Suboptimal
It has recently come to my attention that monks suck in 5e D&D. Thanks to Treantmonk for the thorough breakdown.
Now let me start by saying that I don’t have a dog in this fight. The sum total of my experience with the class is giving a few Way of Shadow levels to Glabbagool the gelatinous cube. (It was as hilarious as it sounds.) So for the sake of argument, let’s take the premise for granted: monks are underpowered in 5e. The question then becomes what you want to do with this knowledge.
Let’s say you’re a player. You’ve got the full works of Bruce Lee on VHS, a Kill Bill katana signed by Uma Thurman on your wall, and you’re counting the days until Season 4 of Cobra Kai drops. In this scenario, reflavoring the mechanically superior fighter class as “martial artist with bo staff” probably isn’t going to cut it. You want stunning fist and deflect missiles and your very own ki pool because it’s cool. The theme is strong, and you’re willing to bite the bullet. You’re willing to be suboptimal.
Now let’s say you’re a GM in this situation. Your buddy shows up with a pair of nunchucks hanging around his neck, ready and willing to kicks ass in the grand wuxia tradition. Possessing your own secret wisdom, you realize that the player is at a disadvantage from the outset. How do you handle it? Is it time for preferential treatment? Perhaps more monk-themed magic items show up than you might expect. Do you tinker with a little homebrew? Maybe you add a few extra points of ki to the daily total. Or do you just let it ride, and hope that the monk player enjoys himself despite dealing 2.15 less average damage per round?
These are the questions that try GMs’ souls. They also happen to be our daily discussion! When you find that you’ve got a party with a variety of tiers, do you try and fix it somehow? Does the responsibility lie with the GM or the player? Sound off with your most opinionated opinions down in the comments!
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I believe I’ve mentioned before that my world has a range of player character levels within it from 0 to 52 (well,it did. As of last session, the level 52 one died, alas.) I’m not,therefore, generally too concerned with balance. I have,however, chosen to give the one monk in my game a series of small buffs to make him feel a bit more powerful.
Firstly, the monk in question focussed on becoming stronger through facing temptation and hardship. Thus, three times in the game,the first two of which have already happened, when the monk was in a moment of grave danger I could offer them a chance to achieve a Moment of Mastery. If they accepted,they would make a wisdom save,with total defeat as the consequence on a failure.
The first Moment, Mastery of Body, allows them complete control if their physical state. They’re immune to any and all poisons, drugs, changes of state ect. that they might be exposed to and do not wish to be affected by. When this was achieved, the player purged vampirism from their own body through force of will.
The second Moment is Mastery of Mind. With this one, the player becomes completely immune to mental influence,up to and including, as they did upon achieving this, breaking the mental grasp of a god.
The final Moment, Mastery of Spirit, essentially makes the soul of the monk both indestructible and incorruptible. Further, it means that they will remember their previous life in future reincarnations, that they remember each of their past incarnations, and that they have the open option of entering into the dream-journey to full Enlightenment or Bodhisattvadom.
The other boon I give monks is a bit more specific to my world. In my setting, there’s something called an Epic Level Barrier at level 20, which essentially means that you cannot reach epic levels without having accomplished added of Legend. If you haven’t done something that shakes the world to its foundations, you might train for a thousand years, receive the blessings of three gods and an archdevil, and read every book on magic ever written, but you’re not going to get above level 20. There’s a similar but lesser barrier at levels 15, 10 and 5, but those are quite easy to surpass for the typical adventurer of those levels and can eventually be broken through with sheer practice. Not so level 20.
Well, unless you’re a monk. See, the fantasy of being a monk is about, at least in part, teaching yourself how to punch dragons to death by spending fifty years doing yoga. It doesn’t require legendary deeds. As such, it ignores all level barriers totally. A sufficiently skilled monk could never leave their hilltop cave or fight anyone but their ancient master and still eventually become a being of godlike power.
Anyway, they aren’t really huge bonuses, and they certainly aren’t balanced for a normal game of 5e, but they’re fluffy and feel like they help out with the fantasy of the class a bit.
1) I’d be curious to see the writeup on these level barrier house rules. They do indeed sound fun and fluffy.
2) Did you implement your “monks ignore barriers” rule because monks are suboptimal mechanically, or because it made sense for the fiction?
1) I’m not sure I’ve ever actually written them out; I just tend to explain them when I introduce new people to the game. That said, from my loose notes they go as follows:
A character may not progress from 5th to 6th level unless they have been on at least one ‘adventure’ appropriate to their class or have trained for at least 5 years (in a simple class) or 10 years (in an esoteric class.) A class-appropriate adventure is defined as a prolonged scenario which draws upon the features of the class which the character plans to gain their next level in, and which also includes substantial threat to the safety or desires of the character.
A character may not progress from 10th to 11th level until the same conditions are met again, but this time the training time is 10 years for a simple class, or 20 for an esoteric one.
A character may not progress from 15th to 16th level until they have achieved a Deed of Note, or trained for 25 years in a simple class or 50 years in an esoteric one. A Deed of Note is defined as the completion of some task connected to the class in which the character is to advance which would be universally impressive or frightening to other members of that class, and/or which would be sufficient to make the character a minor celebrity if it were known.
A character may not progress from 20th to 21st level until they have completed at least one Deed of Legend. A Deed of Legend is one that fundamentally alters the world in a substantial fashion and, were it widely known, would ensure that the hero had a place in myth for millennia to come.
Simple Classes include: barbarian, fighter, paladin, ranger, rogue, sorcerer, warlock
Esoteric classes include: artificer, bard, cleric, druid, mystic, scholar, wizard
2) For the fiction, but it doesn’t hurt that it provides some slight balancing.
The thing is, while I’m 100% in the “Monks suck” camp… I don’t think it would necessarily need fixing.
See, while there are tier lists in 5e, I would argue that all of 5e classes would fit within a single 3.5 tier. Sure, monks suck in 5e, but have you seen the 3.5 Monk?
So it depends on the campaign and the rest of the party. How much optimization is going on? What are the other classes played? How much does the monk player cares?
See, if you are in a party of optimizers and there’s a wizard and a cleric, and the monk is using a PHB subclass while everyone else uses Tasha, then yeah, the monk is going to need some help. But if the party is more into RP then it can work as is.
The thing is, Monks are kind of in the same boat as Assassins. Stunning Strike, when you do the math, is pretty bad and unreliable, just like Assassinate is very unlikely to work if you play surprise properly. But when it does work, it feels GOOD. It can completely turn a fight around. That’s why monks have so many defenders. When it works, it works amazingly well. The problem is that it doesn’t work most of the time, but that’s much harder to appreciate.
I will second this.
I was going to say something about a higher floor but “all of 5e classes would fit within a single 3.5 tier” is a very good way of expessing my sentiments.
I would also say that Fighters have a quantative advantage over Monks in that they both fight in melee, dishing out damage and taking hits, and the Fighter has the bigger numbers.
But Monks have a qualitative advantage over Fighter in that there are some things the Monk can do that the Fighter simply can’t, particularly in terms of maneuverability. Slow-fall, wall-running, double jumping distance, increased speed, and option for bonus-action dash (and the Shadow Hand Monks infinite-use short-range teleport).
In fights, this means that your fighter may get stuck in a slugging match with their fighter but the monk might be on the other side of that pit trap, punching the archers, or on the top of that cliff grappling that mage, or running around like a lunatic grabbing all the Macguffins and pulling all the mysterious levers.
A Rogue can do some of this with their always-available bonus-action dash (aka Rogue Speed(TM)) but they still have to go around some things that a Monk can just go over.
Outside of a fight, in “exploration” part of the dungeon delve, this get’s even more fun.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say “all 5e classes fit within a single 3.5 tier”—spellcasting is still a huge advantage, especially at higher levels—but the most overpowered classes have been reined in (mostly by adding limits to spellcasting, e.g. the new concentration rules) and the weakest classes have gotten plenty of new toys to make them worth something.
