Monk Adjustment

[tstewt1921]

My DM wants me to try a monk with an adjustment, he will be giving the monk a full BAB with losing the AC bonus and possibly the extra movement speed. What would be the proper way of changing the flurry of blows? We are toying with moving it at basically whatever attack bonus you're at is where the flurry is at as an option? What do yall think?

[MaxiDuRaritry]

My DM wants me to try a monk with an adjustment, he will be giving the monk a full BAB with losing the AC bonus and possibly the extra movement speed. What would be the proper way of changing the flurry of blows? We are toying with moving it at basically whatever attack bonus you're at is where the flurry is at as an option? What do yall think?Monks are terrible at combat as-is, and he wants to take an unarmed combatant that already has issues with a low AC and remove the only real source of AC bonus it gets?

...Really?

[tstewt1921]

Monks are terrible at combat as-is, and he wants to take an unarmed combatant that already has issues with a low AC and removes the only real source of AC bonus it gets?

...Really?

It would still be keeping the Wisdom bonus to AC, just the extra ac thing in exchange for the full attack, it's an option we are working with, we are just trying to figure out how the flurry would be.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

It would still be keeping the Wisdom bonus to AC, just the extra ac thing in exchange for the full attack, it's an option we are working with, we are just trying to figure out how the flurry would be.So the idea is to lose a good chunk of your main defense any time you actually need to have it, when it's already pretty anemic.

Not the best idea I've ever heard.

[edit] Try boosting the extra AC bonus, have the flurry of blows work similarly to the Snap Kick feat any time you make an attack (including single attacks, like charges), and encourage monk users to enhance their unarmed strikes in interesting and useful ways (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?285801-Tippy-s-Terrifically-Terrible-Trial/page25&p=15474863#post15474863).

You might be surprised at how useful at-will incorporeality via Ghost Touch and the ability to throw your body around the battlefield via Throwing and Distance can be.

Full BAB would be a gods-send as well.

[Crichton]

My DM wants me to try a monk with an adjustment, he will be giving the monk a full BAB with losing the AC bonus and possibly the extra movement speed. What would be the proper way of changing the flurry of blows? We are toying with moving it at basically whatever attack bonus you're at is where the flurry is at as an option? What do yall think?



I'm not sure I understand the bolded part. Flurry is self explanatory, regardless of your current BAB.

Just ignore the table, and use the text to calculate your current set of attack bonuses:
From levels 1-4, you get one extra attack at your current BAB, but ALL attacks, including those ones, take -2 for the rest of the round.
From levels 5-8, that penalty is only -1 for all attacks (when using flurry)
From level 9 onward, there is no penalty, so you just get a free attack at your highest BAB (and at 11 it becomes 2 free extra attacks)


So just take your current set of attacks for whatever BAB you have at that level, and subtract the appropriate penalty number from it, and add the appropriate number of bonus attacks.





For what it's worth, losing both your bonus AC and your speed would make this a horrible idea, nigh-unplayable(in comparison to other class options) in my opinion. You should lobby hard for it not to lose the speed. That's a key feature for Monks, and BAB doesn't really make up for it. If this is the ruling, I'd rather have the Monk as written, with no changes.

Losing only the bonus AC would be decent, but you'll have to spend a fair amount of your resources to shore up your AC in Monk-friendly ways, throughout your character's career, and you'll be even MADder than usual, with DEX for AC being even more important than it already is.

[Mike Miller]

I must echo the above posters, do not remove the AC bonus. I also don't believe you should remove the fast speed. Monk's get lots of things. However, these things are not valuable. Removing a couple of the arguably more useful abilities is no way to treat an already underpowered class. Full BAB is nice, but it is barely scratching the surface of what would be needed to bring monk up to the competitive level of more competent martial characters.

[daremetoidareyo]

Free full BAB solves a bunch of issues. You don't need to mess with the other stuff. You become a flavor of fighter. Find a way to target non-fort saves using your best attribute to set Docs and you should be competent

[tstewt1921]

Gotcha, yeah after re-reading flurry it makes sense, we don't have to do much adjusting. Thanks for all the info! Going to talk to him about keeping the speed for sure, the thing about the AC bonus is it's so little of extra AC, and unfortunately after a certain point we haven't found a way to make AC matter, we focus more on reducing the damage and different things to that extent.

[Psyren]

If you want "full BAB monk without the AC bonus" may I suggest Pathfinder's Brawler? (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/hybrid-classes/brawler/) They at least get to wear light armor.

[Kurald Galain]

Just use Pathfinder's monk (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/unchained-classes/monk-unchained/). Among other things, it gets full BAB and pounce. Problem solved.

[Silvercrys]

If your group is absolutely going forward with testing these changes, you just use your new BAB as the base for the free attacks at -2/-1/-0 as appropriate for your level. You should be able to use the actual rules in the Flurry class feature to figure out what the appropriate attacks and bonuses are, it tells you exactly how many extra attacks and what penalty you take for using it rather than referring you to the table. In summary:

At level 1 you can make 1 extra attack at your highest BAB and all of your attacks take a -2 penalty.

At level 6 the penalty is decreased to -1.

At level 9 the penalty is removed entirely.

At level 11 you can make a second additional attack at your highest BAB.

(If you wanted to buff the monk a bit more you could use your BAB instead of class level for these and add a few more at the top end, something like penalty reductions at level 4 and 6 with the first extra attack at level 8 and a third attack at level 15).

Gonna echo the other posters that Monk with full BAB and no other changes is still not even that strong of a class, though, and I don't think I would even want to play one with the changes your DM is making.

Your chance to hit increases by 25% across an entire 20 level career, but your chance to be hit increases by the same amount over a standard Monk, your HD still sucks for a frontliner, and you can't even outrun something once you realize you made the mistake of trying to frontline with a d8 hit dice. You should try to lobby for at least a d10 hit dice if you have to accept the other changes -- it's the difference between needing a Con of 16 to scrape by and needing a Con of 14.

The changes also remove "melee skirmisher" as an archetype from the game entirely because Monk is the only class with enough speed bonuses to perform it effectively (well, at higher levels you can do it with shadow pounce I suppose). That leaves your choices for striking the enemy's back line limited to ranged weapons.

But yeah with these changes I'd just want to play a fighter. Even for a grapple build I'd get armor spikes and such, way easier to enchant than unarmed strikes, and I can wear armor and stuff so my stats don't need to be super high. This Monk needs an 18 Wisdom and 16 Dex just to get the same AC as a Chain Shirt and 16 Dex. Maybe it's fine if you use a really high powered point buy and can put a 16 in both and still have 18 Str/Con but these changes are an overall nerf.

[Elves]

You might be surprised at how useful at-will incorporeality via Ghost Touch and the ability to throw your body around the battlefield via Throwing and Distance can be.

To say that because a monk's unarmed strikes can be made with any part of their body, "their whole body counts as a weapon" is a total stretch.

It also ignores the glossary definition of unarmed strike (PHB 314): "A successful blow, typically dealing nonlethal damage, from a character attacking without weapons." The blow, not the appendage used to make the blow -- just as the name indicates.

Sofawall has some great stuff but this part of that build doesn't work.