Tayn of Darkwood. Lvl 10 human Life Cleric of Lathander. Retired.
Ikram Sahir ibn Malik al-Sayyid Ra'ad, Second Son of the House of Ra'ad, Defender of the Burning Sands. Lvl 9 Brass Dragonborn Sorcerer + Greater Fire Elemental Devil.
Viktor Gavriil. Lvl 20 White Dragonborn Grave Cleric, of Kurgan the God of Death.
Well it depends on your definition of "weak," but in the usual straight damage dealing definition: monk is weaker. However, if monk stun locks a BBEG, the DM will cry.
I think this will highly depend on how you make the character, and what you mean by "weak". If you mean by damage dealt, I would suspect that the monk has a slightly higher average which is a little more reliable. The warlock, however, I expect to have a lower average, but a higher range; the higher level spells can do a lot more damage, but only per slot.
If it comes to skills and utility, this is really tough to compare, because it also really depends on your setting. In a prisoner setting, where you're stripped of all your belongings, a monk will easily surpass. On the other hand, a warlock, with the various choices of invocations, can have many ritual spells and cantrips available.
Both have a lot of passive abilities too. So this really comes down to:
How are you going to play the character? What is the setting you're playing in?
This question is... ridiculous to its core... because its a poorly formed question.
What is the definition of "weakest". Even in real contests of people we have definitions of what that means. Are you talking about arm wrestling, bench press, or 100m sprint?
Are you talking about Damage dealt? If so, how many rounds? Warlocks are glass cannon capable... do I get to build around a 5/10 round battle?
Are you talking about how long they can stand toe to toe with a much stronger opponent? Monk isn't even in the "weaker" side of the bracket on that, in fact, I would say they are the STRONGEST class in that category.
Are you talking about RP? Are you talking about Feat/Racial synergy? Level 1? Level 20? RAW, or UA additions? Items or no?
You can't ask people to tell you which one is "stronger/weaker" without giving us a defined criteria for that argument. I would say I could easily find hundreds of scenarios where every single class in the game gets the "weakest" title.
That Barbarian and that Warrior and that Paladin are SO useful when a dragon takes off and is 50ft off the ground...
That Wizard/Sorc is SO useful when they are in a silence field....
I would LOVE for you to define "weakest" because I honestly and truly LOVE theory craft and debate like this.
As is, the only answer to your question is, "This is a really bad question"...
I think this will highly depend on how you make the character, and what you mean by "weak". If you mean by damage dealt, I would suspect that the monk has a slightly higher average which is a little more reliable. The warlock, however, I expect to have a lower average, but a higher range; the higher level spells can do a lot more damage, but only per slot.
If it comes to skills and utility, this is really tough to compare, because it also really depends on your setting. In a prisoner setting, where you're stripped of all your belongings, a monk will easily surpass. On the other hand, a warlock, with the various choices of invocations, can have many ritual spells and cantrips available.
Both have a lot of passive abilities too. So this really comes down to:
How are you going to play the character? What is the setting you're playing in?
One of the things I like about the Warlock is that, depending on how you build them, they could easily be just as capable in a "stripped of accessories and thrown in prison" scenario, potentially even more so. Picking the right invocations, a warlock could have mage armor on constantly, and a pact of the blade warlock could simply summon their weapon, and if they took the right invocation, simply use it as their spellcasting focus to get full access to their entire spell library
This question is... ridiculous to its core... because its a poorly formed question.
What is the definition of "weakest". Even in real contests of people we have definitions of what that means. Are you talking about arm wrestling, bench press, or 100m sprint?
Are you talking about Damage dealt? If so, how many rounds? Warlocks are glass cannon capable... do I get to build around a 5/10 round battle?
Are you talking about how long they can stand toe to toe with a much stronger opponent? Monk isn't even in the "weaker" side of the bracket on that, in fact, I would say they are the STRONGEST class in that category.
Are you talking about RP? Are you talking about Feat/Racial synergy? Level 1? Level 20? RAW, or UA additions? Items or no?
