Monk Class Preview

Monday, June 18, 2018

Some players love to play monks so they can strive toward enlightenment. Others just like to punch stuff!

Monk Features

Monks choose whether their key ability is Strength or Dexterity, which will determine the DC of some of their abilities. Their selection of initial proficiencies looks pretty different from most classes! First off, they have expert proficiency in all their saving throws. Monks aren't trained in any weapons, but they are trained in all unarmed attacks. They also get powerful fist, which increases the damage die of their fists and lets them make lethal strikes without penalty when using normally nonlethal unarmed attacks. Further, they're untrained in armor, but get graceful expertise at 1st level, which gives them expert proficiency in unarmored defense (everybody else is only trained).

They get one last class feature at 1st level, of course: Flurry of Blows! This is a single action that can be used once per round to make two strikes using an unarmed attack. If both hit, their damage is combined. Both these attacks take the multiple attack penalty normally, so usually the monk will be making the second attack at a -4 penalty (since a fist is agile). Flurry of Blows is a huge advantage, letting the monk attack up to four times in a round, or letting the monk have plenty of actions to move and attack in a single turn. Speaking of moving, at 3rd level, a monk gains incredible movement, increasing his speed as long as he's not wearing armor. This starts at a 10-foot increase, and it goes up by 5 feet every 3 levels.

Illustration by Wayne Reynolds

Because monks can defend themselves in so many different ways, we wanted to let the monk pick how his saving throws improve. His saves increase at 7th level through the path to perfection class feature, which lets him increase a save's proficiency rank to master. The second path to perfection, at 11th level, lets a monk treat any successful save as a critical success instead, as long as he has master proficiency in that save. The monk gets his third path to perfection at 15th level, which he can use to either increase his proficiency rank in another save to master proficiency or progress his proficiency at a save in which he's already a master to legendary.

The monk's unarmored defense proficiency also goes up as he levels, first to master at 13th level and then to legendary at 17th. You'll notice that monks no longer add their Wisdom modifiers to AC, which is due to a few factors. First, depending on the monk's Dexterity modifier, the gulf between a heavily armored character and a monk without armor is extremely low, so adding even more bonuses would put the monk really far ahead. Second, adding more than a single ability modifier to a check or DC now really distorts the game. Third, we have another role for Wisdom to play in the class, and wanted it to be optional so monks aren't dependent on many different ability scores, giving you more flexibility with how you can build a monk character.

Of course, it goes without saying that the monk's unarmed attacks get better as he levels up. Magic strikes, at 3rd level, makes the monk's unarmed attacks magical, and increases his proficiency rank to expert. At 5th level, metal strikes causes them to be treated as cold iron and silver; at 17th level, adamantine strikes makes them act as adamantine. Fierce flurry, at 9th level, increases the damage dice of a Flurry of Blows by one step whenever both strikes hit. At 19th level, the monk has developed perfected form, meaning that when he makes an unarmed attack, he can treat any die roll lower than 10 as if he had rolled a 10! This lets the monk plow through weaker enemies who can't handle his immaculate fighting style, and against bosses, he can even turn a good number of misses into hits.

Monk Feats

A monk's feats let him expand how he can attack, teach him special martial arts techniques, let him develop an entire fighting style, or use magic called ki (which we explain in the Ki section).

Your monk could take Monastic Weaponry at 1st level, letting him use his unarmed attack proficiencies, as well as any monk abilities that normally work with unarmed attacks, with simple and martial monk weapons. This is how Sajan gets to use that sweet temple sword! If you'd rather stick with punches, kicks, knees, and headbutts, take a look at Brawling Focus at 4th level, which gives you the critical specialization effect for anything in the brawling weapon group. This means if you critically hit with your unarmed attacks, the target might be slowed 1 on its next turn, losing 1 action.

