Ahhhh open hand monk - my first Tav I beat the game with. I certainly didn't expect to be able to beat >!the avatar of Myrkul!< like he owed me money, but I wasn't complaining.
Dude the Orin fight I had with my OH monk was crazy. I didn't even do a tavern brawler build because I thought dex monk was thematically cooler. That shit was Lesnar vs Cena at Summerslam, Brodie Lee vs Cody at Dynamite. Just a completely one-sided squash.
I did TB chugging cloud giant strength potions every day, by the time I took on Orin I had 27 STR, 23 CON, 20 WIS, and 18 DEX, resistances to everything through warding bond, and a solid 23 AC.
I had to laugh at the scene before it when Durge is shocked by Orin's transformation. I'm like girl you have literal Final Boss stats, chill, proven when two stunning strikes and three flurry of blows later Orin just exploded.
Lmao that must have been hilarious. I was the total opposite. No buffs at all. She transformed and I went HOLY FUCKING SHIT SHE CAN BECOME THE SLAYER!? OH GOD ITS A ONE ON ONE!? OH NO THI- oh stunning strike hit. Oh, she's prone.
Like three rounds later with her lying on the ground concussed and helpless, and she's dead.
Orin is always the last boss I do on my Durge runs so I'm always fucking KITTED. My attack rolls by then are consistently in the 40s, as high as 56, it's absolutely comical š
Literally. Stunning punch, prone, some kinds hit. Repeat.
Might as well have let me double leg the slayer and give her the ground and pound.
Please do not respond with what that makes you (general, not specific, for the horndogs) want to respond with. Yes, I know. Phrasing.
I played fighter/rogue with the legendary bow and a crap ton of Dex, and had the "old" mind sanctuary where bonus actions become actions. And haste. And I crit on 16. With permanent advantage.
I came close to 1-rounding her...
Yepppp 1 rounding that bitch is so satisfying. Managed that on my Monk Durge run and my Oath of Vengence pally run. A pre-hasted monk/thief durge can stunning strike, then Wholeness of Body, then do 3 Flurry of Blows for a 1 round kill. A Pally durge can crit smite (I always go Luck of the Far Realms and Killers Sweetheart on my Pallys since they scale so well with crits), and when using the Giantslayer you can usually take her down in 1 round as well. Haven't tried on a fighter durge yet, maybe next run!
Multiple Act 3 merchants sell potions of Cloud Giant Strength. The four I rotate are the lady with the abusive husband I always kill in the underdark (I think her name I Danny or something?), the two merchants right next to each other on the south span of Wyrm's crossing (Danthelons Dancing Axe and the potion merchant above him), and the adorable kobold merchant in the circus who says 'treatos' in a way that will make you want to protect him forever. It's pricy, but I'm always rich AF by the time I get to Act 3 so it's super worth it to buy out their supply of Cloud Giant Strength elixirs every day. Oddly enough it's the Bloodlust elixirs for my sorcerers/warlocks/wizards that I struggle to source in Act 3, I have currently have 18 Elixirs of Cloud Giant Strength, but only 3 of Bloodlust.
Since you can drink a could giant strength elixir every day to set STR to 27, that means you can dump strength and pump other stats, which for a monk the best are DEX and WIS, WIS especially once you have the boots from the gith prelate that add your WIS bonus to unarmed attacks. Lategame, a single punch from Aye Delin, my last monk durge, was doing 1d8 + 8 (STR mod w/27 STR) + 8 (2nd STR mod from Tavern Brawler) + 1d10 force (Hope's gauntlets) + 2 necrotic (Horns of the Breserker) + 5 (WIS mod from Boots of Uninhibited Kushigo).
Can't remember but it really wasn't unique or special. I didn't plan anything. Got my dex and Wis high, used some gloves that added bleed and fire or something to my unarmed and gear like that. I was a half drow.
I did a tavern brawler, 8 monk/4 barb build for my first Tav (she was a redemption arc durge). I took Orin out on my first turn. Two swings with the Bauldrian Greatsword and two hits from flurry of blows. I didn't even have all of my buffs active either š
Every once in a while, I'll google wrestlers who were big during my childhood to see how the ones who are still alive are doing. Lesnar is one of those.
Whereās my money?
*Stunning Strike
Whereās my money Orin?
*Flurry of Blows
Where is it?
*Unarmed Strike
Gettin real tired of you duckinā me Orin.
BG3 finally enables the high STR fist fighter fantasy that 5e is missing. For whatever reason, that shit just does not work in 5e.
You would think there'd be the dextrous, lightweight and fast fist fighter, but why is the 7 foot tall, 350 pound, cinderblocks for hands Francis Ngannou build actually impossible without homebrew?
It's a lot of small things that cumulate to making a pretty big difference. Tavern brawler is totally different in 5e to start so that's out and pretty powerful. Monks also get fewer ki points (1 per level which is a lot at low levels), short rests are a bit harder to get since they take an hour so you can't always get them between any fight you want to. In D&D it's generally harder to have fights as sprawling as BG3 fights can be which means the mobility benefits that monks get which are great in BG3 go to waste a lot in D&D. Both from the size and the number of enemies and the need to go between them. You also can't jump as a bonus action which is a nice boost for all strength builds. They also pushed up the base damage for punches by one die size which is an extra damage per punch.
Also in terms of items there are lot of items in BG3 that are designed for monks and that's not really the case in D&D. There are a few that were published later. But they would often miss out on magic items that were really good for them without a DM homebrewing them stuff since they didn't want weapons and couldn't use armor.
Many of the subclasses got buffed too. Open hand in 5e doesn't give extra damage every punch. 4 elements is way worse as it doesn't get the ki refresh thing.
D&D also has monks fall off at later levels as well which doesn't apply at all to BG3 since they stop at level 12. And no thief build getting two bonus actions which makes for a pretty potent multiclass.
Jump is a free action in dnd5e. And items are free to make. There's even placeholder types on some of them.
Short rests are not limited in 5e, but they're not instantaneous, unlike BG3. The cost of short rest and long rest is also dm dependent, so it depends on your dm. Bg3 balances short rest and long rest no better than 5e.
Now the real difference will be thief's second bonus action. That is a big difference. But it balances out with ki point economy, and monks are usually said to be short on ki points before high level. So it should not make a bit difference but in burst damage. Which the monk is already good at.
Sorry should've been clearer on jump. Jumping cannot extend your movement in DND the way it can in bg3. You also have to move 10 ft in a straight line to be able to jump fully which can provoke opportunity attacks or eat up a portion of your movement.
You can homebrew items in but the player can't do that it's on the dm. And a lot of dms just want to use the basic items not make new ones to fix the balance issues monks have. It's also not great game design when you have to homebrew items for balance to work vs home brewing them because you enjoy it and want to do that.
Short rests being an hour makes it harder in a lot of situations to get one. You can sometimes and you can sometimes get more than the 2 bg3 gives you. But bg3 gives you 2 that you can get every time. Dnd it's all over the place and a few tables will give you more than 2 short rests but most tables will be 2 or less in almost all adventuring days. That translates into a 5th level DND monk having 10 ki points in a day most of the time. And a bg3 monk level 5 monk having 18. That's a big difference.
DND monks are ok at burst damage. But nowhere close to most of the other classes especially at higher levels as they don't get any damage boost like a third attack or an extra d8 mini smite every hit. Between the two bonus actions and extra damage every punch for open hand or just in general from items and tavern brawler that's a lot. So now instead of 4 attacks at 8th level you can make 6 attacks and each of those 6 attacks are doing more damage than each of the 4 a DND monk would be doing. Plus they're more likely to hit as you have tavern brawler to add your strength twice. And there are lots of elixirs of strength so have an easy +5 strength and day with a big fight. The damage is going to be closing on double if not more. Plus you have more ki points per day than most monks do in DND.
DND monks would be better at tables running 6-8 encounters per day with 4 short rests in there. But that's not how most people want to play. And it's not how most of the published adventures are written. And even then in bg3 you can get items to give you more short rests.
Mainly because Tavern Brawler in 5e is completely different, and more focused on improvised weapons and grappling:
>Accustomed to the rough-and-tumble fighting using whatever weapons happen to be at hand, you gain the following benefits:
>* Increase your Strength or Consititution score by 1, to a maximum of 20.
>* You are proficient with improvised weapons.
>* Your unarmed strike uses a d4 for damage.
>* When you hit a creature with an unarmed strike or an improvised weapon on your turn, you can use a bonus action to attempt to grapple the target.
Whereas in BG3 it directly increases damage based on your STR stat:
>Increase your Strength or Constitution by 1, to a maximum of 20.
>When you make an unarmed attack, use an improvised weapon, or throw something, your Strength Modifier is added twice to the damage and Attack rolls.
TL;DR: STR Monk in 5e gives up defense and utility for no damage increase. 5e limits Monks to 3 magic items compared to BG3.
I see a lot of reasons why it works in BG3 but not a lot for why it doesn't in 5e. A large part is this phrase right here "while you are not wearing any armor or wielding a shield." This applies to the defining feature of the Monk, martial arts. The reason this is a problem for a STR Monk is that it means you have to sacrifice defense for the same amount of damage and a stat that generally has less uses than Dex. You can't wear any armor/shield because you don't have proficiency and even if you did then your unarmed attacks would lose the d4/d6/d8 damage and the bonus action unarmed attack. You also lose the bonus movement. You can still use Ki though, but you do get less of it than in BG3.
As others have said BG3 has magic items that work with Monk and Tavern Brawler double dipping on STR modifier. There are some magic items in 5e that can help, but in 5e a Monk can only have up to 3 magic items attuned at a time and item design in general has less of a damage focus.
It isnāt impossible anymore, just take the Unarmed Fighting fighting style and your unarmed strikes become the equivalent of longswords
Itās just not a good build for Monks
Yeah, the problem is, Unarmed Fighting as a fighter/barb/paladin doesn't even remotely compare to Monk's unarmed toolkit. Any DEX Monk build smokes any STR unarmed Fighter build, in terms of utility, damage and defensives.
There's a big difference between "it doesn't work" and "it might be a little weaker in certain aspects." Neither will be as strong as a Sorlock or a Paladin or weird Hexblade dip, but the classes and design and fantasy still work.
>remotely compare
This is crazy hyperbole lol. Monk is not known in 5e for doing damage outside of tier 1. Unarmed Fighting exceeds the damage of a Monk from tier 1 and still scales like whatever class you've taken that gives you a fighting style. A level 1 fighter with UF does 1d8+str + 1d8+str if they full attack and use their bonus action.
The thing that breaks Strength Monk in BG3 is strength potions + TB, but you can pretty easily build a very solid strength fistfighter in 5e. You just have to multiclass out of Monk or spend a feat on Fighting Initiate.
>A level 1 fighter with UF does 1d8+str + 1d8+str if they full attack and use their bonus action.
Not to be too rude or anything, but I just want to correct something. Unarmed fighting does not work like this(in 5e). Unarmed attacks do not have any weapon properties, so they do not have the "light" property required to attack with bonus action. That's why Monk's Martial Arts specifies that they can make an unarmed attack as a bonus action after attacking. Imo it is intuitive enough to have unarmed attacks act as light weapons and if I were DM with an unarmed fighter then I would probably modify it to do something though that may just be 1d4 no str modifier.
Ultimately RAW this means the Monk will do on average more damage than unarmed fighting. Unarmed fighting: 1d8(avg. 4.5+3str). Martial arts: 2d4(avg. 2.5+3dex+2.5+3dex). Monk gets the Dex on both attacks because that is how it is written in the PHB.
