Updating 1e OA Monk

[Tusen]

Firstly: Tell me if I put this in the wrong section. I wasn't sure if a prefix is required or not since this is my first thread.

So this thread is generally about updating AD&D 1e OA monk to 3.5, below is a bunch of information (aka: a rant) to provide some background knowledge so you don't have to go and dig up your AD&D 1e OA book to discuss this. Sorry if this has been done before, I couldn't find it but I probably didn't search as hard as I should have.

Okay, so I'd say it's pretty well known that martials got shafted as they were brought forward to 3.x, a bunch of styles got nerfs to their attacks per round, had relatively worse saves in terms of frequency while everyone got a general buff to their HP since high con bonuses became larger and easier to get, while magic users didn't level up slower than martials any more. However, the boy that was done the absolute dirtiest in my opinion is the monk.

Leaving the details about why the shift happened which could risk this thread going off-topic, we can say that the assassin and the monk (among others) were already done dirty by the transfer from AD&D 1e to 2e. The wotc monk of 3.x draws from one of the only bits of monk we got in 2e, which was in a red brotherhood book. When you compare the 1e monks to the 3.x monks you can see some similarities, evasion was basically an exclusive monk thing in 1e iirc (I haven't looked too deeply to try to find another example, plus it was called something different).

OA monk had a bunch of different styles. These could range in damage from 1d4 to 1d8 as a base, and you could get up to 5 dice +1 extra damage by level 17. They also gained extra damage on the use of all weapons which they could use, but that paled in comparison to the sheer dominance that their unarmed damage could deal out, especially once you take into account special attacks like roundhouse kicks or flying kicks which could double or triple damage (but had penalties if you missed, ranging from the minor (missing the rest of your turn) to severe (falling prone and missing the rest of your turn)). They were also under the thief umbrella and gained most of the skills relating to being one. With the most defensive style they could also start with an AC of 5 as well and progress in the end to an AC of -2.

The price of this? 2d4 as their HD at level 1, 1d4 at levels after. Also, they were unable to benefit from high stats, while requiring plenty of them to gain class entry. This was fine in terms of strength, who cares about an extra 6 damage or so per attack when you are dealing 5d8+1? However it really, really hurt in terms of hit points.

They were the epitome of martial glass cannon, along with some rules regarding stunning enemies if you hit them well enough and such which wouldn't translate forward into 3.5 that well I think. Some could only attack with fists, some with fists and feet, some with any part of their body. You could also learn to combine styles through enough RP stuff and tracking down masters to teach you so that you could end up with the strongest possible combination. AC 5 at base, d8 damage dice, ability to strike with all your body and things like that. However that was to be done at DM discression.

So when the question came in regards to: Which one of these monks do I adapt? Do I make it the best possible one to make the monk as strong as possible? Or do I make a strong combination just using a body-fighting monk since that's what 3.5 draws from the most in terms of lore (since monks are are hand + feet + joint attacks in 3.5 base). Also some of the progressions of monk could happen at funky intervals rather than regular ones, and 3.5 tends to smooth those progressions out so I did the same here.

So in the end I went for keeping the d4 HD, but bringing forward the lesser thief abilities (the lesser skill breadth represented by 6+int instead of 8+int skill points) and I based it on a 1d6 damage high defense style. Putting the average damage at each level into a regression to get an equation that fit kind of well which I could then extrapolate back out into unarmed damages by getting as close to the values it spat out as possible, so we can use raw dice values instead of 4d6+1 for damage, althought he progression is anything but smooth. For now I kept to them having good saves since that's part of their identity in 3.5, along with keeping rogue BAB since that's what they had. Also to get around the 2d4 at level 1 funkiness I gave them the toughness feat as a bonus feat at level 1, since that provides 3hp instead of 2.5 on average and monks didn't get bonus con to hp in AD&D 1e anyway.

The AC bonus can be changed. However the progression was done with 3.5 systems in mind, namely that monks actually get dex to AC along with wisdom to AC. If these were removed to make it more like 1e monk then the AC bonus progression would be ramped up. Since not only did you go to -3 which in raw numberrs would be equivalent to AC23, but this was also a good armour class to have at end game (level 17), while a good AC at end game for 3.x is far higher than 22, so to make the context match you would need to ramp up that progression a lot. Other than that I've kept the regular 3.5 monk abilities rather than trying to forward port the AD&D 1e monk ones mainly since I'm lazy and will at least pretend wotc's timings are somewhat balanced.

