13
What do we think of the new Monk?
(lemmy.world)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2023
13 points (100.0% liked)
OneDnD - 5e UA Material/Discussion
872 readers
4 users here now
A place to discuss the playtest content for the 2024 version of 5e D&D, known by its codename OneD&D.
Join our discord! https://discord.gg/dndnext
-- Rules --
- Be Civil. Unacceptable behavior includes name calling, taunting, baiting, flaming, etc. Please respect the opinions of people who play differently than you do.
- Use Clear, Concise Titles.
- Limit Self-Promotional Links. External links to blogs, kickstarters, storefronts, YouTube channels, etc, must be related to DnD and posted no more than once every 14 days. Affiliate links are never allowed.
This is a new community and the rules are in flux. Please bear with us (and give your feedback!) as we navigate building this new community. Thank you!
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
I'm lukewarm on it. By my measure, the critical flaw in the monk's design is stunning strike. Any discussion on the monk that I've had has invariably been pulled to that singular ability.
It's an incredibly swingy ability that only costs one point. As a result all monks need to weigh all their point-cost abilities against it, and in combat either the monk is a mediocre contributor or they undermine the whole encounter by disabling key actors. SS was nerfed, but I'd like to see a version where it was removed entirely and it's power was distributed throughout the class.
A key compromise that I think would be healthy is to transplant stunning strike into a subclass. That way players who enjoy that playstyle can opt for it, and DMs who dislike running games for those builds can disallow them at their table.
As for all the other details, I'm uncertain. There are some improvements, but it's hard not to see the system bending over backwards and straining to fit around stunning strike.
I like the monk as the class who applied status conditions to enemies. The guy who runs around the battlefield who supports his allies but debuffing the enemies. So stun works with that fantasy but if it's in a subclass like open hand that allows the others to have a cool signature ability at like 5th level.
Since I doubt that will happen I enjoy the changes now. You can do stun once and then use your discipline points elsewhere.
I can agree that Stunning Strike was bad design, for sure.
It's interesting when you compare the Monk to casters, who typically also have incap abilities that cost a resource. While I don't think casters are designed perfectly either, a caster isn't useless if they can't use their incap spell on an enemy (through immunity or high saves or whatever) whereas a Monk that can't stun is doing really nothing but subpar damage. Casters usually spend more of their resources on an incap spell, and they sure aren't spamming it three times per round. Hypnotic pattern can still cause ridiculous swinginess when it comes to balancing fights of course, so maybe it's not the best benchmark anyway.
With that in mind, I think Stunning Strike should probably be less spammy (which is the main part of what they did) but obviously it needs to be made up for by making the rest of the Monk much better, which I don't feel was really achieved here.
I absolutely agree with you on the Stunning Strike matter. The nerf has helped - it's gone from "Use almost all my Ki on Stunning Strike." to "What can I afford to use Ki on while Stunning Strike is on cooldown?" But it's still the wrong kind of question to be asking, and IMO it's exactly the kind of debilitating ability that makes DnD unfun.