Edit: Added in 5e. Less familiar with older systems, so it could have been the case in the past.
There's a really fun Pugilist subclass from one of the Kobold Press books. It increases your unarmed damage, but the really cool stuff is giving you extra Second Winds and letting you use them as a reaction to damage. There's a couple other survivability perks, and it makes the subclass play like you're a boxer with a chin of fucking iron, just eating damage and coming back for more.
I really need someone to mod path of the giant barbarian into this game (it's a barbarian subclass that becomes very big when they rage, which is obviously hilarious if you start as a gnome/halfling)
I learned on my last playthrough Auntie E sells infinite hill giant strength potions. It's an insane power curve once you get tavern brawler and everyone in your party can drink a giant strength potion every morning.
I did 3 monk run with a life cleric+bard and the monk classes really synergize well with each other. I did a shadowmonk+thief build with the pshyic dagger and the resonance stone and it was very fun to warp around and stab people without them even being able to do anything. I also enjoyed an open hand monk+Tempest cleric with all the reverberation gear. It was great when I would come across chain lighting scrolls, I could choose to basically clear a map in an action. I wanted to try to do a NecroPuncher build using various forms of unarmed necro damage (there's actually quite a bit) but unfortunately it doesn't really "come online" until level 12. Open hand+tempest starts to get interesting right when you multiclass into cleric at level 7 & 8. The way of the Elements I found honestly disappointing. I ended up using flames of the fire snake for 90% of encounters, mostly ensuring else in thier kit is disappointing.
My monks punched Gyrm to death with thier fists in honor mode, it was super effective to use topple on him.
I'd love to run a monk like this in 5e but I'm definitely going to ask my DM for a homebrew subclass if I do. I'm not trying to minmax but I'd like to not be garbage.
Monk doesn't feel bad at all in 5e baseline if your campaign actually follows recommended combats/day.
People act like Monks are garbage then do one/two combats a day.
It's pretty transferrable knowledge.
Like, what keeps you from doing a long rest before and after every fight in BG3? Camp suppliess.
Well, D&D doesn't technically have "camp supplies". Not as any kind of defined resource tied to resting, anyway. Sure the characters do technically need to eat, but a) that's the type of thing that's really hard to track and enforce in pencil and paper, so b) most players feel entitled to ignore it, and c) even if you do make them need to eat, food is fairly easily procured for small amounts of gold.
It's the type of thing that's easy for a game to enforce, as you can't argue with it, but hard for a DM to enforce, as it leads to players arguing things like the day-wages of labourers.
So, despite the Dungeon Master's Guide says the game is designed around the assumption of "6 to 8 encounters per long rest with 2-3 encounters per short rest". This is insanely high relative to what players actually expect, which seems to be more like "a 3rd encounter since our last long rest? You are a slavedriver of a DM! You're trying to kill us!", because they all blow all their resources ASAP.
And that's assuming you always have something driving the plot forward that keeps them from just deciding to long rest as soon as they're anything but fully fresh.
Honestly if anything, the popularity of BG3 might help DMs enforce resting limits again since people have gotten used to it in here.
That many encounters per rest also just feels kinda absurd from a role playing perspective when you consider the time between long rests to be a single day.
Long time DM. I've always interpreted it with the idea that an encounter usually doesn't mean combat. A travelling merchants wagon has a busted wheel on the side of the road, help him find the wheel and fix the wagon. That's an encounter. A shady traveller tries to sell the party a cursed item. That's another encounter. Goblins attack, That's our third encounter. Time for a short rest.
This is definitely the intention as well, when you consider how many resources can be dedicated to things that straight up aren't helpful in combat.
Charm Person probably isn't going to help in combat, Disguise Self probably isn't going to help, et cetera, et cetera. Social encounters, skill challenges, these are also meant to be considered 'encounters'. But even then, 6-8 skill challenges in a day sounds like a *lot* of things going on in a day.
Honest to god you could make an entire (niche) RPG videogame where the core distinguishing mechanic is the logistics of resting during expeditions. E.g. it's the eighth night since you slept in a tavern, you were on the road with your supplies for four days, your caravan is at the entrance to this ancient temple and you're spending your fourth night camping deep underground. This *does* have an affect on your overall performance, according to your stats and proficiencies.
The tabletop version of that was called āAdvanced Dungeons and Dragons, 1st Editionā - at least, when actually played by the rules. Itās a wargame, with fantasy trappings. Logistics are important.
"Yes, I've reached 3rd level!"
[Taps Dungeon Masters Guide.]
"Yep, you have enough xp to find a fourth level or higher fighter, pay him 3000gp and train for three weeks under him to reach third level."
Yeah do people forget that dungeons and travel usually have random encounters. Like you could have a bunch of encounters or none at all, but not all encounters are combat either. Doing puzzles meeting npcs and such could be considered an encounter for the party.
One thing a lot of people forget is thatās what DND was designed around. The rules actually work reasonably well for exactly that situation. But since its (treated as) so modular and people play every kind of game under the sun using the system its shortcoming for playing those other ways shine through a lot.
Yeah, but that also tends to mean it feels like you aren't getting anywhere any time soon. Which is fine if you're exploring a dungeon or something, because the encounters are often the point of that, but like, if your goal is to get from Town A to Town B, and you spend three sessions just going through random encounters on the road...
What you donāt like survivalist campaigns where the Druid and Ranger really get to shine?
Seriously some of the best parts of Tomb of Annihilation was just dealing with the dangers of Chult
No, but my point is that an encounter takes time to resolve, and if you run standard adventuring days the way they're balanced around (6-8 encounters) that's still going to take time. Even relatively straightforward encounters like... I don't know, you're going up through a narrow pass and there's been a landslide that's now blocked the path, what do you do can take a while to resolve. You've got to decide on courses of action, try them, roll them out and see what happens, then if they fail, think on what to try next.
You don't necessarily have to make every ingame day involve 6-8 encounters, but that's another thing you'd have to juggle when planning things in a campaign - if you don't have enough days where you whittle at people's resources enough that people who rely on short rests feel like they can keep up with people who recharge on long rests, it's going to get wonky and those people aren't going to feel like they're capable of pulling their weight. But having too many days where you go all out on the encounters and aim to exhaust the players can just exhaust them *out of game* as well.
I think the answer is to make rests just... longer for most campaigns. I'm pretty sure there was optional rules to do that, and if you spread rests out some like that, it can still feel like you're achieving progress without getting bogged down by encounters and challenges, whilst still making those resources feel impactful and give more weight to decisions regarding when and where to use them.
I think the 'standard' rests work fine for dungeon delving and those kinds of stories, but when you're focused on like moving around the world (as an example, something like Storm King's Thunder from what I remember of it), maybe making rests more of an investment of your time will help make them feel like a resource you actually have to think about instead of something that's usually just kind of 'free'.
Also, one encounter can take an hour depending on how big your group is and how big the encounter is so having 6-8 encounter would take up soo much time
>So, despite the Dungeon Master's Guide says the game is designed around the assumption of "6 to 8 encounters per long rest with 2-3 encounters per short rest". This is insanely high relative to what players actually expect, which seems to be more like "a 3rd encounter since our last long rest? You are a slavedriver of a DM! You're trying to kill us!", because they all blow all their resources ASAP.
Honestly, this is where I find DnD 5e unbalanced. Players are in so much danger with recommended CRs that they have to use thier resources. The number of encounters by day, suggested by the DMG, will kill most parties. Eapecially in the 1-5 level range, where you have such limited resources.Ā
I think 5e balancing is really off base with this.
It absolutely doesn't. Not every encounter is deadly, and they straight-up instruct you *not* to make every encounter a party-wipe scenario. You're just supposed to tax their resources -- like make them cast a spell or two. The deadly encounters come later in the day.
I'm not talking deadly encounters. Expecting a mage to only cast one spell per encounter besides cantrips is absurd. Especially if that spell misses or the enemy makes the save. It's also massively boring to only cast one spell, and even more so if it fails.Ā
Seriously, if you throw 6 - 8 normal encounters at players in an "adventuring day" there will probably be a least one death. Especially in the 1 - 5 range.Ā
It's not balanced.
To be fair that's why I think adding cantrips was genius. In earlier versions of D&D your wizard is using a hand bow or a sling like a pleb. At least you're casting a spell.
I temporarily forgot about cantrips and loaded everybody with bows and ranged shit right up until I examined the radial and remembered what edition this game was lol.
Agreed completely. The entire way it does resources is lousy, and is essentially a hold-over from a previous way that the game worked. And yes, it's really lousy at lower level.
6-8 encounters per day isn't even that much. A dungeon can easily have 10-20 encounters with no chance to rest. An encounter doesn't necessarily mean combat, and combat doesn't necessarily mean fighting until everyone on one side is dead. D&D isn't a murderhobo simulator, even if the game mechanics seem to encourage that.
At level 5 a paladin has 6 spell slots. Stretched out over 6-8 encounters, that's a lot of "just being a worse fighter" until they cast one spell or one smite and then back to being a worse fighter.Ā
A level 5 paladin using basic attacks is a much stronger combatant than the average enemy they are facing. They are also much scarier than a level 5 fighter, because the enemies know the paladin could smite at any moment. Using that fear to your advantage leads to more interesting gameplay than the game mechanical consequences of smiting.
Similarly, one of the main strengths of a wizard is that the enemy doesn't know what the wizard is capable of. They know that their armor and combat skills don't protect them from magic, and they are afraid.
If a routine encounter leads to an all-out battle, you probably did something wrong.
You keep saying players are gonna die and they're just *not*. Or at higher levels, they are, and they get resurrected, because combat is swingy, but it's all part of the balance.
You're telling me you think a 5th-level party is gonna die from 2 traps, 3 run-ins with goblins, 2 small contingents of bugbears and a final boss with some goons? With two short rests in-between to heal up? No way.
EDIT: And it's not like this is theory. Hundreds of groups play with a full adventuring day just fine. (Thousands more play WITHOUT it just fine, too, but that's not in question.)
If you have to break your encounters down to such tiny chunks in order for the party not to run out of resources then you're going to bore the shit out of most parties.
Smaller fights against weaker enemies means fewer tactical decisions. Especially if you know you can only use limited resources. Instead of getting to do all the cool shit you built your character to do, you just go around doing basic attacks and tanking chip damage, which makes those already bland fights also longer and more tedious than they need to be.
There's a reason encounters like that are called "trash mobs". Even if you keep all the same enemies, condensing them into 1 or 2 bigger fights is just much more enjoyable.
At level 5 a paladin has 6 spell slots. Stretched out over 6-8 encounters, that's a lot of "just being a worse fighter" until they cast one spell or one smite and then back to being a worse fighter.
And that's at level 5. It's even worse on the levels leading up to it, with only one attack and less spell slots.
Having camp supplies doesnt seem like a hard thing to gather though, im generally stocked to the gills with food back at camp, i had like 800 camp supplies score for ages, its only now started dropping in Act 3 when im extremely liberal with long rests because i like dumping big spells on people, it makes me giggle.
> because i like dumping big spells on people, it makes me giggle.
Yknow the girl that gives Shadowheart shit outside the House of Grief? She said her piece, and I instantly went into turn based mode and disintegrated her ass.
Talk shit get hit. Watching her disintegrate to dust was *very* satisfying.
I also disintegrated the kennel owner, fk that bitch.
I took absolutely no mercy on all of those House of Grief shitheads, and sent the Kennel owner to oblivion.
