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  1. - Top - End - #91
    Firbolg in the Playground
     
    EvilClericGuy

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    Default Re: Monks are problematic from a roleplaying perspective, too.

    Quote Originally Posted by NaughtyTiger View Post
    I like that elemonk (i pay attention max!) isn't a caster
    It kinda is. 12 out of 17 Elemental Disciplines are just "You cast the spell X for Y Ki points", though it's 'spell slot mechanic' is closer to spell-point based warlock than traditional spellcaster.
    It's Eberron, not ebberon.
    It's not high magic, it's wide magic.
    And it's definitely not steampunk. The only time steam gets involved is when the fire and water elementals break loose.

  2. - Top - End - #92

    Default Re: Monks are problematic from a roleplaying perspective, too.

    Quote Originally Posted by JackPhoenix View Post
    It kinda is. 12 out of 17 Elemental Disciplines are just "You cast the spell X for Y Ki points", though it's 'spell slot mechanic' is closer to spell-point based warlock than traditional spellcaster.
    I believe we're talking about the Spellcasting trait and the fact that Elemonks lack it and therefore don't add to your multiclassing caster level, nor do they have a spell list (so you can't benefit from stuff like Dragonmarked spells or Ravnica backgrounds, because you have no spell list to add those spells to).

  3. - Top - End - #93
    Bugbear in the Playground
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    Jan 2017

    Default Re: Monks are problematic from a roleplaying perspective, too.

    One thing that jumped out to me from the OP's character list was Mike Haggar. A normal man punching normal gang member out in a fighting game.

    If we assume that a street gang member is equivalent to a Bandit, then for Haggar to punch out an enemy in 3 strikes he just needs to be a man with 16 strength.

    Unarmed strikes will deal 1+3 = 4 damage, three hits is 12 damage, beating a gang member. He's also strong enough to kill a normal civilian in a single blow. Want to emulate the fact that he can use a pipe? Given him tavern brawler (he's human, he can have a single feat easily) Now he can use improvised weapons, and does 1d4+3 with his punching, meaning we've now almost doubled his base damage.


    Oh, want someone from Street Fighter? How about Sagat? Guy is clearly strong, and fast, give him a bit of wisdom too. You know, he bases a lot of his moves off tigers, let's use that... So, 1 point below a tiger in each gives him 16 STR and 14 Dex. Give him 2 levels in monk and he can strike 2 - 3 times in rapid succession, ripping a normal man apart with those 1d4+3 strikes (heck, he can half kill a tiger in a single round of combat if he gets lucky, and killing a tiger in 12 seconds wouldn't be too hard), but what about his famous Tiger Shot energy attack? Magic Initiate, Eldritch blast. That deals a massive 1d10, enough to devastate a normal foe, and if he does the Hex (an intimidating warrior spirit perhaps?) he can wreck his foes in short order.


    See, it matters where you out your comparisons. A character with 16 strength is as strong as a Gorilla or an Ox, a character with a 14 or 16 dex is insanely agile and quick.



    But also, some of the stuff you see in these other properties is just truly insane. Mortal Kombat, for example, has a strength mini-game where you smash through different incredibly thick blocks of material. Including diamond. The math was done on Death Battle once. That would take 50 million joules of energy, or about 26 vehicular collisions simultaneously.The equivalent would be, what 40d6 damage (since that is double falling 500 ft)? In a single blow. Oh, and they dodge automatic gunfire and lightning on the regular.



    So, things are never quite as straightforward as they seem

  4. - Top - End - #94
    Titan in the Playground
     
    Imp

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    Feb 2017

    Default Re: Monks are problematic from a roleplaying perspective, too.

    Quote Originally Posted by Chaosmancer View Post
    One thing that jumped out to me from the OP's character list was Mike Haggar. A normal man punching normal gang member out in a fighting game.

    If we assume that a street gang member is equivalent to a Bandit, then for Haggar to punch out an enemy in 3 strikes he just needs to be a man with 16 strength.