Some of the special attacks you can learn include Stunning Fist, a great option if you're looking to recreate your Pathfinder First Edition monk. A Stunning Fist strike takes 2 actions and you make an unarmed strike; if the strike deals damage, the target has to succeed at a Fortitude save against your class DC (based on your Strength or Dex, remember?) or be flat-footed for 1 round, or stupefied 2 if it critically fails. So how do you stun the target? If your strike is a critical hit, the target's saving throw result is treated as one category worse, and if it critically fails its save it's stunned for 1 round! At 4th level, you can pick up Deflect Arrow, a reaction that gives you a +4 bonus to AC against a ranged weapon attack, or Flying Kick, which lets you use 2 actions to jump and make a strike at the end of your jump. You can even Long Jump—normally 2 actions—as part of your Flying Kick, potentially moving very far before your strike. Other attacks include Ghost Strike, which lets you use 2 actions to target TAC, or Wall Run, which lets you run up vertical surfaces at your full Speed.

Now what about fighting styles? Let's look at one that starts with the Crane Stance feat at 1st level! A stance takes one action to enter, and can be used only in an encounter. You typically stay in a stance until you enter another stance or get knocked out. In Crane Stance, you gain a +1 bonus to AC and get better at jumping, but the only Strikes you can make are crane wing attacks. What the heck are those? Well, many stances give special unarmed attacks that have statistics much like weapons. Crane wing attacks deal 1d6 bludgeoning damage, and have the agile, finesse, nonlethal, and unarmed traits. They're not too different from normal fist strikes, but others differ more; for instance, heavy dragon tail attacks deal 1d10 bludgeoning damage and have the backswing trait instead of agile or finesse. What if Crane Stance isn't enough? Well, you can pick up Crane Flutter, a reaction that increases your AC against a melee attack and lets you immediately riposte with a crane wing strike at a -4 penalty if the triggering attack misses. Each of the stances in the Playtest Rulebook has one special attack tied to it, but I could see us expanding on them in the future, couldn't you? If you really get into stances, you can pick up Master of Many Styles at 16th level, which lets you enter a stance as a free action at the start of each of your turns.

Ki

Oh, geez, I'm running long, huh? Let's make this quick. You know how I said there's a role for Wisdom? Well, that's where ki powers come into play. And when I say powers, I mean powers—they're spells just like other powers (such as the wizard's school powers or the cleric's domain powers). You gain access to ki by picking up the first ki power feat, Ki Strike, which gives you a pool of Spell Points equal to your Wisdom modifier, which you can spend to cast ki strike. This power is a Verbal Casting free action you can use when making an unarmed strike to get a +1 bonus to your attack roll. So you let out a shout and hit better!

Now that you have Spell Points, you can expand your repertoire of powers to teleport with Abundant Step, fire a cone of force with a Ki Blast, or kill someone with Quivering Palm. Quivering Palm costs 2 Spell Points, and as with the monk's other Spell Point abilities, taking the 16th-level feat to get this spell increases your Spell Point pool by 2. Let's take a look, and then I'm outta here (probably flying away using the wind jump power)!

Quivering Palm Power 8

Attack, Necromancy
Casting [[A]] Somatic Casting, [[A]] Verbal Casting
Duration 1 month

Make a melee unarmed Strike, dealing damage normally. If you succeed and the target is alive, anytime during the duration you can spend a Verbal action to speak a word of death that could instantly slay it, depending on its Fortitude save.

Success The target survives, the spell ends, and the target is bolstered against it.
Failure The target is stunned for 1 round but survives. The spell's duration continues, but the target is bolstered against being killed by quivering palm for 24 hours.
Critical Failure The target dies.

If you cast quivering palm again, any previous quivering palm you had cast ends.

Logan Bonner
Designer

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Tags: Pathfinder Playtest Wayne Reynolds
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Sovereign Court

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Pathfinder Starfinder Society Subscriber

Cue the Flurry of Posts!


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Quote:
Monks aren't trained in any weapons, but they are trained in all unarmed attacks.

Are the different types of unarmed attacks considered separate weapons in pf2 (kick, punch, elbow, etc)?


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So the way I read this, you can play the monk as a heavy brawler (Str focus), a Bruce Lee-type martial artist (Dex focus), with the fantasy-style ki strikes being an optional extra for you to choose (or not) as you please (depending on how much you bump up your Wis in char-gen)?

Sweeeeeet!

Paizo Blog wrote:
Your monk could take Monastic Weaponry at 1st level, letting him use his unarmed attack proficiencies, as well as any monk abilities that normally work with unarmed attacks, with simple and martial monk weapons.

And you don't even need to play an unarmed master!

Nice. Me likey!