You can't ask people to tell you which one is "stronger/weaker" without giving us a defined criteria for that argument. I would say I could easily find hundreds of scenarios where every single class in the game gets the "weakest" title.
That Barbarian and that Warrior and that Paladin are SO useful when a dragon takes off and is 50ft off the ground...
That Wizard/Sorc is SO useful when they are in a silence field....
I would LOVE for you to define "weakest" because I honestly and truly LOVE theory craft and debate like this.
As is, the only answer to your question is, "This is a really bad question"...
He means it in the "I'm playing an MMORPG and making a build, which of the classes can be min/maxed to be OP".. I'm sure I'm missing some terminology. This generation of players rubs me the wrong way, if a player said something like that at our gaming table, he would get booted and likely roughed up on his way out.
Agreed. While I'm apart of the newer generation, I'm still young an have only started playing last year, but I agree. Making a build feels wrong, like meta gaming, instead of just playing the game like a traditional table top rpg. There weren't to many mmorpg's a while back though, so building wasn't quite a common thing then.
There’s nothing wrong with “building” for the right reasons. Realizing once it’s too late that you picked crummy spells or spells that suck at later levels, or even just spells you don’t need because others in the party do it better just sucks. Planning out what spells you want ahead of time is no great sin.
Deciding before session 1 that your levels 4 and 5 are gonna be Druid for the Beast Shape, then back to Monk for a few levels 2 levels for the D6, then.... Yeah, that’s a bit gamey, but for some that’s part of the fun.
With 7,6??,000,000 people on the planet it’s to be expected.
Minmaxers and munchkins have been a part of the hobby since way before MMOs became a thing.
It just used to be easier to tell yourself they don't exist before the internet.
No doubt, but they weren't welcome then either. I think the difference is that today it's politically incorrect to tell somehow how they should or shouldn't play role-playing games, I'm sure someone will be along soon enough to make that point.
Once again, it's always been dickish to tell people they're playing wrong or just flat out shouldn't play rpgs.
The only difference now is that instead of complaining about those people to just your friends or the people at your local shop or convention where nobody is there to disagree with you, you're doing it over the internet.
Minmaxers and munchkins have been a part of the hobby since way before MMOs became a thing.
It just used to be easier to tell yourself they don't exist before the internet.
No doubt, but they weren't welcome then either. I think the difference is that today it's politically incorrect to tell somehow how they should or shouldn't play role-playing games, I'm sure someone will be along soon enough to make that point.
Once again, it's always been dickish to tell people they're playing wrong or just flat out shouldn't play rpgs.
The only difference now is that instead of complaining about those people to just your friends or the people at your local shop or convention where nobody is there to disagree with you, you're doing it over the internet.
Everyone has a different play style. Just because you don't like playing a character that can kill the Tarrasque twice in one turn doesn't mean that it's wrong that someone else likes playing that. I like min-maxing, math makes me calm down, and higher numbers are just nicer. I like making super cool or powerful multiclasses, or spell-combos because that makes me feel like I know enough about the game to be good at it.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Minmaxers and munchkins have been a part of the hobby since way before MMOs became a thing.
It just used to be easier to tell yourself they don't exist before the internet.
Although this is absolutely a true statement, I think that two changes have occurred over the years.
The first is in game design. Older versions of D&D had many more restrictions on them making it harder to min-max. For example, elves were super-awesome at lots of things, but they could not play every single class, and in certain classes they had a max level -- and these max levels were often quite low, i.e. < 12th (back when 36th was the theoretical max, although hardly anyone ever got anywhere near that). If you played by the book with all the encumbrance, weapon vs. AC tables, rest mechanics, and so on, there were actually massive limitations on what characters could do -- all of which prevented a lot of min-maxing from even being possible.
