Had a question about balance.

[Dmitropher]

Hey all,
I'm currently messing around with some homebrewing, and I was fooling about with Monk as a starting point, because I've always found monk to be strangely balanced, and a very specific feel of monk which does not necessarily fit with my own. I personally never really liked the idea of granting bonus AC equal to Wisdom (just my own silly quirks), so I'm thinking about doing something quite stupid instead. I also removed the flat AC bonus per 5 levels. There is a line of red text: I'm not sure if I want to keep this portion of the rule.


Fast Paced (Ex):
The monk has spent years training to be the quickest, be it in a monastery, or on the streets, always scrambling for survival. Not only is the Monk faster than the average person, but he or she also knows how to use that speed in combat, darting in and out of range, dodging attacks at the last second using hardened reflexes.
The Monk gains a +1 dodge bonus to AC per level per 10ft of move speed above their racial base move speed, provided this bonus does not exceed his or her monk level. This includes bonus move speed provided from an outside source, however this bonus cannot exceed his or her monk level (max +10 at 10th level).

In addition, a monk may gain an additional +1 dodge bonus to AC/10ft of total move speed by forgoing a move action in a round, provided that this bonus does not exceed his or her monk level. The monk may not fight defensively in the same round as he or she forgoes his or her move action in a round in this way.

These bonuses to AC apply even against touch attacks but not when the monk is flat-footed. She loses these bonuses when she is immobilized or helpless, when she wears any armor, when she carries a shield, or when she carries a medium or heavy load.


The bonus move speed progression is as follows:
{table]1|+10
2|+10
3|+10
4|+20
5|+20
6|+20
7|+30
8|+30
9|+30
10|+40
11|+40
12|+40
13|+50
14|+50
15|+50
16|+60
17|+60
18|+60
19|+70
20|+70
[/table]


Given other features of the class, I'm assuming that most players will take an ability score distribution something like:
Str:15 Dex:17 Con:13 Int:12 Wis:10 Cha:10

Total AC:

At level 5: 10+4(Dex) + 3(total Move Speed bonuses) + 1(Magic Item) = 18
(Assumptions: +1 to Dex at level 4, Some sort of magic item to enhance movement by +10ft or buff from ally, some sort of magic item to grant +1 AC)
At level 10: 10 + 5(Dex) + 6(total move speed bonuses) + 2(magic items) = 23
(Assumptions: Dex enhancing items up to +2 bonus to dex score, better movement enhancement magic item or buff from ally +20ft, some sort of magic item that grants +2 AC)
At level 15: 10 + 7(Dex) + 9(total move speed bonuses) + 3(magic items) = 29
(Assumptions: +1 to dex at level 8 and at level 12, Dex enhancing items up to +4 bonus to dex, better movement enhancement magic item or buff from ally +40ft, some sort of magic item that grants +3 AC)
At level 20: 10 + 8(Dex) + 12(total move speed bonuses) + 4(magic items/potions etc) = 34
(Assumptions: Dex enhancing items up to +6 bonus to Dex Score, better movement enhancement magic item or buff from ally +50ft, some sort of magic item that grants +4 AC

There is also an ability in the works (I'm not even going to post the draft, it's quite rough) which gives an additional benefit to fighting defensively, which I hope will be enough to raise AC to a slightly better level (a light armor fighter is my target).

Bottom line: is this a bad direction to start working in? I know there is little magic in the core RAW world that increases movement speed, but hell there's Haste, and Expeditious Retreat (I see nothing wrong with allowing a nerfed version of that spell be a touch spell).

Edit: A few more of the riskier decisions (IMHO) that I've been making:
1) I was thinking about starting with four or five weapon proficiencies (dagger, quarterstaff, club, guantlets, brass knuckles) and giving the player the option to (every X levels) gain a new proficiency, and treat the new weapon as a monk weapon. All of the starting weapons are treated as special monk weapons.

2) I wanted to give some sort of additional bonuses to dodge when fighting defensively or taking the total defense action. My current thought was to grant an additional one-half of existing dodge bonuses (including the bonus for fighting defensively or total defense) in addition to existing bonus and then possibly progressing that to simply adding the dodge bonuses a second time. My worry with a mechanic like this is that it makes it harder to deal burst damage: if most of your AC comes from fighting defensively you're never going to use flurry of blows against any even slightly threatening opponent. That might not be a bad thing. I would really like to figure out a way to give them more AC without just giving a flat bonus, a non-Dex ability bonus, or forcing them to fight defensively all the time.

Anyway: questions, comments, criticisms and playful ribaldry all welcome!