I wouldn’t say they all fit within a single 3.5 tier…but they would probably fit within two. Probably tiers 3 and 4. There aren’t any classes that can do anything, and there aren’t any classes that only do one thing poorly, but there are definitely generalist classes which don’t shine at any one thing or which are nigh-useless outside their one area of expertise.
There’s this concept in Exalted called “paranoia combat.” If you learn how to take the correct “perfect dodge” charms and combo them with “I can never get sneak attacked” charms, you can become unkillable (at least until your magic points run out). This is the mechanically “correct” way to play, and IMHO it absolutely ruins the game when your players find out about it.
In the same way, I think that too much emphasis on optimization can yield similar results. So yes, running for a more RP-focused table is a solution. It’s not going to make the mechanics-first guys like Treantmonk too happy though.
Paranoia combat was always a symptom rather than the disease though.
The real problem is that if you don’t do the paranoia combat it is trivially easy to make it so that you can just kill anyone stone dead several times over by spending a smallish amount of resources.
This is best avoided with care and deliberation and gentleman’s agreements, in my opinion. (well or playing 3E exalted where that got fixed at the root).
Yeah paranoia combat is boring, but losing your character with no real realistic defense of a few years because the ST thought it’d be cool to have a ninja jump out and use a ninja charm on the attack and they didn’t realize that was too much isn’t exactly great either.
Yeah that. 🙂
Laurel would slay me with slaying fire for suggesting such a thing.
Now that they finally have Lunars, 3e is really hitting it’s stride. I played a lot of 2e and 2.5e, and outside the initial wonkiness in withering versus decisive, I will take 3e everytime.
Not only have I seen an end to paranoia combat but I have also seen non-solaroids matter. Hell Dragon-Blooded actually feel like they could have conquered the world instead of just a joke that only matters when at party essence +3 or in groups of 5 or more.
I’d be willing to give such a game its shot. But E2e was Laurel’s college game. It was the thing she fell in love with when she first sailed beyond site of the shores of D&D. If we’re going to play Exalted, it’ll be a big ask to have it NOT be that game.
Eh. Treantmonk is only really correct from a minmaxing perspective; if the tone of the table is that everyone makes highly optimized characters and the DM puts forward harsh and challenging encounters, then yeah, you can’t really do all that much with a monk. Your survivability is bad, your damage output is mediocre, and the only real strengths you’ve got are your excellent saving throws and being able to easily get to your chosen target and Stunning Fist them.
For a table that isn’t built with minmaxing and optimal combat performance in mind however, monks are just fine. They’re not greatly behind a more generic or unoptimized fighter, barbarian, or paladin. The trick, as always, is to know your audience. Don’t bring a monk to a wargaming session. But if you’re with a group with very different priorities and character builds, it’s not going to be an issue.
But if there is a mismatch between PC power levels in this way, resorting to magical items that help the monk specifically or even homebrew to help smooth things along can become necessary. There’s nothing worse than one or two players dominating while other PCs perform woefully inadequately. If so, use the solution that is best in-line with what your group needs; if everyone is aware that there is a problem, homebrewing a solution or handing out a Boon to even the playing field is well and good. But at the same time you sometimes don’t want to be playing favorites, even when there’s clearly a need for it. Careful use of magical items or other solutions can be good then. Or just ask the overperforming player(s) to take things down a notch.
No arguments here. “But I want to play a monk” is a pretty solid trump card for “they’re suboptimal.”
Sorcerors are one of the things that bugs me. Why are they a level behind Wizards on getting access to spells in pathfinder
Like, aren’t they supposed to be the ones for whom spells come naturally, and are generally credited as having more innate magical power?
Cause it more feels like they’re gimped versions of wizards, who only know how to cast a few spells, and are generally just worse. The wizards can even pretty much get the same amount of spells per day by specialising too, which really does make sorcerors feel kinda rubbish
The bloodlines are similar to the monks, in that they might be kinda cool thematically, but in terms of actual power and utility.. also kinda meh, really, usually a little unfocused and not stuff you might want necessarily
I don’t really get why the spell progression just doesn’t work the same, and sorcs get more spells at the cost of being able to only cast a few.. like how it feels it should be
I wanted to take a thematic prestige class for my sorc, which was one of those annoying ones which doesn’t increase your magic progression at level 1 too.. the GM was kind and handwaved that for me, which I was hugely grateful for, cause damn, being 2 levels behind the actual power curve just so I can have a class which suited my character would’ve majorly sucked
It’s a “balancing factor” meant to balance out the fact that sorcerers don’t need to prepare specific spells. (By RAW, a wizard on Pathfinder needs to pick how many times they’re going to cast fireball or haste in a given day, unlike 5e where they just prepare fireball and haste and cast each however many times they like.) The fact that this is inherently balanced by sorcerers having a more limited list of spells they can cast at all was either not considered or actively dismissed by whatever D&D designer made sorcerers work that way.
I dunno. Being slightly less powerful than the most powerful class in the game seems OK. Grab a few Batman utility belt full of scrolls and your sorcerer doesn’t look that different from the wizard anyway.
For my part, I’ve intended to play a metamagic-focused sorc for a while in PF. Being able to play mix-n-match seems like a fun subtheme for a caster, and being spontaneous makes it happen.
I feel I’ve actually been running into this problem from the player’s side of things recently. I’ve been playing a pathfinder 2nd edition investigator with the Vigilante archetype, and Social Purview to steal a couple abilities from the Dandy archetype- which is GREAT for social encounters. I can save face for my allies if they make too bad of a roll, I can get us into places we shouldn’t be, and I can talk circles around our enemies. The problem is, This came at the expense of being borderline useless in combat. Investigator relies on their class feats to really… even measure up on average to other classes, and I’ve burned all mine to be better at talking.
On the GM side though, I generally go by the design of making sure everyone in the party, at some point in the campaign, gets a magic item that is ‘for’ them. It might not literally have their name tag on it, but it’ll be useful to them more than the other party members either by referencing class features they have or feats they’ve taken. By working with the balance of those, I can somewhat balance between party members- Example; When running War For the Crown, my party had a Kineticest in it. With none of the relics (unique, special magic items with powers that increased as the campaign went on) in the campaign as-written being very useful to a kineticest, I dropped one of the existing ones that wouldn’t be useful to the party and wrote in a new one to fit their style of play. I did the same running our next campaign, Strange Aeons, by giving each pc an item from their past (SA has amnesiac heroes) to give them some idea of who they were & some unique abilities. (Example; one of the characters was a Necromancer in the past, so his unique item very slowly heals undead around him, allowing him to slowly restore undead allies to full health without needing to spend magic on it)
This is usually a problem I encounter from the “I’m bored in social scenes” side of things, but I think the same solution applies. You don’t have to be the best at it, but you have to contribute in social scenes, combat scenes, and during downtime. If you don’t have something to do in one of these, you lose out on the chance to exert agency in a core part of the game. And RPGs are all about changing the world in one way or another.
I’m sure you’re not 100% useless in combat, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with shifting the balance a bit so that you’ve got a bit more going on during initiative time, even if it means you’re marginally less talky.
So, my problem comes from a couple core issues; The investigator is INCREDIBLY mad.
to build a face investigator, you need:
Strength (damage)
dex (AC / reflex)
INT (attack rolls from Strategic strike)
AND charisma (for face rolls)
On top of this, paizo made Hero Points a core feature of 2nd edition, and then blanket banned investigator from using them for their main combat feature, Strategic Strike (which lets them attack using Int instead of STR or DEX once per round). Both Hero Points and Strategic Strike have the Fortune trait, and you can only benefit from one Fortune effect on any given roll.
If and when my strategic strikes roll high, I’m a fairly competent damage dealer. By and large, I have the highest attack roll in the party, so in theory I should be landing a lot of attacks.