And... the Quivering Palm has a 1-month duration?!

So. Many. Ideas.


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Oh hey, an outright choice of whether to use Str or Dex - should be interesting to see how this works in practice. ^^


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Quote:
You'll notice that monks no longer add their Wisdom modifiers to AC, which is due to a few factors. First, depending on the monk's Dexterity modifier, the gulf between a heavily armored character and a monk without armor is extremely low, so adding even more bonuses would put the monk really far ahead.

What about monks who use str as their key ability, do they get some other bonus to ac?

Sovereign Court

Pathfinder Starfinder Society Subscriber

I think "bolstered" is a new term. Anyone know what it means?


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So if I am reading this right even if quivering palms does not succeed in killing out right the monk can keep muttering DIE DIE DIE until either they save or die? Ideally I guess once per day for maximum chance just go DIE if you really are trying to slay some affected target?


willuwontu wrote:
Quote:
You'll notice that monks no longer add their Wisdom modifiers to AC, which is due to a few factors. First, depending on the monk's Dexterity modifier, the gulf between a heavily armored character and a monk without armor is extremely low, so adding even more bonuses would put the monk really far ahead.
What about monks who use str as their key ability, do they get some other bonus to ac?

Yes. It's called a fist. And you can use it against other people's ac.

Again.

And again.

And again.

:-)

(More seriously, that's a great question - and I think/hope the increase in unarmoured proficiency will help some - but I couldn't resist the Blackadder quote!)


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Isn't Wis mod of Spell points to few? or are all powers going to add additional Spell points?

Speaking of powers, each one cost a class feat right?


Spicy!


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Hmmm... a lot of this sounds cool, but I’m really worried that it could be implemented in a way that actually works. For example, what’s keeping STR-based builds from falling drastically behind all other classes in AC? How is any monk, especially with ability scores coped much more than in P1e, supposed to use Ki powers at any amount? A lot of this ties back to some of my problems with the core of the game, but the monk just seems particularly vulnerable.


KingOfAnything wrote:
I think "bolstered" is a new term. Anyone know what it means?

Basically means they are more resistant to it and get a bonus to their save. So if you try this more than once per day they have a better chance of saving and clearing the effect it seems. But once per day for a month it looks like you can make one attempt to kill them at their normal save chance.


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So one thing I'm curious about is how unarmed strikes keep pace with monastic weapons just in terms of damage. So if you pick up a temple sword (which for sake of argument it deals d8 damage), eventually you will own a +1 temple sword, which deals 2d8 damage, and towards the end you may own a +5 temple sword, which deals 6d8 damage.

Is there an Amulet of Mighty Fists or analogous to add damage dice to an unarmed strike?

Also, if I just want to be Punchy McPunchperson who does not fly or teleport or do anything that involves spells, do I use Wisdom for anything? Like if I want the power of my enlightenment to be internal, rather than external.


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Interesting, though I wonder whether Str based Monks aren't just going to be subpar. True, they seem to do a little more damage than Dex monks, if Crane Wing and Dragon Tail are to be considered as representative, but a Dex monk might not need to care about Dex, while a Str based monk still needs Dex a whole lot for AC, not to mention reflex. Maybe it won't be as bad as prior editions, since Wis is somewhat optional, but still, I'm unsure.


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I like the idea of folding special attacks into the various kinds of styles. It makes them feel more unique and less like a few situational attack buffs.


kaid wrote:
KingOfAnything wrote:
I think "bolstered" is a new term. Anyone know what it means?
Basically means they are more resistant to it and get a bonus to their save. So if you try this more than once per day they have a better chance of saving and clearing the effect it seems. But once per day for a month it looks like you can make one attempt to kill them at their normal save chance.

It means immune, from what I remember.

Sovereign Court

Pathfinder Starfinder Society Subscriber
kaid wrote:
KingOfAnything wrote:
I think "bolstered" is a new term. Anyone know what it means?
Basically means they are more resistant to it and get a bonus to their save. So if you try this more than once per day they have a better chance of saving and clearing the effect it seems. But once per day for a month it looks like you can make one attempt to kill them at their normal save chance.

I got the sense of it. I was wondering if we knew the game mechanics though. :D


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I've never been a monk guy, but I have to admit this all sounds pretty cool.

Maybe someday.