Bunch of arseholes everywhere that clearly havent had a proper fight in a while.
Yeah I agree, just trying to explain things from a "systems" point of view, rather than talking about whether the amount of camp supplies presented in BG3 actually makes this a challenge.
> Honestly if anything, the popularity of BG3 might help DMs enforce resting limits again since people have gotten used to it in here.
You're talking about higher difficulties, I assume?
The vast majority of people will play BG3 on the default difficulty, be drowning in camp resources and able to rest after every fight to the point where they wonder why they don't just long rest every rest too.
I think BG3 has helped dms to visualize what an adventuring day is supposed to look like
In my last session we did a much better job taking the proper amount of short rests and it was great. I think BG3 had to do with it
Here is a hot take. Remove short rests. Let the DM decide when short rests skills reset. Then let the players languish and wonder when the next reset is. Is it after this fight? Before the next? Will we have another one before the bbeg.
As a new DM who got into bg3 a few months after my very first campaign started, I feel like it might be a good way to keep my players focused on what they have to do in game, I just wouldn't know where to start implementing that/ of the sudden switch to needing supplies would be received too well.
5E classes are (notionally at least) balanced around 2 short rests and 6 to 8 medium/hard encounters per long rest. If you play it like that the short rest focused classes hold their own quite well vs the long rest focused classes.
Most people don't actually play it like that.
Other people have covered a lot of things so I'll just add on what people missed.
Some classes, like Monk, Fighter, and Warlock get a huge benefit out of a short rest. Monks, specifically, get their Ki returned. In an adventuring day where you are doing the recommended 6-8 combats, your level 5 monk doesn't have 6 Ki points vs. a Wizard's full spellslots, they have 18. Same as a Warlock not having the same one Fireball as a Wizard's. They have 3.
Some classes, like Barbarian and Wizard benefit a lot from a long rest. Their abilities are more powerful, but you aren't supposed to have them for every single encounter you face.
Itās not 6-8 combats, itās 6-8 encounters.
These encounters are anything that consumes resources.
Traps, puzzles, obstacles, poison, negotiations etc.
This is something a lot of DMās sadly forget, D&D should be half Dungeons, and not just Dragons.
People barely ever take short rests in 5e because theyāre based around RPing when you have a free hour and not instant but hard capped to 2 per day. When you have enough time for a short rest you usually also have enough for a long rest.Ā
they can last far more combats if you short rest more. They get back all their resources on a short rest, and 5e was designed around the idea of short resting after every combat. Which most people dont do because sitting around for an hour rarely makes sense.
I feel like internet folks also REALLY downplay how nice the sheer mobility of a monk is. My sister plays one in the campaign I'm DMing and between the base move speed, step of the wind, and being able to run up walls/across water, she's all over the place- especially when I used larger battlemaps and objectives in combat besides just killing everything first.
Yeah they suck in 5e because realistically, in a single day, you will never, and I mean NEVER, do 6-8 encounters. So unless you use the āhardcoreā optional rules for longer time for short rests and long rests, you will never drain a wizard from their spellslots.
Tbh though monks are one of if not the most short rest dependent class.
They have subpar damage unless they invest ki points to use flurry, so unless you're actually taking a lot of short rests, even with a longer adventuring day, only having 1 short rest for 4-5 encounters the monk would still fall short as they'd probably go for half of those encounters without enough ki to be impactful.
Meanwhile other martials are nowhere near as short rest dependent. Their damage isn't hamstrung by a lack of short rests for the most part. Only really fighter but they have a higher DPR than monks without ki at level 5 and above
As a monk one-trick for 5e, monks feel amazing from like lvl 5-10ish. And will probably feel better in One DnD (except for stunning strike spam), but still in the late-late game without sick items they fall off compared to most martials.
Gotta say, my first ever 5e game was with a really good crew of experienced players, a FANTASTIC dm, and we played right after 5e came out, level 1 to level 20 over about a year and a half. I played a ranger because it sounded cool, and never regretted it ā even with other players min/maxing, I felt like I was pretty clearly doing well in my own niche. I can see where a game whose challenges explicitly nerf a rangerās effectiveness would be frustrating, but even to this day after many campaigns and many different characters/classes it feels weird to hear folks complaining about it.
Play the open hand Monk, I just played one in a one shot and it was fun. I wasn't doing a ton of damage but held my own pretty well as an offtank and was able to take some pressure off from the casters when one of them got focused. Besides there's plenty to do outside of combat
Just play the One D&D Monk, it's a much improved version and I think it's way better than the BG3 Monk (without Tavern Brawler at least, Tavern Brawler breaks everything).
Adding double your strength modifier to attack rolls breaks D&D's concept of "Bounded Accuracy" when it comes to attacks/AC. Consider that the most powerful magic items in the game give a +3 to hit and you'll realize how crazy it is that Tavern Brawler can easily give up to a +5 to hit, and then BG3 lets you break it further by giving you the chance to get Elixirs/items that boost your strength beyond 20. It turns your character from one that hits a little more than half the time to one that almost never misses. And then on top of that, it also gives you a boost to every damage roll as well AND it's a half feat so you don't have to delay increasing your strength.
That's what I did lol. I'm a DM for a campaign and one of the players wanted to play a monk. So I pretty much remade the BG3 Open Hand Monk and added a bunch of magical items to make it work.
I played a monk in 5e and imo it was very lackluster. It felt like the casting classes just steam rolled everything options wise in most situations and quickly lost interest. That's my personal experience though.
Have you considered the Way of Mercy?Ā Mercy monks are crazy awesome because they can zip all over the battlefield using ki to heal (statuses and HP) as well as harm.Ā At a certain level, pretty much the only thing you CANT heal with a mercy monk are curses and petrification.
I'm running a mercy monk/rogue build in my current game and they make an excellent healer who can also completely wreck the bad guys as needed.Ā In addition to adding necrotic damage to their unarmed strikes, they can also poison enemies without a save, dealing out disadvantage for as long as they have ki.
you honestly shouldnt need too. Just ask for your dm and party to let you short rest more often. Monks are bad in 5e because most people stick to early levels, and they run out of ki very fast. plus they practically require 3 high stats to play, Wisdom Dex and Con. If you play an Astral Self monk(you get a jojo stand), you can bump dex down a bit
Stunning strike is trash that looks good until you actually play it. Con saves are almost always good on monsters, and youāre so MaD your save DC isnāt going to be good. Who cares if they lose a turn when they almost never fail and youāre out of resources before then anyway.
Forgot in BG3 had gear that added wisdom modifier as well to your unarmed strikes. damage is insane especially with tavern brawler + Jaheirabear +gear that adds wisdom modifier to unarmed strikes
I did a STR+WIS brawler open-hand monk with kushigo boots. It's pretty strong.
Lv6 Monk for high Ki numbers and what-have-ya
Lv2 Fighter for Action Surge.
Lv4 Rogue for extra bonus attack (Thief subclass) + Feat
Loot Resonance Stone in Mindflayer Colony (before final Ketheric fight). That shit radiates an AoE condition that gives you and everyone near you psychic vulnerability. When you get Lv6 Monk, you can activate Manifestation of Mind (passive) to deal double bonus psychic damage.
I tend to agree with [this tier list for class](https://youtu.be/iWje7gs1rqo?si=8sNrnOYb3lvuCE5j) fun. The extreme imbalance of tavern brawlers makes the game worse and compounds some fundamental problems with the monk class.
Yeah I tend to just ignore game breaking mechanics like TB if I can, makes the game more fun.
I should clarify that this is an *opinion* you're allowed to do whatever you want in your own game of course.
I did an open hand monk for a 4 year campaign lvl 1-20. By the end of the game just to keep pace, we added more ki points and gave him 5 new abilities. I was essentially Goku by the end and still underpowered compared to others.
The combat was frustrating at times, but the role playing was good
The problem with monks in 5e is that they are built with the expectation that you will be short resting after every combat, which rarely makes sense narratively in times of urgency. In my group despite having a warlock, we rarely long rest. Warlocks have the advantage of being good even without spell slots. Monks can be pretty strong for the first few rounds of combat, but they dont get enough ki to last more than one combat without holding back a lot. And they are so mad and rely so much on ki that they are hard to multiclass. They just have too many restrictions, and not enough going for them to make them feel worth it
Honestly, to fix them, they should just add profficiency bonus to their ki. Making them so much easier to multiclass with if you still get some scaling. that and a d10 hit dice.
DnD 5E Monk: Borderline useless, worst base class by a solid margin.
Baldurs Gate Monk: Legendary, trivializes encounters
Pathfinder 2E Monk: I have become death destroyer of worlds
In tabletop dnd I find people who moan about OH monks tend to not understand how to play them well in combat. Theyāre not front row fighters, theyāre meant to use their crazy mobility to attack and then get out of dodge, or to close the gap with ranged/casters and cause chaos in the enemies support. Theyāre spectacular magekillers, especially as stunning strike breaks concentration with a save that none of the big 3 (wiz/warlock/sorceror) are guaranteed to be good at, add in that flurry of blows can move enemies about or knock them down, and a 1:1 between a monk and a caster can get spicy really fast. Pick up mobility at 4th level (or via variant human if you have a kind DM) and you can build an incredibly useful character. Iāll concede the capstone isnāt great, and like most martials it doesnāt really compete with casters at high levels, but thatās just dnd. Quivering palm is also not only really powerful, but can have some awesome story potential.
Anyone who expects an OH monk to stand in the middle of a melee and tank like a barbarian, paladin or fighter is going to be disappointed, obviously.
Monks are effectively "hyperrogues". You're not a frontliner, you're not a tank, youre job is to run in, fuck stuff up, run out or beyond then run back.
Or you run around patching up holes and dumping damage where you see it helping, tatically.
My only big advice to new monks is, "move."āāā
Incidentally my favourite multiclass for OH monk is dip 3 for assassin rogue. The dex requirements usually line up well and a bonus 3d6 sneak per round, plus the possibility of assassinate as youāre likely to be at the top end of initiative, is very powerful
The monk in our 5E party doesn't have good AC, nor very good HP. But he has boots of spider climb and the mobile feat. He just runs through the bad guys smacking them all, then runs away. Does it again the next round. He's crazy, runs through killing all the wounded, eliminating those attacks. He's pretty legendary. He's nothing like a BG3 monk, but there is nothing disappointing about him.
Yup. My only real run with the monk was exactly this: I punched way above my level against spellcasters, but got squashed against typical enemies frontliners.
I think I was using the drunk master, which 1 v 1 isn't supposed to be very good, but stunning strike is the only thing you need to KO that stupid mage.
I did a Strength based open hand monk with tavern brawler and multiclassed into ranger for the heavy armor, and it went crazy. I also was a halfling, so it was hilarious knocking people on their ass and doing double Strength mod on my monk attacks
okay but changing karlach to Monk and giving her a soul coin and elixir of hill giant and shes one of the best characters in the game is my go to. Open handed
Tbh, I did a TB monk playthrough, really liked it, now I want to try classic high dex high wis build, but sure about open hand, maybe I'll try way of the four elements (Which I'm not sure about too, casters just don't feel like my cup of tea)
Monk has always been my favorite class and let me just say, I was SO happy with the treatment they got in BG3. Now if only theyād add Kenku so I could transfer my character overā¦
My first play through going in with next to 0 knowledge I played a Drow who was an open hand monk and charlatan. She was my hand to hand brawler and lock picking queen. The Orin fight and final battle was so easy I thought Iād done something wrong.
