open Hand Technique.
But the attacks from the Attack Action can be spreading during the round, if have multiple make one attack, move, then make another attack. So you can only use your Bonus Action for that after dealing all the attacks from the Attack Action and cannot combine?.
Noticed that the monk relies much on the thrown weapon attacks. You can set your masteries to Dagger and Dart, then with its extra movement can set at 20’, throw all the normal attacks darts with Vex, then throw an extra free dagger with Nick, and move out of range beyond the typical effective melee 30’. This is directly related with the MA style. Then it looks like exciting to play with many possibilities. Allowing to get some style like throwing or dual-wielder could reinforce it.
Edit: also noticed that the Unarmed Strike now integrates Grapple and Shove and you decide when you hit, which is great. Having multiple and maximized unarmed strikes, many tactics get into the table. I.e. if you hit your 1st attack, can shove, then make all the others with the target prone, and move away 20’ (making its opportunity attack with disadvantage), as the target needs half to stand up, with the addition that grants advantage to the others melee party members until the target turn. This modifies the hit-and-run strategy to only require 20’ of distance for targets up to Large. Then the Monk could not be good to maintain the Grapple, but are nice to deal it in a round-by-round basis.
With this new Unarmed Strike, using unarmed attacks does not feel bad at all with a large variety of tactics.
See, the utility and social encounter arguments never really make sense to me. Because in play at a table, it is the player's mental stats not the character's mental stats that matter the most in a social encounter because.. honestly.. it's just so much more fun to figure out the NPC you are talking to is lying, than to have the DM say: roll insight, Oh I got a 23, ok you notice the NPC is lying to you. Likewise it is so much more fun to think up a convincing argument to appeal to the NPC to get what you need from them, than to say: "I try to convince NPC to give me what I want" "Roll Persuasion" "I got a 16" "Ok it doesn't work the NPC tells you to go away."
In addition, the personality of your character can matter a lot more than their stats in a social situation. A noble chivalrous knight who treats NPCs with respect and courteousy will be more successful in social encounters than a slimy, lying, underhanded rogue, regardless of what their persuasion bonuses are. E.g. my Swashbuckler Rogue with +9 Persuasion stole a priceless heirloom from a noble family and got a bounty put on the party's head that resulted in one of our allies being kidnapped, whereas the Ranger with +0 Persuasion managed to convince their academic mentor to give the party 500 gp for expenses in exchange for regular reports back on our encounters with dragons for their research project.
Every table runs social encounters differently. For some its the roll that matters as just like they don't expect you to be a expert fighter in order for your character to fight they dont expect fantastic social skills from the player of the bard, other tables its on the player to do it right.
Tell me about it. My gaming group had to run a 3 week session when I was away on business trips and the GM had everyone run "characters that weren't optimized" for a side campaign. Those characters were: an Eldritch Knight with a 10 intelligence, a Ranger without the Survival proficiency, and an Arcane Trickster without Mage Hand. When notified that at least 2 of them were unable to even use subclass features he fell back on "Not every character needs to be optimised!"
Pretty much this - the wallflower player who is barely coming out of their shell and is dealing with people in a social setting for the first time might not be able to even begin to describe what they are doing. Forcing them to do so can be seen as forcing them to metagame in order to create a disadvantage.
Imagine misconstruing all of the criticism of how poorly designed monk is this badly. Monk is a jack of no trades besides movement speed and doesn't hold up when compared to any class. If it falls behind all of the others then it needs to be buffed. Also this is a strawman argument? Classes will be "power-gamed" regardless of what state they are in. The game isn't balanced as is, comparison matters because what is the point of even seeking balance if there is no baseline. And many people have already proven that monk falls far behind the baseline.
Many people have thought about how bad monk is. It is a constant debate all over the internet. You can go to the monk forum to see the discourse if you don't believe me. You can pretend this isn't a real issue at all but that's because you're the one burying your head in the sand and plugging your ears because you are mad at people for pointing out issues you'd rather ignore. There is nothing wrong with wanting a mechanically functional character, how is one looking to be "superior" by doing what the game encourages you to do. Maybe you have had bad experiences with actual power gamers in the past but at this point you are confusing any and all critique of flaws in the game as pure optimization talk. Wotc wants feedback for One DnD and that is what people are giving. I can imagine you've already stopped reading at this point though.
This doesn't follow at all; you are choosing to be needlessly antagonistic to people for wanting improvements to the Monk class. If you're 100% happy with the way the game is right now, and literally want nothing changed, why are you in the Unearthed Arcana sub-forum?
