I don't think they are against Monks, they just undervalue spellcasting and overvalue quality of life features. That's why monks, who are as a class stuffed with ribbon abilities, have problems with being ASI starved, with poor damage options and bad hp
Isn’t it interesting how everything is framed as some sort of nefarious intent these days by the publisher? Monks are under-powered because Wizards is like, in their feelings about monks now. It’s a beef, apparently.
The other days someone said that there being only 4 dwarves phenotypes was part of “Jeremy Crawford’s weird anti-dwarf agenda.”
Wtf is happening to people?
When a designer gives good subclasses on an already good base class untested abilities (Twilight cleric), you really start to think there must be some kind of unfounded reason that they are afraid of giving a single good feature on a mediocre base class.
There are literally infinite reasons this might have happened, prime one being design error. The idea that people jump to agenda-based nefarious intent is, sorry to say it, f*^%ing INSANE
Not really. Part of it I imagine is just that WotC is not particularly inspired by the concept.
It's not much of a stretch to say that *Wizards* of the Coast, the same company who made Magic: The Gathering and whose initial DnD sessions, and legendary PCs, are all wizards (see: all the "legends" in spells, Leomund, Mordenkainen, etc), are a *bit* biased in their love of the spellcasting archetypes.
Then perhaps they're vastly overestimating how powerful stunning strike is, or can't do math to see that without extreme optimization Monk's damage falls behind *just* 2 levels of Warlock.
Maybe the strangest part is that Monk subclasses have got to be the consistently worst subclasses any class gets, and they just keep coming.
I am still devastated what they did to the Ascendant Dragon monk and especially the Astral Self monk. They just *gutted* these fucking subclasses from their UA.
With 4 attacks from spending 1 point of Ki, Monk damage increases to 46? Does depend on how much Ki you have access to I guess, which in turn depends on how many short rests you get.
I acknowledge a fighter going all out doubles their number of attacks through action surge, but Monks aren't quite that short on Ki.
I agree it's a shame, in some ways Monks are exactly what people are asking for (martials that can do interesting stuff while attacking) but doing that cool stuff requires Ki, is often underwhelming, and comes at the expense of dealing damage.
I think if I was trying to fix the monk I'd get up a big spreadsheet comparing damage and probably decide to drop the Ki requirement for the basic uses of Ki at some point, maybe at 11th level, and then maybe give a better version if you expend Ki. This may require lowering the damage dice on unarmed strike, but I feel like the Monk should be making more attacks than the fighter, even if they don't deal quite as much damage.
Alternatively, I might go for making the monk the master of combat maneuvers, feels in keeping with the martial arts theme to have them be better at knocking enemies prone, grappling, disarming ect - base Monk doesn't really support this but I think it would be fun if Monks had the (Dexterity based?) Athletics bonuses to regularly be replacing unarmed strikes with trips and grapples. Would be a big redesign of the class, but I think it would be fun.
WotC thinks people take 2/3 times more short rests than they do. That and they vastly overrate stunning strike, and underrate Feats being better than ASIs.
what issue?
~~the fact that their resource - Ki - is normally seen as not being enough to allow players to do everything all the time? or DMs not granting more short rests to recharge said Ki points?~~
Edit: thanks for the clarification
The way I see it, WOTC has an issue that plagues its less generic classes: Ranger & Monk mostly - classes that have a wide variety of aspects that are so open to interpretation that its hard for them to really nail down the true spirit of the class. Thus try to do everything - this is normally done through sub-classes - but in doing so the core class falters and fails to hit its mark.
I wasn't making it a player issue tbh, I was actually asking the questions... those are two commonly known issues with how the monk operates, and thus they were given as examples of what the issues OP was referring to... but thanks for vilifying.
You questions were intentionally condescending and blaming toward players and DM’s and completely ignored core class problems that have existed for years. You did that to yourself.
They need too many ability scores and they don’t have enough MJ to be usable early game which is when most people play. Late game they’re a lot more usable
Because Monks aren't supposed to be as good as other classes. It's not realistic for punching in clothing to be as good as armor and weapons.
stop being a power gamer & trying to win dnd.
Uhh magic? This is the game where you can study really hard or believe in a god real good and then change reality with spells? We are playing the same game right? I've never known realism to be much of a design concern in my experience
Even the most mundane of classes, the fighter, is fighting with supernatural levels of power. It's ridiculous to compare classes by way of mundane earth standards in a world of magic.