These restrictions, many of which were purposely put into place to prevent min-maxing of "builds," frustrated players, many of whom just wanted to do something creative (like have a Dwarven Wizard) and not particularly min-max anything. So over the years, D&D has bit by bit removed a lot of these restrictions in favor of the idea to "build what you want." But when you make a game more open-ended like this, the opportunity to min-max explodes. This has been an issue in Champions, for example, since it first came out in 1980, because it was always completely open-ended. D&D is still not as open-ended and flexible as Champions, but whereas on a flexibility scale AD&D was like a 2 out of 10, and Champions was a 9... 5e is probably now something like a 6 or 7. And that extra flexibility leads to min-maxing (like my friend who is remaking his old Human sorcerer as a Tiefling for, as far as I can tell, exactly ONE reason -- to get the racial bonuses that dovetail with his class).
The second thing that has influenced the idea of min-maxed builds (as I have said on another thread) is online gaming, which did not exist pre-1996 or so in the way that it exists now. In online games, everything happens in real time and your build can be the difference between life and death. There's no time to think, consult the manual, or ask another player for advice. You have to click that ability, and click it NOW, and if it's not maxed out to the right degree, you probably just died, and may well have just caused a team wipe into the bargain. You can't say "but I like this leather armor" as the team's Tanking knight character, because that 20% of less damage resistance (or whatever) means you will take more damage than the healer can cure, and you'll go down, and the party will die without its tank. So players coming from a video game background are used to the fact that they have to min-max their builds or they won't survive the dungeon, raid, mission, instance, whatever. It's easily possible to survive with a sub-optimal "build" in a table-top game with a human DM to cater the content to your individual party and take account of your sub-optimality (and that of your fellow party members). But the computer in an MMO will not take account of that, and will just kill you. So video RPGers learn very quickly that you have to build "right" or you can't succeed.
So... I think this mentality of min-maxing has always been there, but I think the increased trend of flexibility (the "build-what-you-want" mentality and all the options upon options we now have available) and the fact that many players have lots of CRPG experience (and especially MMORPGs) has exacerbated the issue.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
People min/maxed pre computer games. The term “Munchkin” has been applied to min/maxers since the ‘70s. It’s just easier now is all. I never really felt it to be a problem personally. It just means that DMs can throw Beholders and Dragons at the party sooner!
It is very common for every player to want their character to have a share in the spotlight.
If you don't want your character to have that, then you go be you.
But, for those that -do- want that, they need to know how their character compares to other characters at the table.
Weak characters are generally NOT going to be able to get their share of the spotlight because the party should not be split. Put Superman next to Mad Dog and Mad Dog is going to have a hard time getting any glory.
So, it is just basic common sense to figure out which classes are weakest, because you can't build a strong character from weak materials.
This isn't so that you can kill a Tarrasque in two attacks. It is so that your character can stand alongside other characters and get his share of time in the spotlight.
There's no way to provide a meaningful answer to your question. Not only do the classes excel at very different things, there's no such thing as a "straight" warlock or monk and the subclass choice is also going to have a huge impact. D&D is highly contextual and without pinning down a significant number of specifics - like how often the party will get into fights, how often they'll fight certain kinds of monsters, how often you'll get short or long rests, what the rest of the party looks like, and how willing they are to make character choices that mesh well with you further down the line, what magic items are available - the only thing we can say is that none of the classes significantly underperform as long as you don't go out of your way to build a bad character.
Who gets to shine and how often is mostly up to the DM anyways.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
The Forum Infestation (TM)
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Which class is weakest, straight warlock or straight monk?
Between only those 2. Monk.
Warlock sucks, but monk is worse.
jack l p
There are no weak classes.
Only weak players.
Tayn of Darkwood. Lvl 10 human Life Cleric of Lathander. Retired.
Ikram Sahir ibn Malik al-Sayyid Ra'ad, Second Son of the House of Ra'ad, Defender of the Burning Sands. Lvl 9 Brass Dragonborn Sorcerer + Greater Fire Elemental Devil.
Viktor Gavriil. Lvl 20 White Dragonborn Grave Cleric, of Kurgan the God of Death.
Anzio Faro. Lvl 5 Prot. Aasimar Light Cleric.
Well it depends on your definition of "weak," but in the usual straight damage dealing definition: monk is weaker. However, if monk stun locks a BBEG, the DM will cry.
