Is Treantmonk's homebrew "fixed" Monk overtuned?

[SharkForce]

We are told in the book that resistance to nonmagical attacks at cr 11 is counted as the creature having 25% more hp. We are told in the book that magic resistance, flying with ranged attacks (up to cr 10), and having a large number of saving throw proficiencies all factor into the creature's defenses. You used hp/ac based on real creatures with none of the other abilities from those creatures. Creatures with useless or ignored defenses die faster. Shocking. Still not seeing how every equal cr should die in one round.

The cleric's range is 60'. The rogue's range is 80'. The fighter's longbow could be worse than fire bolt. The roc's speed is 120'. But "flying enemy" is supposed to be a solved problem for parties at this level, and it has to come into range eventually, and it still doesn't seem normal for the roc to die in one round.

Monk is slightly behind because it is a different class than rogue and fighter with different strengths and weaknesses, and people ignore half of its abilities, and people don't take short rests.


That only makes sense if the class is expected to fight without resources. High level characters aren't going to do that, so they can't be balanced as if they will.

- feel free to go through the list and show which extra defence the vast majority of CR 11 creatures need to justify their substantially lower HP any time. I won't stop you.

- if the roc is attacking, it can fly 60 feet, attack, and then fly away 60 feet. not seeing the problem with 60 foot range here. it's a bird, not an apache helicopter. if it wants to hit you, it has to move close, and then move back. (for that matter, it doesn't have flyby attack, which suggests that it usually wouldn't do that, but even if it does it should be fine). and I never once said one round. I said 4 rounds is laughably absurd, 2 rounds is pretty much where I'd expect things to last. one round, well... it's probably possible, but only if the party is going all out on a medium encounter for some weird reason.

- monk is a little below 75% of a regular boring-ass fighter with a greatsword and no feats, and is also a little below 75% of a regular boring-ass rogue with two short swords (even without getting advantage on one attack). as has been pointed out: which incredible strengths is the monk going to bring to the table? perhaps you're planning to stun that roc with it's +9 con save bonus on your DC 15 saving throw? sure, why not just throw even more resources so that you can catch up to where you should be in the first place, it just sounds *totally* reasonable that in order to keep up with extremely basic damage builds the monk needs to burn through ki on a medium encounter. but sure thing, you go ahead and spend 3-4 ki per round, and need a short rest after 4 rounds of fighting at most while everyone else can comfortably handle these medium encounters without burning out entirely.

- if the monk spending resources was spiking higher than the other classes that aren't spending resources, I would have no problem. but it isn't. by spending ki on flurry, it *almost* (not quite) catches up with some extremely basic damage builds. that is a problem.

@Frogreaver

first off, I don't know that there are a lot of times where I've been able to take a casual one hour break from adventuring that I couldn't have also done a long rest. generally speaking, an hour is a long time if you're in a "dungeon" environment where wandering monsters could be a problem. why are the monsters just letting you rest? if you're not in that sort of environment, then in my experience you rarely need the short rests anyways.

if we had 4th edition's 5 minute short rests, then yeah, monk would have lots of resources, but they don't.

and as far as having "more" resources even if they *do* get those two short rests per long rest... I'm not so sure on that being vastly more than anyone else. a level 11 warlock is getting 9 5th level spells and one 6th level in that time, and while that isn't 33, I have to say that a 5th level spell is worth a lot more than 1 point of ki. converting it to 4 elements monk, that's 72 ki worth plus a level 6 spell slot right there. a level 11 wizard in that same 3-short-rest day is getting 1 level 6 spell, 2 level 5, and 3 each of levels 1-4 and can easily gain back one of those level 5 spell slots. if we were to represent those as ki, then based on 4 elements monk the wizard is getting 18 (3 level 5 spell slots) + 15 (3 level 4 slots) + 12 (3 level 3 slots) + 9 (3 level 2 slots) + 8 (3 level 1 slots plus 1 recovered) = 62, and also a level 6 slot that a 4 element monk can never duplicate. if we instead extrapolate from other subclasses and go with level = ki cost (since almost everyone I know of thinks 4 element monk abilities are over the cost they should be), it would still be 46. (or 45 for the warlock, plus they each get the level 6 spell).

and of course, the wizard has a far wider range of options than any monk when it comes to spells.

now, based on that, I have a *really* hard time looking at that and thinking "oh yeah, the monk sure does get more resources than other resource-based classes". they're well behind a wizard (they're also well behind other full spellcasters, though not quite as much as the one that gets arcane recovery).

and again, this is without considering subclasses or extra abilities that resource-based classes get, which for things that aren't monk frequently add extra resources to spend, but for monks typically just means more abilities that compete for your ki. I mean, how do we count bardic inspiration? I would think each use of bardic inspiration is worth at least 1 point of ki. or wild shape. or ritual spellcasting. or channel divinity. or lay on hands for that matter.