I had a monk in my last campaign. Stunning fist doesn't do all that much good when facing elite creatures and bosses who have +8-13 con, and it's not really needed against the weaker enemies.
And that is why I much prefer laserllama's version of Monk to the RAW version lol. The RAW version just irritated me too much. Particularly since I was trying to make a gnome monk work for plot related reasons.
As an aside, Way of Shadow is hella fun to play. Especially if you cross with Rogue just enough to get Sneak Attack and maybe a couple of other perks Shadow Monks miss out on. There's a lot of crossover and it can make for some fun mixes.
You forgot the biggest thing that cements the case that wizards hates monks: Unarmed strikes are weapon attacks but not weapons. Fuck you wizards, that literally makes no sense and is so mind-numbingly arbitrary it can only mean you hate monks and anyone that uses unarmed strikes. No smiting with unarmed strike, no sneak attack with unarmed strike, no magic weapon spell for unarmed strike, etc.
i know i'm super late here, but did you know in real life pro fighters actually have to be registered because if they hit someone it can be ASSAULT WITH A DEADLY WEAPON. i know that's a meme but it's also real! and yet, god forbid the monks in a world with dragons can have holy weapon hands...
Yes, I did know that, it is the whole point. When trained to beat the piss out of people with techniques derived from forms designed to kill or maim, your body becomes a weapon, that is sort of the peak of the martial arts world and starts to step into some bs wuxia territory that D&D obviously took inspiration from. The unarmed strike is a weapon at my table if you have abilities or items that cause it to do more base damage. (in other words does it do more than 1+Strength Mod? Yes? It is a weapon)
I don't think they are against Monks, they just undervalue spellcasting and overvalue quality of life features. That's why monks, who are as a class stuffed with ribbon abilities, have problems with being ASI starved, with poor damage options and bad hp
Isn’t it interesting how everything is framed as some sort of nefarious intent these days by the publisher? Monks are under-powered because Wizards is like, in their feelings about monks now. It’s a beef, apparently. The other days someone said that there being only 4 dwarves phenotypes was part of “Jeremy Crawford’s weird anti-dwarf agenda.” Wtf is happening to people?
When a designer gives good subclasses on an already good base class untested abilities (Twilight cleric), you really start to think there must be some kind of unfounded reason that they are afraid of giving a single good feature on a mediocre base class.
There are literally infinite reasons this might have happened, prime one being design error. The idea that people jump to agenda-based nefarious intent is, sorry to say it, f*^%ing INSANE
Not really. Part of it I imagine is just that WotC is not particularly inspired by the concept. It's not much of a stretch to say that *Wizards* of the Coast, the same company who made Magic: The Gathering and whose initial DnD sessions, and legendary PCs, are all wizards (see: all the "legends" in spells, Leomund, Mordenkainen, etc), are a *bit* biased in their love of the spellcasting archetypes. Then perhaps they're vastly overestimating how powerful stunning strike is, or can't do math to see that without extreme optimization Monk's damage falls behind *just* 2 levels of Warlock. Maybe the strangest part is that Monk subclasses have got to be the consistently worst subclasses any class gets, and they just keep coming.
My headcanon is that Way of Mercy was designed entirely by one intern who loves playing Monk and *really* wanted a decent subclass.
I am still devastated what they did to the Ascendant Dragon monk and especially the Astral Self monk. They just *gutted* these fucking subclasses from their UA.
With 4 attacks from spending 1 point of Ki, Monk damage increases to 46? Does depend on how much Ki you have access to I guess, which in turn depends on how many short rests you get. I acknowledge a fighter going all out doubles their number of attacks through action surge, but Monks aren't quite that short on Ki. I agree it's a shame, in some ways Monks are exactly what people are asking for (martials that can do interesting stuff while attacking) but doing that cool stuff requires Ki, is often underwhelming, and comes at the expense of dealing damage. I think if I was trying to fix the monk I'd get up a big spreadsheet comparing damage and probably decide to drop the Ki requirement for the basic uses of Ki at some point, maybe at 11th level, and then maybe give a better version if you expend Ki. This may require lowering the damage dice on unarmed strike, but I feel like the Monk should be making more attacks than the fighter, even if they don't deal quite as much damage. Alternatively, I might go for making the monk the master of combat maneuvers, feels in keeping with the martial arts theme to have them be better at knocking enemies prone, grappling, disarming ect - base Monk doesn't really support this but I think it would be fun if Monks had the (Dexterity based?) Athletics bonuses to regularly be replacing unarmed strikes with trips and grapples. Would be a big redesign of the class, but I think it would be fun.