I think this will highly depend on how you make the character, and what you mean by "weak". If you mean by damage dealt, I would suspect that the monk has a slightly higher average which is a little more reliable. The warlock, however, I expect to have a lower average, but a higher range; the higher level spells can do a lot more damage, but only per slot.
If it comes to skills and utility, this is really tough to compare, because it also really depends on your setting. In a prisoner setting, where you're stripped of all your belongings, a monk will easily surpass. On the other hand, a warlock, with the various choices of invocations, can have many ritual spells and cantrips available.
Both have a lot of passive abilities too. So this really comes down to:
How are you going to play the character? What is the setting you're playing in?
This question is... ridiculous to its core... because its a poorly formed question.
What is the definition of "weakest". Even in real contests of people we have definitions of what that means. Are you talking about arm wrestling, bench press, or 100m sprint?
Are you talking about Damage dealt? If so, how many rounds? Warlocks are glass cannon capable... do I get to build around a 5/10 round battle?
Are you talking about how long they can stand toe to toe with a much stronger opponent? Monk isn't even in the "weaker" side of the bracket on that, in fact, I would say they are the STRONGEST class in that category.
Are you talking about RP? Are you talking about Feat/Racial synergy? Level 1? Level 20? RAW, or UA additions? Items or no?
You can't ask people to tell you which one is "stronger/weaker" without giving us a defined criteria for that argument. I would say I could easily find hundreds of scenarios where every single class in the game gets the "weakest" title.
That Barbarian and that Warrior and that Paladin are SO useful when a dragon takes off and is 50ft off the ground...
That Wizard/Sorc is SO useful when they are in a silence field....
I would LOVE for you to define "weakest" because I honestly and truly LOVE theory craft and debate like this.
As is, the only answer to your question is, "This is a really bad question"...
What, you don't carry a bow? ;)
One of the things I like about the Warlock is that, depending on how you build them, they could easily be just as capable in a "stripped of accessories and thrown in prison" scenario, potentially even more so. Picking the right invocations, a warlock could have mage armor on constantly, and a pact of the blade warlock could simply summon their weapon, and if they took the right invocation, simply use it as their spellcasting focus to get full access to their entire spell library
Watch Crits for Breakfast, an adults-only RP-Heavy Roll20 Livestream at twitch.tv/afterdisbooty
And now you too can play with the amazing art and assets we use in Roll20 for our campaign at Hazel's Emporium
Agreed. While I'm apart of the newer generation, I'm still young an have only started playing last year, but I agree. Making a build feels wrong, like meta gaming, instead of just playing the game like a traditional table top rpg. There weren't to many mmorpg's a while back though, so building wasn't quite a common thing then.
Also known as CrafterB and DankMemer.
Here, have some homebrew classes! Subclasses to? Why not races. Feats, feats as well. I have a lot of magic items. Lastly I got monsters, fun, fun times.
Minmaxers and munchkins have been a part of the hobby since way before MMOs became a thing.
It just used to be easier to tell yourself they don't exist before the internet.
There’s nothing wrong with “building” for the right reasons. Realizing once it’s too late that you picked crummy spells or spells that suck at later levels, or even just spells you don’t need because others in the party do it better just sucks. Planning out what spells you want ahead of time is no great sin.
Deciding before session 1 that your levels 4 and 5 are gonna be Druid for the Beast Shape, then back to Monk for a few levels 2 levels for the D6, then.... Yeah, that’s a bit gamey, but for some that’s part of the fun.
With 7,6??,000,000 people on the planet it’s to be expected.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
I'd say the one with the lowest str score :)
Sorry couldn't resist
Once again, it's always been dickish to tell people they're playing wrong or just flat out shouldn't play rpgs.
The only difference now is that instead of complaining about those people to just your friends or the people at your local shop or convention where nobody is there to disagree with you, you're doing it over the internet.
Everyone has a different play style. Just because you don't like playing a character that can kill the Tarrasque twice in one turn doesn't mean that it's wrong that someone else likes playing that. I like min-maxing, math makes me calm down, and higher numbers are just nicer. I like making super cool or powerful multiclasses, or spell-combos because that makes me feel like I know enough about the game to be good at it.
