Venture-Lieutenant, Florida—Melbourne
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The monks abilities are too weak or incredibly situational to really quantify.
Well I certainly agree they are very hard to quantify. This difficulty in quantifying is exactly why there is a debate. It is also why number crunching comparisons will always fail. This means I can only rely on my own experience regarding this. My experience with playing 40 years of D&D is that versatility is more powerful in the game (power being defined in your ability to succeed in a scenario/campaign) than specialization. Going all the way back to first edition monks (I don't recall if I tried one when they first came out in, I believe, the Blackmoor supplement) I have found them to be far more versatile than any fighter or barbarian I have played or played with. I suppose you could build a fighter or barbarian that rivaled a monk for versatility but most people don't. My guess is that it is because fighters and barbarians lend themselves toward specialization while monks lend themselves better to versatility. Regardless, I have not found monks to be nearly as weak as a lot of people, especially the number crunchers, would have me believe.
The problem is at least part of the debate is based around "Monks already get a lot of other stuff, so they shouldn't also get Pummeling Charge" to which I disagree with.We should probably keep this discussion limited to the merits of Pummeling Charge, and not turn it into a "X is better than Y" debate.
I just feel we're getting off topic.
Well, let's boil this back down to its base arguments.
a) Giving a monk the DPR potential of the other martial classes while allowing them to retain everything else a monk can do is broken.
b) Pummeling Charge gives monk the DPR potential of the other martial classes.
Given those two arguments then Pummeling Charge is broken if, and only if, both A & B are true. If either or both are false, then Pummeling Charge is not broken. My personal opinion is that A is true but B is not. Obviously not everyone agrees with that.
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Well I certainly agree they are very hard to quantify. This difficulty in quantifying is exactly why there is a debate. It is also why number crunching comparisons will always fail. This means I can only rely on my own experience regarding this. My experience with playing 40 years of D&D is that versatility is more powerful in the game (power being defined in your ability to succeed in a scenario/campaign) than specialization.
always?
While yes, versatility has a power all its own and I love versatile characters to the point that I have my own druids union, there are limits. A fighter 1 rogue 1 sorcerer 1 wizard 1 cleric 1 certainly has a lot of versatility it does not neccesarily make for a more powerful character.
Regardless, I have not found monks to be nearly as weak as a lot of people, especially the number crunchers, would have me believe.
Let me ask again, HOW? Where is this alleged versatility? What are they good at? They're supposed to be good at fighting while mobile. This feat lets them actually do that, something no monk i've ever seen has managed and no one has been able to describe to me how to do.
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Well, let's boil this back down to its base arguments.
a) Giving a monk the DPR potential of the other martial classes while allowing them to retain everything else a monk can do is broken.
b) Pummeling Charge gives monk the DPR potential of the other martial classes.
Given those two arguments then Pummeling Charge is broken if, and only if, both A & B are true. If either or both are false, then Pummeling Charge is not broken. My personal opinion...
I'm late to the argument, but option a is not broken.
A Barbarian can spell sunder permanent magical effects outside of combat and pounce.
A Bloodrager, Ranger, or Paladin can cast several spells, and have tricks out of combat that far outweigh a Monks ki based abilities.
A monk being able to match the dpr potential of a martial class while allowing them to do the other things they do if just fine. It's not like anything they get will compare with Smite, Instant Enemy, or longarm.
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I do not consider Ki abilities negligible.
Most of the Barbarian class abilities revolve around doing better in combat in some fashion.
Most of the Monk abilities can help in combat, but can also be used to overcome other obstacles better than most other classes.
The monk has the tools to overcome obstacles - for himself, and only especially so when he's high enough level to disqualify himself from PFS play. He is also good at keeping himself alive, but that doesn't help anybody else. If he isn't a damage threat, he's completely ignorable in combat. Out of combat, I guess he'd be good at staying alive through the deadliest encounter in
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Monks are better in homebrews. Period. You can make much better use of their mechanical tools in a free form game. Need to know where the slavers are based? Have the monk pretend to be rabble and get grabbed by the slavers with some kind of homing magic on him/her. Monks can escape bonds and beat up bozos with their bare hands. This kind of stuff almost never comes up in PFS. The railroad tracks drive standard monks right into the ditch. That's my 2 cents.
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My monk in a single full attack killed the king and queen of the storval stairs (at high tier), thanks to our wizard dimension dooring me into full attack range and our bard providing bard song and heroism.
That the wizard felt that overcomming your inability to move and damage at the same time was important enough to
-Burn his action
-Burn a 4th level spell
- and most importantly, put him in range of some pretty dangerous melee
I think gives a pretty convincing demonstration of how ineffective monks are without it. You shouldn't need to use another character as a taxi to get your mobile fightin on.