Interesting.


The ability to choose your key ability is a very interesting one. Wonder who else has this as an option.


PossibleCabbage wrote:

So one thing I'm curious about is how unarmed strikes keep pace with monastic weapons just in terms of damage. So if you pick up a temple sword (which for sake of argument it deals d8 damage), eventually you will own a +1 temple sword, which deals 2d8 damage, and towards the end you may own a +5 temple sword, which deals 6d8 damage.

Is there an Amulet of Mighty Fists or analogous to add damage dice to an unarmed strike?

I think I've heard "fistwraps of mighty strikes" tossed around as the replacement for AoMF, though IDK if there's any reason for the switch, since item slots aren't a thing any longer, now that resonance is a thing.

Paizo Employee Designer

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Tholomyes wrote:
Interesting, though I wonder whether Str based Monks aren't just going to be subpar. True, they seem to do a little more damage than Dex monks, if Crane Wing and Dragon Tail are to be considered as representative, but a Dex monk might not need to care about Dex, while a Str based monk still needs Dex a whole lot for AC, not to mention reflex. Maybe it won't be as bad as prior editions, since Wis is somewhat optional, but still, I'm unsure.

My suspicion is that such a monk will still have Dex second, so 18 Str/16 Dex at 1st level, 19/18 at 5th level, 20/19 at 10th level, and so on, meaning they're behind by 1 or 0 in AC at most levels. A monk like this will probably want Con third for sure. We'll see how it fares in playtest!


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So, if a target saves against quivering palm, do they become immune to the unarmed strike that's a part of future quivering palm?


Tholomyes wrote:
PossibleCabbage wrote:

So one thing I'm curious about is how unarmed strikes keep pace with monastic weapons just in terms of damage. So if you pick up a temple sword (which for sake of argument it deals d8 damage), eventually you will own a +1 temple sword, which deals 2d8 damage, and towards the end you may own a +5 temple sword, which deals 6d8 damage.

Is there an Amulet of Mighty Fists or analogous to add damage dice to an unarmed strike?

I think I've heard "fistwraps of mighty strikes" tossed around as the replacement for AoMF, though IDK if there's any reason for the switch, since item slots aren't a thing any longer, now that resonance is a thing.

Fistwraps seem like an odd solution in case your thing is kicking, or knees and elbows.


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I don't think I quite understand how unarmored works... It sounds like a 1st level monk's AC will just be 11+dex, essentially. That seems low, and extremely low if you happen to be playing a strength build.


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I really, really like this implementation. I have some questions though:

1. Is there any incentive to focus on STR? I imagine styles without Finesse-type attacks are one of them, but not having armor early on pushes the class towards DEX pretty hard.

2. Any plans for perhaps some other class feats that are keyed off INT/CHA? They don't have to be systems as deep as Ki, but one or two-offs could be interesting additions. I'd love an INT option that allows me to Quivering Palm through anatomical knowledge.

3. No alignment requirement? Nothing was mentioned so it's curious.

4. What about utility? Everything mentioned so far is about offenses/defenses, wondering what happened to other skills relating to exploration and such.


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"If you succeed and the target is alive, anytime during the duration you can spend a Verbal action to speak a word of death that could instantly slay it, depending on its Fortitude save."

This is really awkward method of expressing the dependencies. It also does not state whether the target must be able to hear the word of death or be within a range of hearing, or...

Moreover: this casting deals no damage. So why would the target become NOT alive at the end of the casting, huh?

Also this section (below) is not clear whether it relates to QUIVERING PALM casting or target's Fortitude save.

"Success The target survives, the spell ends, and the target is bolstered against it.
Failure The target is stunned for 1 round but survives. The spell's duration continues, but the target is bolstered against being killed by quivering palm for 24 hours.
Critical Failure The target dies."

Verdict: Really bad. As in back to the drawing board.

----
Upon successful casting, the target is affected by a spell effect. The effect is dormant until activated by a caster with a Verbal action (the target must be within a range of hearing and alive, though not necessarily able to hear the caster).
----

*sigh*

Paizo Employee Designer

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KingOfAnything wrote:
I think "bolstered" is a new term. Anyone know what it means?

I thought we had mentioned this in a previous blog, but perhaps not. "Bolstered" means you're immune for 24 hours.