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
Although this is absolutely a true statement, I think that two changes have occurred over the years.
The first is in game design. Older versions of D&D had many more restrictions on them making it harder to min-max. For example, elves were super-awesome at lots of things, but they could not play every single class, and in certain classes they had a max level -- and these max levels were often quite low, i.e. < 12th (back when 36th was the theoretical max, although hardly anyone ever got anywhere near that). If you played by the book with all the encumbrance, weapon vs. AC tables, rest mechanics, and so on, there were actually massive limitations on what characters could do -- all of which prevented a lot of min-maxing from even being possible.
These restrictions, many of which were purposely put into place to prevent min-maxing of "builds," frustrated players, many of whom just wanted to do something creative (like have a Dwarven Wizard) and not particularly min-max anything. So over the years, D&D has bit by bit removed a lot of these restrictions in favor of the idea to "build what you want." But when you make a game more open-ended like this, the opportunity to min-max explodes. This has been an issue in Champions, for example, since it first came out in 1980, because it was always completely open-ended. D&D is still not as open-ended and flexible as Champions, but whereas on a flexibility scale AD&D was like a 2 out of 10, and Champions was a 9... 5e is probably now something like a 6 or 7. And that extra flexibility leads to min-maxing (like my friend who is remaking his old Human sorcerer as a Tiefling for, as far as I can tell, exactly ONE reason -- to get the racial bonuses that dovetail with his class).
The second thing that has influenced the idea of min-maxed builds (as I have said on another thread) is online gaming, which did not exist pre-1996 or so in the way that it exists now. In online games, everything happens in real time and your build can be the difference between life and death. There's no time to think, consult the manual, or ask another player for advice. You have to click that ability, and click it NOW, and if it's not maxed out to the right degree, you probably just died, and may well have just caused a team wipe into the bargain. You can't say "but I like this leather armor" as the team's Tanking knight character, because that 20% of less damage resistance (or whatever) means you will take more damage than the healer can cure, and you'll go down, and the party will die without its tank. So players coming from a video game background are used to the fact that they have to min-max their builds or they won't survive the dungeon, raid, mission, instance, whatever. It's easily possible to survive with a sub-optimal "build" in a table-top game with a human DM to cater the content to your individual party and take account of your sub-optimality (and that of your fellow party members). But the computer in an MMO will not take account of that, and will just kill you. So video RPGers learn very quickly that you have to build "right" or you can't succeed.
So... I think this mentality of min-maxing has always been there, but I think the increased trend of flexibility (the "build-what-you-want" mentality and all the options upon options we now have available) and the fact that many players have lots of CRPG experience (and especially MMORPGs) has exacerbated the issue.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
People min/maxed pre computer games. The term “Munchkin” has been applied to min/maxers since the ‘70s. It’s just easier now is all. I never really felt it to be a problem personally. It just means that DMs can throw Beholders and Dragons at the party sooner!
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
It is very common for every player to want their character to have a share in the spotlight.
If you don't want your character to have that, then you go be you.
But, for those that -do- want that, they need to know how their character compares to other characters at the table.
Weak characters are generally NOT going to be able to get their share of the spotlight because the party should not be split. Put Superman next to Mad Dog and Mad Dog is going to have a hard time getting any glory.
So, it is just basic common sense to figure out which classes are weakest, because you can't build a strong character from weak materials.
This isn't so that you can kill a Tarrasque in two attacks. It is so that your character can stand alongside other characters and get his share of time in the spotlight.
There's no way to provide a meaningful answer to your question. Not only do the classes excel at very different things, there's no such thing as a "straight" warlock or monk and the subclass choice is also going to have a huge impact. D&D is highly contextual and without pinning down a significant number of specifics - like how often the party will get into fights, how often they'll fight certain kinds of monsters, how often you'll get short or long rests, what the rest of the party looks like, and how willing they are to make character choices that mesh well with you further down the line, what magic items are available - the only thing we can say is that none of the classes significantly underperform as long as you don't go out of your way to build a bad character.
Who gets to shine and how often is mostly up to the DM anyways.
The Forum Infestation (TM)