So in the end this is what the initial rough forward-port adds. I'd like to have input about how to balance it with the system changes that 3.x introduced and the like.

So what do we end up with?


HD: d4
Skills: 6+int
Skills added to class skills: Search, Disable Device, Open Lock


Monk
BAB
Fortitude
Reflex
Will
Class Features
Flurry of Blows attacks
Unarmed Damage
Unarmored AC bonus
Unarmored Bonus Speed
Number Of Special Attacks


1
+0
+2
+2
+2
Trapfinding, Toughness, Bonus feat
3
1d6
5
10ft
1


2
+1
+3
+3
+3
Bonus feat, Evasion
3
1d6
5
10ft
1


3
+2
+3
+3
+3
Still Mind
3
1d6
5
10ft
1


4
+3
+4
+4
+4
Ki Strike (Magic), Slow Fall 20ft
3
1d8
5
20ft
2


5
+3
+4
+4
+4
Purity of Body
4
1d8
6
20ft
2


6
+4
+5
+5
+5
Bonus Feat, Slow Fall 30ft
4
1d10
6
20ft
2


7
+5
+5
+5
+5
Wholeness of Body
4
1d10
6
20ft
3


8
+6
+6
+6
+6
Slow Fall 40ft
4
2d6
6
30ft
3


9
+6
+6
+6
+6
Improved Evasion
5
3d4
6
30ft
3


10
+7
+7
+7
+7
Ki Strike (Lawful), Slow Fall 50ft
5
3d4
7
30ft
4


11
+8
+7
+7
+7
Diamond Body
5
2d8 (this can also be 4d4 for progression smoothness)
7
30ft
4


12
+9
+8
+8
+8
Abundant Step, Slow Fall 60ft
5
4d4
7
40ft
4


13
+9
+8
+8
+8
Diamond Soul
6
2d10
7
40ft
5


14
+10
+9
+9
+9
Slow Fall 70ft
6
5d4
7
40ft
5


15
+11
+9
+9
+9
Quivering Palm
6
4d6
8
40ft
5


16
+12
+10
+10
+10
Ki Strike (Adamantine), Slow Fall 80ft
6
6d4
8
50ft
6


17
+12
+10
+10
+10
Timeless Body, Tongue of the Sun and Moon
6
7d4
8
50ft
6


18
+13
+11
+11
+11
Slow Fall 90ft
7
3d12 (once again can be buffed to 6d6 for smoother progression)
8
50ft
6


19
+14
+11
+11
+11
Empty Body
7
6d6
8
50ft
7


20
+15
+12
+12
+12
Perfect Self, Slow Fall Any Distance
7
7d6
9
60ft
7




This is just using one particular style, but I've kept the special attacks open to any from 1e OA. I can provide a list of them if required. The flurry of blows represent the extra strikes this character got, if we were doing the 5e reversion to being able to do all your attacks as a standard action instead of requiring a full action, and them all being at maximum attack value instead of having BAB progression then that shows how many attacks they'd have at that level.

Different styles would end up with different end values, as would different assumptions. We could go as high as 8d8 or so damage at level 20 with a more potent style being adapted. As you can see though, monk damage tends to go up exponentially. Level 1-4 thet gain no additional compared to their style base, but in the last 4 levels they go from 2d+1 to 4d bonus in OA (13-17). The extra attacks were rescaled in progression since it went no extra, 1/4 extra (As in 1 extra every 4 rounds), 1/2 extra, 1, 3/2, 2/1, 3/1 which isn't really a progression that plays nice with 3.5. With the progression that is there and assuming it will go 4/1 afterwards you end up with an extended level 20 providing 4/1 extra attacks, on top of the 2 extra the style I chose to bring forward for the total of 7 that we have at the end.

If you want to know the AC progression if we kept to this style and the raw progression from 1e but changed it to a bonus due to high AC being better in 3.5 rather than the low AC being better as in AD&D and expanded it out to 20 levels it would be
5/5/5/5/5/5/5/6/7/7/8/9/10/11/11/12/13/14/15/15

Just now as I'm finishing this I realise that the soft attack vital area style that i updated has an attack mod of 1 and not 2...but given that you could theoretically make a style with enough combining to have an ac mod of 5, attack mod of 2 and base damage of d8 instead of d6 this isn't beond the system's capabilities. Reduce all the FoB attacks by 1 if you want to keep it to updating a soft vital area style.