    Unarmed strikes will deal 1+3 = 4 damage, three hits is 12 damage, beating a gang member. He's also strong enough to kill a normal civilian in a single blow. Want to emulate the fact that he can use a pipe? Given him tavern brawler (he's human, he can have a single feat easily) Now he can use improvised weapons, and does 1d4+3 with his punching, meaning we've now almost doubled his base damage.


    Oh, want someone from Street Fighter? How about Sagat? Guy is clearly strong, and fast, give him a bit of wisdom too. You know, he bases a lot of his moves off tigers, let's use that... So, 1 point below a tiger in each gives him 16 STR and 14 Dex. Give him 2 levels in monk and he can strike 2 - 3 times in rapid succession, ripping a normal man apart with those 1d4+3 strikes (heck, he can half kill a tiger in a single round of combat if he gets lucky, and killing a tiger in 12 seconds wouldn't be too hard), but what about his famous Tiger Shot energy attack? Magic Initiate, Eldritch blast. That deals a massive 1d10, enough to devastate a normal foe, and if he does the Hex (an intimidating warrior spirit perhaps?) he can wreck his foes in short order.
    Good comparisons. Though Tiger Shot is probably best represented by a fire spell.

    Quote Originally Posted by Chaosmancer View Post
    See, it matters where you out your comparisons. A character with 16 strength is as strong as a Gorilla or an Ox, a character with a 14 or 16 dex is insanely agile and quick.
    Yeah, people forget this all the time. PCs really are a cut above your average joe, even if there is people and creatures capable of matching or outmatching them.

    Quote Originally Posted by Chaosmancer View Post
    But also, some of the stuff you see in these other properties is just truly insane. Mortal Kombat, for example, has a strength mini-game where you smash through different incredibly thick blocks of material. Including diamond. The math was done on Death Battle once. That would take 50 million joules of energy, or about 26 vehicular collisions simultaneously.The equivalent would be, what 40d6 damage (since that is double falling 500 ft)? In a single blow. Oh, and they dodge automatic gunfire and lightning on the regular.
    Mortal Combat characters in the most recent games are shown to get their bones broken and/or their body parts torn off as part of their opponents' special moves, and continue fighting afterward. While Mortal Combat has an higher general power level as, say, Street Fighter, it's also clear that some of the most "...what" stuff are to make the gameplay entertaining and not diegetic.

  5. - Top - End - #95
    Firbolg in the Playground
     
    Man_Over_Game's Avatar

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    Default Re: Monks are problematic from a roleplaying perspective, too.

    Quote Originally Posted by MaxWilson View Post
    I believe we're talking about the Spellcasting trait and the fact that Elemonks lack it and therefore don't add to your multiclassing caster level, nor do they have a spell list (so you can't benefit from stuff like Dragonmarked spells or Ravnica backgrounds, because you have no spell list to add those spells to).
    Yup, and that there aren't very many good bridges between the martial/caster playstyles:

    • Sorcerer has a lot of melee-centric spells, but has no martial proficiencies and has the smallest hit die in the game, and is only valid as a melee option because of Booming Blade+Quickened/Twinned Spell.
    • Paladin is fine as a bridge, I just hate that the bridge is basically "Spend your spellcasting to deal extra damage", but I know a lot of people like that.
    • Ranger can spend spell slots on Ranger spells for attacks, but there aren't very many past level 1 spells, and their upcasting sucks.
    • Hexblade can't actually use their spells to enhance their attacking until you've hit mid-level. Until then, you basically just have better casting and worse AC than most other hybrids.
    • Eldritch Knight is a bridge once you get those higher level features, but those features are rarely relevant, and -once again- they're pretty high level options.
    • Shillellagh works like a Hexblade, but basically runs into the same problem where it basically translates to a bonus to hit with a weapon and nothing else (unless you're a Monk, and then you can just stack Wisdom).


