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Ogrillian
2019-03-03, 03:41 AM
I’ve been playing a spear wielding monk for a while now, and a friend of mine wanted to play a punching machine monk, we’re both Martial arts fans, and he wanted to know why a monk’s attacks are reduced to using slow kicks for their unarmed strikes. I told him to re-read the manual it counts as any body part. And he came up with the following reasons.

1. An untrained person can use 2 or more punches, elbows, and headbuts in the same time a trained person could swing anything heavier than a dagger.

2. A level 20 monk is the master over their own body, yet somehow cannot swing their own arms more than a 20lb Greataxe wielded by a level 5 fighter,
.

3. Anyone who has watched Cops or MMA knows a headbut does NOT require a free hand, but restrained hands reduces kicking ability.

Yes I know this involves real world mechanics, but he brought up an interesting argument, and he has valid points

Can anyone think of a way to change this to be more realistic, either by class rules or subclass? No multiclassing is allowed for players.

Ashtagon
2019-03-03, 04:21 AM
Okay, first up, anyone who thinks a basic untrained warrior can only swing their first (or other weapon) once every six seconds has no real idea of how real combat works. An "attack" in D&D doesn't represent all the swings the character makes. It reflects only the number of swings (or pokes with a pointy stick) the warrior can make in that six-second round that have a chance of hitting. All the rest are feints, ruses, and "Flynning" with no real game effect.

Second, last time I checked, a level 20 monk can make 5 or 6 attacks per round, which seems a bit more than the one that a level 5 fighter can do with his greataxe.

Composer99
2019-03-03, 09:42 AM
Monks are really more the mystical style of unarmed combatants. If you want a "realistic" straight-up unarmed martial artist who gets lots of attacks, with no multiclassing I guess you're stuck with fighter with the tavern brawler feat. (Otherwise, one to three levels of monk for bonus action unarmed strikes would be helpful along with, say, the open hand techniques.) If you want to keep up in damage output, though, you'd stick with a monk. (If multiclassing were allowed, a couple of levels of fighter for the action surge would be decent.)

It's not really productive to talk about "realism" per se when it comes to D&D combat, since it's such a regimented abstraction.

If you wanted a monk whose shtick was just attack more, I guess you could brew a subclass that, for its 11th level feature, got to use ki to make an additional attack when it takes the Attack action on its turn. I wouldn't go any further than that, methinks.

Ogrillian
2019-03-04, 11:14 AM
A lvl 20 monk gets 4 hits USING the Flurry of Blows skill : Attack; Extra Att; & FoB and A Lvl5 fighter would get 4 using A. Surge. Attack+Extra Att. (Surge) Attack+Extra Att and that’s WITHOUT Bonus Action

thanks for the suggestions will be making the argument for the multi-class action surge or a feat that allows the Multi-Attack as the monks normal attack.

JNAProductions
2019-03-04, 11:26 AM
A lvl 20 monk gets 4 hits USING the Flurry of Blows skill : Attack; Extra Att; & FoB and A Lvl5 fighter would get 4 using A. Surge. Attack+Extra Att. (Surge) Attack+Extra Att and that’s WITHOUT Bonus Action

thanks for the suggestions will be making the argument for the multi-class action surge or a feat that allows the Multi-Attack as the monks normal attack.

Note that a level 5 Monk also gets 4 attacks with Flurry of Blows.

Ogrillian
2019-03-05, 04:45 AM
Unless they’ve changed it the PHB says two attacks with FoB.

Either the additional unarmed strike from Martial Arts or the two strikes granted by Flurry of Blows use a bonus action. (PHB p.78, variously)

But "you can take only one bonus action on your turn, so you must choose which bonus action to use when you have more than one available to you." (PHB p.189, "Bonus Actions")

But your post gave me an idea, number of attacks could equal Dex Modifier or similar stat

Composer99
2019-03-05, 07:18 AM
Monks get 4 attacks from 5th level on with the Attack action and Flurry of Blows.

Vogie
2019-03-06, 02:53 PM
I’ve been playing a spear wielding monk for a while now, and a friend of mine wanted to play a punching machine monk, we’re both Martial arts fans, and he wanted to know why a monk’s attacks are reduced to using slow kicks for their unarmed strikes. I told him to re-read the manual it counts as any body part. And he came up with the following reasons.

1. An untrained person can use 2 or more punches, elbows, and headbuts in the same time a trained person could swing anything heavier than a dagger.

2. A level 20 monk is the master over their own body, yet somehow cannot swing their own arms more than a 20lb Greataxe wielded by a level 5 fighter.

3. Anyone who has watched Cops or MMA knows a headbut does NOT require a free hand, but restrained hands reduces kicking ability.

Yes I know this involves real world mechanics, but he brought up an interesting argument, and he has valid points

Can anyone think of a way to change this to be more realistic, either by class rules or subclass? No multiclassing is allowed for players.

Easy - The questions are all wrong, and based on faulty assumptions.

1) Yes, an untrained person can throw blows that are effectively limp noodles. Being able to make a blow that actually has the potential to damage someone wearing medium or heavy armor, that takes effort - either speed or accuracy. Say, you could probably fit in 1 unarmed attacks in a six-second window. Same way that, if you don't know how to use a knife but bring it to a fight anyway, you're much more likely have just donated a knife to your opponent.

2) Even without using Ki, a monk would be able to make three attacks per turn starting at level 3 5 (EDIT: my bad): 2 during the attack action, and a bonus action unarmed attack. At 20, Drunken Master Monks can land up to 5, while a Open hand monk can literally touch a person, walk away, wait 18 days, then potentially kill them with a snap of their fingers.

3) Restrained hands only reduces kicking ability if trained as such. You put Chuck Norris, Van Damme, or anyone trained in Capoeira in handcuffs, and their damage won't go down in the slightest. Compare that to Sherriff Average Jo who maybe goes to a crossfit box, who likely can't kick anything more that 3 feet off the ground without potentially falling down. Johnny Law is not going to be Donnie Yen.

And if you want to include headbutting, (which, it should be mentioned MMA bans BTW) then look at the stats for minotaur's gore ability, and copy it, with the following changes:

a smaller damage die
bludgeoning damage instead of piercing
Is available only after grappling a target, or after dashing
have it deal you damage equal to half the damage dished out.
Because, lets be fair, that's not something you should be doing all the time.

JNAProductions
2019-03-06, 02:56 PM
2) Did you mean level 5?

Ogrillian
2019-03-07, 05:48 AM
Thanks for the help the issue was taken care of by changing the number of FoB’s attacks to gain another attack at levels 6,11,&14, nothing that steps on a fighter’s toes and he has to really work for it. And Vogie thank you for the counter arguments will be sure to use them if this ever comes up again. Although you should look up UFC 1, as long as you didn’t bite or gauge eyes you were pretty much good.