As much as I've enjoyed playing Monks in 5e, I'm also not blind to the classes' problems; while yes, there are people who are too obsessed with the DPR and just want Monks to be Fighters for some reason, those of us that don't need Monks to have loads more damage still want to see improvements and changes to how they operate.
We recognise that Monks being reliant on Stunning Strike is detrimental to the class because it's simultaneously both an overly powerful ability, and an overly unreliable one, meaning Monks can spend turns just burning Ki to no effect, or get lucky on a few hits and render a boss fight entirely pointless. Some of us want a middle ground where Monks can consistently do more without spoiling what should be intense, high stakes challenge.
And this is literally a sub-forum about upcoming changes to the game, so people have every right to say what changes they'd like to see to the game. While I'll discuss the specifics of what people want to see (e.g- DPS vs. control/utility) we're all supposed to want the same things here, i.e- changes.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
Just curious. Do you think the monk in the UA is perfect the way it is? Is it better or worse than the 2014 monk?
And to reply to the quote above. There are a lot of tables that don’t focus on DPR, true. There are a lot of tables who don’t participate in any D&D forums at all. There perspectives are probably not overly expressed on these forums. You can see people who have been members for 5 years with only 10 posts. My personal experience is out of the 6 players in my group (myself, the DM, and 4 other players) I am the only one following 1DD. I am the only one that is on any D&D forums. And I know tables that spend 70+% of the game RPing so they don’t care that the wizard has a 15 INT and barely casts a spell. They’re having fun.
I do want the monk to be buffed, it’s my favorite class since I played AD&D in the early 80’s. I look at how many of the classes in this UA have been treated and wish the same for the monk. Barbarian got buffed but monk did not. The fighter got buffed, but not the monk. And these three classes are all supposed to be Warriors. The first version of Rogue was meh. This new version is much better. And I hope monk gets similar treatment when the next iteration comes out. And that’s why I post here about them.
EZD6 by DM Scotty
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/397599/EZD6-Core-Rulebook?
I will say some good points are made here while marks are missed throughout as well.
1. Monk in early levels AREN'T bad. Level 1 through 5 isn't bad compared to other martials.
The problem is still how poorly monk scales.
They get subclass feature at 6 same as most and their damage type changes, which we have no way of knowing that is just a ribbon feature. At 7 they just get evasion at 8 the same ASI everyone else gets. 9 they get the movement that allows them to solve issues that everyone else already solved. 10 they get to use their bonus action (the thing they need to use to keep up with other martial characters) to shrug off moderate effects (the worse versions wont let you use a bonus action any more than they let you use an action) and finally the nail in the coffin 11 when fighters are getting a whole extra attack, Paladins are getting an extra d8 on every attack, warlocks are getting an extra blast, rogues are getting more cunning strikes and their sneak attack has been scaling every other level this whole time, every class is getting some big spike, monks are getting 1 damage per hit with unarmed strikes only. And it never actually gets better.
Monks are good in the early game, but they fall off hard by the end of t2 and start of t3 and they never recover.
Edit: btw any character that gets access to martial weapons can get a d6 weapon with nick at level 1 AND have two weapon fighting style. So asking monk's martial arts bonus action attack to just be part of the attack like with nick wouldn't let monk do what others aren't able to at this level. It would need to make flurry of blows only 1 attack though for the bonus action and it would help scaling a small amount, mostly just making non-flurry of blows options more appealing.
Edit 2: the other question is, would it be too strong if monks didn't need to use ki for their abilities except stunning strike and subclass features? Is the only issue flurry at early levels? If so can we just make flurry later.
Example at level 2 would it be too strong to be able to either attack and bonus action attack, attack and dodge, attack and dash, or finally attack and disengage every turn. At 3 being able to just throw back that weapon you used your reaction on.
With this ki wouldn't need to recover on a short because there would be so little competing for your ki. Heightened metabolism wouldn't be needed as a band aid feature and they could put a real feature there. The number of attacks you make with your martials arts feature could just scale to 2 at higher monk level, when you are basically expected to have enough ki to flurry, dodge, or step every turn.
What would you change about monk?
I'm not one of those who like the Bard getting access to every spell in the game and I will mention that in the survey. I was not a fan of Wizards Modify/Create spells. I think they are broken as written. They're good ideas, but you can create a multi effect spell that uses the same spell slot, etc... So they need a rewrite or removal. Or sorcerers being able to cast Wish twice (once casting an 8th level spell or lower using that spell slot and not the 9th. And casting it again with the 9th level slot with no ill effects. So they can make an entire party resistant to all damage given enough time.).