Unfortunately, I am deeply, deeply cursed. Over the last two sessions, I’ve rolled 12 strategic strikes and 8 normal attacks. only two of them, both of which were normal attacks, have been above a 12 on the d20. We ended up nearly TPKing to a group of APL-2 enemies, and we’re currently planning a rescue mission to get myself and the swashbuckler back. (The rogue faked her death and got away while I was being tied up, the wizard teleported out)
If you’re feeling useless in combat, keep in mind that retraining in PF2e is a LOT easier. Take some time during downtime to retrain a feat you don’t use much of, get yourself something that makes you feel a bit more useful in combat.
Also, don’t underestimate the power of your Strategic Strike and Devise a Stratagem. If you get a low roll for your DaS, you can instead change your plans and roll for something else like Intimidate, Deception, Knowledge, etc. All of which can have invaluable uses in the midst of combat. If you roll high enough with DaS, you can get into position and set yourself up for positively brutal hits.
Devise a Strategem is very powerful, but it being a Fortune effect completely bars investigators from using hero points on it. And with hero points being made a more core feature of the system, it feels REALLY bad to be hard disallowed from using them on your primary combat ability.
Honestly? I feel like monks are probably fine. They may not be optimal when it comes to damage dealing, but they are fun, and that’s what matters. When you can run over 200 feet in a single round, climb onto the roof, and kill the big bad with your bare hands while the rest of the party is ten stories down at the base of the tower, I think you’re fine dealing a tiny bit less average damage over the day. Yes, this is something that actually happened in a game I played. We were level 5.
I feel like a lot of “tier lists” don’t take into account the fact that, most of the time, none of the players are writing down every damage roll and adding it up at the end of the session to compare with everybody else. Instead, it’s about memorable moments.
So, no, generally I’m not worried about a class being underpowered—either it’s fun for the player anyway, in which case it’s not an issue, or it’s not, and then I talk with them about what’s bothering them and go from there.
Plus, sometimes the stuff that’s “suboptimal” is what drew the player to the class in the first place!
Playing Treantmonk’s advocate here, but the sample size is always pretty small when we’re talking about individual monks. On average, you’ve got to be a little luckier than your fellow players to “keep up” as a monk. And if RPGs are all about exerting agency within a fictional world, having less ability to exert agency seems like less fun.
Fair! It is only anecdotal evidence, anyway. Really, though, I just mean to say that different players will optimize for different things, because they have fun in different ways.
If I wanted to deal the most damage as a martial character, yeah I’d play a champion fighter / barb multiclass with a greatsword of sharpness or something, but I still wouldn’t be able to run up walls and slowfall and grab arrows out of the air like my monk buddy, and those are different kinds of cool moments.
I won’t say treantmonk is having bad wrong fun, but I will say that his style definitely isn’t mine.
This really depends on how you are defining “sub-optimal.” There’s “not good enough to do your job” and “not as good at doing your job as some other option.” The first is a problem and steps should probably be taken to mitigate it, especially if it is clearly the designers’ fault (as in the 5e Monk – the player can’t be faulted for assuming that one of the 11 classes is capable of doing what it says it does) and not the player’s (“my commoner-turned-Fighter has never worked out in their life, so they have 10 STR, 12 DEX and 8 CON”). The second one is not nearly as much of an issue as people think. So what if you’d be better at meleeing things to death as a Barbarian? TTRPG success is not measured by efficiency, it is measured by adequacy! If you can do your part in the group, then there actually isn’t a problem at all.
(The other thing to consider is how aware the player is of the limitations of their choice. A total noob probably didn’t realize that their character is weaker than they expect, whereas to a veteran that might be an acceptable and consensual tradeoff for a flashy or roleplay-enhancing feature, or it might even be an intentional personal challenge!)
I can relate. I like to give my casters phobias or thematically restricted spell lists for this reason.
Well, firstly i warn my players that i dont like monks conceptually and my worlds are generally not friendly to their fantasy. Frequently, thats enough to convince them to switch, or at least multiclass. If that doesnt work, then i try to play it by ear, but most of the time the solution tends to be to pull my DM lever labled “Swag” and make it rain special monk loot until they dont feel overshadowed by the elven bard with Tenser’s Transformation, Elven Accuracy (roll advantage twice!) and a vorpal sword.
Also, the last time i had a monk in my game, they were also a werebear, so that kind of evened it out a bit. Turning into Kung Fu Grizzly and just laughing off the orcs or whatever was always worth a laugh.
Who doesn’t love that gif?
https://gifer.com/en/2Mxm
Only if you don’t know how to use them. Or if you play Four Elements.
How do you use ’em?
Who’s the padawan/grasshopper contemplating free beer there? They resemble Druid, contemplating a multiclass. Or is it a new character/class in the making?
Me: “Hey Laurel! Some folks seem to think that’s Druid. What if she was exploring a monk multiclass as a way to explore Arcane Archer’s culture?”
Laurel: “No.”
Me: “Why not?”
Laurel: “Her eyes are the wrong color. It’s not Druid.”
And then the conversation bled out on the floor and died.
She’s also missing the leaf in her hair.
She could be a (twin) sister, though… Or her mom (elves age weird).
Scratch the mom idea, her mom has blue eyes. Could still be a sister!
Also, eye color is easy to fake with spells, class abilities (Thousand Faces), or disguise checks.
I had some worries in our Mummy’s Mask group that our Samurai player would have issues on account of their class being effectively ‘garbage tier’ as far as abilities go. Luckily, said tier weakness didn’t really show in practice (having a bard with doubled performance bonuses helped) and they performed splendidly, murdering things in 2-3 attacks (or less, due to high crit range).
Having played 1-18 in a megadungeon, I find that tier lists are more about theory than practice. If full casters aren’t doing the goofy shenanigans like crafting sweatshops inside of demiplanes or making legions of clones to ensure they never die, the moment-to-moment of high level play is still fun for everyone, martials included.
I feel like even without tier lists befuddling ones assumptions of the classes, there’s still memes and preconceived notions about some classes that veterans aquire (and then warn new players about). Wild sorcerers. Rangers. Summoners (especially vsynth summoners). How shocking grasp is important for a Magus, or Natural Spell is for a druid.
I feel like you’re assuming a priori that the tier lists and whatnot are wrong.
Yes, tier lists abstract away the complexities of play, assuming that players are all equally good at optimizing and that they’re playing a “typical” campaign and that the relative power of classes are worth categorizing, but that’s because it’s a tier list and those sorts of simplifications are inherent to the concept.
There’s still value in that simplified concept, especially in 3.5 (where AFAIK the first D&D tier lists arose), where the differences between good and bad classes were ridiculous. But you need to recognize what a tier list is good for and its limitations…which a lot of tier list authors actively remind you of in the foreword to their lists.
As to the specific examples you mention:
Wild Sorcerer is a fun idea, but it doesn’t actually give you much. Worst of all, whether you ever get to roll on the wild magic table is up to DM discretion, meaning you might never roll any of the fun options because the DM hardly ever remembered that it exists.
5e ranges have a bit of the 3.5 monk problem of having a bunch of abilities which fit their theme without building to any strong purpose, made worse by the fact that most games won’t have much wilderness-exploration-type stuff going on.
Natural Spell is ridiculously good for druids in any edition that has it. It lets you just not invest anything in your physical stats, and then turn into a bear. Combine that with a few buffs and (depending on the edition) it’s easy to be as good a fighter as the fighter with spells left over.
Shocking grasp seems like a default damage spell for magus builds. The only magus I built wasn’t built around damage spells so I didn’t pay that much attention to that part of the guide.
Not that familiar with summoners, either.
I’m not bashing tier lists, I’m more saying that, a person who reads a tier list and one who doesn’t might have different preferences for a class beyond that point – as the person who didn’t read it isn’t informed by the statistical data presented, and plays what they assume to be a class with fun gimmicks, working on trust and DM interactions rather than the math of it.
The person who reads a tier list likely works off of a statistical observation, on assumptions of what they might encounter in a given adventure, and such. The put it in perspective, it’s kind of like comparing competitive veteran League of Legends versus casual players – the casual players pick whatever is fun for them or works in a niche way, or possibly what is most popular at the moment, e.g. a newly released hero, even if they’re not very good.