[Yitzi]

If your goal is a good light armor fighter, I'd advise the following changes (instead of what you're doing):
1. Cut his skillpoints/level and skill list somewhat, probably down to around the level of paladin. Also remove any of his special abilities that doesn't really fit.
2. Give him full BAB, and consider raising his hit die to d10.
3. Make Flurry of Blows apply to standard actions as well.
4. Give him Weapon Finesse as a bonus feat. This should replace the unarmed Strike progression and his level 1 bonus feats.
5. Give him some ability score (probably WIS) to damage instead of STR; light armor means high DEX and low STR, so you don't want him to need STR for damage.
6. Give him new uses for AoOs; sidestep charge as a bonus feat (or even a variant that allows him to take an AoO before the charge attack) could work well. Mobility as a free feat might work well too.

[silphael]

At the opposite to Yitzi first point, I strongly recommend never cuting down skill lists and skill points: everyone should be able to do things outside fight, especially non int-based characters. If you want you monk to become good, allow him to apply dex to hit and to damage, it will reduce MADness.

[Dmitropher]

If your goal is a good light armor fighter, I'd advise the following changes (instead of what you're doing):
1. Cut his skillpoints/level and skill list somewhat, probably down to around the level of paladin. Also remove any of his special abilities that doesn't really fit.

No. Sorry, but there aren't really enough skills to warrant removing, and the shear uselessness of all non-tier 1 classes at higher levels is somewhat offset by the ability to solve problems with high modifiers to skill checks.

(I don't think that even giving fighter a buttload of skills and skill points would make it anything but tier 4 or 5, (though it would make rogue pretty useless except as a trapfinder))


2. Give him full BAB, and consider raising his hit die to d10.

I already gave him full BAB. I was considering raising hit die to D10, but I don't know if it would make him a bit too tanky. The flavor I was going for was incredibly high mobility: as such I am including a number of features that aid our dude in moving around any battle field with ease. The idea is that this guy can jump in and out of melee with ease, and deal a large amount of burst damage every time he does. Having fewer hit points ensures that he has to jump from target to target, avoiding full attacks and power attacks.


3. Make Flurry of Blows apply to standard actions as well.

No. Why would I do that? Then I'd have to allow him to make his full attack as a standard action, too... or maybe I could... that would be pretty funny... but no. I just don't think it makes sense that you should be able to make 6 attacks twice as fast as three attacks. However, like I said before, getting from one side of the battlefield to the other is no issue for our dude, and he can just chill on a total defense action until he can make a full attack and drop buffed flurry of blows (keep in mind that flurry of blows depends on the base number of attacks... which goes up when you give him good BAB)


4. Give him Weapon Finesse as a bonus feat. This should replace the
unarmed Strike progression and his level 1 bonus feats.

Not quite what I'm doing, but pretty close: I was going to expand the options for the first few bonus feats to include weapon finesse, the spring attack tree, and the Brawl tree (from D20 modern). I feel like this gives them enough bonus feats that their regular feats will easily fill the gaps to finish at least two or three trees (brawl, weapon focus, combat expertise, spring attack, or unarmed strike trees). This leaves the player a metric poopton of options in terms of feat progression, giving that little bit of customization that is needed to make a class fun for players. Or you know, the only thing players like other than damage.



5. Give him some ability score (probably WIS) to damage instead of STR; light armor means high DEX and low STR, so you don't want him to need STR for damage.

I mean... after I buffed up FoB, you get three +8 attacks and one +3 attack at level 11 even with just base dice (you know, not wearing flaming bladed bracers of death) thats a bunch of damage... tacking more bonuses to each attack is a little excessive... keeping in mind that just because low str seems optimal, some dipstick is going to roll three high scores, and then you might as well give our dude 2x strength to damage.


6. Give him new uses for AoOs; sidestep charge as a bonus feat (or even a variant that allows him to take an AoO before the charge attack) could work well. Mobility as a free feat might work well too.

I didn't note this, because of the very rough nature of my notes at this time (they're in two notebooks, and a document on my computer, along with a very tentative and mostly empty progression table) but I did want to increase the options for the regular monk bonus feats.

Notably I wanted to add Dodge as an option at level 1, Mobility at level 2, and Spring attack at 6. There are other feats I want to add as options, but... I really want to think hard about what feats I want to give and which ones I don't...I don't just want to be making a "better" fighter, I really want to make sure that this class has a different feel.

However, I still don't get if you liked the one ability I was asking about or not :( ... all of the other features of the class are written one time, in pencil, in a notebook (which would be why I didn't put them in the OP), this is the only one I've actually spent some time and math checking for viability.