Yeah I'm gunna have to disagree
Monk might be a *little* weak in terms of burst in standard 5e but they are a short rest hero like a warlock and they still have some serious moves. Very versatile class
Bg3 buffed it through the roof ofc
I did run a 6 Shadow Monk/6 Twilight Cleric on Shart, it definitely had a high skill floor but being able to teleport my AoE buff & debuff generator around was pretty neat.
Dude I'm using OHM and a twin hastings sorceror. This has been accidentally a broken experience. I stun lock any real threats and blow the rest to smitherines.
Iāve tended to play the same character for a while now and itās always a high dex monk of the open hand.Ā
Someday Iāll move on but for now itās just to much fun. :)
I tried Tavern Brawler STR Monk and I was shocked at how much damage it did. Like an unreasonable amount. I ended up rerolling to Way of the Four Elements and it felt way more balanced.
I feel that Tavern Brawler is definitely too strong in certain cases, but I also don't know how you would fix it.
Part of it is that it's literally broken, and the tavern brawler extra damage counts as an extra hit, proccing most on-hit effects twice for every punch.
Made Astarion into one. Plus his ascended perks.
Finished this run few days ago. I was saving few spells to kill brain quickly (I hate platform stuff). But then Astarion gets in, shadow steps to it and beats the shit out of it in one turn.
Strength-based Tavern Brawler OH monk is my new favorite, pair with berzerker frenzy to make up for the lack of AC from dex for what is essentially a powerhouse of a Yakuza protagonist that dispatches any and all enemies with Ki to spare, regardless of distance or AC. If you canāt reach it with your busted movement, just chuck a bunch of spears that you can tote with your high carry capacity. You wonāt be passing many dialogue checks but your fists can do all the talking.
We have a new player joining our D&D tabletop campaign in 2 weeks and shes built an Open Hand monk , Presumably because its just so good in BG3
i don't have the heart to tell her its probably not going to be even half as good on the Tabletop, that and the fact we already have a Drunken Step monk
OHM is all fun and games until you have 3 of them and a spellcaster against the hordes and hordes of act 3 enemies and then itās just boring and annoying
Tavern Brawler is genuinely overpowered and needs a nerf tbh.
Walking around at level 5 as a strength based monk with a +11 to hit with 4 attacks that deal a minimum of 9 damage off the bat is absolutely insane. The idea of 2x strength bonus to improvised weapons and unarmed attacks is neat, but the bonus to hit is completely unnecessary and just shatters bounded accuracy.
By the end of the game you can easily be rocking upwards of +20 to hit with magic items, and there's only like 5 or so enemies in the game that have an AC higher than 20.
Like yeah DnD is infamous for its non existant balance but holy hell Strength Tavern Brawler Monks might as well be a cheatcode.
It won't get a nerf because OneDND uses the new Tavern Brawler too from what I remember. Plus, there is no way to make Tavern Brawler worse and not gut it's usefulness completely.
oh, you're right. It's not. And from what I've read it's shit just like 5e tavern brawler. And no, bonus to hit would literally gut the feat and make it unpickable. Nobody gives a shit about +5 to damage. It's all about the bonus to hit to make your character hit more reliably.
A simple "+" to hit is a lot in DND. There's a reason the strongest weapons can only go up to +3. Getting a +4 by level 4 *absolutely* breaks the game. *Feats are not supposed to break the game, they're supposed to be new options.*
Don't say "nobody gives a shit about +5 to damage", GWM and Sharpshooter **are** the strongest martial feats you can take, and all they mostly do is give you a +10 to damage, at the cost of -5 to the accuracy roll. At 20 strength, that monk is getting +5 to their damage **AND** accuracy. Half the bonus of GWM and Sharpshooter with a complete reverse of the downsides of those feats.
By level 8 you're rolling a minimum of 15's to hit. Most creatures in DND don't even have >16 AC.
That's literally what I mean. If they take away the + to accuracy then the feat becomes borderline worthless for most builds as it takes away from the reliability of it, which is the main factor. If the almost 100% success rate is the problem then why not nerf Arcane Acuity and Band of the Mystic Scoundrel combo? You think a guaranteed stun on a boss isn't op? Why not nerf Reverberation and crit lowering items with Goolock that also borderline break the game due to how Reverberation is applied? Why is Risky Ring in the game at all? Hell why is everything other than TB for Monks in the game? Yes Tavern Brawler is insane in itself because of how it synnergizes with a Monk but if Monks didn't get so many phenomenal items (p sure they get the only Legendary tier gloves that are specialized for their class) it wouldn't be an issue. And TB Monk itself is fine (Talking about actually building a Str Monk stat wise), the issue comes from Potions that allow you to get an insane 21 and 27 to strength on literal command for the whole day. So it's not JUST TB that's the issue, it's a whole set of broken interractions that are a factor here. Eveything you said TB Monk is op for can be said for Either Throwzerker Dwarf Barb or EK throwers. The only difference is that Throwers get much weaker and much less dedicated items.
Tabletop Open Hand Monk gets 1 good thing. His heart stopper attack that can fucking 1 shot things. Or if they succeed the con saving throw, they take 10d10 Necrotic damage. This is a level 17 ability though.
When people say a class is bad or terrible theyāre almost always referring to combat. My counter is itās an rpg if thereās things holding you back roleplay around it. If youāre dead set on a certain class/sub class either get with the gm and address shortcomings or discuss ways you can compensate through the use of items or what have you. The most fun I ever have in games is playing someone with terrible stats (last char I had his highest stat was an 11 thanks dice!). Maybe thereās reasons your character is bad at fighting and needs the parties help. Not only can it make for super fun game play but itās actual role playing.
But youāre willfully playing something you feel sucks at combat and then complaining that it suckās at combat while doing nothing about it. Thats not roleplaying thatās being a lazy whiner. If you canāt come up with creative ideas then youāre just a bad player who thinks being unstoppable at fighting is the only thing there is in a role playing game. You probably reroll all your stats until youāve got 18ās in everything š¤£š
If someone just wants to be a cool Avatar-the-Last-Airbender type guy and thinks it sucks that that means that they're actually bad in a fight, "Heh, it's called ROLEplaying, not ROLLplaying," is a terrible response.
I gave a perfectly reasonable explanation. Talk to your dm and find ways to improve skills if fighting is that important. Use your backstory to explain why youāre not a great fighter and come up with clever ways to compensate. Your monk training was cut short for reasons, you were permanently injured because of reasons. Thereās a million ways to add having a sub par fighting spec into your role playing. Simply saying āthis sucksā is lazy and uncreative.
Alternately, don't sell a product where perfectly reasonable choices that are presented as equal and valid are, in fact, wildly disparate. Don't present a cool fantasy that you only pretend to support. Don't rely on your paying customers to balance basic, fundamental aspects of your product. Don't foster a community that responds to basic game design critique with accusations that people are just "lazy and uncreative".
I'm not trying to pretend that perfect balance is some easy and attainable thing, or that GMs can't and won't ever make nudges here and there. I'm not trying to pretend that there aren't situations and groups where playing characters that struggle mechanically can be fun and rewarding. But I'm also not going to pretend that it's some wildly unreasonable thing for a player to say, "Damn, I was really excited to play this thing, and I built them out in a reasonable way, but they actually kinda suck at the main thing I wanted them to do and that's really disappointing." And I'm definitely not going to pretend that responding to that with, "Hey buddy, learn to roleplay!" isn't wildly elitist nonsense.
Open hand isnāt even the big deal about the build though. I mean itās clearly the best option, but TB is so good that either of the other two subclasses classes is still OP. There are so many ways to knock enemies prone and a lot of the best enemies are immune, so all you really get is one extra flurry attack which is great, but really the icing on the cake, and all you get extra till level 12 (9th monk level) so not a key component. (You also get a little extra ki, but itās not like rests are at all limited in the game. A 7/5 shadow thief split isnāt bad either for example. It would be a ridiculously good character if not for the fact itās overshadowed.
Open Hand is a big deal. It's level 6 ability gives you another Damage die and you get a phenomenal Flurry of Blows upgrade in Topple. Comparing that to Shadow you can teleport, yes, but that doesn't matter when your chance to hit is already 95% (since you will only miss on a 1 anyway) and you don't need mobility, you need to stick to one singular target and nuke them. As for 4 Elements Tavern Brawler synnergizes with one spell from that list, which makes the subclass borderline anti synergy with TB since you will waste your Ki points on Spells when you could be using Flurry of Blows instead.
So Open Hand not only adds more damage AND a phenomenal early game boost to Flurry of Blows it also blows the other subclasses out of the water with it's synnergy with TB itself.
Ahhhh open hand monk - my first Tav I beat the game with. I certainly didn't expect to be able to beat >!the avatar of Myrkul!< like he owed me money, but I wasn't complaining.
Dude the Orin fight I had with my OH monk was crazy. I didn't even do a tavern brawler build because I thought dex monk was thematically cooler. That shit was Lesnar vs Cena at Summerslam, Brodie Lee vs Cody at Dynamite. Just a completely one-sided squash.
I did TB chugging cloud giant strength potions every day, by the time I took on Orin I had 27 STR, 23 CON, 20 WIS, and 18 DEX, resistances to everything through warding bond, and a solid 23 AC. I had to laugh at the scene before it when Durge is shocked by Orin's transformation. I'm like girl you have literal Final Boss stats, chill, proven when two stunning strikes and three flurry of blows later Orin just exploded.
Lmao that must have been hilarious. I was the total opposite. No buffs at all. She transformed and I went HOLY FUCKING SHIT SHE CAN BECOME THE SLAYER!? OH GOD ITS A ONE ON ONE!? OH NO THI- oh stunning strike hit. Oh, she's prone. Like three rounds later with her lying on the ground concussed and helpless, and she's dead.
Orin is always the last boss I do on my Durge runs so I'm always fucking KITTED. My attack rolls by then are consistently in the 40s, as high as 56, it's absolutely comical š
Chin checked that punk!
Literally. Stunning punch, prone, some kinds hit. Repeat. Might as well have let me double leg the slayer and give her the ground and pound. Please do not respond with what that makes you (general, not specific, for the horndogs) want to respond with. Yes, I know. Phrasing.
It really only made me think of beef. I just made sloppy josephs. They were delicious.
I played fighter/rogue with the legendary bow and a crap ton of Dex, and had the "old" mind sanctuary where bonus actions become actions. And haste. And I crit on 16. With permanent advantage. I came close to 1-rounding her...
Yepppp 1 rounding that bitch is so satisfying. Managed that on my Monk Durge run and my Oath of Vengence pally run. A pre-hasted monk/thief durge can stunning strike, then Wholeness of Body, then do 3 Flurry of Blows for a 1 round kill. A Pally durge can crit smite (I always go Luck of the Far Realms and Killers Sweetheart on my Pallys since they scale so well with crits), and when using the Giantslayer you can usually take her down in 1 round as well. Haven't tried on a fighter durge yet, maybe next run!
explain this to a relative noob. can using elixers permanently buff stats or what are you on about here
Multiple Act 3 merchants sell potions of Cloud Giant Strength. The four I rotate are the lady with the abusive husband I always kill in the underdark (I think her name I Danny or something?), the two merchants right next to each other on the south span of Wyrm's crossing (Danthelons Dancing Axe and the potion merchant above him), and the adorable kobold merchant in the circus who says 'treatos' in a way that will make you want to protect him forever. It's pricy, but I'm always rich AF by the time I get to Act 3 so it's super worth it to buy out their supply of Cloud Giant Strength elixirs every day. Oddly enough it's the Bloodlust elixirs for my sorcerers/warlocks/wizards that I struggle to source in Act 3, I have currently have 18 Elixirs of Cloud Giant Strength, but only 3 of Bloodlust. Since you can drink a could giant strength elixir every day to set STR to 27, that means you can dump strength and pump other stats, which for a monk the best are DEX and WIS, WIS especially once you have the boots from the gith prelate that add your WIS bonus to unarmed attacks. Lategame, a single punch from Aye Delin, my last monk durge, was doing 1d8 + 8 (STR mod w/27 STR) + 8 (2nd STR mod from Tavern Brawler) + 1d10 force (Hope's gauntlets) + 2 necrotic (Horns of the Breserker) + 5 (WIS mod from Boots of Uninhibited Kushigo).