The competitive players mathed it out to perfection, and know exactly which champion needs to be banned/picked, how good a matchup it is versus another champion, and so on, to the point that the ban/pick phase can decide entire games from the get-go. Experience and knowledge shape their perception of a class and can ‘sour’ their outlook on them even without putting them into practice or before the RNG of dice is put into play.
As for the specific examples: Summoners in Pathfinder are infamous for being undesirable or banned from play. Their abilities are focused around a summoned creature or summoning creatures, which not only puts the focus on said summons instead of the summoner itself, it also has play issues of bogging down play due to controlling multiple characters simultaneously.
And the synth summoner is infamous for being incredibly, incredibly OP – being a full caster with martial stats and defenses of both due to fusing with their eidolon physically whilst retaining mental stats, on top of a lot of defensive abilities from the class and spells. They’re almost able to solo-play an adventure.
Wild Sorcerer (and any other given ‘wild’ table user) can be fun to play but statistically is a nightmare – their table potentially being able to kill you (fireball on self) if you get unlucky, doing nothing useful, and very rarely, being helpful in combat. DMs dislike the randomness potentially making them wildly change the plot or causing unintentional challenge to a easy situation, or vice versa, and other players may become hampered by a wild effect at a critical moment, putting ‘blame’ on the Wild Sorcerer who’s effectively a jinx on them.
Natural Spell is indeed so amazing that it’s borderline mandatory. A player without Natural Spell is likely to get yelled at by any ‘good’ druid player. The same applies to Shocking Grasp as it’s statistically the best ‘starter/default’ option for a magus – being a spell that’s rarely resisted, easy to use, low level, and possible to use metamagic shenanigans to make it scale into the later levels.
Rangers, in my opinions, suffer the ‘meh’ effect. Their abilities are cool if you like LOTR rangers and fit that theme… But are kind of bland if they’re not in a game specifically suited for them, especially with the ‘chosen enemy’ and ‘chosen terrain’ gimmicks they rely on or the abilities of other classes outshining them.
Most classes outperform them at their role as well. Druids are better trackers/wilderness survivors/pet users. Fighters are better at combat. Rogues are sneakier and have more useful non-combat skills overall, and are usually cooler than a ranger. All this leaves the ranger is the informal ‘best archer’ role that many other builds can outperform.
And then Pathfinder released Slayer, which is a combo of Ranger and Rogue and is just cooler than a ranger in every regard whilst doing largely the same things as them. Making the ranger stuck as a innately vanilla class compared to everything else available.
Everyone wants to be Aragorn or Legolas. Rarely do they achieve that expectation when playing the Ranger, or it gets old quickly.
As far as tiers go, while monks are consistently underpowered (I think WotC overestimates the utility of not needing a sword on hand), the biggest problem is the gap between spellcasters and non-spellcasters. Part of that is simply because there are so many spells which just solve problems, but the versatility of having a bunch of different options is a big part of it, too (especially for classes who can pick different spells if they expect certain challenges in a specific day).
Plus…spells are just more fun than attacks. Deciding when and how to blow your high-level spell slots is interesting, and the ways you can use them are more varied than the smattering of long-rest abilities other classes get. I don’t like Vancian magic much, but I think a lot of its problems would go away if everyone used it.
As to the solutions…I mostly ignore the problem and hope it doesn’t come up, which works pretty well for me. There’s one player in my group who’s really good at optimizing characters, and while he can make a terrifying tier 1 caster if he wants to, he usually doesn’t want to. Nobody else seems to worry about it, so I won’t.
[QUOTE] “…the biggest problem is the gap between spellcasters and non-spellcasters. “[/QUOTE]
True, but I think the current edition has done a lot to narrow the gap. Casters usually have to concentrate on a spell that has more than an instant duration. And spells DCs are fairly low, providing opponents a better opportunity to resist them.
Witness the “powers” in 4e. People didn’t like that “every class felt the same.” I never played much 4e, so I can’t speak to the validity of the claim. But I do agree that giving martials some way to effect the world and “problem solve” is a good idea. If that’s not spells though, I’m not sure what it could be. Maybe something like the gunslinger’s utility shot….
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/base-classes/gunslinger/#Deeds
I always thought 4e was just a touch to board gamey. Which is fine, I like board games. But it didn’t feel like an RPG.
I like some of the ideas though. And giving martials spell like effects was interesting. You can kind of see that same mechanic in other game systems where you buy a power or spell, then define it’s trappings or fluff.
I agree here, I think – 4e’s AEDU was fine. The big problem I had with 4e was just how strongly it was tied to the grid. People claim it can be run without, but when half of the martial powers get their utility from moving a character one or two squares, I really don’t see how it can be done without significantly weakening those characters.
But AEDU? That was a pretty good idea, I think.
On a totally unrelated note, how do you quote someone from the comments. I tried using a common tag up above ([QUOTE][/QUOTE]), but it failed. Am I supposed to use greater than/ less than signs maybe?
What in the? Did I miss something? Monks are underpowered in 5e? My very first character was a half-orc Long Death monk. Whenever the enemy managed to break through his regenerating TP and actually damage him severely enough to kill him, they’d have to repeat the procedure 12 more times for him to actually stay dead.
My other monk was a Kensei. It could be argued that he doesn’t count as a positive example of monkhood, because he was an OP as balls bugbear (abusing his built-in Reach and Sneak Attack). However, both my monks were the top damage dealers of their respective groups, far above the other physical attackers present (Fighters, Paladins, Rangers, Rogues) in terms of damage to the enemy (since this seems to be the only aspect in which the ironically named Treantmonk compares this class to others).
I honestly believe that the idea of class tiers, as described to me by 1d4chan, is no longer applicable in 5e and that no DM intervention is needed to “level the field”.
(With the sole exception of the pre-Tasha Beastmaster Ranger, which can be found in the depths of a magma-heated cave, a mile below some rotted wood, that a long time ago composed the bottom of a barrel).
Kalfa said that all 5e classes would fit in a single 3.5 tier, and while I don’t agree with that exact statement, I agree with the sentiment. That said, I don’t think tiers are invalid in 5e; they’re just less significant.
And of course, as any good tier list will point out, what tier of class you play is only a single factor in how powerful your character is. In particular, how good a player is at making strong characters is a factor. It sounds like you’re pretty good at it—after all, both of the characters you mention were the top damage-dealers in the party.
You might argue that that’s a big flaw in the idea of tiers, but I’d disagree. Just because other factors exist doesn’t mean it’s not worth talking about this one.
Fair enough. I just read up a defense of Treatmonk, which shows that there’s a noticeable discrepancy between monks and other classes when viewed through the tiers of play. Apparently I was really lucky.
We’ve never made it to Tier 3 and 4, where I would’ve felt completely useless when compared to the other PCs.
Like I said in today’s rant, the bit about monks was news to me too. It does make a handy example case for “how do you correct for different tiers in the party,” whatever that happens to look like in a given game.
Having been playing a monk in 5e for the past year and a half and watching a monk be played on Critical Role for almost 3 years, I am not sure who thinks monks are under powered, but they are clearly morons.
I think the better question is why people think any one class is “more betterer” or “most worstest” than another class in the first place.
I will agree, that some classes do have what seems like a slight advantage over another, but that has been true since 1st edition and will continue to be true as the game enters 1000th edition.
This is also true of real life. An accountant is at a disadvantage in most combat situations versus a SWAT member. This is just how it is.
But at least the devs of the game have tried to balance the classes as much as they can over the years and I can say with confidence that this is mostly just a case of “the grass is always greener”.
“That other class” is going to be over powered when you are not playing them yourself and see all the “cool shit” that they can do.
And when you are playing a particular class and you think it is under powered, because “those other classes” are so much more advantageous in all these situations, then I think it is better to argue, why is your DM creating such advantageous situations for them and none for you? Or maybe you should try and self examine and see, IS the class as under powered as you think, or are you just a little bitch and you need to get over it?
