What does a Monk need to not suck? (3.0)

[Username17]

How about an Astral Projection Equipment doublage?

Regardless, the reason this character sucks is not because he can't participate in adventures or make cool things happen. Heck, Magic Missile does less damage than the party Archer probably does in an attack action - and Plane Shift can get the party unlimited funds relatively easily.

No, the reason this character is completely sucktastic is that absolutely every single spell he knows is also automatically known at an equal or lesser level by every single Neutral Cleric ever made.

So he's sucking up the lower BAB, the worse weapon proficiencies, the worse hit points, the worse saves, the inability to cast in armor, and the loss of special abilities all in order to have a more restrictive spell list and less spells per day.

That's why he sucks. Because despite the fact that he can do many very powerful things, the Cleric can do exactly everything he can do, and more, and do it better while sitting on a better class chasis.

Class balance amongst spellcasters is a god damned joke.

-Username17

[The_Hanged_Man]

lol.

Class balance is always going to be a joke, so long as you try to balance a class instead of a power.

The problem w/ spells is that they don't exist in a vacuum. Just the opposite, they live in some high-gravity mush where everything alters everything else.

The Cleric spell list is better for only one reason. The spells aren't balanced against other spells, but instead against the perceived suckiness of the rest of the class features - and roleplaying considerations.

IOW, the cleric isn't balanced. That's kind of my point. You can balance spells pretty easily. The exist in a vacuum to a certain extent because they don't depend on other class features. If all abilities were given independently of other class features, it would be easier to judge them.

That's all I'm saying.

[User3]

Frank is being playful. He filled his list with ass spells to show just how suck a caster he can make.

[Maj]

Class balance is always going to be a joke, so long as you try to balance a class instead of a power.

No... So long as powers are different, balance won't exist. So long as players are different, balance won't exist. So long as you have a plethora of choices, balance won't exist.

It can't. The system will eventually fall prey to people who don't know what their best choices are. The question is whether that's a flaw in the game system, or a flaw in the people playing it. I used to think it was the game's fault. Now I know it's mine.

[Desdan_Mervolam]

I pretty much agree with Maj. For there to be balance, you don't need perfect mechanical balance, such a thing is not possible. What you need is players who are good enough to not abuse rule loopholes, and DMs who are good enough to close those loopholes when they come up. Of course, this also requires a non-literalist view of the rules, which I'm sure grates against some of the posters here.

Of course, this is not to say that there are not options that could realistically be balanced better. Monks are one of them. I was serious when I said monks would work alot better if split out into four or five individial classes.

-Desdan

[The_Hanged_Man]

1085080793[/unixtime]]

Class balance is always going to be a joke, so long as you try to balance a class instead of a power.

No... So long as powers are different, balance won't exist. So long as players are different, balance won't exist. So long as you have a plethora of choices, balance won't exist.

It can't. The system will eventually fall prey to people who don't know what their best choices are. The question is whether that's a flaw in the game system, or a flaw in the people playing it. I used to think it was the game's fault. Now I know it's mine.

I'm not talking about balance on a micro level, but a macro level. Of course you can never get things to be completely equal. Some powers are always going to give more bang for the buck than others. One weapon will always give an extra point of damage most of the time, or one spell will affect more things, and so on. That's a given.

But making bad choices shouldn't cripple you. The imbalance should be small, to the level that you can choose (or end up w/) a sub-optimal character and still be effective. So you do 18 points of damage instead of 24. Woot.

CD gives excellent examples of crippling, macro balance issues. After reading that through, I have no idea how anyone is supposed to compete w/ Druids. I just don't. If you don't take something w/ Turning ability and Divine Metamagic, almost whatever class you have, you have crippled your character. This is a whole different level of bad than, say, TWF on average being worse than THF.

For those issues, it's much, much easier to balance individual powers than a combination of powers and abilities. Then you can look at a power, see what combinations of stuff you can do with it, and get a baseline for how big a can of whup-ass that power opens. You don't get BS arguments like "Clerics get better hit die, armor, and abilities b/c their spell list sucks."

[User3]

The system will eventually fall prey to people who don't know what their best choices are. The question is whether that's a flaw in the game system, or a flaw in the people playing it. I used to think it was the game's fault. Now I know it's mine.

So it's my fault that my character concept is one which is woefully underpowered.

