What Is A Monk?

[Anonymouswizard]

I don't really know what the distinction you're trying to make. I would say you seem to be making the distinction between subsystem use and non-subsystem use, but maneuvers are a subsystem too. What's the difference between mystical teleportation and magical teleportation?

'You want to be a mystic swordsman, why not just play a magus/eldritch knight/whatever'.

It's less about subsystems (although spell slots can die in a hole for all I care about them), and more about me adding a note because I've seen people make the above mistake. Especially trying to force me into classes with fluff, limitations, and abilities I don't want (including at it's worst 'if you focus on DEX you must play a Rogue instead of a Fighter').

As for the difference between a magical and mystical effect? In this case the difference between a psionic effect and a magical effect. It's a 'don't bring up magical warrior X class here, because they are built towards a concept I'm not talking about it here'. Also 'don't use a system where yelling and making and gestures are important*, but Spell-Like Abilities are okay'.

*sure, a Mystic should need to move their body for at least some abilities, but Somatic Components are a terrible way to model this need.

[Nifft]

Yeah, Swordsage is good.

Swordsage is a great class to model both the mystical magic and perfectly mundane Monk.

To be mystical, pick some Supernatural maneuvers: Shadow Hand, Desert Wind, and such.

To be mundane, pick maneuvers which are not Supernatural.

[Morphic tide]

The Swordsage models the Mystic Monk decently well in most regards, particularly surrounding the stuff that's more the Ninja's ballpark. The two areas it misses that the Monk could be adjusted to cover well are self-perfection as pursuit of immortality, which the Monk's various automatic save advantages and Wholeness of Body apply to, alongside a Four Elements matter, as there's no Water effects, Stone Dragon doesn't do the terrain manipulation typical of Earth, and Desert Wind doesn't have much that's just Wind going for it. Additionally, the Swordsage has relatively little inbuilt battlefield control properties, which is a task the Monk could leverage its existing features to tackle fairly well.

So generally, the Monk's function could be directed heavily towards battlefield control and variety of damage, rather than scale of it. Mass of attacks more than bonuses to them, choice of damage type more than increasing amount, a shift somewhat more to per-hit rider effects than special attacks, and generally making it so that it's supremely effective mook-slaying for a Martial, but somewhat poor against equal-level opponents. In general something of a "dodge tank" class, largely based around not being really hit.

With Flurry of Blows, I'd make it directly be a Two Weapon Fighting adjustment. Such as ability to do so with a Standard Action attack, a Full Attack automatically scaling as a doubled number of hits, changing the initial penalties to -3/-6 for a Light off-hand, and doing it with an Unarmed Strike while wielding a two-handed weapon. The largest thing is that the Two Weapon Fighting feat then turns into a massive bonus to your accuracy with Flurry of Blows, while the gradual decrease of the penalties means that going double Rapier can see a non-trash chance to actually hit on your third-attack roll of 16.

Wholeness of Body is the other case where I have a very clear idea in mind for the end result I'd like to see. I'd want it at 1st or 2nd level, function as Fast Healing drawing from the pool rather than a direct point dump, and make it very front-loaded by scaling from Wisdom without including Monk level in the calculation. Possibly Con x Wis x 5. The purpose of this is to essentially remove the need for external healing in any not-immediately-fatal situation basically immediately, but not in a fashion that is conductive to face-tanking. Automatic stabilizing, and often a pop-up to run to safety.

Then the entire situation with Ki Strike, Stunning Fist, and Quivering Palm would turn into the rider effects mentioned above, with the DC math making a single roll at the end of your turn based on the number of attacks that landed on each enemy instead of rolling each save separately. Either by lookup table closely representing the actual math, or by being a flat +1-3 for each. And also a "Strong Fist" effect that makes one Standard Action attack with damage and save DC similar to the full Flurry of Blows against Touch AC, for when there's one target that needs shut down.

[Elves]

Is the elements thing actually a monk thing or is it just from that TV show?

Wholeness of Body is the other case where I have a very clear idea in mind for the end result I'd like to see.

This is what I replaced it with in the AOW PHB variant classes, which is not supposed to be a definitive fix, but still might interest you:

Cleansing Meditation (Ex): Starting at 5th level, you can meditate to purge your body of toxins and repair its wounds. By meditating for at least 10 minutes, you cure yourself of poisons and heal hit points equal to your class level plus your Wisdom modifier. By meditating for at least 24 hours, you cure yourself of all contagious diseases. You can meditate a maximum of once per hour.

In other words, making it an out-of-combat thing. In part because I don't really get the flavor behind Wholeness of Body as an instant thing. Of course, could have an ability later on that lets you get this benefit in a single action.

This is what I have ATM for flurry, and again this is not necessarily what I'd do for a true monk fix:

Flurry of Blows (Ex): Whenever you make an unarmed strike attack, including as part of a full attack, you can make a flurry of blows. If you choose to use this ability, your attack affects three spaces within your reach, applying to all creatures in those spaces, but deals only half damage.