All that being said, Ranger needs a little rework still. They did an okay “work around” with Tasha’s Cauldron class options, but then again, they gave every class new options, so Ranger is still a little lame in some areas. SOME areas. They are still not “under powered”.
“It’s always true, so it’s never worth talking about” is such a stupid argument no matter what you’re discussing. It’s self-evidently true for science (since scientific laws never change), it’s almost self-evidently true for culture (since talking about things which “never change” is required for affecting change), and it’s true for everything in between…especially since, while some classes are always better or worse than others, they’re not always better/worse in the same ways or to the same degrees.
This is a stupid argument for two big reasons.
One, D&D is not and has never been realistic; it is fantasy, and it is a game, specifically a game which claims to be balanced in some regard. (It’s not Rifts.)
Two, D&D isn’t a game about accountants and police officers, it’s a game about different flavors of fantasy heroes. There’s no reason a wizard has to be stronger than an archer. A kung fu monk or shirtless berserker doesn’t have to be less effective than a guy with armor and a sword, even though obviously armor and weapons have historically been important for people who don’t want to die in combat.
This is a pretty good argument. It’s not one I think holds up to scrutiny—it mixes a bit of “It’s always true and hence not worth discussing” with assumptions about how flimsy arguments for some 5e classes being better than others that don’t match up with the substance of those arguments (nor the consistency with which some classes are called weak or strong), but it’s not a bad argument.
I’m trying to not be purely negative. I understand your perspective, and think that focusing on class tiers (in anything but an abstract for-its-own-sake discussion) is a bad idea. But I disagree with your wholesale rejection of the concept (except for rangers, for some reason), and I think you argued your case very poorly.
Careful, GWG. Friendly argument is fine. It’s what we do ’round these parts after all. Make sure it stays friendly though.
I see you. I always appreciate your presence. I just want to head off any flames before they flare up. 🙂
I agree with you. I can not think of a class that I have not heard called ‘over powered’ at some point. The truth is that every class has circumstances in which they shine – do things no other base class build can do. It is also true that as the PCs gain levels that they tend to specialize. Of course PCs that specialize at combat will tend to perform better in combat than those who do not. If it seems like some PC never gets their time in the spotlight, its either that the party is not being given a sufficient variety of encounters (DM’s fault), or the PC has a poor build or is not run intelligently (player’s fault), or its merely skewed perception (as you say, ‘Grass is always greener…’ – no one’s fault).
Did you watch the Treanmonk video? If you’ve got a bones to pick with the “monk is underpowered” business, I’d start there.
Like I said in the OP though, I don’t have a dog in that particular fight.
Yeah, I always thought the monk got a raw deal. I think in the next version of D&D, they should make the monk a subclass of fighter. Give it a few unique abilities such as unarmored defense and ki powered attacks. This would let monk have all of the base fighter abilities while keeping the monk aesthetic.
Out of curiosities sake, does anyone know how the monk in Pathfinder holds up?
Most of my expertise on the Pathfinder monk also comes from Treanmonk. Dude has been my mechanics guru for many years. Here’s the guide:
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/extras/community-creations/treatmonks-lab/treantmonk-s-guide-to-monks/
I’m pretty sure it’s outdated at this point, but for a high-level “core rulebook” perspective, it’s an interesting read.
As long as the players know what their characters can and can’t do and aren’t coming in with no understanding of the system, I’ll generally let them make all the bad decisions with their character creation. Tiers are a bit of generalization and strongly depend on the player’s cleverness. In the Pathfinder actual play podcast The Glass Cannon Podcast, Matthew plays a spellcaster (multiple as several of them have died brutally) whose clever use of spells and actions have saved the party’s bacon a number of times, while Grant’s gunslinger inquisitor (while being more limited in regards to the tier list) who acts as the team leader and often trivializes combat due to his excellent build for their AP.
I was about to write a comment about Joe before I got to this line. Dude drives me nuts building “interesting” characters and then complaining about this luck. I’ll be sitting there like, “Bro. Dude. Dude bro. THERE’S A CORRELATION HERE.”
Joe plays a Hungy Ghost Monk in their live play of Strange Aeons (available on YouTube) mostly because the fans chose it for him. He goes into it assuming the worst as he considers it to be a bad archetype for a underpowered class.
He is promptly proven right as he dies in the first round of the first combat, of the first session. Said character is forever mocked from that point, dubbed the ‘shitty orc’ by Troy.
Dude’s cursed.
I mean, it IS a bad archetype for a weak class, but at the level they were at, it could have happened to anyone, but especially to Joe.
My buddy and I are more or less always waiting to see what dumb thing Joe is going to complain about that is entirely self-inflicted. Not including his issues with Hero Lab in creating Dalgreath (self inflicted, but understandable), he was complaining about his saves, but hadn’t done anything to boost them with feats, traits, or equipment, and had even put enough points into his Charisma to make it have a positive modifier… For fuck’s sake Joe… Then there’s all the issues of him screwing up how his goddamn character’s MAIN GODDAMN TACTIC works. JOE! STOP NERFING YOURSELF! YOUR CHARACTERS ARE ALREADY BAD ENOUGH AS THEY ARE!!! Four Bears couldn’t cast his best spells because his wisdom wasn’t high enough and Joe kept playing him like a frontline fighter. Sir Will would have been adequate as a straight Cavalier, but Joe threw in the Paladin Divine Defender bit that complicated things for him (flavorful and cool, but not necessary) and his handling of Sir Will’s tactics was abysmal. It’s pretty bad when Lorc was likely the mechanically best character Joe has put together for the main GCP campaign. Ugh…
That’s a case where a good and kind GM would step in and being a good friend make sure that their player wasn’t doing something to screw themselves over and also make it harder to enjoy themselves during the game. It’s one thing to choose a weaker/more narrowly focused class like a barbarian, monk, or fighter over a cleric/druid/wizard, but it’s another to build it so suboptimally that you’re likely to be an anchor around your party’s collective neck and actively not enjoy playing the character.
A good and kind DM would be nice for them to have. Unfortunately, they have Troy instead, who is competent and cruel.
He, among other killer DM things, mislead Joe into getting favored enemy undead on his ranger, only for him to spend most of the book not encountering any (and when they did become numerous, he was already killed off for good).
As a DM, I always try to throw in some content (a roll here, a puzzle there, a specific challenge) so that every player has something to do somewhere to contribute to the adventure. (The Avengers have a guy with only a dozen trick-arrows and a walkie talkie? Stick him on a tall building to monitor the situation.) Sure, it gets awkward if a glory-hound with a kitchen-sink build tries to do everything, but if nudging them to play nice doesn’t work, you can always spring the next surprise while they’re up getting another slice of pizza. We once had a 3.5 Bard whose player missed playing a fighter and would not engage in the mission. Some subtle encouragement and a couple of low-powered magic items later (including a harmonica of entangle and sunglasses that gave a +2 to Intimidate if you whipped them off and said something pithy) and the Bard was causing distractions to whip up chaos on the battlefield while the player hastily wrote lyrics to his own songs of inspiration.
I remember a million years ago giving one of my first GMs bad vibes.
“I don’t really care what I play,” I told him.
He thought I meant that I was not invested in the game. What I really meant was, “So long as I can do stuff, I’ll be a happy camper.” Feeling like I can contribute is my bread and butter as a player.
I have been in many games with Monk PCs – I think always run by RAW – and I never saw anything to suggest the class is under-powered. I can recall several instances where our Monk stunning a foe was instrumental (for example, preventing the escape of a Hag, thus ensuring we did not later face the full coven). I also played a Monk once, but not seriously. Thus I am dubious of this “claim of under-poweredness”. Each class has its own circumstances in which it gets the spotlight, and I have certainly seen Monk characters get theirs.