    For the build to function as a real "hybrid", you probably have to leverage the "bridging" features of two classes with them in order for it to work:
    • Paladin + Warlock
    • Warlock + Sorcerer
    • Paladin + Sorcerer
    • Ranger + Druid
    • Ranger + Nature Cleric



    And that's about it. Anything else is running into an issue where you have to focus on the Martial or the Caster portion of the build, with the dip likely abusing some sort of early spell, feature or proficiency that doesn't get in the way (E.G. Druid+Monk, Wizard+Fighter, Barbarian+Moon Druid), but these builds often get worse the higher into the game you go, as those dip features generally don't scale as well as doing a boring, specialist build would have given you. They generally don't "Work together", but instead generally act like two people working on projects on opposite sides of the room so they don't get in each others' way.

    Having something that worked like Sorcery Points for Monks to convert Ki into Spell Slots would have been easy, and had added it to this list, especially since that's almost exactly what the Elemonk already does (just with arbitrary cost/level requirements).
    Last edited by Man_Over_Game; 2020-08-10 at 06:03 PM.
    Quote Originally Posted by KOLE View Post
    MOG, design a darn RPG system. Seriously, the amount of ideas I’ve gleaned from your posts has been valuable. You’re a gem of the community here.

    5th Edition Homebrewery
    Prestige Options, changing primary attributes to open a world of new multiclassing.
    Adrenaline Surge, fitting Short Rests into combat to fix bosses/Short Rest Classes.
    Pain, using Exhaustion to make tactical martial combatants.
    Fate Sorcery, lucky winner of the 5e D&D Subclass Contest VII!

  6. - Top - End - #96
    Barbarian in the Playground
     
    NecromancerGuy

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    Default Re: Monks are problematic from a roleplaying perspective, too.

    I mean, the problem with base monk damage is the problem with base martial damage-good DPS classes use feats or spells, no exceptions. If you didn't allow a fighter to take feats, he'd also suck. Monks just don't have any feats that help them.

    I do digress, but this is really part of the problem; monks have a very specific style of play which is kept in it's own little world. Stunning strike, ki points, host of additional features-they all add in but aren't synergistic with the greater whole of the game. Feats are largely irrelevant, and you have a pretty deterministic way to build a monk if you want to be effective at higher levels. I haven't really come across a character who uses so little of the content in the game before-Monks don't really use printed weapons, most printed items, spells, or most feats. You can barely even multi-class, given the DEX/WIS requirement pretty effectively locking you out of STR, CHA, and INT builds, translating to all non-divine non-rogue classes, and your features are all monk level dependent.

    The other problem is that the class actively fights deviation. There is no way to build a STR monk with any pretense of AC, nor is there a way to build an INT monk without a homebrew archetype. In combat you basically have to be open hand to do "grappling", and can't interact with the actual grappling rules because everything is STR athletics based. You can get around some of this-Tortle Monks, for instance, have a decent enough built in AC that you'll at least be keeping up with the Rogue, sans magic armor or items, so you can rock STR monk that way-but that required a specific race choice to justify and limits roleplaying.

    Monks in general have this problem; because their attribute requirements are so godsforsaken stringent they are forced into a few specific races to get their precious 16's.

    Put simply, the Monk chassis punishes innovation. You can use your imagination all you want, but you'll be peddling uphill.

    So, to put is succinctly, the problem is that the Monk is built in such a way that

    A. It can't use feats, because it needs high ability scores.

    B. Can't use magic armor

    C. Can't effectively use most magic weapons.

    D. Can't effectively use most skills because is needs two specific high ability scores (you can have investigation, just don't except to learn anything from it with your 8 INT).

    E. Can't effectively be most races for the same reason.

    F. Can't effectively multiclass, both because of the ability score requirements and because almost every single on of it's features simply does not work with any other classes. No fighting styles, spells are mostly anti-synergistic 'cause monk needs to take attack action and spellcasting monks don't stack with other classes, can't use armor proficiency, and all it's abilities have linear scaling with level so you stop advancing as a monk in any way.

    G. Can't even really improvise in combat past punching people out of its sub-class, as most of the ways to do that are STR based.

    In other words, Monk cannot make use of 90% of the games customization features effectively.

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