Starting at 8th level, your flurry instead affects 4 spaces within your reach. Starting at xth level, it instead affects 5 spaces.

[King of Nowhere]

the problem with monk is that it's mostly designed for defence (specifically what i call passive defence, i.e. AC, saving throws, SR, basically you need to match big numbers to affect him), while at high optimization defence is unfeasible (except active defence, i.e. making yourself untargettable). and at low optimization people try to use it for dps anyway.
i play at middle optimization and i find that monks work pretty well. but as far as fixing them, it would actually depend on the optimization level involved, because monks seem to play a different game than the other classes. everyone else tries to kill his opponent as fast as possible, not to make oneself untouchable.

[nonsi]

For the TWF/Flurry part, I understand the point about gameflow. But for a standard monk to take Two-Weapon Fighting Route is hard. High dex, heavy feat tax. And at the outcome, comparing monk to the fighter we would have :
- Fighter routine TWF full : +18/+18/+13/+13/+8/+8/+3
- Monk routine flurry + TWF full : +13/+13/+13/+13/+8/+8/+3/+3
So only one more attack for the monk, and worse to-hit overall for monk (not even considering the str to-hit for fighter and fact that monk don't have wis to hit without Intuitive attack in standard d&d).

This is exactly the high-investment amounting to Flurry of Misses I was talking about.
My Monk gains 3 additional feats, but aesthetically, on the aspect of elegant design, it would be a shame to waste them on TWF.

In fact, because you speak about ToB, I personaly think many ToB features give this "fantasy martial-arts movies" vibe. I consider ToB classes really strong in comparison to standard melee classes (with the exception of some really specific builds in melee part), so in my own rework I focused to make the monk "on-par" with other standard melee classes from core (or slightly better) and staying as close as possible from the original class.

As I said, I find your rework really fine in order to make monk really strong, even if we have a totally different approach at how we are doing the thing (rework I mean). But it can also be explained by the fact your monk rework is part of a greater rework (in fact, a setting) where you houseruled many things. I did my own rework based on core rules and other melee classes, without considering ToB in that. That's why I said I should, maybe, also do a monk that could be played on par with ToB classes (and some ideas in your rework are really good in that).

I'm really curious to see your work.

- Ascetic Athleticism is good. But monk level to Balance, Climb, Escape Artist, Jump, Move Silently, Swim and Tumble seems a really great advantage, as you're not wearing armor (no penalty to these checks) and have 6+int skill points, so 6 skills maxed if wanted. Add Listen, Spot, Diplomacy and Sense Motive and you get almost all the skills of the monk. It means the monk will easily outshine anybody in physical prowess's skills without many investment.

From my PoV, the monk is supposed to easily outshine anybody in physical prowess's skills with little effort.

For me, it could be good in an high-tiered campaign where spells and ToB are proeminent, but it outshines all the rest ^^ (example : Ninja get +6 to Climb, Jump, Tumble. That's it.)

In my project, one of the roles a monk could take is Ninja (with a plethora of mystical abilities).

giving wis to hit and wis to dmg is good, but could easily be abused by cleric/druid multiclassing with one-level dip.

I'd like clarification how you'd do that, because I wouldn't want to open that door in my overhaul project either.

I solved this myself by giving full BaB to monk and letting him choose what he wants to do with it (with a bonus wis to trip, bullrush, etc). Giving wis to hit and to dmg is common sense if you want the monk to shine, but I wanted to pinpoint some things about it x) But adding it ON-TOP at level 10th seems really, really powerful and unecessary for me.

I don't see why Wis to attack & damage (for a MAD class with med. BAB) sould be better than full BAB on classes that are heavily Str-based.

- You give total immunity to fear, charm and compulsion effects at lvl 10. It's a bit too earlier I think. It's almost Mind Blank without divination part and mental illusion, which is a 17th spell, at level 10. You then give mind blank at level 19th, which is good, but could for example be given at level 17 or 18, making it relevant faster and enabling to get rid of the 10th level effect.

The Monk is supposed to represent the peak of mental strength. This just means that the option of remote-controlling the character is off the table at the higher half of its power potential (which is light years beyond the limits of mortal men). The game suggests many other strategies and tactics to examine and exploite (divination and illusions are nothing to sneer at).

- Uneartlhy Reactions is good for movement etc. But the part about AOO bothers me. It hurts me that a fighter which put all his effort to manage to gain an AOO with feats etc his just denied. Imagine : monk want to trip, fighter has the feat to react to that and trip, but monk trip before and say "nope lol". I would feel really sorry for the fighter in that case.

Uneartlhy Reactions is not a "no-you-don't" card. The defender's AoO is still resolved normally. It just so happens that it's resolved after the monk's attack is carried out to the fullest.

