Monks: JB doesn't "get it" (air quotes)

[K]

http://paizo.com/paizo/messageboards/pa ... ChestWound

Ok, after reading this post, I realized that there were several major problems in JB's design philosophy(we'll keep this about his work on the Monk rather than personal):

--No room for wimp "support" roles:
This is DnD, and your party might easily only be three people, and that means that DnD has no room for his version of "support" roles. Granting a bonus to a real character is not a viable combat action, and maybe Stunning a guy is a 1st level option and that means at 3rd level you should be doing something better.

A proper support role is the "combat control" caster who removes actions(attacks, moves, whatever) from a pile of enemies, or strategically executes some fool (Rogues and sneak attack).

--Mobility roles end early:
At level 5, Fly is an option, so the fact that you can avoid AoOs or run fast across broken ground is nullified by the fact that flyers don't have those problems. We won't even talk about spellcasters with Levitate who nullify the Monk's schtick at level 3.

Second, archers fill the role without ever leaving a defensible position. Got a problem with a pesky spellcaster? Well, your friendly neighborhood archer can shoot the crap out of that guy, even if his only option is to ready a Manyshot action to disrupt a spell. Oh, and did I mention he's doing it in magic Full Plate....away from monster attacks....with Greater Magic Weapon arrows and a bonus from his bow....with a full BAB....and his stats focus on Str/Dex/Con instead of the same with Wis added in?

Third, your friendly neighborhood spellcaster has more mobility and attacks that don't give a damn about range. His fills the role in a way that the Monk would sell both testicals to gain. The fact that he can cast Fly on other PCs is just adding insult to injury.

Fourth, the fighter on a Griffin Mount masters mobility and avoiding terrain in a way that makes a monk turn in his MC Hammer pants and oily pecks.

--Why the Rogue rocks and Monk blows (yes, they are different):
Ok, the Rogue wears armor and might use a shield(good AC) and causes enemies to explode from massive damage from a pile of attacks (which can even be ranged). His "set-up" is trivially easy to obtain, and in general either increases his to-hit (flanking), or AC (concealment, 3.0 or 3.5 blink, improved invisibility, etc), or avoids attacks altogether (ranged attacks on stunned guys). He's also really good at using magic items to mix up his schtick.

The Monk spends his life pretending that the class features he gets somehow compensate him for not getting to wear armor, get good combat feats, a full BAB, anything that synergizes with ranged attacks, or just something that is not rendered obsolete by basic magic equipment (land speed or high jumps is dumb when you get a griffin, bonuses to AC when unarmored are lame when you fly in full plate or use mithral and/or celestial full plate, small amounts of personal healing is a pittance compared to Wands of CLW(out of combat) or scrolls(in combat) or just relying on a real healer, etc).

Passive defenses don't make a character. It won't save your companions, kill the dark lord, or otherwise make you win adventures. At best, some monsters might be dumb enough to waste attacks on you. At worse, you are a drain on party resources as you take more damage than other melee characters who have decent AC and HPs and don't need to be saved in the middle of combat.

To wrap up, the Rogue has a massive and flexible offense, decent defenses, and the ability to mix his schtick up with magic in various forms (items, friendly casters, etc). The Monk spends his life pretending he's not playing DnD by avoiding good equipment that renders his abilities a joke, having attacks better than 3rd level characters, or being a weaker eggshell than an unoptimized arcane caster.

[Harlune]

Hrm... reading the replies in that thread seems to suggest that their idea of the perfect monk is either an unarmored cleric who can't cast spells or a rogue without a sneak attack, skills, or UMD.

They're doing a great job of staying true to that vision of complete character uselessness with a spash of weaboo.

[Absentminded_Wizard]

Good points.

On mobility: That was the first thing I thought when somebody in that thread actually said that monks could take out spellcasters better than anybody else.

On rogues: Yeah, I was wondering if rogues are supposed to be similar to monks, where's the monk's equivalent to sneak attack?

And I just read over the Pathfinder monk. Their monk has to spend points out of a ki pool in order to bypass DR. WTH?

