The Monk struggles.
Conceptually, the Monk is fun - bringing a beloved heroic archetype and making a class out of it. But it struggles because of a few things:
1. Defensively, it's the most fragile of the classes that are forced to fight in melee (the others being the Paladin and Barbarian). It typically has a lower AC and has a lower hit die than both of these classes, along with two classes that can easily be built around ranged attacks (though Fighters are gently encouraged to go melee in most cases).
2. Damage-wise, they don't get a big, exciting upgrade to their damage output at higher levels. Yes, by level 5 you can, with relative frequency, get off four attacks in a round, but it generally doesn't go up beyond that. Furthermore, Unarmed Strikes, the central "thing" of the class, doesn't get buffed by any magic weapons - while a Fighter could get their hands on a Flame Tongue Longsword, getting an extra 2d6 damage on each hit (usually 7, or 14 on a crit,) your punches/kicks/headbutts/tail-slaps at best get the level 6 change to make the hits count as magical (or, in the new version, do Force damage). But you're not going to get a +1 weapon, making your chance to hit fall behind.
3. Next, the Monk is resource-starved. Not only do they have a lot of things to spend their Ki/Discipline points in the base class, but most subclasses add more things to spend them on, making Monks extremely dependent on short rests to recover them.
4. And, while I think this might be less of an issue if we fix the other things, they're also spread a little thin in terms of ability scores. Monks really want to have high Dex, high Wis, and high Con. Now, there are other classes that also want three ability scores to be high - Paladins, for instance, like to have good Strength, Con, and Charisma. But a Paladin, even at high level, with only a +3 to Con and Charisma will still be pretty functional. For a Monk, it's almost like the expectation is that you're going to have all of these super-high.
5. Finally, with the advent of Weapon Mastery, it's really sad to see the Monk unable to use these masteries with their unarmed strikes. This is a new thing, but it pushes the Monk to have to wield weapons with their action, and makes their signature moves - their unarmed strikes - into mere supplements to their damage.
Take this with a huge grain of rock-salt, as the source here is "a Youtube comment," but it seems plausible: Supposedly, WotC considers the Monk to be on-par with a Fighter with Crossbow Expert, and that Stunning Strike is a big part of that power.
I played a Drunken Master Monk as my first Adventurer's League character. And I loved him, even if the subclass leaves some things to be desired (Redirect Attack didn't work nearly as often as I'd hoped it would, and Drunkard's Luck is a terrible, worthless, awful ability). But I remember, getting a Stun off was great. It turned the tide profoundly in a battle - suddenly the whole party was attacking with advantage, and the target couldn't even do anything on its turn.
But boy was it swingy - to stun something, I'd have to invest pretty heavily in Ki points most of the time, as the monsters would usually get off a save or two before I could actually get them stunned.
The thing is, from the DM's perspective, it was also kind of a bummer when it worked, though, as it prevented them from getting to actually use the monster.
So: if Stunning Strike is the reason they're afraid to buff the Monk, let's propose that we get rid of it.
That's obviously a nerf. We could possibly give them a less powerful replacement - perhaps something like Dazing Strike, where we can spend a Discipline Point to daze the target (and maybe make it a Wisdom save, so it will land a little more often?)
But, if we do that, let me propose things we could give to address the issues that were listed above.
1: First off, easy: give the Monk a d10 hit die. (I could even argue for a d12, but if we want that to be an exclusive thing for Barbarians, I understand). But that's not going to be enough - their HP gets better - about one point per level, but at least now keeping pace with Fighters and Paladins. But we also want their AC to go up. And that's where a certain theme you might notice begins to develop: Change Unarmored Defense to no longer gain any benefit from Wisdom, but instead get twice your Dexterity modifier.
This one's big. With the Standard Array, you can typically get one +3 modifier and two +2 modifiers, or two +3 modifiers and no +2 modifiers. Generally, I assume that a character who hasn't rolled stats (or hasn't rolled exceptionally well) is going to have a +3 to their main stat, and for the Monk, that should be Dexterity. This would mean that a Monk starts off with an AC of 16. You might notice that this is precisely the AC that heavy-armor classes start with, thanks to Chain Mail, and also that anyone that starts with medium armor can have if they have at least a +2 to Dexterity and begins with Scale Mail (which, at least in the 2014 PHB, is all medium armor classes other than the Druid).
Now, once their Dex goes up to +4, that means an AC of 18 - which is as good as anyone can get with mundane armor and no shield. And when they get to +5 (typically level 8,) they'll be at 20 AC, which is as good as plate armor and a shield.
So, this is one I could see some pushback to, but Monks can hit this eventually if they spend all their ASIs on getting their Dex and then their Wisdom maxed out, though not until level 19.
If this scaling is too strong, we could do something more controlled - you could have your Unarmored Defense start off giving you a +3 (which I think is perfectly reasonable, given what I said about heavy and medium armor three paragraphs ago) and have it scale up slower - maybe getting one higher with each tier of play. This would means starting with 16, going to 17 at level 4, 18 at level 5, 19 at level 8, and 20 at level 11, and then possibly 21 at level 17 if we want to keep up with this. Adjust as necessary.