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Not gonna lie, with stunning being so rare on stunning fist, I think it shouldn't be called stunning fist. Maybe staggering blow?

Grand Lodge

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Calling it..

Ki Powers give me a strong feeling on how we'll see Kineticist Wild Talents implemented. *_*

And Blasts will be like powerful Cantrips.
Wild Talents are like Ki Powers.

I do hope they'll keep the Con/HP burn mechanic.


Arachnofiend wrote:
I don't think I quite understand how unarmored works... It sounds like a 1st level monk's AC will just be 11+dex, essentially. That seems low, and extremely low if you happen to be playing a strength build.

For a strength build, I agree, but remember that a chain shirt, for instance, is now only +2 to AC and touch AC. So it's not that much behind for dex characters.


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Logan Bonner wrote:
Tholomyes wrote:
Interesting, though I wonder whether Str based Monks aren't just going to be subpar. True, they seem to do a little more damage than Dex monks, if Crane Wing and Dragon Tail are to be considered as representative, but a Dex monk might not need to care about Dex, while a Str based monk still needs Dex a whole lot for AC, not to mention reflex. Maybe it won't be as bad as prior editions, since Wis is somewhat optional, but still, I'm unsure.
My suspicion is that such a monk will still have Dex second, so 18 Str/16 Dex at 1st level, 19/18 at 5th level, 20/19 at 10th level, and so on, meaning they're behind by 1 or 0 in AC at most levels. A monk like this will probably want Con third for sure. We'll see how it fares in playtest!

...Which means that the monk can't be intelligent, charismatic, or wise if he wants to survive combats. That is really bad.


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Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I imagine that a str based monk is going to be capable of dealing a lot of damage a round, so there AC might fall behind a Dex based Monk, but that probably means there is not an easy path to dex based damage bonuses to your unarmed attacked, or else the Str monk really serves no viable build. Dex monk is probably going to be a strong defensive character and Str Monk is probably going to be a powerful striker. I am alright with that split. The access to spell points via a feat is interesting. That might be how they handle the ranger as well.


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I will miss adding your Wis mod to AC.

I do wish you could choose to use Cha or Wis for Ki.

Paizo Employee Designer

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Arachnofiend wrote:
I don't think I quite understand how unarmored works... It sounds like a 1st level monk's AC will just be 11+dex, essentially. That seems low, and extremely low if you happen to be playing a strength build.

They're experts in unarmored defense, so it will be 10 + 2 (expert proficiency = level+1) + Dex.


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ruemere wrote:

"If you succeed and the target is alive, anytime during the duration you can spend a Verbal action to speak a word of death that could instantly slay it, depending on its Fortitude save."

This is really awkward method of expressing the dependencies. It also does not state whether the target must be able to hear the word of death or be within a range of hearing, or...

Moreover: this casting deals no damage. So why would the target become NOT alive at the end of the casting, huh?

Also this section (below) is not clear whether it relates to QUIVERING PALM casting or target's Fortitude save.

"Success The target survives, the spell ends, and the target is bolstered against it.
Failure The target is stunned for 1 round but survives. The spell's duration continues, but the target is bolstered against being killed by quivering palm for 24 hours.
Critical Failure The target dies."

Verdict: Really bad. As in back to the drawing board.

----
Upon successful casting, the target is affected by a spell effect. The effect is dormant until activated by a caster with a Verbal action (the target must be within a range of hearing and alive, though not necessarily able to hear the caster).
----

*sigh*

The casting requires an unarmed strike dealing damage normally. So in theory in "casting this" if you manage to kill them with the blow itself then the quivering palm has no effect.


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Secret Wizard wrote:

I really, really like this implementation. I have some questions though:

1. Is there any incentive to focus on STR? I imagine styles without Finesse-type attacks are one of them, but not having armor early on pushes the class towards DEX pretty hard.

I'd figure strength is so their punches don't hit like a pile of wet noodles. Dex can be your primary attribute all you want, it doesn't change the damage formula of being base+str mod.


