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Hanuman
2013-09-27, 08:07 PM
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This is a progressive monk design and philosophy discussion.

I've been thinking a while about how I would want to create a monk remake, inspired by my own martial arts background and studies, media containing martial arts, wire fighting and wuxia, legends and stories in books and verbal, and when it comes down to it the dnd monk is actually not bad, it's just that the execution is so difficult to execute that the balance tends to be very difficult.

One of the solutions I've been playing with in general balancing and fluff is the concept of generalization, this means that you can abstract some concepts to BETTER retain their flavor, and balancing becomes miles easier.

First of all, a monk's flurry of blows is their bread and butter, unarmed strikes at high speed, mobility of limbs instead of 2-10lb+ is a lot faster and easier, the issue is that the more die you get the more ineffective you end up being.

A solution came to mind, a cross between an AoE, a dervish and an attack pool system.

The monk may have and expand a threatened area, and make one roll per area instead of attack. The monk would have flurry charges rather than attack rolls and these could be expended in any division per turn.

How this would work, is similar to and AoE spell. You'd measure the enemies AC to your attack roll as a 'reverse' save, then apply your attack to any foe that your attack roll beats.

You would re-roll your flurry every time your movement changed, and your threatened area would increase as you advanced, allowing you to dance around that area, ending your turn in any square you wanted within it, allowing you to be a very mobile character, and out-maneuvering foes better as you level rather than just getting better at trying (which is the main problem with melee, See: Guy at the Gym theory).


Second, a monk is supposed to be able to move people, and by that I mean move their bodies around. This is expressed mostly from trip and grapple as bonus feats. I'm not a fan of this, mostly because it expresses a very limited scope of potential, better expressed in other classes and adding awkward support-ish roles to the monk as a debuffer.

The solution is to gain follow-ups, free actions caused by the success of debuffing or vice versa. This could emulate a single action, such as an attack causing a free bullrush, forcing the foe backwards or the same for trip, damaging a foe and attempting to make them fall at the same time.
Vice versa you may attempt to disrupt a foe tripping them, then following up with a kick in the teeth which would gain effectiveness by their debuffed state.

This could all trigger out of flurry, using your flurry pool for actions instead of gaining free ones.


Third, the monk is supposed to be a supernatural being, with divine powers and the supernatural ability to dodge things. This is to combat the increasing deadliness of encounters, and the potential for the monk to die at any given time as he needs to be a pseudo-midline focused on scrimming. With magic fist enhancements that allow him to penetrate supernatural armor.

To me, it seems like the abilities of debuffing such as stunning blow or quivering palm seem like the things that the monk should choose from, and the bonus feats should be available to every monk. Regardless if you are tai chi chuan, systema or kung fu, you are likely going to get proficient far before you master them, and the simple matter is that the skill-capacity in dnd is much higher than in real life. It should not be unlikely that someone would be a master grappler, tripper, melee fighter, mobility specialist with a high degree in proficiency in all of them in the world of DnD, and if you make the debuffs optional you can choose what you 'actually' master, retaining the contrast of flavor. In real life there's very specific forms of martial mastery, such as BJJ which would be an example of a highly focused grappling style, but monks simply should not have such a strictly focused martial path, it should be an exception to be so linear, and when the exception is made then it should be a tier 3 (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?PHPSESSID=t1ba8et7hnc55rr7njelmomsa7&topic=5293) optionality in that direction, not balanced in option intensity and power to a fighter regardless.

The supernatural powers of a monk are not necessary flavor, they really should be an ACF option, or be modular options the monk may choose between at any time (either works). Their mechanical flavor however may be necessary, the concept of supernatural awareness to gain a flat risk of being hit (AC bonus) does not have to be the only execution of this defense, as an optional route the monk can easily have limited use damage reduction, creating short trades in a melee skirmish scenario then a quick duck-out.

On the point of having magical fists. This flavor is simply not necessary.
I spoke to a friend of mine (deceased) about the balance functionality around monks a few years ago and we agreed that the main problem of the monk is that it's essentially like kicking an object. At low levels you are kicking something fragile, but at high levels you are kicking something more malleable, such as a tin can. You can squash a tin can as a monk using a save-or-die, ect, but the entire purpose of a monk is to be a martial artist and when you're primarily engaging foes with the intention of wuxia instead of combat the point of the class becomes a PrC in itself, drifting away from the original concept.

The execution behind bypassing damage reduction should be at heart to do increased damage. The idea of a flurry pool is to land rapid actions against multiple targets, where as if your target is very durable then landing off-hits are just going to be contextually delaying them. Landing single shots is or should be about the equivalent of using maneuvers at a slightly more sustainable pace, so a damage increase is not such a bad idea despite the biting feeling it would be too powerful and should be limited.

As a quick example, at 4th level+ a monster may gain damage reduction 5, the monk is given a damage enhancement to his single strike of aprox. 5 damage, a maneuver will be above this damage yet is frontloaded. Granting the monk extra damage on standard action attacks at the rate monsters generally gain damage reduction should retain in balance both in and outside the balance of the original monk. This would also bypass hardness as a similar measure, and finally it would allow a monk to have a devastating attack against an unprotected opponent. Slight tweaks could be made to overcome damage reduction such as a special combat focus (warrior's way (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=192596)) so that a monk could do fine once the characters are adventuring in a demon pit where you can be assured to have lots of damage reduction. The finishing thought process is that damage reduction is situational, and forcing that as a balancepoint makes the monk herself situational.

In addition, funneling the monk's BAB into this one attack would limit the amount of rolls (at a high level) a monk needs to make as a standard function, if a monk attempt a +15/+10/+5 full attack at level 20, why not a +20 (+dmg) instead?
The functionality should simply be in there, it should not be forced, but power attack or hitting multiple times sometimes simply does not fit this flavor as it is too specific and the core combat structure cannot be changed without additional flavor changes.

Further expanding on the idea that the monk has a zone or range to work with, this could extend simply to fall damage reduction, fast movement, evasion added movement, and other movement abilities. This zone would advance, simplifying multiple mechanical advancements and book keeping to a single range.

That's all I can think of for now, let me know what you guys think about any of the concepts presented.