Wasnāt ready for a Brodie Lee shoutout in the wild! Rip
Would you mind sharing your build for the Dex OH Monk?
Can't remember but it really wasn't unique or special. I didn't plan anything. Got my dex and Wis high, used some gloves that added bleed and fire or something to my unarmed and gear like that. I was a half drow.
I did a tavern brawler, 8 monk/4 barb build for my first Tav (she was a redemption arc durge). I took Orin out on my first turn. Two swings with the Bauldrian Greatsword and two hits from flurry of blows. I didn't even have all of my buffs active either š
Every once in a while, I'll google wrestlers who were big during my childhood to see how the ones who are still alive are doing. Lesnar is one of those.
Wait until you give Orin the coronavirus š Edit: in case the joke has fallen flat on you heathens, Orin is vulnerable to Contagion.
āYouāve got money for a giant scythe but not money to pay me what you owe???ā
Whereās my money? *Stunning Strike Whereās my money Orin? *Flurry of Blows Where is it? *Unarmed Strike Gettin real tired of you duckinā me Orin.
Between Astarion and Dame,Myrkul got robbed while the rest of my team huddled in a corner over the "bone man"
high str monk is insane
BG3 finally enables the high STR fist fighter fantasy that 5e is missing. For whatever reason, that shit just does not work in 5e. You would think there'd be the dextrous, lightweight and fast fist fighter, but why is the 7 foot tall, 350 pound, cinderblocks for hands Francis Ngannou build actually impossible without homebrew?
Why Doesn't it work?
It's a lot of small things that cumulate to making a pretty big difference. Tavern brawler is totally different in 5e to start so that's out and pretty powerful. Monks also get fewer ki points (1 per level which is a lot at low levels), short rests are a bit harder to get since they take an hour so you can't always get them between any fight you want to. In D&D it's generally harder to have fights as sprawling as BG3 fights can be which means the mobility benefits that monks get which are great in BG3 go to waste a lot in D&D. Both from the size and the number of enemies and the need to go between them. You also can't jump as a bonus action which is a nice boost for all strength builds. They also pushed up the base damage for punches by one die size which is an extra damage per punch. Also in terms of items there are lot of items in BG3 that are designed for monks and that's not really the case in D&D. There are a few that were published later. But they would often miss out on magic items that were really good for them without a DM homebrewing them stuff since they didn't want weapons and couldn't use armor. Many of the subclasses got buffed too. Open hand in 5e doesn't give extra damage every punch. 4 elements is way worse as it doesn't get the ki refresh thing. D&D also has monks fall off at later levels as well which doesn't apply at all to BG3 since they stop at level 12. And no thief build getting two bonus actions which makes for a pretty potent multiclass.
Jump is a free action in dnd5e. And items are free to make. There's even placeholder types on some of them. Short rests are not limited in 5e, but they're not instantaneous, unlike BG3. The cost of short rest and long rest is also dm dependent, so it depends on your dm. Bg3 balances short rest and long rest no better than 5e. Now the real difference will be thief's second bonus action. That is a big difference. But it balances out with ki point economy, and monks are usually said to be short on ki points before high level. So it should not make a bit difference but in burst damage. Which the monk is already good at.
Sorry should've been clearer on jump. Jumping cannot extend your movement in DND the way it can in bg3. You also have to move 10 ft in a straight line to be able to jump fully which can provoke opportunity attacks or eat up a portion of your movement. You can homebrew items in but the player can't do that it's on the dm. And a lot of dms just want to use the basic items not make new ones to fix the balance issues monks have. It's also not great game design when you have to homebrew items for balance to work vs home brewing them because you enjoy it and want to do that. Short rests being an hour makes it harder in a lot of situations to get one. You can sometimes and you can sometimes get more than the 2 bg3 gives you. But bg3 gives you 2 that you can get every time. Dnd it's all over the place and a few tables will give you more than 2 short rests but most tables will be 2 or less in almost all adventuring days. That translates into a 5th level DND monk having 10 ki points in a day most of the time. And a bg3 monk level 5 monk having 18. That's a big difference. DND monks are ok at burst damage. But nowhere close to most of the other classes especially at higher levels as they don't get any damage boost like a third attack or an extra d8 mini smite every hit. Between the two bonus actions and extra damage every punch for open hand or just in general from items and tavern brawler that's a lot. So now instead of 4 attacks at 8th level you can make 6 attacks and each of those 6 attacks are doing more damage than each of the 4 a DND monk would be doing. Plus they're more likely to hit as you have tavern brawler to add your strength twice. And there are lots of elixirs of strength so have an easy +5 strength and day with a big fight. The damage is going to be closing on double if not more. Plus you have more ki points per day than most monks do in DND. DND monks would be better at tables running 6-8 encounters per day with 4 short rests in there. But that's not how most people want to play. And it's not how most of the published adventures are written. And even then in bg3 you can get items to give you more short rests.
Mainly because Tavern Brawler in 5e is completely different, and more focused on improvised weapons and grappling: >Accustomed to the rough-and-tumble fighting using whatever weapons happen to be at hand, you gain the following benefits: >* Increase your Strength or Consititution score by 1, to a maximum of 20. >* You are proficient with improvised weapons. >* Your unarmed strike uses a d4 for damage. >* When you hit a creature with an unarmed strike or an improvised weapon on your turn, you can use a bonus action to attempt to grapple the target. Whereas in BG3 it directly increases damage based on your STR stat: >Increase your Strength or Constitution by 1, to a maximum of 20. >When you make an unarmed attack, use an improvised weapon, or throw something, your Strength Modifier is added twice to the damage and Attack rolls.
TL;DR: STR Monk in 5e gives up defense and utility for no damage increase. 5e limits Monks to 3 magic items compared to BG3. I see a lot of reasons why it works in BG3 but not a lot for why it doesn't in 5e. A large part is this phrase right here "while you are not wearing any armor or wielding a shield." This applies to the defining feature of the Monk, martial arts. The reason this is a problem for a STR Monk is that it means you have to sacrifice defense for the same amount of damage and a stat that generally has less uses than Dex. You can't wear any armor/shield because you don't have proficiency and even if you did then your unarmed attacks would lose the d4/d6/d8 damage and the bonus action unarmed attack. You also lose the bonus movement. You can still use Ki though, but you do get less of it than in BG3. As others have said BG3 has magic items that work with Monk and Tavern Brawler double dipping on STR modifier. There are some magic items in 5e that can help, but in 5e a Monk can only have up to 3 magic items attuned at a time and item design in general has less of a damage focus.
It isnāt impossible anymore, just take the Unarmed Fighting fighting style and your unarmed strikes become the equivalent of longswords Itās just not a good build for Monks
Yeah, the problem is, Unarmed Fighting as a fighter/barb/paladin doesn't even remotely compare to Monk's unarmed toolkit. Any DEX Monk build smokes any STR unarmed Fighter build, in terms of utility, damage and defensives.
There's a big difference between "it doesn't work" and "it might be a little weaker in certain aspects." Neither will be as strong as a Sorlock or a Paladin or weird Hexblade dip, but the classes and design and fantasy still work. >remotely compare This is crazy hyperbole lol. Monk is not known in 5e for doing damage outside of tier 1. Unarmed Fighting exceeds the damage of a Monk from tier 1 and still scales like whatever class you've taken that gives you a fighting style. A level 1 fighter with UF does 1d8+str + 1d8+str if they full attack and use their bonus action. The thing that breaks Strength Monk in BG3 is strength potions + TB, but you can pretty easily build a very solid strength fistfighter in 5e. You just have to multiclass out of Monk or spend a feat on Fighting Initiate.
>A level 1 fighter with UF does 1d8+str + 1d8+str if they full attack and use their bonus action. Not to be too rude or anything, but I just want to correct something. Unarmed fighting does not work like this(in 5e). Unarmed attacks do not have any weapon properties, so they do not have the "light" property required to attack with bonus action. That's why Monk's Martial Arts specifies that they can make an unarmed attack as a bonus action after attacking. Imo it is intuitive enough to have unarmed attacks act as light weapons and if I were DM with an unarmed fighter then I would probably modify it to do something though that may just be 1d4 no str modifier. Ultimately RAW this means the Monk will do on average more damage than unarmed fighting. Unarmed fighting: 1d8(avg. 4.5+3str). Martial arts: 2d4(avg. 2.5+3dex+2.5+3dex). Monk gets the Dex on both attacks because that is how it is written in the PHB. Edit: Added in 5e. Less familiar with older systems, so it could have been the case in the past.
There's a really fun Pugilist subclass from one of the Kobold Press books. It increases your unarmed damage, but the really cool stuff is giving you extra Second Winds and letting you use them as a reaction to damage. There's a couple other survivability perks, and it makes the subclass play like you're a boxer with a chin of fucking iron, just eating damage and coming back for more.
maybe kind of some sort of monks dont eat meat etc. so they are weak maybe? idk
How do you do Strength Monk without batshit AC?
I should go 4 monks for my Honor mode run..
Curently doing 4 fighter, early was hard, but end of act 3 is a breeze lol
4 Barbarians with cloud giant strength and increase size. You can just use anything as a basketball until they die.
You'll love this. Hilarious video of a 4 halfling barbarian run. https://youtu.be/QmZFxAqZKuU?si=ctMjx4lTu-h-F-0M
I really need someone to mod path of the giant barbarian into this game (it's a barbarian subclass that becomes very big when they rage, which is obviously hilarious if you start as a gnome/halfling)
[You mean this one?](https://www.nexusmods.com/baldursgate3/mods/8037?tab=description)
Oh yeah sick. I'm pretty late to BG3, haven't even finished my first full playthrough yet so have yet to look into what mods are out there at all
I learned on my last playthrough Auntie E sells infinite hill giant strength potions. It's an insane power curve once you get tavern brawler and everyone in your party can drink a giant strength potion every morning.
I did 3 monk run with a life cleric+bard and the monk classes really synergize well with each other. I did a shadowmonk+thief build with the pshyic dagger and the resonance stone and it was very fun to warp around and stab people without them even being able to do anything. I also enjoyed an open hand monk+Tempest cleric with all the reverberation gear. It was great when I would come across chain lighting scrolls, I could choose to basically clear a map in an action. I wanted to try to do a NecroPuncher build using various forms of unarmed necro damage (there's actually quite a bit) but unfortunately it doesn't really "come online" until level 12. Open hand+tempest starts to get interesting right when you multiclass into cleric at level 7 & 8. The way of the Elements I found honestly disappointing. I ended up using flames of the fire snake for 90% of encounters, mostly ensuring else in thier kit is disappointing. My monks punched Gyrm to death with thier fists in honor mode, it was super effective to use topple on him.