I also haven't delved into how to deal with the changes that something like the leap special attack would bring. Since that allowed one to leap 3 feet+1/level forward (10ft+1/level if you had 10ft of running space) and to flip in mid-air to change your facing at the cost of only one attack, as long as you landed safely. Meaning that end game you could flip behind someone, circle kick them, flip away, circle kick someone else in the arse and so on.

The expoenential progress also interacts weirdly with things like monk tattoo and monk belt since you end up in a world where you can be doing ~30d6 with your punches incredibly easily and thus be able to do 7 ~60d6 circle kicks in a round as long as you don't miss any...but given that you can break monk progression to over double that already this isn't exactly anything new.


So yes, this long and rambling post is now finally over. Yay! What suggestions would you make for this update? We have effectively buffed 1e monks since wea re assuming somethings from 3.5 monks like the AC bonus, being able to actually get bonus damage/hp/things like that but that buff happened to other classes as well being able to access things they couldn't before. The movement speed is technically slightly nerfed, it should be +65ft at the end but I also smoothed out the progression (but kept in that they have a buff at level 1 like 1e OA). Technically they should get vow of poverty at level 1 as well and that should be factored into this, since monks had limits on their use of magical items but plenty of classes did in 1e and this restriction was removed in 3.x. I also wasn't sure what to do regarding their surprise normal progression or their ESP resistance.

Are you fine with the damage growth? Or is it too strong for you? How do you feel about them being even more frail than before but being another trapfinding class (Since they got Find/Remove traps in AD&D 1e)?

[Peelee]

Firstly: Tell me if I put this in the wrong section.

The Mod on the Silver Mountain: not anymore its not. :smallwink:

Moved to Homebrew.

[Maat Mons]

I like that you give a flat numeric bonus to AC at 1st level. One of the biggest issues with 3e Monk is that the class performs very poorly without exceptional ability scores. This problem is keenest at 1st level. A Rogue gets +4 AC from his chain shirt, and can add his full Dex to AC, because the max Dex of a chain shirt is high enough that you won’t have enough Dex at 1st level to get capped out. In order for a Monk to have as much AC as a Rogue at 1st level, you’d need 18 Wis. Moreover, you’d need to manage that 18 Wis without sacrificing any Dex, or you’ll still have worse AC. And if you sacrifice Str or Con to manage that Dex and Wis, you’re just hurting yourself in other ways to break even with what everyone else gets from basic equipment.

I’d say give Monk +4 AC at first level, to make it even with wearing light armor. I’d then delay +Wis to AC until 2nd level. At that point, Swordsage and Moon-Warded Ranger get +Wis to AC in light armor, so Monk getting +Wis to AC with a bonus equivalent to wearing light armor is right on par. I also suggest making the progression be +1 AC at every level divisible by 3. That matches up with Dragonscale husk. It’s a little faster than the +1 per 4 levels from Magic Weapon. But bear in mind, users of regular armor will eventually bump their AC by 1 by moving to a mithril breastplate. If you have any concerns that this will get too high when combined with Bracers of Armor, you could always just word it so that the flat numerical part of the Monk’s AC bonus doesn’t stack with Bracers of Armor. That would help decrease the Monk’s reliance on items too.



For the unarmed damage progression, remember that damage scales with size. Some of the base damage values you’ve listed don’t appear on the damage-by-size adjustment tables in 3.5. Also remember that, even with 2d10 as the damage for a medium 20th-level Monk, the damage for a colossal 20th-level Monk is 12d8. And you can just get an ally to cast Greater Mighty Wallop on your fists so you can deal damage as if colossal while remaining medium. Actually, this exponential scaling of damage with size is what makes it so disadvantageous to play a small Monk. I say let the Monk’s base damage stay the same across all levels. Instead, give bonus damage that scales with level. Bonus damage doesn’t scale with size the way base damage does. The bonus damage should apply equally to Monk weapons as it does with unarmed strikes. It should be a reasonable option for a high-level Monk to fight with a staff, kukri, or whatever.

Another thing you have to keep in mind with Monk is that there’s debate whether you can two-weapon fight with unarmed strikes. The FAQ says you can, but the PHB seems to say you can’t. People can’t agree is the FAQ or PHB should take priority. If you allow two-weapon fighting, you should allow some sort of extra damage when not two-weapon fighting. Sort of like how a dude with a greatsword deals 2d6 + 1.3x Str damage, while a TWFer deals 1d6 + 1x Str + 1d6 + 0.5x Str damage. That is, the same amount, just spread over more or fewer attacks.