Logan Bonner wrote:
Tholomyes wrote:
Interesting, though I wonder whether Str based Monks aren't just going to be subpar. True, they seem to do a little more damage than Dex monks, if Crane Wing and Dragon Tail are to be considered as representative, but a Dex monk might not need to care about Dex, while a Str based monk still needs Dex a whole lot for AC, not to mention reflex. Maybe it won't be as bad as prior editions, since Wis is somewhat optional, but still, I'm unsure.
My suspicion is that such a monk will still have Dex second, so 18 Str/16 Dex at 1st level, 19/18 at 5th level, 20/19 at 10th level, and so on, meaning they're behind by 1 or 0 in AC at most levels. A monk like this will probably want Con third for sure. We'll see how it fares in playtest!

How ability increases works in this edition?


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Also I believe the quivering palm effect ties the "caster" to the victim. So once applied you are linked until you save or they use it on somebody else or you die. So once applied they do not have to be near you or in voice or sight range to attempt to kill you again. Once per day they mutter DIE and you roll your save.


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Awesome. I'm glad monks aren't quite as MAD anymore!

Nonlethal in PF2 isn't actually tracked separately anymore, right? I think I remember reading that it is just determined by whatever hit is the one to bring the target to 0 HP.

I'm glad Flurry only takes 1 action. (Sort of how I had expected two weapon fighting to only take one action once per turn...) If you have a good attack bonus it's pretty powerful, especially in conjunction with extra actions, because as I understand things the iterative penalty doesn't actually go past -10 (-8 with agile) no matter how many attacks you make.

Save progression is customizeable, good. It was always kind of weird for them to be good at everything from the beginning to the end of their career, tbh.

I was hoping that armored monks could be a thing. :/ Vegeta and numerous other fictional martial artists wear some form of at least light armor. Oh well...

I expected Wis as an additional add-on to AC to disappear, but I kind of thought there might be a feat or feature where you could use your Wis in place of of your Dex if it was better. Well, who knows, maybe that is actually an available feat to help Str-based monks, and they just didn't go into it.

What used to be the "ki strike" progression is pretty much as expected.

Interesting that monk weapon access is feat gated, but fair enough I suppose. They do get all those defensive proficiencies, and the monk weapons do cut across multiple other weapon groups.

Stunning Fist is a little complicated and probably a little weak. To actually stun your target as the name of the feat implies, you have to critically hit the target and the target has to critically fail their save. I would think stun would just be the critical fail result period, with a critical hit just making their save one step lower than they actually rolled. Well, that's what playtesting is for I guess...

Most of the other feats look good, except Ghost Strike. I would expect that to be useful for, you know, attacking incorporeal targets, but instead it just works out to "give up an entire extra action for +1 to +2 to hit."

Glad to see fighting styles shared with the Fighter as I predicted. Hopefully these are the only two classes that get the style / stance / etc system. I don't want to see rangers also dipping this and making the whole thing less special, like that time in the 5E playtest where EVERYONE stole the Fighter's expertise die.

Ki Strike is a verbal free action component, eh? Good to see those are around, and that offers room for feats that interact with metamagic...

On the other hand, it sounds like you made Ki Strike the sole point of entry into the Ki power tree, just like Point Blank Shot in PF1 was the feat tax to be able to do anything else whatsoever as an archer. Not sure how I feel about that. It'd be better if there was at least two points of entry. I know there will be more options later down the line, but even the CRB shouldn't constrict things this much. All the other ki feats should have "Possesses ki" as their printed prerequisite rather than specifically "Ki Strike" to make this more future compatible.

Looks like there's nothing much to do with weapons other than the one monk weapon feat as mentioned, so we can't really use monk as our first year standin for the magus and other mystical warriors. Oh well...

Overall good despite some qualms. I feared some pretty heavy cuts so I'm glad it's in pretty good shape.


Now I only need to see when and how for PF2 Monks will Timeless Body and Perfect Self kicks in...!


I like the sound of ki blast though I hope there will be a single target touch attack and line effect versions/options.


Logan Bonner wrote:
KingOfAnything wrote:
I think "bolstered" is a new term. Anyone know what it means?
I thought we had mentioned this in a previous blog, but perhaps not. "Bolstered" means you're immune for 24 hours.

It's a bit confusing that the success just says "bolstered", and the failure specifies that it's for 24 hours. This makes it seem like the success isn't for 24 hours.