With this change, you no longer need to be so heavily invested in Wisdom to get a decent AC. While I think the flavor of Wisdom increasing your AC is really cool (you are more aware of the angle and velocity of incoming attacks - which makes more sense to me than Barbarians getting a higher AC because... their skin is just tougher? Like, if it was because of their brawn, they should really add their Strength instead of the Constitution) it means that you're typically doing no better than a Rogue in Studded Leather, but without things like Uncanny Dodge or Cunning Action to disengage (we do have Step of the Wind, but that cuts into our damage output and also costs a precious resource).
Now, with HP on par with Fighters and AC on par with Fighters... I think this is acceptable for a melee class. If the AC winds up a little higher, even, I don't mind, because isn't that part of the fantasy? Being so agile that you can dodge your enemy's attacks?
2: So, I like that the new monk gets its damage dice upgraded, mainly because rolling a d4 is always a pain in the ass (I need to get those pill-shaped d4s). But it's not nearly enough of a damage boost - an average of one extra damage per hit.
A lot of martial classes get a big damage boost at level 11 (to go along with casters getting 6th level spells). Fighters get their third attack, Paladins get their extra d8 of radiant damage on each hit. Ranger subclass features tend toward this as well at level 11 (at least in the playtest). Barbarians, in the playtest, get Brutal Critical at 11 (which... I need to do math on how good that is). And Warlocks, like Fighters, get their third attack at this level (yes, Warlocks are secretly a martial class).
Monks, typically, don't get such a bonus at 11, aside from upgrading their martial arts die. What might they get, then?
More attacks doesn't feel that great - Monks already do a lot of attacks, and that means A: their turns will take forever if we add more and B: another attack will be diluted and C: the Fighter already does that.
What if we, then, made them hit harder? Let's toss out the following: when you deal damage with a Simple (or Monk, if they restore Shortswords to them) weapon or an Unarmed Strike, you deal additional damage of that type equal to your Wisdom modifier. Call it "Focused Strikes."
While we might not be pushing Wisdom quite as hard, this will give it some oomph. We could also make this only work on Unarmed Strikes if need be.
We're not done with 2 though - the other thing I'd do is extremely simple: add +1, +2, and +3 Wrist Wraps as standard magic items to be found in the loot tables of the DMG - when you wear these wrist wraps, you get a +1 (or 2 or 3) bonus to attack and damage rolls with your Unarmed Strikes. Bam: scaling synchronized.
3: Ok, now, Discipline Points. You run out of them really quick. And almost every Monk feature costs them. So, a couple changes (and credit to d4 and Treantmonk's Temple and their Monk discussion that came up with the general idea for this:) Discipline Points reset when you roll initiative, perhaps with fewer at your disposal.
Either that, or far fewer things need to cost them - Patient Defense and Step of the Wind could be free, and a lot of subclass features could as well (or use a different resource).
Rather than having your Monk level in DPs (nope) in Discipline Points, you perhaps get like twice your proficiency bonus, or perhaps that amount if you were going pure Monk (so 4 from level 1-4, 6 from 5-8, 8 from 9-13, 10 from 14-16, and 12 from 17-20) but when you take a short rest, a long rest, or you roll initiative, you get all of them back.
This could cause some issues with features like Hands of Healing, and I am always a bit wary of "when you roll initiative" features because DM style comes into play (in my Monday game, my players are essentially in the middle of a battle that is sort of a rolling combat encounter - each "encounter" comes in when the last group of foes is nearly all down, meaning it's technically one long fight,) but this will make the fact that everything costs Ki/Discipline more strategic, I think (the Astral Self might be less of a pain).
The total you get, and even whether you get all of them when you roll initiative (in the playtest you get back four when you do so at level 15, though only if you're totally out, which is crazy - why should you be stuck at 2 points simply because you didn't think to spend those two out of combat?) or just some of them, is something to iterate on, but for a class that burns through this resource as quickly as it does, you either need to slow that rate of burn, or give them ample access to fuel.
4: Ok, well, we kind of covered this with #1, but one way to address the spread-thin nature of the Monk would be to reduce or eliminate their reliance on Wisdom. I actually love, flavorfully, that Monks use wisdom, as it makes total sense and distinguishes them from Fighters - who are also people who discipline and condition their bodies. But letting Monks focus on Dexterity for their AC certainly would help.
And if we want to go farther, we could have them even determine their Ki save DC using Dexterity as well - much as the Rogue's new Cunning Strikes do. Without Stunning Strike, some Monks might not even need to have a DC at all.
But, if we also kept my "Focused Strikes" feature, it would let Wisdom still be appealing, but not as make-or-break. Getting from +3 to +4 would definitely boost your damage, but only by 1, so you could weigh whether that's worth it.
5: And lastly, Weapon Mastery. Again, D4 and Treantmonk made a proposal that I think is fine - just let Monks apply weapon masteries to unarmed strikes. Which ones? Well, screw it - any of them. Indeed, I actually think giving Monks access to masteries they could never get with their weapons, like Graze, Cleave, Push, or Topple would be really cool (though the Open Hand Monk would need a serious redesign).
If letting you use multiple options for your unarmed strikes would be too powerful, or more importantly step on the Fighter's toes, you could maybe force the Monk to choose one of them for Unarmed Strikes on a long rest (leaving their other for their actual weapon,) but this would be really cool.
Together, I think this would more than compensate for the removal of Stunning Strike. I think you'd have a Monk that was working much more the way that the fantasy of it suggests. Would it be too powerful? Possibly. But I'd be ok with Monks being overpowered after spending so long struggling to keep up. And without stuns, it's not going to be annoying to have them be powerful.
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