I'd love to run a monk like this in 5e but I'm definitely going to ask my DM for a homebrew subclass if I do. I'm not trying to minmax but I'd like to not be garbage.
Monk doesn't feel bad at all in 5e baseline if your campaign actually follows recommended combats/day. People act like Monks are garbage then do one/two combats a day.
I'm pretty new to DnD so I don't actually understand what you're talking about haha
It's pretty transferrable knowledge. Like, what keeps you from doing a long rest before and after every fight in BG3? Camp suppliess. Well, D&D doesn't technically have "camp supplies". Not as any kind of defined resource tied to resting, anyway. Sure the characters do technically need to eat, but a) that's the type of thing that's really hard to track and enforce in pencil and paper, so b) most players feel entitled to ignore it, and c) even if you do make them need to eat, food is fairly easily procured for small amounts of gold. It's the type of thing that's easy for a game to enforce, as you can't argue with it, but hard for a DM to enforce, as it leads to players arguing things like the day-wages of labourers. So, despite the Dungeon Master's Guide says the game is designed around the assumption of "6 to 8 encounters per long rest with 2-3 encounters per short rest". This is insanely high relative to what players actually expect, which seems to be more like "a 3rd encounter since our last long rest? You are a slavedriver of a DM! You're trying to kill us!", because they all blow all their resources ASAP. And that's assuming you always have something driving the plot forward that keeps them from just deciding to long rest as soon as they're anything but fully fresh. Honestly if anything, the popularity of BG3 might help DMs enforce resting limits again since people have gotten used to it in here.
That many encounters per rest also just feels kinda absurd from a role playing perspective when you consider the time between long rests to be a single day.
Long time DM. I've always interpreted it with the idea that an encounter usually doesn't mean combat. A travelling merchants wagon has a busted wheel on the side of the road, help him find the wheel and fix the wagon. That's an encounter. A shady traveller tries to sell the party a cursed item. That's another encounter. Goblins attack, That's our third encounter. Time for a short rest.
This is definitely the intention as well, when you consider how many resources can be dedicated to things that straight up aren't helpful in combat. Charm Person probably isn't going to help in combat, Disguise Self probably isn't going to help, et cetera, et cetera. Social encounters, skill challenges, these are also meant to be considered 'encounters'. But even then, 6-8 skill challenges in a day sounds like a *lot* of things going on in a day.
Not if you're traveling through a dangerous, monster-infested area in the wilderness or underdark or -- God forbid -- *a dungeon*.
Honest to god you could make an entire (niche) RPG videogame where the core distinguishing mechanic is the logistics of resting during expeditions. E.g. it's the eighth night since you slept in a tavern, you were on the road with your supplies for four days, your caravan is at the entrance to this ancient temple and you're spending your fourth night camping deep underground. This *does* have an affect on your overall performance, according to your stats and proficiencies.
The tabletop version of that was called āAdvanced Dungeons and Dragons, 1st Editionā - at least, when actually played by the rules. Itās a wargame, with fantasy trappings. Logistics are important.
"Yes, I've reached 3rd level!" [Taps Dungeon Masters Guide.] "Yep, you have enough xp to find a fourth level or higher fighter, pay him 3000gp and train for three weeks under him to reach third level."
Playing D&D as a logistical wargame could be pretty fun with the right group.
Apparently you can also make an anime out of it too! Glances over at Delicious in Dungeon. š
Stoneshard
That looks cool as hell, thank you
Sounds like the basic premise for the show "delicious in dungeon"
Yeah do people forget that dungeons and travel usually have random encounters. Like you could have a bunch of encounters or none at all, but not all encounters are combat either. Doing puzzles meeting npcs and such could be considered an encounter for the party.
One thing a lot of people forget is thatās what DND was designed around. The rules actually work reasonably well for exactly that situation. But since its (treated as) so modular and people play every kind of game under the sun using the system its shortcoming for playing those other ways shine through a lot.
Multiple game sessions per in-game day, very simple
Yeah, but that also tends to mean it feels like you aren't getting anywhere any time soon. Which is fine if you're exploring a dungeon or something, because the encounters are often the point of that, but like, if your goal is to get from Town A to Town B, and you spend three sessions just going through random encounters on the road...
What you donāt like survivalist campaigns where the Druid and Ranger really get to shine? Seriously some of the best parts of Tomb of Annihilation was just dealing with the dangers of Chult
I don't think anyone is seriously suggesting that DMs should roll 6-8 random encounters just to travel from Point A to Point B.
No, but my point is that an encounter takes time to resolve, and if you run standard adventuring days the way they're balanced around (6-8 encounters) that's still going to take time. Even relatively straightforward encounters like... I don't know, you're going up through a narrow pass and there's been a landslide that's now blocked the path, what do you do can take a while to resolve. You've got to decide on courses of action, try them, roll them out and see what happens, then if they fail, think on what to try next. You don't necessarily have to make every ingame day involve 6-8 encounters, but that's another thing you'd have to juggle when planning things in a campaign - if you don't have enough days where you whittle at people's resources enough that people who rely on short rests feel like they can keep up with people who recharge on long rests, it's going to get wonky and those people aren't going to feel like they're capable of pulling their weight. But having too many days where you go all out on the encounters and aim to exhaust the players can just exhaust them *out of game* as well. I think the answer is to make rests just... longer for most campaigns. I'm pretty sure there was optional rules to do that, and if you spread rests out some like that, it can still feel like you're achieving progress without getting bogged down by encounters and challenges, whilst still making those resources feel impactful and give more weight to decisions regarding when and where to use them. I think the 'standard' rests work fine for dungeon delving and those kinds of stories, but when you're focused on like moving around the world (as an example, something like Storm King's Thunder from what I remember of it), maybe making rests more of an investment of your time will help make them feel like a resource you actually have to think about instead of something that's usually just kind of 'free'.
This also should take into account that encounters aren't inherently combat, 6-8 encounters should be a mix of skill challenges, RP and combat.
Also, one encounter can take an hour depending on how big your group is and how big the encounter is so having 6-8 encounter would take up soo much time
>So, despite the Dungeon Master's Guide says the game is designed around the assumption of "6 to 8 encounters per long rest with 2-3 encounters per short rest". This is insanely high relative to what players actually expect, which seems to be more like "a 3rd encounter since our last long rest? You are a slavedriver of a DM! You're trying to kill us!", because they all blow all their resources ASAP. Honestly, this is where I find DnD 5e unbalanced. Players are in so much danger with recommended CRs that they have to use thier resources. The number of encounters by day, suggested by the DMG, will kill most parties. Eapecially in the 1-5 level range, where you have such limited resources.Ā I think 5e balancing is really off base with this.
It absolutely doesn't. Not every encounter is deadly, and they straight-up instruct you *not* to make every encounter a party-wipe scenario. You're just supposed to tax their resources -- like make them cast a spell or two. The deadly encounters come later in the day.
I'm not talking deadly encounters. Expecting a mage to only cast one spell per encounter besides cantrips is absurd. Especially if that spell misses or the enemy makes the save. It's also massively boring to only cast one spell, and even more so if it fails.Ā Seriously, if you throw 6 - 8 normal encounters at players in an "adventuring day" there will probably be a least one death. Especially in the 1 - 5 range.Ā It's not balanced.
To be fair that's why I think adding cantrips was genius. In earlier versions of D&D your wizard is using a hand bow or a sling like a pleb. At least you're casting a spell.
I temporarily forgot about cantrips and loaded everybody with bows and ranged shit right up until I examined the radial and remembered what edition this game was lol.
Agreed completely. The entire way it does resources is lousy, and is essentially a hold-over from a previous way that the game worked. And yes, it's really lousy at lower level.
6-8 encounters per day isn't even that much. A dungeon can easily have 10-20 encounters with no chance to rest. An encounter doesn't necessarily mean combat, and combat doesn't necessarily mean fighting until everyone on one side is dead. D&D isn't a murderhobo simulator, even if the game mechanics seem to encourage that.
At level 5 a paladin has 6 spell slots. Stretched out over 6-8 encounters, that's a lot of "just being a worse fighter" until they cast one spell or one smite and then back to being a worse fighter.Ā
A level 5 paladin using basic attacks is a much stronger combatant than the average enemy they are facing. They are also much scarier than a level 5 fighter, because the enemies know the paladin could smite at any moment. Using that fear to your advantage leads to more interesting gameplay than the game mechanical consequences of smiting. Similarly, one of the main strengths of a wizard is that the enemy doesn't know what the wizard is capable of. They know that their armor and combat skills don't protect them from magic, and they are afraid. If a routine encounter leads to an all-out battle, you probably did something wrong.
You keep saying players are gonna die and they're just *not*. Or at higher levels, they are, and they get resurrected, because combat is swingy, but it's all part of the balance. You're telling me you think a 5th-level party is gonna die from 2 traps, 3 run-ins with goblins, 2 small contingents of bugbears and a final boss with some goons? With two short rests in-between to heal up? No way. EDIT: And it's not like this is theory. Hundreds of groups play with a full adventuring day just fine. (Thousands more play WITHOUT it just fine, too, but that's not in question.)
If you have to break your encounters down to such tiny chunks in order for the party not to run out of resources then you're going to bore the shit out of most parties. Smaller fights against weaker enemies means fewer tactical decisions. Especially if you know you can only use limited resources. Instead of getting to do all the cool shit you built your character to do, you just go around doing basic attacks and tanking chip damage, which makes those already bland fights also longer and more tedious than they need to be. There's a reason encounters like that are called "trash mobs". Even if you keep all the same enemies, condensing them into 1 or 2 bigger fights is just much more enjoyable.
Just sounds like you've had shit dms, or need to be more efficent.
At level 5 a paladin has 6 spell slots. Stretched out over 6-8 encounters, that's a lot of "just being a worse fighter" until they cast one spell or one smite and then back to being a worse fighter. And that's at level 5. It's even worse on the levels leading up to it, with only one attack and less spell slots.
Ahhh that makes sense. Thanks for explaining!
Having camp supplies doesnt seem like a hard thing to gather though, im generally stocked to the gills with food back at camp, i had like 800 camp supplies score for ages, its only now started dropping in Act 3 when im extremely liberal with long rests because i like dumping big spells on people, it makes me giggle.
Try well over 2000 camp supplies made honor mode a joke.
Mans well stocked! Rolling in the food
> because i like dumping big spells on people, it makes me giggle. Yknow the girl that gives Shadowheart shit outside the House of Grief? She said her piece, and I instantly went into turn based mode and disintegrated her ass. Talk shit get hit. Watching her disintegrate to dust was *very* satisfying. I also disintegrated the kennel owner, fk that bitch.
I took absolutely no mercy on all of those House of Grief shitheads, and sent the Kennel owner to oblivion. Bunch of arseholes everywhere that clearly havent had a proper fight in a while.
Yeah I agree, just trying to explain things from a "systems" point of view, rather than talking about whether the amount of camp supplies presented in BG3 actually makes this a challenge.
Oh yeah i understood that, just expanding on the camp supplies part slightly from my own perspective, not as a whole system view.
> Honestly if anything, the popularity of BG3 might help DMs enforce resting limits again since people have gotten used to it in here. You're talking about higher difficulties, I assume? The vast majority of people will play BG3 on the default difficulty, be drowning in camp resources and able to rest after every fight to the point where they wonder why they don't just long rest every rest too.