[Absentminded_Wizard]

Hrm... reading the replies in that thread seems to suggest that their idea of the perfect monk is either an unarmored cleric who can't cast spells or a rogue without a sneak attack, skills, or UMD.

They're doing a great job of staying true to that vision of complete character uselessness with a spash of weaboo.

Since everybody there (including JB) seems to want the monk to have great defense but no offense, the nonmagical cleric thing seems to be the best analogy. The party monk can't do anything but marginally annoy the opponent, but if there's no party cleric, he gets to find a way to drag everybody to the temple for healing.

[Harlune]

I do like the idea one of them suggested of having the monk do various status effects with their attacks. Being a physical based crowd control class and or melee version of a warlock would help to give them an interesting flavor and role all their own. Though I don't know why the hell he didn't include silence in the possible effects he listed, that one seems like a no brainer to include.

AW:

Yeah... the ki fist ability really ought to just have a flat 'you ignore X amount of DR with your melee attacks' bonus that goes up with level.

Spending points should let you do really cool stuff like ignore magic protection spells (stoneskin, etc), punch someone in the face from twenty feet away, or turn your next few attacks into touch attacks, not you might actually get to hurt something and pretend you're not worse than a fighter for a round.

[Draco_Argentum]

What about allowing the monk to use his 'unarmed strike' damage when using 'special monk weapons'?

It would eliminate the amulet of mighty fists supercost requirement by allowing the monk access to the same priced melee combat boosters as all other classes, plus also get rid of the 'need' to do things like..multiclass to kensai so i can enchant my fist...etc. I think it would allow the monks to get more into the damage dealing level that rogues have because it would allow the stacking of holy, flaming, etc.

JB posts his support of this on page 2.

What the hell? So the solution to monks sucking at their flavour of unarmed combat is to make unarmed combat relatively worse than it already was?

[Absentminded_Wizard]

It looks like the only good thing the monk got out of this revision isn't anything they changed about the class features. Now that they've turned all the SODs into damage spells, only 15+ level monks and 20th level bards get to outright kill people from anything other than high damage (barring poison or magic items).

[Voss]

So, Jason's solution:

So,

I think we are starting to see what I felt has been the problem with the monk all along, the fact that they cannot really gain the same kind of bonuses to their unarmed strikes as others can with their weapons without paying a ridiculous cost.

I have been working on a way for them to do this, that is, apply weapon enhancements (such as +1 and flaming) to their fists at a reasonable price. The tripping point was not the idea, but the in game implementation. I thought of some sort of hand wrapping, rings, or maybe bracers, but these are really going off the beaten path, as they are not, in and of themselves, weapons.

I am hoping to get something like this into the Beta. Thoughts?

Yeah, seriously. People do a thread about the serious problems the monk has, and he interprets it as 'the only problem is that it costs too much to fake enhancement bonuses'.
what. the. fuck.

So I was bored, so I added some comments to the thread. I don't hold out much hope that jason will actually heed them, since his initial response to the thread as a whole was 'shut the fuck up'.

I also added a little something (like basic logic) to a thread about the bard, here:
http://paizo.com/paizo/messageboards/pa ... rfulPage20

It has a priceless comment from Jason that the ability is 'too powerful as written'. Well, why the fuck did you write it that way, you jackass?

[Username17]

Honestly can't be bothered to read through version 3.

What is the thinking behind putting limits on Save or Die effects when topologically identical Save or Essentially Die effects are unlimited? If you can force a save against Paralyzation an opponent won't be able to fight and their ability to survive a level-appropriate coup de grace is generally nil.

So what's the deal? Why is it a bad thing to kill one target on a failed save with one action when it's apparently not a bad thing to force several opponents to make a save against losing the fight all at once?

If Mass Paralysis effects such as mass hold monster exist, the very concept of nerfing finger of death is at best a comical one.

-Username17

[Cielingcat]

The point is that he sees people complaining about save or dies without realizing that save or be paralyzed is just as bad.