You quote “2.15 damage per round”. I confess, I never did such a detailed calculation. However, there is alot more to class effectiveness than damage per round. For example, the bit I said above about preventing a Hag from escaping by stunning them – how does one figure that into a “damage per round” calculation? In my opinion, if the DM is doing a good job of giving the party a good variety of encounter types, and the players are running their PCs intelligently, then – when averaged over all encounters – then all the classes should fair about the same. Now, if this fails to be true for whatever reason – for example one player building their PC poorly, or not running them intelligently – the DM should not touch a thing, and just continue running the game strictly according to RAW. If someone can not enjoy the game because their PC does 2.15 less damage per round than another, well, first of all, why do you even bother calculating that statistic? Secondly, you need to let players learn the game – and that gets less likely if the DM keeps trying to baby-sit them. If they make character build choices that reduce their enjoyment of the game, let them learn from it, and learn to work with it. The DM should never intervene by changing the rules, homebrewing items, or giving preferential treatment in any way. What the DM should do is make sure they are giving the party a proper variety of types of encounters.
I pulled the number out of the air. If you want to see that actual charts, go to the Treanmonk video I linked. Like I said, I don’t have a dog in the monk fight. It’s more of an example of an underpowered class than the topic of today’s conversation. What’s more interesting to me is, regardless of class or system, if you spot that one player is underperforming compared to the others, how do you go about course-correcting?
We aren’t talking “my boyfriend is a monk so he gets a +5 bo staff of charming.” We’re talking about which version of the 5e Ranger you want at your table. That’s one that the actual designers struggle with, so it’s only natural for GMs to noodle with it as well. For me, noodling with the rules and trying to dial in the right fit for the table is part of the charm of the hobby. After all, if I wasn’t allowed to hack the game a little bit, I wouldn’t have much to do as a 3rd party designer. 🙂
I have no experience playing monks in D&D, but in my system of choice, Warhammer fantasy roleplay, the “class tier” problem is largely self-correcting. You see, in WHFR, you don’t choose your starting class, you roll on a (very large) table (roll twice and pick your favourite). This combined with the system’s high mortality rate means that, when faced with one guy who rolled a Peasant and his jammy friend who rolled a Knight Errant, both are likely to die in any given combat. Therefore, they will have to roll up new characters which gives the peasant a chance at a better class and the knight is unlikely to get a really good class twice in a row. Of course, better classes means a better chance of survival, so the system tends towards the party having decent classes. Finally, all starting classes eventually progress into andvanced classes, which means even the lowliest peasant could become a winged lancer or noble lord if they’re lucky/skilled enough to survive the early game.
I’ve never had much chance to play with random generation. I was always intrigued by Traveler though. The notion of dying in character gen is so wacky that I’ve itched to give it a shot for years!
Well, Warhammer isn’t quite that crazy with randomness. It’s just random race, stats, starting class and a couple of feats if you got a human or halfling. Unless you elected to start as a mutant, in which case there’s a 2 page d1000 table of FUN. As far as classes go, there’s everything from ratcatchers and dung collectors to chaos marauders and troll-slayers. And if you’re very unlucky, various magic users.
I had a druid with a one level dip in monk (sadly the campaign ended pretty quick). She was an undine with the oceans subdomain, snake style, and was going to use a water elemental (shaped like a serpent) as her combat form of choice (and eventual form of choice period).
Love me some styles feats. Had a snake stylist in my megadungeon for years before she finally dipped out. It was always cool to see in action. Lots of drama and such while rolling to block. 😀
In my personal experience, having DM´ed a couple of Monks, their mobility is actually pretty useful. First of all it allows Monks to pretty much assist whenever needed on the battlefield. Secondly, they are pretty handy mageslayers. High Dex allows them to go before the Wizard, run straight past the wizards minions and attempt to stun the wizard (Who is very likely to get stunned, seeing that most NPC Wizards have terrible CON saves). If the wizard is concentrating on a spell, they then stunning strike can be used to make them save twice. Add to this the Monks ability to make several attacks per turn and you have a class that is pretty good at reaching a caster, breaking concentration and beating their way through various other protections.
You can´t counterspell fist, after all. And if they use their reaction for shield, then that is a reaction they can´t use for counterspelling your casters spells. Evasion also helps them greatly when it comes to survive a great deal of spells.
For most battles I have seen with monks without casters, they would generally do hit and run attacks, assisting the more brute martial classes where needed, and moving to assist the Caster if they were about to be overwhelmed. For the this is where Monks shined, with their ability to be everywhere at once if necessary. I don´t know if I would call monks great battlefield controllers, but I think they are great battlefield assisters.
For Treants video, while I do see a lot of his points, I must say I think his comment about how everyone on a horse is able to be faster then a monk is kinda ridiculous. Seeing that there is going to be plenty of occasions in a game where you can´t bring a horse with you. Or the fact that Horses are really, really easy to kill. Especially if your enemy casts fireball at the party.
Monks are underpowered in 5e?
what else is new under the sun?
or rather: hath ever there been a time when they weren’t?
Did PF1e unchained actually do what it said on the box?
I’ve added one level of Monk to what was supposed to become an Arcane Trickster.
And I have met one player who actually plays Monks exclusively, but apart from that the class is considered so FUBAR in my gaming circles that I doubt it will ever come up.
PF1e Unchained is one of two rules books of which I didn’t buy the pdf:
it felt too much like an extended errata sheet, full of stuff they should have done at the start.
It’s the players problem. He choose the class, if he is sub-optimal or doesn’t know how to play the class it’s his own deal. Isn’t the work of the DM to play the players characters or to make decisions over them. Unless it got to do with the campaign, but that should be discussed before start playing. If the player wants to play sub-optimal it’s his problem 🙂
That said i think the important question is: “Should every build be optimal”? What many players consider optimal is OP, sub-optimal is normal, and bad is utter crap. If the powerplayer and minmaxers set the bar anything, other that their own special advice and brew, is sub-optimal 🙂
are adventure paths written with power gamers in mind?
it sometimes feels like it.
So that they don’t complain of easy things. Also adventure paths are ready made things. It’s like burgers, you buy them, you eat them. A campaign made by the players is like cooking before eating, too much boring and tiresome for powergamers 🙂
I tend to feel that sub-optimal is a matter of opinion… provided you’re good at something. The bigger problem tends to that little icosahedron landing with the wrong numbers face up. I’m having a 10 week spate of that in Pathfinder right now on my Rogue Warpriest (think Indiana Jones, but the museum is the temple of Shelyn). Bad times.
Some of this is how you personally build characters… I tend to go very themey. I like being effective at what I do, so I build to be effective at what I do while staying in theme. Sometimes this isn’t as much of a compromise as you’d think. Sometimes it is much more so.
Just account for it. Realize that whatever sub optimal part of your build can be covered by magic items. Or templates if you’re into TF and the GM isn’t a floppy wet sock.
Game balance is important in so far as everyone has fun. It’s to help everyone feel like there is some kind of rough parity and believe they are on an equal or roughly equal playing field. Thumbing the scales in service of that goal is arguably what a GM should do. The only exception is if we’re playing a ‘let the dice fall where they may’ sort of scenario.
I’m always of the opinion that Monk’s are great as pesudo-rogues. They can dress however they want, blend into the background, and suddenly step forward and punch some poor fool so hard their fists leave ‘dents’ in the fool’s armor.
A Social style encounter that turns deadly is also great for a monk, as he doesn’t have to worry about his weapons being taken away. He IS a weapon and he’ll shine as the assassins suddenly find themselves being beaten bloody and knocked all over the place.
I do have a weird place in my heart for the Monk Archtype “Martial Artist”. I just wish I could do something with the remaining Ki-needing powers it keeps as the archtype trades away its Ki-Pool.
I made a bard archer that’s an orc. When I started up the thread on the Paizo forums, several people told me that an orc is a bad choice for a bard and that I should make something like a barbarian because that was more optimized. All I could think was ‘If I wanted to make an orc barbarian, I’d be doing so. I want an orc bard.’ I didn’t care if it was a bad matchup. I really liked the mental image so I made it.