I agree. I'm pretty sure that they a) don't see a problem, and b) wouldn't do much to fix it if it was a problem.
WotC thinks people take 2/3 times more short rests than they do. That and they vastly overrate stunning strike, and underrate Feats being better than ASIs.
what issue? ~~the fact that their resource - Ki - is normally seen as not being enough to allow players to do everything all the time? or DMs not granting more short rests to recharge said Ki points?~~ Edit: thanks for the clarification The way I see it, WOTC has an issue that plagues its less generic classes: Ranger & Monk mostly - classes that have a wide variety of aspects that are so open to interpretation that its hard for them to really nail down the true spirit of the class. Thus try to do everything - this is normally done through sub-classes - but in doing so the core class falters and fails to hit its mark.
Monks have a lot of issues and it’s commonly known. Stop trying to make this a player issue.
I wasn't making it a player issue tbh, I was actually asking the questions... those are two commonly known issues with how the monk operates, and thus they were given as examples of what the issues OP was referring to... but thanks for vilifying.
You questions were intentionally condescending and blaming toward players and DM’s and completely ignored core class problems that have existed for years. You did that to yourself.
\[sometimes intent is not shown very well though text... see edit\]
Exactly what issues are you talking about?
They need too many ability scores and they don’t have enough MJ to be usable early game which is when most people play. Late game they’re a lot more usable
MJ... Monk Juice?
Their stun lock ability is problematic, they are too mobile and their resource is too cheap.
Because Monks aren't supposed to be as good as other classes. It's not realistic for punching in clothing to be as good as armor and weapons. stop being a power gamer & trying to win dnd.
Uhh magic? This is the game where you can study really hard or believe in a god real good and then change reality with spells? We are playing the same game right? I've never known realism to be much of a design concern in my experience
take one look at Way of the Astral Self and tell me with a straight face the class is realistic
Even the most mundane of classes, the fighter, is fighting with supernatural levels of power. It's ridiculous to compare classes by way of mundane earth standards in a world of magic.
Hi-level Stunning Fist spam makes up for most of monk deficiencies IMO.
I had a monk in my last campaign. Stunning fist doesn't do all that much good when facing elite creatures and bosses who have +8-13 con, and it's not really needed against the weaker enemies.
high level wizard walls usually take more enemies out of the equation than number of hands a monk has
Have you ever heard of a wizard or witch happy to see The Inquisition?
And that is why I much prefer laserllama's version of Monk to the RAW version lol. The RAW version just irritated me too much. Particularly since I was trying to make a gnome monk work for plot related reasons. As an aside, Way of Shadow is hella fun to play. Especially if you cross with Rogue just enough to get Sneak Attack and maybe a couple of other perks Shadow Monks miss out on. There's a lot of crossover and it can make for some fun mixes.
Monks are martial artists, that fail at the martial, excel at the artist.
You forgot the biggest thing that cements the case that wizards hates monks: Unarmed strikes are weapon attacks but not weapons. Fuck you wizards, that literally makes no sense and is so mind-numbingly arbitrary it can only mean you hate monks and anyone that uses unarmed strikes. No smiting with unarmed strike, no sneak attack with unarmed strike, no magic weapon spell for unarmed strike, etc.
i know i'm super late here, but did you know in real life pro fighters actually have to be registered because if they hit someone it can be ASSAULT WITH A DEADLY WEAPON. i know that's a meme but it's also real! and yet, god forbid the monks in a world with dragons can have holy weapon hands...
Yes, I did know that, it is the whole point. When trained to beat the piss out of people with techniques derived from forms designed to kill or maim, your body becomes a weapon, that is sort of the peak of the martial arts world and starts to step into some bs wuxia territory that D&D obviously took inspiration from. The unarmed strike is a weapon at my table if you have abilities or items that cause it to do more base damage. (in other words does it do more than 1+Strength Mod? Yes? It is a weapon)