[Voss]

Just for sheer comedy value, its worth glancing through, particularly for people who have been around for all of third edition (if not longer). Between splatbooks, fan creations, house rules and other shit, there is almost nothing in the document that hasn't been done before. Almost nothing, moreover, that we haven't seen *fail* a dozen times before.

And yet, his response is the same as before. 'Well, you haven't tested it, so you can't possibly know that its bad'. But really, we have, its been done, tested, and it fails. ki pool? Right from the ninja. Bonus spells known based on a theme? Seen that. Skill based save DCs? That never fails to be a trainwreck. Favored terrain? Yep. But more than all of that, we have at least basic skills in thinking and analysis. You really can take text and read and understand it, and immediately spot the shit that is obviously good and obviously bad. And there is a lot of both in this document... its actually troubling he wrote up the new bard and didn't immediately say, 'This isn't going to work' and start over.

The monk is a little more difficult, because you have to compensate for the system itself, which is very clear that unarmed and unarmored is always going to be weaker than someone who is armed and armored. Because every resource you spend just to catch up with the other guy is a resource he can spend to be even better. You never actually climb out of the hole. But adding a little to nothing doesn't make the class equal.

[K]

I do like the idea one of them suggested of having the monk do various status effects with their attacks. Being a physical based crowd control class and or melee version of a warlock would help to give them an interesting flavor and role all their own. Though I don't know why the hell he didn't include silence in the possible effects he listed, that one seems like a no brainer to include.

Yeh, and then he'd have a Tome Monk.

[Harlune]

The point is that he sees people complaining about save or dies without realizing that save or be paralyzed is just as bad.

I really haven't been paying very close attention to the pathfinder stuff lately, what did they do to SoD's? And I don't suppose they've actually done anything about making evocation spells not suck either.

[Voss]

Most of the Save and actually Die spells (finger of death, slay living, impolsion, wail of the banshee) just got smacked in the new version: they all do 10 damage/ caster level. But, if you save its still the 3d6 + CL (or whatever).

So depending on the specific monster (and how many hit points it has at whatever CR), they're either still SoDs or just.. not. It hurts, but the balor can just not care that you ripped out a chunk of his hit points.

But at the same time, he left Hold Monster and that sort of thing (save or lose) alone *AND* gave the bard a mass save or lose and a save or die. And the ranger got an SoD as well.

The inconsistencies involved really boggle the mind. I'm really not sure he's doing anything other than making random decisions and sticking them in a pdf. (I almost said making stuff up, but he's lifted so much from other places that he's barely making anything up).

[Harlune]

Hrm... I'm actually okay with the idea of giving the Bard some decent offensive magic stuff, but yeah those SoD changes or just... freaking hell, if somebody thought they were that much of a problem why not just outright remove the bloody things and use the flat damage per level thing for the direct damage spells instead.

Considering those changes, I suspect they'll also add a 'no coup de grace' rule or even something like timestop's 'no attacking, no stealing, no moving, no magic, no doing anything useful to someone' to the Hold/Sleep/Mez type spells in the next update.

[Absentminded_Wizard]

So, Jason's solution:

So,

I think we are starting to see what I felt has been the problem with the monk all along, the fact that they cannot really gain the same kind of bonuses to their unarmed strikes as others can with their weapons without paying a ridiculous cost.

I have been working on a way for them to do this, that is, apply weapon enhancements (such as +1 and flaming) to their fists at a reasonable price. The tripping point was not the idea, but the in game implementation. I thought of some sort of hand wrapping, rings, or maybe bracers, but these are really going off the beaten path, as they are not, in and of themselves, weapons.

I am hoping to get something like this into the Beta. Thoughts?

Yeah, seriously. People do a thread about the serious problems the monk has, and he interprets it as 'the only problem is that it costs too much to fake enhancement bonuses'.
what. the. fuck.

Even worse, he's sitting there saying, "I wonder how I could possibly let monks get the weapon enhancements fighters get?"

Duh. Have you seen that ki pool you put in? Like Harlune said earlier, instead of paying for the privilege of doing things that were free for you in 3.5, you could give the monk the ability to make his fists flaming. Sure, you still need more powerful stuff to give the monk real offensive punch, but it's a step in the right direction that would allow a reasonable person to see farther down the path.