I also have Tamarie, my half-drow monk. She’s done decently well in terms of damage output. The biggest problem I had was flying opponents. Luckily, my group has a homebrew rule with martial traditions, so now my little monk has a fly speed of 20. And a level of cleric, which fit her backstory perfectly and gave her a bit of spells.
the forum advice in the style of „play something else“ is always fun.
makes me wonder how those people ever found enough imagination to decide to play D&D in the first place.
I know, right? It’s so annoying. It’s one thing to say ‘This class can do what you want but better.’ It’s another to say ‘This class matches the min-max better even though it does exactly the opposite of what you want the character to be.’
I’ve been playing my orc bard and he’s been doing pretty well. Although it is a gestalt game and I slapped on fighter as the other class. That might have helped.
as gestalt I would have build a bardbarian.
Wouldn’t have really worked with this guy. He’s worked very hard to learn to control his orcish temper for the sake of his baby sister. Plus I wanted the feats. There were a lot I had to set aside because there wasn’t room in the build for them originally. With all the bonus feats a fighter gets, there was plenty of room. Even grabbed him Empty Quiver Style on the off-chance he’d end up in melee.
I have another character in that group as it’s a living world game. He’s a warpriest and I gestalted him with hunter.
I’ll just go with the Occam’s Razor approach to this and suggest not playing in/running games where being fully optimized is a requirement or even a goal. That’s not really fun? Also really limiting because given that D&D is a game that is mostly mechanically focused on combat it means that some build out there is the best one and deciding you can’t do anything less than that or less good than X steps away from that is like saying you won’t eat anything if you can’t eat the world’s best hamburger, even if you’ve already had it this week.
I don’t think Monks are bad enough that they aren’t enjoyable to play (like PHB Beast Ranger or something), so I don’t think there’s a real problem to fix here. (Though obviously designers should try and make classes and options as balanced as possible, so if we ever get a Revised Monk or something I wouldn’t object. But it’s not so bad that I think there’s some strong need for it either.
Though take this with a grain of salt as Monks are one of my less favored classes, mostly because I find a lot of their archetypes poorly designed or bland.
2.15 less damage per round, eh? I’d never looked into the exact number.
I’ve gotten rather grumpy over the years. My first thought was that if some whiney little twerp comes crying to me that “Waah, the monk’s average damage per round is a whopping 2.15 less than optimal!” I would tell them to cry me a river and go find a different group. I’m here to roleplay, not prop up the fragile ego of a powergamer who can’t survive not being the most optimal thing in the room.
I like fighters, but I like monks too. I’ve played 5e monks and DMed games for 5e monk players. They’ve been great. The fighters have been great too. At the end of the day though, none were great because of their access to second wind, or flurry of blows, or whatever. Well-written, interesting characters in the hands of capable players are what make for fun games, not optimized builds with big numbers attached.
It’s not a class I have a lot of experience with, but had some fun with a monk during a 4e campaign. Having an at-will burst attack (i.e. kick the crap out of everything within reach) was a very useful crowd-control technique…
Don’t give Treantmonk oxygen.
I’ll say the same thing aboot TreantMonk as I do aboot Ben Shapiro: Confidently saying blatantly incorrect things into a camera for 50 minutes without rebuttal does not make you right.
Overall, on the note of balance, I usually tweak it in the items my players get (each one gets a single scaling item per character) – but I’m generally okay with certain characters doing drastically different damage in different scenarios provided they are all reasonably capable in a given scenario.
I do take some issue with the points that monks are bad – I’ve found quite the opposite in fact. Their mobility and CC are actually extremely powerful at high levels in complex combats. When enemies are regularly teleporting away, having a character that can run up to them and potentially drain multiple legendary resistances in a single round is immeasurably strong. Obviously not all enemies have low Con saves, but I think it is generally good practice as a DM to ensure that every big enemy has at least one major and one minor save that is relatively low (And we should vary that up). At up to 4 chances in a round, if you have the enemy balanced for about 30% success rate on their bad save, you can potentially see 3 legendary resists burned in a single turn from a monk, which can be game-changing (Especially if you’re playing with things that have way more than 3).
I feel Treantmonk’s analysis looks at combat if you just throw a bunch of people against a fat, immobile, high Con enemy. But make that enemy mobile, give it a variety of Saves that it targets (I stand by the position that any major encounter should be able to target at least one major and one minor save, but ideally should target two major and two minor saves), and suddenly monks have an uptime on enemies and survivability that far beats out most of their competition, and more than makes up for their damage discrepancies.
And that, I think, is where character balance really comes in – you don’t need every character being great at everything, so long as they are generally decent as a baseline, and have something they excel at, you’ve reached the goal. I think, in fact, that it is good to have characters that excel under different circumstances, because it helps create a bit of a ‘rotation’ of who ends up feeling like they’re the MVP of the fight.
I suppose, in the end, my point is that it is up to us as the GM’s to help balance characters, but it does not need to be by tweaking the characters so much as it is by good encounter design. Good encounter design goes a long way to empowering players in my experience.
The first question when faced with a party of wildly different tiers is if it’s actually a problem; it can feel bad to be a Monk watching the Unarmed Swordsage doing everything you want to but better, and it’s part of why players should communicate to ensure there’s no role overlap. The Wizard solving encounters before the party gets to do anything might require taking them aside to ask them to dial it back and keep the win buttons saved for a rainy ‘oh crap I’m about to accidentally TPK the party’ day.
The biggest problem involving an underpowered character is when it’s disappointing the player, rather than being outdone- lack of function over lack of competitiveness. The Monk is a famous example because it simply can’t DO most of what it says it does. It has lots of fluff features that are situational or limited in per day use, needs high numbers in multiple attributes, doesn’t have the numbers needed to contribute competently, can’t really use its mobility and contribute at the same time (given 3.5e and Pathfinder both really want martials to Full-Attack to keep the damage flowing instead of moving and attacking), and so on.
I feel this situation is partly out of the DM’s hands, but it’s best if they can try to keep the mechanically weaker party members’ limits in mind to ensure they don’t end up in a situation over their heads. Possibly opting for larger numbers of weaker enemies to ensure the high tiers don’t just wipe out an encounter before the rest of the group gets to dip their toes in, and talking with people to ensure there’s no friction or lack of engagement, etc. Don’t put too many flying enemies in, mix them with ground-bound foes the flight- and range-deprived fistfighter can work with. Offering to help optimize the character (or asking the party for advice) can help (if you’ve confirmed the player is not enjoying themselves), and houserule buffs or homebrew magic items can help in extreme scenarios, but the DM can only do so much to wave away the flaws of the system without cracking the system open and going Frankenstein on it, which is a major commitment on top of their many other huge commitments from their role.
That said, it’s also hard to pin this on the players; not everyone knows the system inside and out, and may not know until they’re several sessions deep and committed/attached to a character before they realize the gears and cogs underlying the system is letting them down. The reason Monk is an infamous example is it’s an incredibly cool class that draws new players to it, standing out enough to really get people excited about it, only to fail to deliver on what it promises. Look at any homebrew site, and you’ll find tons of Monk fixes for any given edition (I’ve made several and have an incomplete third attempt for 3.5e still stashed on my computer). A player who’s aware of this issue can look up advice on sites if they’re that committed to playing Monk specifically over Swordsage or Brawler or whatever alternative your system offers, and thankfully most commonly played systems are very flexible and can bring you to the point of at least contributing with everyone else- if you see a newer player coming to the table with a Monk, you could helpfully give them a headsup that the class underperforms a bit and they might want to ask around for advice.
There’s a few things everyone can do for this, though- including the other players. Party buffers can look into stuff that’ll prop up the other players where they’re lacking- Heroism to make them hit more reliably, Haste to give them that extra swing, an extra Mage Armor prep from the Wizard can really help the Monk’s AC in 3.Xe and Pathfinder, the other front-liners can purposefully go for flanking positions easily accessible for the Monk, and so on. High power casters can look into building their strengths in areas their compatriots aren’t interested in- if you have a Rogue who is a master of infiltration, don’t pick up Knock. Or do, but make a wand or whatnot of it and fork it over instead of spamming it. If you notice a fellow party member struggling, make sure you offer a hand if you can.