But it's playtest and we are supposed to give our feedback. And we are giving it here.
The only time I believe I've suggested an alternate AC calculation is to reduce the MADness of monk. Only the Monk, Paladin, and Ranger require two stats to be 13 when multiclassing. And I would say Monks depend more on needing a minimum of two stats (Dex and Wis) to be viable. Their AC and Monk DC are dependent on them. And pretty much all melee characters could use a good Con, so I'm leaving that out. A paladin can keep Cha lower because they can use spells that don't requires Cha to be effective, like Bless or use their spell slots for smites. So Paladin only needs to focus on Str. Same with Ranger and Dex.
And you can start a monk with 16 AC with 16 in both Dex and Wis. A fighter can start with 18 AC (starting equipment Chain mail/Shield) with 16 Str and 14 Dex, and never have to touch Dex ever again and focus on Str.
I don't think giving monks significantly more resources at low levels is necessary, but a bump would be helpful (It's why I like Heightened Metabolism moved to 2nd level). You compare it to one use of Action Surge. But Action Surge is more powerful than two ki points. Optimizers dip fighter for this feature. No optimizer is dipping monk for the ki points. And a Fighter doesn't have a resource that Action Surge needs to function. And a Fighter doesn't need Action Surge to be effective. But although Ki points give greater flexibility to the monk, because it is a requirement in order to use that flexibility, you quickly lose that flexibility once they are gone. A monk who wants to move in, take the Attack Action and hit once, and move away either has to use that resource to avoid the OA or take the OA. Doing that two or three times is ok, but if a fight takes longer than 3 rounds (or you don't get a short rest after) you are out of luck with all that flexibility. And monks are not designed to go toe-to-toe with enemies typically.
I'm not one of those people. I don't recall asking for this, but if I did it was a long time ago.
I definitely am one of these people. I've suggested it for a while. And now that the monk UA is out, and it was changed to 1/turn, I feel just as strongly for it. As I mentioned before, this idea was floated by the Devs themselves in the first Paladins Abjure Foes feature. But I am open to alternatives.
And this ties back to MAD. If you don't have that Wis score built up your DC is low, Con saves are typically good especially as you level up and getting it to stick gets harder.
Personally, I had thought that when they introduced the Dazed condition (and the Slowed condition in the first UA but it has since been removed) that this could be an alternative to Stunning Strike or a method of starting with this condition at 5th level and at a higher level getting Stun. Or some variation of that. Stunned condition is very powerful and I thought that this was a reason why monks were held back in other areas to compensate.
I'll take these two together since this response is getting long enough. I'm on the fence about this. And the more I look at it, I think it isn't necessary. I don't like the idea that weapons don't get the MA die for damage. This kind of forces monks to be Unarmed Strikes only, especially as you gain levels. If you have an idea for a character that uses sickles (reflavored as Kama) you quickly find yourself further behind when you see your unarmed damage go from d6 to d8 to d10 to d12 and your thematic weapon is d4 but has Nick. I'm not quite sure how to address this without it turning the other way and disadvantaging characters that want to stay unarmed, but those masteries and magic weapons look so much better because they have more to offer.
Actually, I really think that if they allowed Monks to use Dex or their monk DC for Unarmed Strikes to Shove/prone or Grapple, with maybe an additional option (and this is replacing damage not in addition to the damage, like Masteries) it would help. Maybe that is asking too much.
As for Resource Management, I'm fine with how it is. And I could see a way to get rid of it. I have suggested in the past that maybe the Base monk could go Ki-less with Ki used only in subclasses. Or the other way around and the Base class uses Ki, but Subclasses don't. It's not typical for a class with a limited resource to need it for both the base class and the subclass, but I could be wrong.
And I don't think it is such a pillar of the game for all classes. Not all classes have resources. Until now I don't think Rogues had resources to manage (Cunning Strikes changes that. Sneak attack die are the resource). Classes might have features to track with limited use (Fighters Action Surge/Indomitable) but that's not a resource.
EZD6 by DM Scotty
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I am agree with @LilithFairen about the annoying math obsession around D&D, but probably how the game is designed and the way it head set it even worse in time. Classes and subclasses features focused in combat, plus premade adventures even more focused in combat.
Sometime ago I read at social networks talking about D&D as merely a wargame with unnecessary complicated rules. At first I was shocked and argued much against it, but as you go deeper and read thing in time, you notice that more tables than recommended does not differ much from that.