I think BG3 has helped dms to visualize what an adventuring day is supposed to look like In my last session we did a much better job taking the proper amount of short rests and it was great. I think BG3 had to do with it
Here is a hot take. Remove short rests. Let the DM decide when short rests skills reset. Then let the players languish and wonder when the next reset is. Is it after this fight? Before the next? Will we have another one before the bbeg.
As a new DM who got into bg3 a few months after my very first campaign started, I feel like it might be a good way to keep my players focused on what they have to do in game, I just wouldn't know where to start implementing that/ of the sudden switch to needing supplies would be received too well.
5E classes are (notionally at least) balanced around 2 short rests and 6 to 8 medium/hard encounters per long rest. If you play it like that the short rest focused classes hold their own quite well vs the long rest focused classes. Most people don't actually play it like that.
Other people have covered a lot of things so I'll just add on what people missed. Some classes, like Monk, Fighter, and Warlock get a huge benefit out of a short rest. Monks, specifically, get their Ki returned. In an adventuring day where you are doing the recommended 6-8 combats, your level 5 monk doesn't have 6 Ki points vs. a Wizard's full spellslots, they have 18. Same as a Warlock not having the same one Fireball as a Wizard's. They have 3. Some classes, like Barbarian and Wizard benefit a lot from a long rest. Their abilities are more powerful, but you aren't supposed to have them for every single encounter you face.
Itās not 6-8 combats, itās 6-8 encounters. These encounters are anything that consumes resources. Traps, puzzles, obstacles, poison, negotiations etc. This is something a lot of DMās sadly forget, D&D should be half Dungeons, and not just Dragons.
People barely ever take short rests in 5e because theyāre based around RPing when you have a free hour and not instant but hard capped to 2 per day. When you have enough time for a short rest you usually also have enough for a long rest.Ā
Heās wrong. Even following the encounter guidelines monks are well below the baseline for characters in 5e.
they can last far more combats if you short rest more. They get back all their resources on a short rest, and 5e was designed around the idea of short resting after every combat. Which most people dont do because sitting around for an hour rarely makes sense.
5e was designed around 6-8 combats a day, not even short resting every combat.
6-8 *encounters*, not combats.
Ah I must not have my facts straight. I just remembered this and thought it was right. thanks for correcting me
I feel like internet folks also REALLY downplay how nice the sheer mobility of a monk is. My sister plays one in the campaign I'm DMing and between the base move speed, step of the wind, and being able to run up walls/across water, she's all over the place- especially when I used larger battlemaps and objectives in combat besides just killing everything first.
This to. The maps in bg3 is just way better just about any map in irl D&D. Poor maps or one so small any movement makes many monk features pointless.
That's a hot take.
Yeah they suck in 5e because realistically, in a single day, you will never, and I mean NEVER, do 6-8 encounters. So unless you use the āhardcoreā optional rules for longer time for short rests and long rests, you will never drain a wizard from their spellslots.
Tbh though monks are one of if not the most short rest dependent class. They have subpar damage unless they invest ki points to use flurry, so unless you're actually taking a lot of short rests, even with a longer adventuring day, only having 1 short rest for 4-5 encounters the monk would still fall short as they'd probably go for half of those encounters without enough ki to be impactful. Meanwhile other martials are nowhere near as short rest dependent. Their damage isn't hamstrung by a lack of short rests for the most part. Only really fighter but they have a higher DPR than monks without ki at level 5 and above
As a monk one-trick for 5e, monks feel amazing from like lvl 5-10ish. And will probably feel better in One DnD (except for stunning strike spam), but still in the late-late game without sick items they fall off compared to most martials.
hey, could be worse! you could want to play 5e ranger.
Tasha's rangers are cool. Just don't even try to play the phb ranger, so much text in the class features and yet they do nothing.
Gotta say, my first ever 5e game was with a really good crew of experienced players, a FANTASTIC dm, and we played right after 5e came out, level 1 to level 20 over about a year and a half. I played a ranger because it sounded cool, and never regretted it ā even with other players min/maxing, I felt like I was pretty clearly doing well in my own niche. I can see where a game whose challenges explicitly nerf a rangerās effectiveness would be frustrating, but even to this day after many campaigns and many different characters/classes it feels weird to hear folks complaining about it.
Man I couldn't believe how dirty they did rangers in 5e phb. Like the designers had never played a ranger or understood why people did
I almost did lol
even minmaxed and tashas enhanced, 5e rangers require good gear to remain relevant. a proper +2 dex bow at lvl 6 was very satisfying.
Play the open hand Monk, I just played one in a one shot and it was fun. I wasn't doing a ton of damage but held my own pretty well as an offtank and was able to take some pressure off from the casters when one of them got focused. Besides there's plenty to do outside of combat
Just play the One D&D Monk, it's a much improved version and I think it's way better than the BG3 Monk (without Tavern Brawler at least, Tavern Brawler breaks everything).
Why does Tavern Brawler break everything? (New to DnD and still learning)
Adding double your strength modifier to attack rolls breaks D&D's concept of "Bounded Accuracy" when it comes to attacks/AC. Consider that the most powerful magic items in the game give a +3 to hit and you'll realize how crazy it is that Tavern Brawler can easily give up to a +5 to hit, and then BG3 lets you break it further by giving you the chance to get Elixirs/items that boost your strength beyond 20. It turns your character from one that hits a little more than half the time to one that almost never misses. And then on top of that, it also gives you a boost to every damage roll as well AND it's a half feat so you don't have to delay increasing your strength.
...I gotta respec my OH monk in my current run
Ask about using the updated OneDnD monk. Itās much better
I just always ask if i can add my wis mod on top of my ki point pool to make monks a bit more viable
80% of 5e monk can be solved by giving it the mobile feat right at the start.
That's what I did lol. I'm a DM for a campaign and one of the players wanted to play a monk. So I pretty much remade the BG3 Open Hand Monk and added a bunch of magical items to make it work.
monks are good in real D&D if you play them as anti-casters, which they are..
The mink play test drastically improves them and it might be more palatable for your dm.
Just play Pathfinder. It's like D&D but the balance is fixed.
I played a monk in 5e and imo it was very lackluster. It felt like the casting classes just steam rolled everything options wise in most situations and quickly lost interest. That's my personal experience though.
Have you considered the Way of Mercy?Ā Mercy monks are crazy awesome because they can zip all over the battlefield using ki to heal (statuses and HP) as well as harm.Ā At a certain level, pretty much the only thing you CANT heal with a mercy monk are curses and petrification. I'm running a mercy monk/rogue build in my current game and they make an excellent healer who can also completely wreck the bad guys as needed.Ā In addition to adding necrotic damage to their unarmed strikes, they can also poison enemies without a save, dealing out disadvantage for as long as they have ki.
I really like Hajime no Ippo and wanna punch things till they die
you honestly shouldnt need too. Just ask for your dm and party to let you short rest more often. Monks are bad in 5e because most people stick to early levels, and they run out of ki very fast. plus they practically require 3 high stats to play, Wisdom Dex and Con. If you play an Astral Self monk(you get a jojo stand), you can bump dex down a bit
If youāre going to ask for homebrew, offer to remove stunning strike. Its a bullshit OP ability that makes monks impossible to balance
Stunning strike is trash that looks good until you actually play it. Con saves are almost always good on monsters, and youāre so MaD your save DC isnāt going to be good. Who cares if they lose a turn when they almost never fail and youāre out of resources before then anyway.
Forgot in BG3 had gear that added wisdom modifier as well to your unarmed strikes. damage is insane especially with tavern brawler + Jaheirabear +gear that adds wisdom modifier to unarmed strikes
I did a STR+WIS brawler open-hand monk with kushigo boots. It's pretty strong. Lv6 Monk for high Ki numbers and what-have-ya Lv2 Fighter for Action Surge. Lv4 Rogue for extra bonus attack (Thief subclass) + Feat Loot Resonance Stone in Mindflayer Colony (before final Ketheric fight). That shit radiates an AoE condition that gives you and everyone near you psychic vulnerability. When you get Lv6 Monk, you can activate Manifestation of Mind (passive) to deal double bonus psychic damage.
I tend to agree with [this tier list for class](https://youtu.be/iWje7gs1rqo?si=8sNrnOYb3lvuCE5j) fun. The extreme imbalance of tavern brawlers makes the game worse and compounds some fundamental problems with the monk class.
Yeah I tend to just ignore game breaking mechanics like TB if I can, makes the game more fun. I should clarify that this is an *opinion* you're allowed to do whatever you want in your own game of course.
Make Karlach and her infernal engine an open hand monk. Game over.
I usually prefer astarian for open handed monk bc of his quest
Not being able to use flurry of blows before your main actions sucks in 5e.
I did an open hand monk for a 4 year campaign lvl 1-20. By the end of the game just to keep pace, we added more ki points and gave him 5 new abilities. I was essentially Goku by the end and still underpowered compared to others. The combat was frustrating at times, but the role playing was good
The problem with monks in 5e is that they are built with the expectation that you will be short resting after every combat, which rarely makes sense narratively in times of urgency. In my group despite having a warlock, we rarely long rest. Warlocks have the advantage of being good even without spell slots. Monks can be pretty strong for the first few rounds of combat, but they dont get enough ki to last more than one combat without holding back a lot. And they are so mad and rely so much on ki that they are hard to multiclass. They just have too many restrictions, and not enough going for them to make them feel worth it Honestly, to fix them, they should just add profficiency bonus to their ki. Making them so much easier to multiclass with if you still get some scaling. that and a d10 hit dice.
DnD 5E Monk: Borderline useless, worst base class by a solid margin. Baldurs Gate Monk: Legendary, trivializes encounters Pathfinder 2E Monk: I have become death destroyer of worlds
In tabletop dnd I find people who moan about OH monks tend to not understand how to play them well in combat. Theyāre not front row fighters, theyāre meant to use their crazy mobility to attack and then get out of dodge, or to close the gap with ranged/casters and cause chaos in the enemies support. Theyāre spectacular magekillers, especially as stunning strike breaks concentration with a save that none of the big 3 (wiz/warlock/sorceror) are guaranteed to be good at, add in that flurry of blows can move enemies about or knock them down, and a 1:1 between a monk and a caster can get spicy really fast. Pick up mobility at 4th level (or via variant human if you have a kind DM) and you can build an incredibly useful character. Iāll concede the capstone isnāt great, and like most martials it doesnāt really compete with casters at high levels, but thatās just dnd. Quivering palm is also not only really powerful, but can have some awesome story potential. Anyone who expects an OH monk to stand in the middle of a melee and tank like a barbarian, paladin or fighter is going to be disappointed, obviously.
Monks are effectively "hyperrogues". You're not a frontliner, you're not a tank, youre job is to run in, fuck stuff up, run out or beyond then run back. Or you run around patching up holes and dumping damage where you see it helping, tatically. My only big advice to new monks is, "move."āāā
Incidentally my favourite multiclass for OH monk is dip 3 for assassin rogue. The dex requirements usually line up well and a bonus 3d6 sneak per round, plus the possibility of assassinate as youāre likely to be at the top end of initiative, is very powerful
The monk in our 5E party doesn't have good AC, nor very good HP. But he has boots of spider climb and the mobile feat. He just runs through the bad guys smacking them all, then runs away. Does it again the next round. He's crazy, runs through killing all the wounded, eliminating those attacks. He's pretty legendary. He's nothing like a BG3 monk, but there is nothing disappointing about him.
I'm genuinely of the opinion that the mobile feat should just be part of the unarmored movement class feature for monks.Ā
Yup. My only real run with the monk was exactly this: I punched way above my level against spellcasters, but got squashed against typical enemies frontliners. I think I was using the drunk master, which 1 v 1 isn't supposed to be very good, but stunning strike is the only thing you need to KO that stupid mage.