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Tarik Blackhands wrote:
Secret Wizard wrote:

I really, really like this implementation. I have some questions though:

1. Is there any incentive to focus on STR? I imagine styles without Finesse-type attacks are one of them, but not having armor early on pushes the class towards DEX pretty hard.

I'd figure strength is so their punches don't hit like a pile of wet noodles. Dex can be your primary attribute all you want, it doesn't change the damage formula of being base+str mod.

I thought we already saw (in the glass cannon podcast, I think), that finesse attacks are automatically dex-to-damage.


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Arachnofiend wrote:
Logan Bonner wrote:
Tholomyes wrote:
Interesting, though I wonder whether Str based Monks aren't just going to be subpar. True, they seem to do a little more damage than Dex monks, if Crane Wing and Dragon Tail are to be considered as representative, but a Dex monk might not need to care about Dex, while a Str based monk still needs Dex a whole lot for AC, not to mention reflex. Maybe it won't be as bad as prior editions, since Wis is somewhat optional, but still, I'm unsure.
My suspicion is that such a monk will still have Dex second, so 18 Str/16 Dex at 1st level, 19/18 at 5th level, 20/19 at 10th level, and so on, meaning they're behind by 1 or 0 in AC at most levels. A monk like this will probably want Con third for sure. We'll see how it fares in playtest!
...Which means that the monk can't be intelligent, charismatic, or wise if he wants to survive combats. That is really bad.

Hmm, by quick math, a sample human monk like that might look like: 18/16/12/10/12/10

Spreading out a bit more (16/14/14/10/14/10) might be better, and non-humans with a penalty to Int or Cha would also fare a little better.

Not sure how to feel about this.


Tholomyes wrote:
Tarik Blackhands wrote:
Secret Wizard wrote:

I really, really like this implementation. I have some questions though:

1. Is there any incentive to focus on STR? I imagine styles without Finesse-type attacks are one of them, but not having armor early on pushes the class towards DEX pretty hard.

I'd figure strength is so their punches don't hit like a pile of wet noodles. Dex can be your primary attribute all you want, it doesn't change the damage formula of being base+str mod.
I thought we already saw (in the glass cannon podcast, I think), that agile attacks are automatically dex-to-damage.

Agile lets you take less penalty on iteratives, while finesse attacks are dex-to-hit. We haven't seen any dex-to-damage yet, but Rogue might have one in their class feats somewhere.

Paizo Employee Designer

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Fuzzypaws wrote:
On the other hand, it sounds like you made Ki Strike the sole point of entry into the Ki power tree, just like Point Blank Shot in PF1 was the feat tax to be able to do anything else whatsoever as an archer. Not sure how I feel about that. It'd be better if there was at least two points of entry. I know there will be more options later down the line, but even the CRB shouldn't constrict things this much. All the other ki feats should have "Possesses ki" as their printed prerequisite rather than specifically "Ki Strike" to make this more future compatible.

Hoping to add more access paths in the full Core Rulebook.


Tarik Blackhands wrote:
Secret Wizard wrote:

I really, really like this implementation. I have some questions though:

1. Is there any incentive to focus on STR? I imagine styles without Finesse-type attacks are one of them, but not having armor early on pushes the class towards DEX pretty hard.

I'd figure strength is so their punches don't hit like a pile of wet noodles. Dex can be your primary attribute all you want, it doesn't change the damage formula of being base+str mod.

I'd like to believe that but the whole DEX-to-damage thing hasn't been clarified yet.


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Logan Bonner wrote:
Fuzzypaws wrote:
On the other hand, it sounds like you made Ki Strike the sole point of entry into the Ki power tree, just like Point Blank Shot in PF1 was the feat tax to be able to do anything else whatsoever as an archer. Not sure how I feel about that. It'd be better if there was at least two points of entry. I know there will be more options later down the line, but even the CRB shouldn't constrict things this much. All the other ki feats should have "Possesses ki" as their printed prerequisite rather than specifically "Ki Strike" to make this more future compatible.
Hoping to add more access paths in the full Core Rulebook.

Great to hear!


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How much of a problem is having a 16 in your main stat in PF2? I know that +1 matters a lot, but I always have trouble with monk stats.

Like I'm thinking of playing a Dwarf Monk with 16 in Dex, Con, and Wis, 12 Str, and 8 Cha. Bad idea?

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