Yeh, and then he'd have a Tome Monk.

Haven't read the tome monk, but I thought I remembered Frank talking about giving monks the ability to impose status effects with their fists years ago, possibly on Nifty.

[JonSetanta]

The tripping point was not the idea, but the in game implementation. I thought of some sort of hand wrapping, rings, or maybe bracers, but these are really going off the beaten path, as they are not, in and of themselves, weapons.

...
What?
That was your tripping point?
I want this guy's job.

And Monks have been doing effects with body attacks since 3.0, but at the expense of either relying on touch spells from another class (either the same character or another), using Stunning Fist attempts to power weird touch feats, or grabbing a monster race of some kind.
All have been shitty options, temporary power, or ruined your character's concept (you must be a Succubus, Ghoul, or Vampire) at the expense of power (why can't I just be a Human, a player might say)

[name_here]

i see an answer right now: brass knuckles. have them deal 1d8 per fist, be enchantable like weapons, and count as being unarmed for monk powers.

[Maxus]

Someone can tell Buhlman that the handwraps do exist. They're call cestuses. Or maybe the plural is cesti? Whatever.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cestus

Anyway, there are weapons in antiquity you can wear on your hands to give give more impact. You can google them and find stuff on 'em.

Or you could just take the claw-gauntlets of the Demon Armor. 1d10 damage on each hand, and a contagion effect to boot.

[Calibron]

Unfortunately the Mindsense feat works out to a distance equal to your telepathy range, so not actually having telepathy would make it useless.

As for Extra Wildshape: Yes it does exist, as worded a Rogue could use it, it's on page 81 of the Complete Divine. However, looking at the epic wildshape feats, you'd get no mileage out of them from just the Monster Manual or Monster Manual 3, unless you wanted to turn into a whale or a monstrous centipede.

[Jacob_Orlove]

Not sure how your reply ended up in this thread?

Anyway, you'd have to take something like Extra Wildshape, Wild Shape: Colossal, and Wild Shape: Dragon (or whatever) to get any real mileage out of it. So it's three feats, but still achievable at level 19.

You can also take Improved Elemental Wild Shape/Magical Beast Wild Shape, but I'm not sure if your best choices there will even show up if you're restricted to Gargantuan/Colossal only.

Vorpal Strike is also pretty funny.

[JonSetanta]

Cesti.

The Latin word caestus (plural caestūs) [1] is derived from verb caedere, meaning "to strike". It is unrelated to the similar noun cestus (plural cestī), that refers to a kind of belt worn by women in Ancient Greece. [1]

And I'll remind y'all that the objective of Monk unarmed combat is to NOT USE IMPLEMENTS!
They would learn new techniques, absorb powers from magical sites into their bodies, awaken ancient blood/word pacts from ancestral or alien spirits, or just.
Plain.
Train.
Harder.

[Calibron]

All the applicable creatures have too many hit dice. And yeah, looks like I posted that reply in the wrong thread.

[Koumei]

And I'll remind y'all that the objective of Monk unarmed combat is to NOT USE IMPLEMENTS!

Yes, but if they simply get magical enhancements on their fists as part of their class, then that's money the fighter and cleric have to spend and the monk doesn't. Suddenly, he's level appropriate before he spends money.

So either hit them with weaknesses that need shoring up elsewhere (not a great idea), accept that they'll be better (not a great idea) or do something that requires them to pay money for better hands (fist-wraps, amulets, or secret scrolls with techniques).

[name_here]

Training harder gives them bonus special abilities, so they can channel holy fire through their fists 4/day or spend Ki points to do so. It does not let them punch holes in armor more easily all by itself. So if you can get +1 to your fists from training, it's limited duration. they don't get +1 flaming hands with larger dice from leveling up, that's unbalancing. they get them from magic weapons that bascially enhance punching people. they aren't restriced from displaying weapons like the inventors of martial arts were, so they have no good reason to hide their combat power.