- About the AC Bonus you give (+1 to +10 at level 20). I see nowhere the wisdom to AC line, so I'll give 2 versions :
* if having widsom : the +10 bonus is too much. At level 20, it would easily give +19 AC alone, without other AC improvement. A fighter without shield…

1. I've always considered the core Fighter class as a bad measuring tool.
2. I think it would be a good rule to dictate that the Monk – being a self-reliant class – cannot gain this benefit while using any physical or magical AC enhancements. This should balance things up in favor of gear-reliant classes. Now a heavily-armored character could use magical armor, rings, shields and bracers and easily reach higher AC values. That's another way to further distance monks from being walking Christmas-trees.

[XionUnborn01]

I've always wanted the monk to be the natural battlefield controller. Making a moving barrier of himself. I want him to be able to move enemies around, weaken or inhibit their attacks, do a bunch of hits for small damage but the more hits they get in, the better chance they have to debuff the enemy. I think they should have almost a foresight style of wisdom from their enlightenment, making them harder to hit and harder to avoid. I think they should be able to move in ways that almost seem to defy gravity like the wuxia jumping and running on trees, etc.

[Nifft]

I've always wanted the monk to be the natural battlefield controller. Making a moving barrier of himself. I want him to be able to move enemies around, weaken or inhibit their attacks, do a bunch of hits for small damage but the more hits they get in, the better chance they have to debuff the enemy. I think they should have almost a foresight style of wisdom from their enlightenment, making them harder to hit and harder to avoid. I think they should be able to move in ways that almost seem to defy gravity like the wuxia jumping and running on trees, etc.

This would be at least 300% better than the baseline flurry-of-misses.

[Morphic tide]

This would be at least 300% better than the baseline flurry-of-misses.

This reminds me of my thoughts on making Flurry of Blows into another feat like Stunning Fist, and in a wider sense making the Monk's offensive backend a matter of their bonus feats. This'd mainly be a wider rework of Martial feats so they're consistently decent and follow a true "tree" structure that makes the Fighter good by way of having things branch out into a decent number of Nice Things after your two or three "tax" feats that give boring-but-useful bonuses, so the Fighter can grab a lot of the Nice Things because they have the feats to spare after the taxes to get more of them.

[Phhase]

A Monk (to me) is one that achieves their power through physical self-perfection and meditative introspection, whatever form that may take. This usually involves things like:

• Punching
• Punching fast
• Punching hard
• Punching fast and hard
• Kicking
• Ki techniques, such as bursts of incredible strength and agility, direct attacks on opponent's life force, and yes, KAMEHAMEHA
• Resilience against more mundane physical maladies, like exhaustion, poison, disease, and age
• Advanced physical capabilities, like parkour, wall-sliding/jumping, and quick dodges
• The ability to master a small selection of weapons with great depth (and importantly, the lack of a need for them in order to be effective)
• Stealth

Outside of combat, Monks also can be seen mastering arts designed for doing service to the outside world, such as:

• Surgery, herbalism, or other mundane healing arts
• Brewing and minor chemistry
• Philosophy, negotiation, or peacemaking
• Miscellaneous charitable acts, usually involving the monk in question not keeping wealth for themselves

That's more or less the Monk to me. I've probably missed a few things, but you get the idea. Things like psionics and Avatar-style elemental kata belong more to Mystic in my mind (heh), since the Mystic is essentially the Monk, except instead of focusing on curating their physical vessel first, they focus on refining their minds. Ninja-style stealth also fits into monk for me, although I feel like things such as Kenshi or other Samurai-like classes fit more into Fighter than into Monk. Monk doesn't really strike me as one to be in the rank and file of a fight.

[Edea]

When you think "Monk", what do you think?

Goku or a Street Fighter character.

What should the Monk be able to do, and do well?
What should they be able to do okay?
What should they be bad at?
What should they not be able to do at all?

They should be good at melee DPS (combos), targeted short-range DPS (projectile attacks), mobility (speedy, athletic/acrobatic, short-range conjuration(teleportation) effects, etc.), self-buffing/healing, and general survival/being 'low-maintenance' (as in the others don't have to watch for a stiff wind blowing in his general direction).

They're probably OK in social situations due to mental discipline and a highly observant personality (so mostly skill-based), and they're so-so at debuffing (mostly close-range stun and daze effects) though this takes a back-seat to just beating the crap out of something with your fists.

They shouldn't be bringing additional creatures to the table, ensorcelling minds, buffing/healing others, or fighting from an obscene range.

Also, Monks absolutely should be killing (or trying to kill) whatever they engage. If I want to be a controller, I'll play a wizard; if I'm playing a Monk, it's primarily because I want to beat the crap out of something with my fists until it dies.

One of the issues I've seen people mention with 3.5's Monk is that it's not focused. It's a grab-bag of somewhat fun and interesting features, that just don't really mesh well together to make a cohesive whole. So, what SHOULD the Monk be redesigned to?

Either a psionics user (with a well-curated power list), or just go with an unarmed Swordsage variant and call it a day.