Long Death Longevity?

[JellyPooga]

It's something that came up in another thread recently about hard-to-kill characters, but it's been a pretty staple comment since SCAG came out; whenever someone asks for advice on a character that is hard to put down, someone always brings up the Long Death Monk.

Now, don't get me wrong; the temp HP on a "kill shot" and the "never drop to 0 HP" thing are great for, well, not dying but is there really anything else that reinforces the Long Death Monk as being a toughie?

I mean, let's look at the facts;

- d8 HD isn't great. It's not terrible if you can afford a decent Con, but Monks are pretty MAD at the best of times; Con is a secondary stat at best.

- They're pretty much forced to use Unarmoured AC and if they devote all their focus to bumping Dex and Wis they can have 20 AC at level 16 (using point-buy stats). That's as good as it gets, though. Not without magic items and even then, other classes get more and better access to items and that leaves Monks trailing still. More likely, they'll spend most of their career with AC in the 16-18 range. Hardly good enough to "tough it out" when they're being attacked.

- Deflect Arrows is a solid defensive ability, but only 1/round and only vs. ranged attacks. If anyone's attacking you at range, you're probably taking more than one shot; your low AC doesn't help you here.

- Evasion gives you good AoE defence, but is otherwise irrelevant.

- Diamond Soul is great...except it doesn't come online until level 14. That's edging into late-game territory and many games don't run that hot. Even then, it's only proficiency and a further drain on your Ki pool to get the re-roll.

...aaaand that's it for defences. Yes, they've got stun and fear and some other toys to play with that register on the "good offence=good defence" scale and they're nice and maneuverable to try and avoid being attacked in the first place, but for actual being straight up tough and hard to put down, all they really have going for them is Mastery of Death and once you're using that, your Ki pool is going to plummet very quickly.

When you bear in mind that getting to the point of using MoD is going to happen pretty quickly due to an almost complete lack of other strong defences, Long Death Monk is compensating for a weakness rather than actively promoting a strength.

So what am I missing? Yes, Long Death Monk looks hard to put down because putting him on 0 HP takes a whole bunch of attacks, but getting a LDMonk down to 1 HP doesn't appear to be much of a challenge and once there, it's just a matter of love-tapping him until he's down and/or largely ineffective due to lack of Ki.

[Addaran]

It's something that came up in another thread recently about hard-to-kill characters, but it's been a pretty staple comment since SCAG came out; whenever someone asks for advice on a character that is hard to put down, someone always brings up the Long Death Monk.

Now, don't get me wrong; the temp HP on a "kill shot" and the "never drop to 0 HP" thing are great for, well, not dying but is there really anything else that reinforces the Long Death Monk as being a toughie?

I mean, let's look at the facts;

- d8 HD isn't great. It's not terrible if you can afford a decent Con, but Monks are pretty MAD at the best of times; Con is a secondary stat at best.

- They're pretty much forced to use Unarmoured AC and if they devote all their focus to bumping Dex and Wis they can have 20 AC at level 16 (using point-buy stats). That's as good as it gets, though. Not without magic items and even then, other classes get more and better access to items and that leaves Monks trailing still. More likely, they'll spend most of their career with AC in the 16-18 range. Hardly good enough to "tough it out" when they're being attacked.

- Deflect Arrows is a solid defensive ability, but only 1/round and only vs. ranged attacks. If anyone's attacking you at range, you're probably taking more than one shot; your low AC doesn't help you here.

- Evasion gives you good AoE defence, but is otherwise irrelevant.

- Diamond Soul is great...except it doesn't come online until level 14. That's edging into late-game territory and many games don't run that hot. Even then, it's only proficiency and a further drain on your Ki pool to get the re-roll.

...aaaand that's it for defences. Yes, they've got stun and fear and some other toys to play with that register on the "good offence=good defence" scale and they're nice and maneuverable to try and avoid being attacked in the first place, but for actual being straight up tough and hard to put down, all they really have going for them is Mastery of Death and once you're using that, your Ki pool is going to plummet very quickly.

