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So a while back I had an idea on how to make the monk just a little bit more effective in combat (from a damage standpoint at least. I personally think monks are awesome, but it is hard to get a good damage rating sometimes).
The basic idea is this: Keep Flurry of Blows as is, but roll it together into one ability called Fist of Legend (or something else cheesy and awesome) which, in addition to the standard Flurry, allows for the use of the Vital Strike feat chain.
So, at level 6, the monk "gains" vital strike. When using this attack, just like with flurry, his BaB equals hit level (not 2/3 as normal).
At levels 11 and 16, he automatically gains Improved Vital Strike and Greater Vital Strike in the same manner.
While I haven't had the chance to playtest this, I think it could help to alleviate some of the damage issues monks seem to have.
Comments? Questions? Hurtful statements? What do you guys think?
Seems like a very specific fix oriented towards a specific type of play.
Ok. I'm just spit-balling how to make combat more viable from a ground-up, basics point of view. My group has only had one monk player so far, and he went with the Martial Artist archetype, so Ki wasn't something I considered, and honestly, is a whole other beast beyond the scope of this idea.
One complaint I keep hearing about is how the flurry is awesome, but if the monk does use his awesome speed to keep mobile, he misses out on dealing a lot of damage. I was just thinking of how to fix that (I also tend to run low-magic games, so the cost issue of things like amulet of mighty fists and such wasn't part of this thought process).
Simple fixing the "move and then attack" option to keep monks up in damage until they flurry (or if they flurry- leaping about the battlefield Death Punching enemies sounds kinda cool to me).
Monk uses wisdom for hit and damage.
amulet of unarmed strikes. (same cost progression as a normal weapon)
Old FoB
1 ki point to take a move action and full attack
Kinda rez-ing my own thread here, but I'm still looking for feedback on the actual implications of this ability. Any thoughts?
I think at this point you might want to consider making the monk a full bab class and adding vital strike to its bonus feat list. It would be silly if the monk had full BAB for full attacks and for 'legendary fist' (read standard action) attacks, but somehow for other i guess non-attacking situations.
Overall, I think monks are fine. There are some minor issues (in my opinion) and this is what we did to fix those:
We replaced slow fall with catfall and edited this entry in the ki expenditures section:
Removed: "Make one additional attack at his highest attack bonus when making a flurry of blows attack, or"
Replaced: "Grant his unarmed strike a +1 enhancement bonus on attack and damage rolls, increasing by +1 per four levels after 4th to a maximum bonus of +5 at 20th level, until the end of his next turn, or"
Doesn't step on the toes of the Sohei as they still can use it with weapons, where as the standard monk can't & slowfall is something we haven't liked... well, ever. Seems to have resolved most of the issues we were having with monks.
So a while back I had an idea on how to make the monk just a little bit more effective in combat (from a damage standpoint at least. I personally think monks are awesome, but it is hard to get a good damage rating sometimes).
The basic idea is this: Keep Flurry of Blows as is, but roll it together into one ability called Fist of Legend (or something else cheesy and awesome) which, in addition to the standard Flurry, allows for the use of the Vital Strike feat chain.
So, at level 6, the monk "gains" vital strike. When using this attack, just like with flurry, his BaB equals hit level (not 2/3 as normal).
At levels 11 and 16, he automatically gains Improved Vital Strike and Greater Vital Strike in the same manner.While I haven't had the chance to playtest this, I think it could help to alleviate some of the damage issues monks seem to have.
Comments? Questions? Hurtful statements? What do you guys think?
First off, what are the monk's problems? Until you answer this, no 'fix' is meaningful.
Second off, looking at your 'fix' you are basically making the monk more effective at move-and-strike, which I would agree is an issue but not the most pressing one. That's all this fixes, and IMHO the monk has a lot more issues than just this.