I’d give Monk full base attack bonus and d8 hit dice. I think this Monk rework is, in many ways, analogous to Ranger. They both take part of the Rogue toolkit, but lose other parts of it in exchange for more of a direct combat focus, and some minor magical abilities. I also encourage you to give the class some customization options besides feats. An article in Dragon magazine gave different weapon proficiencies based on your choice of “Monastic Tradition.” This also changed what counted as a monk weapon for you. It didn’t wind up mattering much, but it was nice that they tried to create differences in Monks based on what martial arts style they used. It may also be worth looking through all of the Monk alternative class features and things, and seeing which ones it makes sense to integrate into the base class as options. For example, there exist ACFs that trade Slow fall for the ability to run on walls or skip over the surface of water. Instead of having those be ACFs, you could grant a class feature with a name like “Movement Ability,” and when the player gets it, they get to pick negating falling damage, running on walls, or running on water.

[Tusen]

Fist of all, thanks for your input!


If you have any concerns that this will get too high when combined with Bracers of Armor, you could always just word it so that the flat numerical part of the Monk’s AC bonus doesn’t stack with Bracers of Armor. That would help decrease the Monk’s reliance on items too.

I think I'll do that. Making it an armor bonus gives you a bit more leeway in making it stronger. Dragonscale Husk scaling is definitely a good starting point. Since while it's considered lacklustre, that's due to it having a prohibitive max dex bonus and slowing you down while this doesn't. Original progression once you started growing was 2/3, which is more of an aside since you have the whole thing of inability to get defensive adjustment from high dex vs having both wisdom and dexterity contribute. So I'd say 4+1/3 works, with the note to DMs of 4+2/3 being possible if you're going for a higher power environment. With it being an armor bonus we don't have to worry about abjurant champion mage armour shenanigans buffing it up further as well.

EDIT: We can also consider inertial armour which is effectively 4+1/2 AC for scaling and generally considered pretty strong, since it doesn't consume that much of your resources at end game.


For the unarmed damage progression, remember that damage scales with size. Some of the base damage values you’ve listed don’t appear on the damage-by-size adjustment tables in 3.5. Also remember that, even with 2d10 as the damage for a medium 20th-level Monk, the damage for a colossal 20th-level Monk is 12d8. And you can just get an ally to cast Greater Mighty Wallop on your fists so you can deal damage as if colossal while remaining medium. Actually, this exponential scaling of damage with size is what makes it so disadvantageous to play a small Monk. I say let the Monk’s base damage stay the same across all levels. Instead, give bonus damage that scales with level. Bonus damage doesn’t scale with size the way base damage does. The bonus damage should apply equally to Monk weapons as it does with unarmed strikes. It should be a reasonable option for a high-level Monk to fight with a staff, kukri, or whatever.

Yeah damage scaling with size can always give issues. 1d4->1d6->1d8->2d6 is a nice progression but then WotC throws in 2d6->3d6->4d6->6d6 when you'd think it would go 2d6->2d8->4d6->4d8, their progression being stronger at the 3d6 and 6d6 points. However, at least we do have two precedents for monk damage bonus with weapons. OA monk if you had a style that taught how to use weapons, you'd use the weapon damage modifier (for those weapons) in your monk progression, ending up with +4D at level 17 (so 5d6 with a 1d6 base weapon if your style taught that at level 17), the other one is +1/2 level with all other weapons, so if your style didn't teach that 1d6 base weapon at level 17 you'd get 1d6+8 damage, which is about halfway to the bonus damage you'd have from martial arts. Worst case scenario for martial arts (d4) you'd get +10 bonus damage on average from the die bonus, making it closer. However there have also been many general damage buffs in 3.x, like THFers being able to get +2 damage/level from their BAB progression (as long as they can keep up in accuracy).

At the moment I'm leaning towards having it be that you add your level on attacks with weapons. This will let your damage keep up with oversized TWFers who use Power Attack. They have 7 attacks base at end game just as you do as well. However, you're managing this without feats while they have a heavy feat tax. This comes into play more with discussions of HD and BAB though.


Another thing you have to keep in mind with Monk is that there’s debate whether you can two-weapon fight with unarmed strikes. The FAQ says you can, but the PHB seems to say you can’t. People can’t agree is the FAQ or PHB should take priority. If you allow two-weapon fighting, you should allow some sort of extra damage when not two-weapon fighting. Sort of like how a dude with a greatsword deals 2d6 + 1.3x Str damage, while a TWFer deals 1d6 + 1x Str + 1d6 + 0.5x Str damage. That is, the same amount, just spread over more or fewer attacks.