[Maj]

How can the concept of what your character is suck if you are actually participating in a game with other people and adventuring?

Unless your character concept is some guy who's below average at everything in life, has no friends, and spends the time he could be out in the world dropping any and all the money he has into the consumption of alcoholic beverages and losing belching contests, there's no way that the idea of what your character should be can suck.

[Username17]

The point is: if your concept is one of say Dr. Victor Frankenstein, your character is going to suck. The game doesn't allow people who want to prove the power of science over god to be any good game mechanically.

That's not your fault, that's the game designer's fault. If the game allows you to have a character archetype, it should allow the character archetype to not suck ass.

If you are allowed to be a "Rose Knight", being one shouldn't subtract 3 from all of your rolls.

-Username17

[Maj]

My basis for my ideas are in large part inspired from the following post (originally found here in this thread):

For example... you want to play a "heroic, heavily armored knight".

Fine. Now, you think of what abilities you want your character to have to fit your character conception. Obviously, you'll want to be able to wear heavy armor, so at least one of your levels must be one which gives heavy armor proficiency. Furthermore, you'll want to be an accomplished warrior - so not getting a +1 to your BAB every level is highly questionable. This rules out taking levels of wizard, and virtually eliminates taking levels of Rogue, Cleric, Monk, etc.

OK fine, we have established that this character should have levels drawn from:

Barbarian
Fighter
Paladin
Ranger
Samurai

So now we look at what the levels give besides the skill at arms. Barbarian gives speed bonuses while wearing less than heavy armor - which since the character intends to wear heavy armor is not an ability at all. It also requires the character to be non-lawful, since we are basing this on an indealistic form of chivalry, that's unacceptable. We cross off Barbarian as a possibility.

Fighter gives bonus feats, which allow us to customize the character in the direction we want to go. More towards mounted combat? More towards slugging it out with a shield and sword? We can customize this right here. Levels 1, 2, 4, 6, and 8 allow this level of customization, and levels 3, 5, and 7 give us nothing - so if there is anything we can get to advance our character at levels 3, 5, or 7 instead of taking more Fighter levels, we should do that.

Ranger gives us a Favored Enemy bonus and some extra skill points. It also gives some light-armor bonuses that we can discount because we will be using heavy armor. The skill points are nice, and allow us to customiz our character towards things we think he should be able to do. Maybe we want him to be passably good at riding, jumping, or even simply to be a little bit quiet. Whatever, the skill points serve to make the character fit the conception better. Furthermore, the FEB allows us to choose any arbitrary creature type that we think the character should be good at fighting. Since we are talking about an idealistic knight - the obvious tjoice is Dragons. So taking that single level of Ranger allows us to be in some way a "Dragon Slayer", an important part of being a classical mythic knight. After that, it's just skill points - so abandoning the Ranger class after 1 level fits pefectly into the character conception.

Then we look at Paladin. Paladins have a built-in code of Chivalry, and substantial bonuses to being pure and stuff. This would be an obvious choice for at least two levels, whereupon we get immunity to fear. Since the character is supposed to be an idealistic mythic knight, and mythic knights are fearless, this is practically a requirement. At level 3, the paladin gets the ability to Turn Undead, which is sort of a holy man ability and not much in the Mythic Knight theme, so we should probably abandon the class at level 2.

Now we look at Samurai. There is a certain Nippon feel to the name of the class, but let's look at what you actually get for the first two levels: A bonus feat, extra skill points, a special sword that signifies your rank, and a code of conduct requiring you to uphold lawfulness and chivalry. That's perfect.

So what does our Knight look like after 9 levels:

Fighter4/ Ranger 1/ Paladin 2/ Samurai 2

Taking 9 Fighter levels is less like our character concept than this "min/max" build. That means that simply taking the same level one after another after it stops being good is so lazy that it is actually casuing the character to deviate from our character conception.

In short, failing to min/max towards your character concept is actually allowing game mechanics to get in the way of your character conception. Which is meta gaming and bad role playing.

Your character is not a "fighter", your character is an "idealistic, heavily armored knight" - "Fighter" has no real place in the game world, it's just a simulation of what your character is supposed to be. If you allow words like "fighter" to get in between yourself and your "idealistic heavily armored knight" you are role playing badly.