DMs can definitely tailor the loot pool a bit- a Monk’s Belt or a quick and dirty custom magic item that amps up Unarmed Strike damage is neat, and can patch over damage issues. There’s another thing DMs can do to help even the playing field, too, though it depends on the table and player. If the character can’t keep up mechanically, try giving them more spotlight in roleplay situations! Shy away from asking for skill checks regarding RP unless a character is really going over the top or enacting a plan with mechanical rewards over plot or character, mind- if they’re floundering in combat, they’ll likely have trouble with social situations, too (boy that’s a sentence).
You can also expand an RP element to combat, making them a bit more memorable as set-pieces, too. Precariously-placed stones that can be dropped from a high ledge onto enemies that the Monk can reach/get to faster, a plot mcguffin or shiny valuable the Kobolds are running toward on their stubby little legs, backline archers that aren’t properly covered by the less numerous frontliners, etc. Again, though, this is a decent bit of extra work in that player weaknesses and strengths need to be considered.
Oh! One other thing that helps in the situation of a new player being disappointed/let down: retraining. A lot of systems offer optional rules that let players spend in-game time and money to change out feats, class levels, etc, and I highly recommend allowing these rules and opportunities to use them. Make sure your players know they’re on the table, too.
Buyer’s Remorse is painful enough as is, but if you’re feeling it when you’re 5th level in an AP or Module meant to go to 16th level, it’s gonna be a long, rough road for the next few months (or however long it takes for the player to give up and ask for a new character they might be less excited to play/for a bad roll to put the poor character out of their misery).
I haven’t even watched the video, can’t really justify spending nearly an hour when comments all seem to imply that the majority of the concept of the video is based on flawed math.
Namely; it doesn’t matter if stunning strike is unreliable. If your monk isn’t being stupid and constantly burning Ki for flurry of blows, and instead focuses on leveraging their martial arts bonus attack, that’s 3 attacks to leverage at 5th level, so even though Stunning strike might fail 2/3rds of the time, if you have 3 attacks, you’re basically guaranteed to get that stun in. and stun is FUCKING HUGE. And all Ki points come back on a SHORT REST those resources are only limited in a stupid party that wont accommodate those rests.
1. Auto-Break Concentration spells, bypassing concentration checks entirely.
2. Give free advantage to your rogues
3. AUTOMATICALLY FAIL Strength and Dexterity saves, which allows your casters to confidently use things like; Disintegrate, Otiluke’s Resilient Sphere, Wall of Fire, or simply a classic fireball, and many other that have less dramatic effects, knowing those slots wont be wasted, and once you get evasion, they can toss out fireballs with little concern for Monk’s safety
Monks also have the speed needed to move onto a second target as soon as they stun their main target. You toss Mercy monk on that and they can easily heal AND stun multiple targets in the same turn, which is huge.
The problem with Monks is that people don’t realize that their real purpose is debuffs, putting them into a similar support role as a bard, or they try to Flurry AND Stun, which just burns those points way too fast.
The tiers of 5E aren’t really comparable to the tiers of 3X. A Sorcerer may be strictly worse than a Wizard in literally all respects, but it’s still viable. Here’s the objective tier-list for 5E:
Above average: Bard, Cleric, Paladin, Wizard.
Average: Druid, Fighter, Monk, Rogue, Warlock.
Below average: Barbarian, Sorcerer, Artificer, post-Tasha’s Ranger.
Far below average: Pre-Tasha’s Ranger.
This is for comparing base-classes. Subclasses would be their own separate chart by class. Short rest classes do fall by a tier if you don’t do an adventuring-day. Similarly this is assuming a varied campaign; if you were in a campaign that was 90% fighting mages you would bump Monk up, whereas if you were in a purely social campaign bump up all the Charisma-based classes.
I’ve never played 5th ed, but based on that Treantmonk video, I’d say:
– make flurry of blows free to use, no need to spend chi
– flurry of blows works more like 3rd ed where it gives you more attacks
– monks get to add Dex bonus, Wis bonus, and Str bonus to their unarmed damage and stunning strike DC
– monks get to add Dex bonus, Wis bonus, and Con bonus to their unarmored AC
– monks get to add their Wis bonus to their Con save (mind over body), their Con bonus to their Dex save (rolling with blows), and I suppose their Int bonus to their Wis save (couldn’t really find a way to justify using Dex here to complete the loop).
That should give them a boost in damage, tankiness, and battlefield control that could make them somewhat passable in a jack-of-all-trade-but-master-of-none way.
This is all, of course, based on some half-remembered notions of D&D 3.5 from like 15 years ago and zero knowledge of D&D 5 rules, and absolutely no playtesting obviously, so I can promise it has to be extremely mechanically sound and perfectly balanced.
As GM, talk with your players about the situation. In a D&D 3.5 campaign, a player wanted to be a Vow of Poverty Monk. He had watched a buncha martial arts TV and thought he would be wonderfully powerful that way. The GM and I explained to him repeatedly how the rules worked against him and he went Unarmed Swordsage instead. He eventually realized how right we were and thanked us for it, because we weren’t some Asian Humans fighting other Humans: We were fighting Undead, Elementals, and stuff notably bigger and longer ranged than us.
The tiers of 3.5 are notably farther apart than in 5e. I feel like you’ve got to make this kind of call when you’re trying to make those concepts work.
IT was mentioned above, but in 1st edition pathfinder. the unchained monk when built right can be a whole world of pain.
i played a monk in rise of the runelords. last part with all the great big giants hitting hard and having ton of hp.
my monk without haste was attacking 7 times in a round (3+ 2 flurry +meduza’s wrath extra two attacks, less if he was using his flying kick to get close so he can full attack) and with jabbing master the 2nd hit got 2d6 more damage and every hit after that 4d6 (not including wealth by level gear. holy amulet of mighty fists +5 with the runelord rune untop).
i was the party top damage dealer. and my ac was rocking the top 50’s-60. with flaying kick, dimension door and the high more rate i was killing all over the map way faster then any other melee or ranged attacker. not including the casters. gods bless them. but i was saving them spell slots!
they know that if there was one or two giants alive they can leave them for me to handle.
Didn’t the songbird of doom have some monk levels?
https://paizo.com/threads/rzs2rzop?The-Songbird-of-Doom-A-Guide-to-a-most
We played a long running D&D 5 game where we went to level 22 (with some third party epic level PDF from DM Guild) and I never felt my Open Hand Monk was underpowered… the DM cursed how useful it was to remove reactions of bad guys (he created “Legendary Reactions” for some of the toughest baddies that couldn’t be removed with that class feature 😛 ), or that time I pushed two giants, that rolled absurdly low on their strength saving rolls, into lava.
But the DM did create custom magic items for all of us and my monk had magical tattoos that allowed him to do additional lightning damage with his unarmed attacks, so I had a high DPS, and he did give us all basically homebrew artifacts with really powerful effects (among the effects mine gave was 1 reaction per enemy, when paired with Sentinel and Mage Slayer was very nasty).
It was an epic high fantasy game with incredible stakes against some pretty insane antagonists. So we had a lot of magical items to match.
Different assumptions / different levels of homebrew will yield different results. That’s always the thing with optimizers: no matter how good your math looks on paper, it does not cover all situations.
Off topic from the question, but my party took in Glabbagool and brought him with us as the team mascot.
We fed him all the “leftovers” that piled up in our murderous wake, and the DM started rolling percentile to give him new powers every time he ate something.
By the end of that campaign, Glabbagool had become an Ooze God and I (after my initial Sorcerer met with a full damage disintegration ray) was playing an Ooze-kin Cleric spawned from his Great Gelatinous-ness, and my character spent all their downtime proselytizing and trying to convert local disadvantaged peoples to join the newly founded Church of Slime.
It was a pretty good time, at least for everyone that didn’t end up on the wrong side of the gooey apocalypse.