The skills are very very important, using the player mental or social stats? No way!. The player decides how to use the character abilities, but is not the character itself. The player can suspect that NPC is lying, but using the character Insight determines what the character thinks about it, as the Deception from the NPC and the Insight from the character has nothing to do with the corresponding from the GM and the player. If the player decides to ignore the character Insight and rely on its own intuition, OK, but your are not using the character abilities then.
You can talk with manners and eloquence, but does has nothing to do with how your character does the same. If you put a 4 in Cha, you can talk as nicely as you want, but that only determines the way taken by your character to talk about, but if you put that 4 in Cha, your character is rude and irritating. I.e. you put a very low Cha to your character, then you have to negotiate, you could do that offering something, DC15, trying a Persuasion:
- You: <put here your talk about offering something sounding like persuading>.
Roll 5, your Cha is -1 and have no skill proficiency. Result: 4.
- Your character: "you fool take this f*cking sh*t and stop bothering me".
Just the same than when you want to climb and use the character Str and Athletics, instead you showing your GM how good are you climbing.
That is the reason one of my fixes for the Monk, due that seems than MA cannot be as good as armed combat, is to make it a half-expertise like the Ranger with access to thieves' tools from class. Exchange some combat numbers by versatility.
I can all but guarantee it would not. It is truly bizarre to me that some people think allowing a monk to be good at grappling would be some kind of magical buff that makes people like them, when:
(1) people complain about how bad grappling is in general in 5e
and
(2) OneD&D has significantly nerfed grappling
Sure One D&D could make monks on par with barbarians for grappling, but that won't make them a good class, because even less people are going to use grappling in One D&D than who use it now in 5e because it has been nerfed so hard.
Even if Monk grapple/shove DC was based off of their DEX almost nobody is going to use it, because only chumps in OneD&D would give up damage to Shove when anyone with a weapon mastery can do it without sacrificing anything (another reason why monk unarmed strikes desperately need to have access to weapon masteries), and to grapple you are giving up all your damage for something that 50% of the time will do nothing b/c the enemy saves from it and the other 50% of the time does very little to hamper the enemy.
Action Surge gives 1 additional attack per short rest at level 1-4, an 2 additional attacks per short rest at level 5-11, or the option to Dash, Disengage, or Dodge once. Two ki points give 2 additional attacks per short rest from level 2 onwards or the option to Dash, Disengage or Dodge twice. Why do you believe Action Surge is more powerful?
Hint: it has nothing to do with the mechanics of Action Surge vs Monk ki abilities, and has everything to do with the poor DPR that monks do with their attacks.
It would be so simple to fix Monk, it's just a shame it will never happen b/c the community insists on obsessing over 1-2 points of AC and 1-2 points of HP, and having there be STR-monks, when none of those things are truly the problem with Monk. The problem with Monk is their in-combat DPR sucks (significantly below all weapon-focused classes), their battlefield control is too limited (just stunning strike), and their out-of-combat utility is mediocre at best (not even close to ranger or rogue).
Action Surge is favored as a dip because (currently) you can stack it with things like spellcasting and Paladin smites. Going forward it will only be usable for attack, dash, disengage, and dodge. Its popularity will likely drop off significantly. Two levels of Monk will still not be taken.
Monk AC being locked to Dex and Wis, and having only normal ASI progression, means it takes 16 levels to get their AC to 20. Other melee fighters can get 20AC at level 1 (with enough gold). Monks also can't wear magical armor, so at higher levels they're dependent on things like Bracers of Defense which require attunement, limiting what they can carry. Being limited to simple weapons, and unable to use their martial arts dice with weapons, means that magical weapons are almost useless to them.
Bladesingers have insane AC, and they're also Wizards, the most powerful class in the game. Their d6 hit dice rarely comes up unless they get clobbered with splash damage.
Other d8 classes are usually casters, with the exception of Rogue (which can be casters) and most have access to medium armor and shields. Only Bards, Warlocks and Rogues are limited to light armor, and both Bard and Warlock have subclasses with medium armor and shield. Clerics are... Clerics, and Druids currently have the largest ability to soak damage in the game.
Martial classes, characters that want to be in melee, Fighters, Rangers, Paladins, and Barbarians, are d10 classes, except for the Barbarian who gets d12.
The proposed Monk has no martial weapon proficiency, and no heavy weapon proficiency, limiting their feat options significantly, especially among those associated with the Warrior class. Even if they could afford to spare the ASIs to take feats, there's a shortage of feats to take. The Speedster feat, which replaces Mobile, no longer allows automatic disengage, so a feat that was a cornerstone of many Monk builds is significantly degraded. Nonetheless, as a feat that can boost dexterity, it's probably still a good choice. Start with 17 dexterity and make it 18 at level 4. A Wood Elf with six levels in Monk with the Speedster feat will have a basic move of 60 feat, and has the racial spell Longstrider that can add another 10 feet. With move, action dash, bonus action dash, that's 210 feet in 6 seconds, which is pretty darn quick.