I'd say to not allow TWFing but to replace it with Flurry of Blows completely, rather than what I do at tables when playing monk normally which is allowing people to stack the penalties to FoB + iterative TWF. Keeping it to the FoB progression will just make eyeballing things easier and reduce the potential of weird interactions.




I’d give Monk full base attack bonus and d8 hit dice. I think this Monk rework is, in many ways, analogous to Ranger. They both take part of the Rogue toolkit, but lose other parts of it in exchange for more of a direct combat focus, and some minor magical abilities. I also encourage you to give the class some customization options besides feats. An article in Dragon magazine gave different weapon proficiencies based on your choice of “Monastic Tradition.” This also changed what counted as a monk weapon for you. It didn’t wind up mattering much, but it was nice that they tried to create differences in Monks based on what martial arts style they used. It may also be worth looking through all of the Monk alternative class features and things, and seeing which ones it makes sense to integrate into the base class as options. For example, there exist ACFs that trade Slow fall for the ability to run on walls or skip over the surface of water. Instead of having those be ACFs, you could grant a class feature with a name like “Movement Ability,” and when the player gets it, they get to pick negating falling damage, running on walls, or running on water.

The main thing about Monk being directly under the Rogue umbrella (while Ranger was, like Paladin, under the fighter umbrella) was that it gave access to rogue abilities. Open lock, find/remove trap, things like that. Hence the skill buffs I gave it. Personally I'm leaning towards keeping the feel of monk from 1e OA - a very strong glass cannon who can do incredible levels of hurt when he hits well, which the d4 HD and rogue attack progression ties into. That's a personal thing though.

Also yeah, that's the kind of thing I always allow so I kind of forgot to include it. All kinds of weapons were taught in martial arts traditions historically (albeit with the usual heavy representation from staff and sword, although the forms of sword and staff could change tremendously), so we can have the proficiencies be that simple weapons cost 1 point, martial cost 2, exotic cost 3 and you get to choose 6 or 10 points worth of proficiencies or the like to represent your style's weapons.

If we draw from Wuxia (or lower-powered Xianxia) shenanigans for movement then slow fall should progress into the ability to glide/fly as well. That's definitely something to consider that I will have to think more on.


Once again, thanks for the input! You've given me things to think about, and I am happy with the new armour progression, it being an armour bonus, and emphasising the flat damage bonus aspects of old monk rather than the die progression they had. My gut temptation is to do both since, aesthetically per se, it 'feels' right for the huge monk to get far more damage than the small one, I can understand wanting to balance that. Since a lot of the bonus for huge fighter over medium fighter is reach and that they generally have massive strength scores rather than the increase from 1d8 to 3d6 for longsword damage. If we bring back in the original die progression (which, expanded out to 20, would be +5D+1) but keep the +1/level as a separate thing (which it was back then as well, although now we're letting them choose between them) the discrepancy ends up being anywhere from better to worse, but when comparing like to like is generally the same or better than under greater wallop.
Mighty greater wallop vs small monk - 12d8 vs 2d8, 6x the damage
Colossal greatsword (+5D+1) monk vs small greatsword (+5D+1) monk - 48d6+1 (169) vs 6d10+1 (34), 4.97x the damage
Colossal fist (+5D+1) monk vs small fist (+20) monk - 24d6+1 (85) vs 1d4+20 (22.5), 3.78x the damage.
If we had pure flat
Colossal fist (+20) vs small fist (+20) monk - 4d6+20 (34) vs 1d4+20 (22.5), 1.51x the damage
Colossal greatsword (+20) vs small greatsword (+20) - 8d6+20 (48) vs 1d10+20 (25.5), 1.88x the damage

Your base damage scaling for small to colossal tends to be 6x, however I understand that these higher base damage values mean that damage bonuses become less dominant, however that's kind of fitting with old monk crunch anyway. It's definitely something I will have to ponder for longer though.

The higher your bonuses on damage (if they are the same), the closer this will come together. It depends on what you want personally from size scaling I think. If you're worried about mighty greater wallop in particular at end game, or size stacking increases from grabbing a bunch of prestige classes, I'd personally adjudicate it at that point.

Once again, thanks for the input. You've definitely helped me think about what I want from this.