-Username17

My point is this: If you are currently actually playing D&D and attempting to operate within its guidelines (being an above-average individual, heavily involved with combat, and taking place in a somewhat fantasic setting), then you should be able to execute some vague resemblance of your character concept. If your character concept is "MONK" that, by no means, means that you have to ever even take levels in the class named "MONK" - unless it can somehow benefit your character better than any other way. With all the cheese that D&D has to offer, I find it hard to believe that there exists any character concept that is required to remain sucky.

[Username17]

If your character concept is "MONK" that, by no means, means that you have to ever even take levels in the class named "MONK"

Quite true, but some character principles (unarmed combat, arcane necromancy, etc.) aren't supported by any class. So there's actually no collection of classes you can take that will represent your character concept in a non-sucky way if that's what you want to do.

And that's the problem. I honestly don't care if people are complaining that their character concept is best described in their mind as a "Ranger", but the "Ranger" character class doesn't give them what they want. I do care if their character concept is "Kung Fu Master" and there's no class or collection of classes that will give them what they want.

The one is not a problem with the game, it's the player getting lost in the completely arbitrary class titles. The other actually is a flaw in the game.

-Username17

[The_Hanged_Man]

1085090540[/unixtime]]With all the cheese that D&D has to offer, I find it hard to believe that there exists any character concept that is required to remain sucky.

I generally agree w/ you, but I disagree here. There are a lot of character concepts that either literally can't be played at all, or are so sucky most of the time that you can't play them. Unarmored fighter, prophet, gadgeteer, Elric, and magical non-humanoids are all more or less unplayable. You can make PC's that aren't just sacks of crap, but they're all disappointing.

[User3]

Classes exist for one reason: to prevent people from sucking too much because they weren't clever enough to choose non-synergizing class abilties.

In that way, the fighter and the psion are both failures.

The fighter offers too many choices: a man CAN and MIGHT be a Fighter 10 with Toughness having been taken 10 times. And he would suck.

The Psion is the guy that went and said "how many 1st level powers can I trade for a 9th level power?" He sucks because people tend to use their best power in a dangerous situation, thus blowing their wad, and not being able to get it up for the next combat.

Now, people who want to play certain concepts need specific classes. Sometimes, as Frank has shown, you can patch together a few classes and get a good class with your concept. 3.+ multiclassing/PrCs allow for that, just as it allows for suboptimal MyThs, ATs, etc.

However, the best situation is to just to have a 1-20 level class the is your Indiana Jones, Mythic Knight, Necrolover, Snow-man Killer, etc class.

The easiest way is to just make all class abilities into feats with character level limits, and then take the HD chassis and give them a number of feats per level. The problem is that some people will make rogue-type classes(the best designed class, ever), and some will make fighters and psions.

If you can figure out a way to stop that from happening, and give people a way to represent the millions of potential variations on a concept or concepts, then I'd be impressed.

[fbmf]

He sucks because people tend to use their best power in a dangerous situation, thus blowing their wad, and not being able to get it up for the next combat.

I will always remember this analogy. Thanks, Keith.

Game On,
fbmf

[User3]

With all the cheese that D&D has to offer, I find it hard to believe that there exists any character concept that is required to remain sucky.

But there are numerous character concepts which can't be represented (well) by any class or combination of classes, eg the healer.

[Essence]

I've done a small project to see if I can't match more people's visions of the monk by creating a few monk variants. I didn't have time to do Lago's Hulk, but I'll get around to it after the weekend, with luck.

Do those attempts more or less succeed at making Monks that are both functional and interesting?

[Lago_AM3P]

The Hulk guy should really have some ability to use gauntlets or some weird monk weapon that's like fists, but not.

I'm just sayin'.

[User3]

1085096897[/unixtime]]
The Psion is the guy that went and said "how many 1st level powers can I trade for a 9th level power?" He sucks because people tend to use their best power in a dangerous situation, thus blowing their wad, and not being able to get it up for the next combat.

IMO the Psion is one of the best designed classes in existance. It is everything the Sorceror wants to be.

I don't think that spending all of your power points on a few high-level powers is an issue, unless you play that way. Much like a Wizard or Cleric.

-Catharz

[Boulie_98]

I agree with Catharz on the coolness of the Psion. Ironically, however, I just had a session that ended with my 10th level Psion down to 9 PP and 10 angry drow waiting downstairs to kill him off. In my defense, they totally ambused us that night after we spent a long day fighting and killing in the Underdark.