The class proficiencies selection is poor. Why can get Alchemist tools but not Herbalism kit? And why the hell that obsession with Music Instrument, even without Performance? It has no sense at all. Much better those Thieves’ tools, Herbalism, Disguise, or many others.
An important miss, why not Perception?
The issue with that racial Longstrider is that it can only use once per Long Rest, and the Monk isn’t a 1/3 caster, that could be a solution to many issues grating it some cantrips plus very few spells plus those got by feats and racial and be used with its limited spell slots, but at least more than once per Long Rest. It uses Wis so it could perfectly be a 1/3 caster Divine or Primal.
D&D is literally a spinoff from wargaming, so it makes sense for the game to be heavily math focused. That's also why so many people focus on 'only' one HP per level, or a couple extra AC making you 15% harder to hit, etc... They want the core of each class/subclass to be roughly equal mathematically so that players can be free to add whatever RP they want on top of that without the pressure to pick one class over another because they know that once they start playing it could mean the difference between life and death when they are putting out numbers that are consistently lower if they make the 'wrong' choice.
Durability is NOT what makes or breaks a character in D&D, otherwise it would be literally impossible to play a Bard, Warlock, Wizard or Sorcerer because TONS of enemies do AoE and/or ranged attacks and can easily attack the casters at the back rather than the fighter in their face. And conversely, the Moon Druid would be by far the most powerful / best front-liner in the game at any and every level. But this isn't the case because just taking hits is completely pointless in D&D. To take a ridiculous example: If Character A deals 0 damage, but can survive 1000X more hits than Character B (who deals 10 DPR) then Character B will still out survive Character A because Character A will just keep taking hits until they are dead because they are unable to kill the enemy that is attacking them.
What makes a good martial character in D&D is their Defensive*Offense score, because the total damage taken by a character in any given combat = Enemy Offense / Character Defense * Number of Rounds Enemy is alive. This means that if Character A kills an enemy 2x as fast as Character B they will take half the damage that Character B takes given the same defenses. Even if we acquiesce to all the "give monks AC & HP to match a Fighter", monks will still be significantly substandard to a Fighter in terms of survivability because they deal less damage which means they are taking hits for longer than the Fighter is which means more total damage taken.
PS AC is not the be-all-and-end-all of Defense. More than 30% of damage dealt by monster of CR 5+ is not dealt by things that have attack rolls, it is Auras, spells, AoE effects, special abilities like Heated body, or are single-target save-based abilities. You can have an AC of 35 and still be easily killed by any appropriate CR dragon.
What exactly means?
“take the Attack action”? Means when you already did the attacks, or just after declaring it? As the Open Hand Technique is:
Can change a lot from all your attacks in that round or only the 2 granted if means after dealing the attacks of the Attack action.
Immediately after you take the Attack action. You take the Attack action, and then you can use your bonus action to do an unarmed strike or, by spending a ki point, you can do a Flurry of Blows, which is two unarmed strikes.
It is only the attacks from your Flurry of Blows that triggers the effect for the Open Hand Technique.
But the attacks from the Attack Action can be spreading during the round, if have multiple make one attack, move, then make another attack. So you can only use your Bonus Action for that after dealing all the attacks from the Attack Action and cannot combine?.
Noticed that the monk relies much on the thrown weapon attacks. You can set your masteries to Dagger and Dart, then with its extra movement can set at 20’, throw all the normal attacks darts with Vex, then throw an extra free dagger with Nick, and move out of range beyond the typical effective melee 30’. This is directly related with the MA style. Then it looks like exciting to play with many possibilities. Allowing to get some style like throwing or dual-wielder could reinforce it.
Edit: also noticed that the Unarmed Strike now integrates Grapple and Shove and you decide when you hit, which is great. Having multiple and maximized unarmed strikes, many tactics get into the table. I.e. if you hit your 1st attack, can shove, then make all the others with the target prone, and move away 20’ (making its opportunity attack with disadvantage), as the target needs half to stand up, with the addition that grants advantage to the others melee party members until the target turn. This modifies the hit-and-run strategy to only require 20’ of distance for targets up to Large. Then the Monk could not be good to maintain the Grapple, but are nice to deal it in a round-by-round basis.
With this new Unarmed Strike, using unarmed attacks does not feel bad at all with a large variety of tactics.