So, we don't have the updated Monk yet, and we don't know how they'll work, and how Masteries will function with them. Personally, I hope that they can somehow transfer some of these mastery effect onto their unarmed strikes. Still, until we get an official UA for them (which I have to imagine will be the next one, though probably not for a long time) I think we can only assume that they'll get something similar to the Barbarian's weapon mastery trait, which starts off with 2 usable per day and then eventually going up to 4.
Monks in the current game can use Simple Weapons and Shortswords, and any of these that don't have the Two-Handed or Heavy property, and are also melee weapons, gain the benefits of the Martial Arts feature.
Thus, other than the Greatclub, all the simple melee weapons are available.
As the game currently works, there's little reason for a monk to dual-wield weapons because they already get a bonus action attack inherently. Unless the off-hand weapon is a powerful, magical one (and the second one they have,) they don't really get a benefit to it.
Thus, all other things being equal, I generally think that a Quarterstaff or a Spear is the best option. Quarterstaffs are, of course, the classic monk weapon, though I realize now (like 8 years into playing this game) that technically, a Spear is actually superior due to its having the Thrown property (though bludgeoning damage does help against skeletons). These weapons can be wielded with two hands thanks to the versatile property, and give you a d8 damage die. (D&D doesn't require any sort of action to swap between one- and two-handed stances on a versatile weapon, and even if they did, your unarmed strikes could be kicks or headbutts or anything else).
Once you hit tier 3, though, this no longer means anything, as all monk weapons will have upgraded to d8s thanks to Martial Arts. Weapon choices open up significantly at tier 3, and at that point you might even choose to just eschew weapons entirely to fight only unarmed. That being said, because there are not currently any "+1 handwraps" to give you magical benefits to your fists (other than the "counts as magical" thing you get at level 6) you'll still generally want to be making your regular attack action with some kind of magical weapon.
However, mastery changes some things up.
Among the masteries you can find on monk weapons, we have Slow, Nick, Vex, Sap, and Flex.
And as such, I actually think my future monks might be looking at very different weapon choices. Quarterstaffs and Spears both get Flex, but we don't really need that, because we aren't going to be wielding a shield in the off hand, and can easily release our off hand from a two-handed stance to make our unarmed strikes. Flex is already not even that good on a class that can truly benefit from it, like a Fighter with a Longsword, who is now only getting an average of one more damage per hit, and Monks are, in most cases, literally not going to get any benefit from it at all.
Slow and Sap are going to be situational, providing utility by either granting a little defensive bonus in the latter case or a bit of battlefield management in the former case. Of the two Slow options, the Javelin does more damage, and can also be thrown. Thanks to Martial Arts, we don't care that it's not a finesse weapon. However, Clubs are also light, which means that if we decide to dual-wield, we can consider it.
Only the Mace has the Sap property from among our choices. So, if we want that effect, we can use it.
Next, let's cover Vex. Our options for Vex are Handaxes and Shortswords. The only real distinction for us here is that Handaxes can be thrown, and that they do different types of damage. As with Fighters and Barbarians, I'll generally favor Handaxes, unless I expect to be fighting Ochre Jellies.
Vex is one of the strongest masteries, giving you more hits and crits over the course of a fight, so definitely worth looking at.
Finally, we come to Nick. Nick actually winds up doing something huge for us: it makes Monks find dual-wielding actually desirable.
Again, we don't know what changes might come to the Martial Arts feature, but if we assume it works more or less the same, we're usually going to be spending our bonus action on an unarmed strike. Nick takes the off-hand attack of the light weapon out of the bonus action and makes it part of the action, which then frees up our bonus action to do an unarmed strike.
The upshot?
At level 5, we're now doing four attacks per round. Or five with Flurry of Blows.
Now, on top of that, Monks, as Warriors, will likely be getting full access to Fighting Styles. We can pick up Two-Weapon Fighting to let us add our Dexterity to our off-hand attacks.
Now, admittedly, all the Simple Nick weapons have a 1d4 weapon die. That is lower damage, but given that we're enabling a whole other attack, I think it's fine. In this case, the Light Hammer and Dagger are both roughly equivalent for us (again, we don't care that the Light Hammer lacks finesse) while the Sickle lags behind only due to lacking the thrown property.
Let's break this down:
Imagine we have a level 5 Monk with +4 to Dexterity. We're using a Handaxe in our main hand and a Dagger in the off-hand.
With our action, we attack twice with the Handaxe (1d6+4 for each, so 2d6+8, which comes out to 15 average damage) and then once with the Dagger (also 1d6+4 thanks to Martial Arts, so 7.5 more damage) and then we make one unarmed strike for... you guessed it, 1d6+4, or 7.5.
Our average damage per round - assuming we hit with all attacks, but still... is 30.
30 damage. At level 5. And that's without spending a single ki point.
If we compare this to the Quarterstaff, and say we take... let's say the Dueling Fighting Style, and then just using these with one hand (and thus gaining the benefit of Flex,) how do we look?
With our action, attack twice with the Quarterstaff (1d8+6 for each, so 2d8+12, which comes to an average of 21) and then once with the Unarmed Strike (7.5, as previously established). So, that's 28.5 damage.
Actually, not too bad.
I think Monks are going to really benefit a lot from both Fighting Style and Weapon Mastery, and helping them to bring the pain to their foes.
Now, interestingly, the introduction to the Weapons section of this UA mentions that when they revisit Experts and Priests in future UAs, some of those classes will gain access to weapon masteries. I assume this means the Ranger and Paladin, though I imagine that Rogues would be very happy to have access to this system as well (if they don't automatically get it, it's an obvious place for a feat investment if only to get some kind of Vex weapon, which is insanely good for a Rogue, given how much they love advantage).
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