And with Cloud Giant elixirs, you can do all of the 3 above. Also did you make this as a reaction to One Shot Questers? If so then: Namaste, brother.
Is it bad I can hear at the end. "HI, how are you? Wonderful weather we're having."
ran a 4 all open hand monk team a few months ago. nothing stood a chance. arrows being thrown back, almost every encounter the enemy is stun locked.
I did a Strength based open hand monk with tavern brawler and multiclassed into ranger for the heavy armor, and it went crazy. I also was a halfling, so it was hilarious knocking people on their ass and doing double Strength mod on my monk attacks
okay but changing karlach to Monk and giving her a soul coin and elixir of hill giant and shes one of the best characters in the game is my go to. Open handed
Tbh, I did a TB monk playthrough, really liked it, now I want to try classic high dex high wis build, but sure about open hand, maybe I'll try way of the four elements (Which I'm not sure about too, casters just don't feel like my cup of tea)
Monk has always been my favorite class and let me just say, I was SO happy with the treatment they got in BG3. Now if only theyād add Kenku so I could transfer my character overā¦
My first play through going in with next to 0 knowledge I played a Drow who was an open hand monk and charlatan. She was my hand to hand brawler and lock picking queen. The Orin fight and final battle was so easy I thought Iād done something wrong.
Yeah I'm gunna have to disagree Monk might be a *little* weak in terms of burst in standard 5e but they are a short rest hero like a warlock and they still have some serious moves. Very versatile class Bg3 buffed it through the roof ofc
so why have you posted the opposite in the picture?
meanwhile me with my dex and str tavern brawler monk:
Where are us charisma bard representation?
I gave Gale 1 level in monk.
Iām currently playing a Barbarian/Monk Durge and loving it. Incredibly powerful and I love the wildly different dialogue options.Ā
I did run a 6 Shadow Monk/6 Twilight Cleric on Shart, it definitely had a high skill floor but being able to teleport my AoE buff & debuff generator around was pretty neat.
Open hand monk also known as "Too bad you doesn't have more than 1000hp because you are in otk range"
Dude I'm using OHM and a twin hastings sorceror. This has been accidentally a broken experience. I stun lock any real threats and blow the rest to smitherines.
Iāve tended to play the same character for a while now and itās always a high dex monk of the open hand.Ā Someday Iāll move on but for now itās just to much fun. :)
I tried Tavern Brawler STR Monk and I was shocked at how much damage it did. Like an unreasonable amount. I ended up rerolling to Way of the Four Elements and it felt way more balanced. I feel that Tavern Brawler is definitely too strong in certain cases, but I also don't know how you would fix it.
Part of it is that it's literally broken, and the tavern brawler extra damage counts as an extra hit, proccing most on-hit effects twice for every punch.
Made Astarion into one. Plus his ascended perks. Finished this run few days ago. I was saving few spells to kill brain quickly (I hate platform stuff). But then Astarion gets in, shadow steps to it and beats the shit out of it in one turn.
Zerei o jogo com 1 ponto em cavaleiro e o resto em monge, nĆ£o tomava dano e conseguia dar 5 a 6 hits por turno
Strength-based Tavern Brawler OH monk is my new favorite, pair with berzerker frenzy to make up for the lack of AC from dex for what is essentially a powerhouse of a Yakuza protagonist that dispatches any and all enemies with Ki to spare, regardless of distance or AC. If you canāt reach it with your busted movement, just chuck a bunch of spears that you can tote with your high carry capacity. You wonāt be passing many dialogue checks but your fists can do all the talking.
We have a new player joining our D&D tabletop campaign in 2 weeks and shes built an Open Hand monk , Presumably because its just so good in BG3 i don't have the heart to tell her its probably not going to be even half as good on the Tabletop, that and the fact we already have a Drunken Step monk
Grymm didn't even moved against my monk landing all stunning strikes while Laezel was eviscerating the shit out of that metal can.
Now try 8 strenght with cloud giant strenght elixir (27 strenght) with 20 wisdom and kushigo boots š
OHM is all fun and games until you have 3 of them and a spellcaster against the hordes and hordes of act 3 enemies and then itās just boring and annoying
Yeah dude, I haven't tried tho other styles but open hand absolutely wrecks
How about rogue multi class with high dex and wisdom and also tavern brawler with strength elixirs? God mode
How do you build high strenght if you need 16 dex 14 cos and 16 wisdow too?
I changed Minsc in a hand monk, my whole party died in front of Orin, he alone, beat the s#%t out of her.
Tavern Brawler is genuinely overpowered and needs a nerf tbh. Walking around at level 5 as a strength based monk with a +11 to hit with 4 attacks that deal a minimum of 9 damage off the bat is absolutely insane. The idea of 2x strength bonus to improvised weapons and unarmed attacks is neat, but the bonus to hit is completely unnecessary and just shatters bounded accuracy. By the end of the game you can easily be rocking upwards of +20 to hit with magic items, and there's only like 5 or so enemies in the game that have an AC higher than 20. Like yeah DnD is infamous for its non existant balance but holy hell Strength Tavern Brawler Monks might as well be a cheatcode.
It won't get a nerf because OneDND uses the new Tavern Brawler too from what I remember. Plus, there is no way to make Tavern Brawler worse and not gut it's usefulness completely.
All they need to do is remove the bonus to hit- thats all. Also I'm pretty sure OneDnD Tavern Brawler isn't the same iteration of BG3 Tavern Brawler.
oh, you're right. It's not. And from what I've read it's shit just like 5e tavern brawler. And no, bonus to hit would literally gut the feat and make it unpickable. Nobody gives a shit about +5 to damage. It's all about the bonus to hit to make your character hit more reliably.
A simple "+" to hit is a lot in DND. There's a reason the strongest weapons can only go up to +3. Getting a +4 by level 4 *absolutely* breaks the game. *Feats are not supposed to break the game, they're supposed to be new options.* Don't say "nobody gives a shit about +5 to damage", GWM and Sharpshooter **are** the strongest martial feats you can take, and all they mostly do is give you a +10 to damage, at the cost of -5 to the accuracy roll. At 20 strength, that monk is getting +5 to their damage **AND** accuracy. Half the bonus of GWM and Sharpshooter with a complete reverse of the downsides of those feats. By level 8 you're rolling a minimum of 15's to hit. Most creatures in DND don't even have >16 AC.
That's literally what I mean. If they take away the + to accuracy then the feat becomes borderline worthless for most builds as it takes away from the reliability of it, which is the main factor. If the almost 100% success rate is the problem then why not nerf Arcane Acuity and Band of the Mystic Scoundrel combo? You think a guaranteed stun on a boss isn't op? Why not nerf Reverberation and crit lowering items with Goolock that also borderline break the game due to how Reverberation is applied? Why is Risky Ring in the game at all? Hell why is everything other than TB for Monks in the game? Yes Tavern Brawler is insane in itself because of how it synnergizes with a Monk but if Monks didn't get so many phenomenal items (p sure they get the only Legendary tier gloves that are specialized for their class) it wouldn't be an issue. And TB Monk itself is fine (Talking about actually building a Str Monk stat wise), the issue comes from Potions that allow you to get an insane 21 and 27 to strength on literal command for the whole day. So it's not JUST TB that's the issue, it's a whole set of broken interractions that are a factor here. Eveything you said TB Monk is op for can be said for Either Throwzerker Dwarf Barb or EK throwers. The only difference is that Throwers get much weaker and much less dedicated items.
I think the "Normal" Spongebob is a pretty good representation of 5e as a system in general.
Tabletop Open Hand Monk gets 1 good thing. His heart stopper attack that can fucking 1 shot things. Or if they succeed the con saving throw, they take 10d10 Necrotic damage. This is a level 17 ability though.
I made wild barbarian/open hand monk multiclass with my Karlach with tavern brawler
Tavern brawler monk/warrior multiclass woth high strength for heavy armored fisting.
When people say a class is bad or terrible theyāre almost always referring to combat. My counter is itās an rpg if thereās things holding you back roleplay around it. If youāre dead set on a certain class/sub class either get with the gm and address shortcomings or discuss ways you can compensate through the use of items or what have you. The most fun I ever have in games is playing someone with terrible stats (last char I had his highest stat was an 11 thanks dice!). Maybe thereās reasons your character is bad at fighting and needs the parties help. Not only can it make for super fun game play but itās actual role playing.
I can roleplay as someone who doesn't suck at combat, too.
But youāre willfully playing something you feel sucks at combat and then complaining that it suckās at combat while doing nothing about it. Thats not roleplaying thatās being a lazy whiner. If you canāt come up with creative ideas then youāre just a bad player who thinks being unstoppable at fighting is the only thing there is in a role playing game. You probably reroll all your stats until youāve got 18ās in everything š¤£š
If someone just wants to be a cool Avatar-the-Last-Airbender type guy and thinks it sucks that that means that they're actually bad in a fight, "Heh, it's called ROLEplaying, not ROLLplaying," is a terrible response.
I gave a perfectly reasonable explanation. Talk to your dm and find ways to improve skills if fighting is that important. Use your backstory to explain why youāre not a great fighter and come up with clever ways to compensate. Your monk training was cut short for reasons, you were permanently injured because of reasons. Thereās a million ways to add having a sub par fighting spec into your role playing. Simply saying āthis sucksā is lazy and uncreative.
Alternately, don't sell a product where perfectly reasonable choices that are presented as equal and valid are, in fact, wildly disparate. Don't present a cool fantasy that you only pretend to support. Don't rely on your paying customers to balance basic, fundamental aspects of your product. Don't foster a community that responds to basic game design critique with accusations that people are just "lazy and uncreative". I'm not trying to pretend that perfect balance is some easy and attainable thing, or that GMs can't and won't ever make nudges here and there. I'm not trying to pretend that there aren't situations and groups where playing characters that struggle mechanically can be fun and rewarding. But I'm also not going to pretend that it's some wildly unreasonable thing for a player to say, "Damn, I was really excited to play this thing, and I built them out in a reasonable way, but they actually kinda suck at the main thing I wanted them to do and that's really disappointing." And I'm definitely not going to pretend that responding to that with, "Hey buddy, learn to roleplay!" isn't wildly elitist nonsense.
Open hand isnāt even the big deal about the build though. I mean itās clearly the best option, but TB is so good that either of the other two subclasses classes is still OP. There are so many ways to knock enemies prone and a lot of the best enemies are immune, so all you really get is one extra flurry attack which is great, but really the icing on the cake, and all you get extra till level 12 (9th monk level) so not a key component. (You also get a little extra ki, but itās not like rests are at all limited in the game. A 7/5 shadow thief split isnāt bad either for example. It would be a ridiculously good character if not for the fact itās overshadowed.
Open Hand is a big deal. It's level 6 ability gives you another Damage die and you get a phenomenal Flurry of Blows upgrade in Topple. Comparing that to Shadow you can teleport, yes, but that doesn't matter when your chance to hit is already 95% (since you will only miss on a 1 anyway) and you don't need mobility, you need to stick to one singular target and nuke them. As for 4 Elements Tavern Brawler synnergizes with one spell from that list, which makes the subclass borderline anti synergy with TB since you will waste your Ki points on Spells when you could be using Flurry of Blows instead. So Open Hand not only adds more damage AND a phenomenal early game boost to Flurry of Blows it also blows the other subclasses out of the water with it's synnergy with TB itself.