When you bear in mind that getting to the point of using MoD is going to happen pretty quickly due to an almost complete lack of other strong defences, Long Death Monk is compensating for a weakness rather than actively promoting a strength.

So what am I missing? Yes, Long Death Monk looks hard to put down because putting him on 0 HP takes a whole bunch of attacks, but getting a LDMonk down to 1 HP doesn't appear to be much of a challenge and once there, it's just a matter of love-tapping him until he's down and/or largely ineffective due to lack of Ki.

Don't forget that monks have great movement so they can hit-and-run (a lot also take Mobility for that). And they still have Stunning Fist for control, if fighting one strong enemy.

They can also fear the enemy at-will, giving them disadvantage for their attacks. It's a good buy time solution if the rest of your team is very damage-centric and you're tanking.

[jitzul]

Long death monk is my first character in d&d ever. Started at 3rd level the beginning of the year and am now at lvl 10 (not able to play that character much because of irl getting in the way.). And at least to me all the people going on and on about the long death monk (and monks in general) being "unkillable battlefield controlling monsters" have a never actually played or seen a monk played past a one shot.

The temp hp thing is nice but it's really only nice if your dm likes throwing low hp minions at you. The fear is nice but only if you are practically the only melee in the group or you go before all the melee in your group and the enemy is more then 30 feet away from your ally's and you have high wisdom so the saving throw is hard for the enemy. The d8 hit dice absolutely works against you in the long run especially if you have a con lower then 14. Before my group got a fighter with high as hell ac and a barbarian from levels 3 to 7 I was almost always the first to go down.

Idk maybe I suck at playing a long death monk which is very possible since I'm bad at most games I play. But the "tanking ability's" of the long death monk before level 11 or vastly vastly overstated by people who like I said earlier are most likely theory crafters who have never actually played or seen a monk being played in real life. Imo the monk with the most longevity is open hand, shadow, and sun soul. Open hand for the heal. Shadow monk for the stealth. And sun soul for the hit and run ranged attacks.

Sorry if this post is a mess I am not great at writing anything.

[jitzul]

And they still have Stunning Fist for control, if fighting one strong enemy.


God forbid that one strong enemy be a dragon, giant, or anything with a high con score. In that case stunning strike would be a wast of ki.

[Addaran]

Yeah, obviously don't stunning fist something with great AC. I was mostly refering in the boss vs mook sense.


Long death monk is my first character in d&d ever. Started at 3rd level the beginning of the year and am now at lvl 10 (not able to play that character much because of irl getting in the way.). And at least to me all the people going on and on about the long death monk (and monks in general) being "unkillable battlefield controlling monsters" have a never actually played or seen a monk played past a one shot.

The temp hp thing is nice but it's really only nice if your dm likes throwing low hp minions at you. The fear is nice but only if you are practically the only melee in the group or you go before all the melee in your group and the enemy is more then 30 feet away from your ally's and you have high wisdom so the saving throw is hard for the enemy. The d8 hit dice absolutely works against you in the long run especially if you have a con lower then 14. Before my group got a fighter with high as hell ac and a barbarian from levels 3 to 7 I was almost always the first to go down.

Idk maybe I suck at playing a long death monk which is very possible since I'm bad at most games I play. But the "tanking ability's" of the long death monk before level 11 or vastly vastly overstated by people who like I said earlier are most likely theory crafters who have never actually played or seen a monk being played in real life. Imo the monk with the most longevity is open hand, shadow, and sun soul. Open hand for the heal. Shadow monk for the stealth. And sun soul for the hit and run ranged attacks.

Sorry if this post is a mess I am not great at writing anything.

I think people talk more about Long Death Monk being extremely hard to kill, not that they are good tanks. If the monk is carefull and hit-and-run, he's very hard to kill. My friend is very strategic and he's usually the most survivable thanks to his choice of class. He likes to have lots of tricks to survive. He also like illusionnist (C&C) and Bladelock(5ed). His "worst" character was his wild mage, who still have lots of control spells and could invoke advantage.