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Being able to jump without having to move 10' first is pretty cool and very useful outside if combat.If a 2 PP potion of fly was not a thing, I might have greater empathy for that viewpoint. Respectfully though, across 86 something odd levels of PFS game play, I can count on one hand the number of times I thought "high jump would actually be decent here". Many of those were chase scenes.
Potions are an incredibly poor choice for PP expenditure, so that is not a feasible option. Besides, why expend a consumable when my Monk will automatically make the jump. Maybe carrying small characters or a rope across the chasm. No room to run up for the jump? No problem, I got this. Bit further than a standard jump? No problem, I'll spend a Ki and get +20. Not to mention my enhanced monk speed makes my jumps easier.
Just because you haven't found jumping useful, doesn't mean it isn't. I was asked what Monk abilities I have found useful out of combat. I named one.
Telling me I'm wrong is essentially calling me that my experiences don't matter.
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I completely disagree. Cash is the most valuable commodity in PFS, not PP. Saving up for 10K+ items is much more difficult if you are constantly buying expensive consumables with PP. A one shot consumable that might save the party a death or multiple deaths is well worth it.
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Potions are an incredibly poor choice for PP expenditure, so that is not a feasible option. Besides, why expend a consumable when my Monk will automatically make the jump. Maybe carrying small characters or a rope across the chasm. No room to run up for the jump? No problem, I got this. Bit further than a standard jump? No problem, I'll spend a Ki and get +20. Not to mention my enhanced monk speed makes my jumps easier.
Just because you haven't found jumping useful, doesn't mean it isn't. I was asked what Monk abilities I have found useful out of combat. I named one.
Telling me I'm wrong is essentially calling me that my experiences don't matter.
It wasn't a personal attack. There is nothing wrong with your opinion, we just disagree.
I personally spend 2/3 to 3/4 of my PC's PP on consumables, and have no regrets. The rest tends to go to vanities.
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I am not convinced monks need help in the damage department, I played a monk in PFS (and beyond in a few different AP parts), and I have had no troubles contributing and in most cases being the primary damage dealer in parties.
My monk in a single full attack killed the king and queen of the storval stairs (at high tier), thanks to our wizard dimension dooring me into full attack range and our bard providing bard song and heroism. I do not see how people can complain about being able to do 3d6+30 on each of 7 attacks (4 primary 2 secondary 1 tertiary).
Since hitting level 12 my damage has scaled even higher.
Pounce as a whole is not required and its presence tends to encourage more of a "rocket tag" mentality to combat which means combats are shorter but far more brutal for both sides, which caused several issues recently with certain combats that I have run, due to the fact the offensive potential of the party far outstripped their defences.
Just wanted to bold those two statements.
I see Dimension Door, in this example, as being comparable to Pummeling Charge.
Carry on.
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Let's assume (perhaps wrongly) that everyone would be okay with Pummeling Charge if early entry via MoMS were not an option: how do we best go about resolving that issue?
Option 1) Ban the MoMS archetype for all characters
Pro: Prevents any future issues with future style feats
Con: Disrupts, and possibly breaks, existing characters as old as three years
Option 2) Ban the MoMS for new characters, grandfathering any existing characters
Pro: As above, while preserving existing characters
Con: The community has not proven itself capable of handling grandfathering options in a mature and reasonable fashion (see Aasimar/Tiefling)
Option 3) Alter the mechanics of the MoMS archetype for organized play
Pro: Keeps options rather than removing them
Con: Falls outside of standard operating practice for organized play
Option 4) Petition the PDT to revisit the archetype for a possible FAQ/Errata
Pro: Solves the issue from the source, avoids alterations to PFRPG source
Con: See Crane Wing
Option 4 may already be happening behind the scenes, though past history has shown a general disinterest in revisiting archetypes with questionable mechanics other than to close loopholes (see Titan Mauler, Pistoleer).
If a change were made, either for OP or to PFRPG, what would be a reasonable change that preserves the concept of the archetype while limiting its effectiveness as a dip?
Here's one hastily assembled, clumsily worded proposal:
Rather than ignoring all prerequisites, the MoMS can ignore all prerequisites except for BAB or level, for which the character counts as four* levels higher.
So the archetype gets early entry to Feats, but the higher level (and more potentially abusive) feats require on a non-dippable number of levels in MoMS monk.
*adjust as necessary
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Prestige has less purchasing power that gold. ANYTHING I can purchase with prestige instead of gold I will do so gladly. I will also convert prestige to gold when possible even if the exchange ration is not good because gold has more purchasing power.
I have a treasure map boon and I am going to start using it at level 4. I also have another boon to boos the gold to 200*level.
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I don't feel either needs to be banned while druid wild shape, the pounce evolve, or greater beast totem are legal.
Also Rapid shot and manyshot...
Let me clarify: if we want to avoid MoMS blocking the legalization of any additional style feats due to balance concerns, what is the best course of action?
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Or 2nd with MoMS.Which, getting back to what was said earlier in the thread, seems to indicate that the MoMS is the problem.
'I don't see the problem. So one funny build lets you pounce at 3rd level. A third level monk, who's poured just about every resource into that combo, isn't going to solo a multiboss fight. All this does is make the monk a better pouncer than the druid and druids pet. Its no more game breaking than archery.
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'I don't see the problem. So one funny build lets you pounce at 3rd level. A third level monk, who's poured just about every resource into that combo, isn't going to solo a multiboss fight. All this does is make the monk a better pouncer than the druid and druids pet. Its no more game breaking than archery.Or 2nd with MoMS.Which, getting back to what was said earlier in the thread, seems to indicate that the MoMS is the problem.
Early Access vis MoMS was also the driving force behind the Crane Wing nerf.
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Edit: Just to be clear, I do not care what PFS does or does not ban. I do care about a part of the game I like being nerfed because PFS could not handle it. If banning MoMS from PFS reduces the chance of other feats being nerfed then ban MoMS from PFS.
You seem pretty convinced that the PFS community was at fault for getting Crane Wing nerfed. One of the problems with Crane Wing was that MoMS made it a little too accessible to martial PCs.
What would you say if I countered that the design team bears a good amount of responsibility for releasing an archetype that enabled power creep that PFS "run as written" could not manage? Perhaps the consequences of allowing entry into a feat that was clearly designed for a higher level PC with a 2 level dip were not fully investigated and tested.
Pretty much all PFS did to "instigate" the nerf was include these features as valid build options, which is what PFS is designed to do by virtue of providing incentive to buy PF books.
The crane wing nerf was bad in a lot of ways, nominally that it didn't solve the root cause of early access to high level style feats. Yes, a nerf was warranted because deflecting natural 20's on PCs that can't get hit by anything but a natural 20 is a problem. But it was overboard and a poorly designed errata. Regardless, it's not the fault of PFS for exposing that combo to a wide audience.
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Crane wing would have required scenarios to be written around single attacking monsters in order to be able to hit a monk at all. I don't see that problem with monkpounce 3 levels before the druid that can be blocked with minions, difficult terrain, minions, stairs, baricades, minions, hostages, and minions on stairs. Winding up in charge range of melee is never a good idea: bad guys doing that should already be prepared for rage axe chomp or lancecharge or charging raptors ...
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Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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Crane wing would have required scenarios to be written around single attacking monsters in order to be able to hit a monk at all. I don't see that problem with monkpounce 3 levels before the druid that can be blocked with minions, difficult terrain, minions, stairs, baricades, minions, hostages, and minions on stairs. Winding up in charge range of melee is never a good idea: bad guys doing that should already be prepared for rage axe chomp or lancecharge or charging raptors ...
These are good points.
I think the early entry is pretty cheesy and should be discouraged. But in this case I don't think it's actually harmful, just cheesy.
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This boils down to "archers are allowed to have nice things that melee is not allowed to have," essentially. Why does one character, who does his damage at range (and out of harm's way), ignoring all forms of cover and concealment, have the power to full attack every single round, when melee characters, who must invest in tankiness and toughness, mobility and survivability, and must be in harm's way, only able to attack creatures right next to them (which is where most of those creatures' damage comes from too), cannot get their full attacks reliably?
I don't know why Paizo wants Archers to utterly dominate the martial category, but they do, and probably always will.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Florida—Melbourne
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This boils down to "archers are allowed to have nice things that melee is not allowed to have," essentially. Why does one character, who does his damage at range (and out of harm's way), ignoring all forms of cover and concealment, have the power to full attack every single round, when melee characters, who must invest in tankiness and toughness, mobility and survivability, and must be in harm's way, only able to attack creatures right next to them (which is where most of those creatures' damage comes from too), cannot get their full attacks reliably?
I don't know why Paizo wants Archers to utterly dominate the martial category, but they do, and probably always will.
Not that I completely disagree with you, but where are you getting "ignoring all forms of cover and concealment?" Even Improved Precise Shot doesn't ignore Total Cover and Total Concealment.