I think a lot of people put a very high value on Will and Fortitude saves, the latter especially for classes that can expect to spend a lot of time in melee. Disease, poison etc all tend to pop up a lot more frequently for the characters who spend a lot of time standing next to the poisoned or diseased thing, and so those tend to need fortitude saves more than the guy standing in the back with a bow. I suspect this is at least partially why the swashbuckler saves were controversial.
I think will saves are so highly valued partially because they are important, but also because failing a will save tends to blow exponentially more than failing a reflex or even a fortitude save. You might be diseased and poisoned from failing fortitude saves and scorched from rolling a 2 on the fireball, but unless you're dead or unconscious you still get to sit at the table and act on your turn. Conversely if a Fear effect nails you and your character spends the next minute hustling away from the fight, that encounter is basically over for you - time to spend 30 minutes browsing reddit on your phone while everyone else have fun.
Speaking from experience on the last bit, ran into a Glabrezu and got hit by a Symbol of Stunning for 7 rounds. I had 97 HP. :(
Completely unrelated, but for the theoretical Pathfinder: Unshackled I'd love to see "Save or Condition" spells get tweaked to follow the Hold Person model. Offering a save each round would make Save-orSuck spells a lot less annoying.
It's a power word stun on that demon, so no save. I know because I was in the same situation (also a glabrezu), and it was pretty much the only time my PFS monk was ever disabled. Someone at the table was like "Whooooah, I've never seen Fasch get disabled!"
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I'm curious in general, going forward. How would you guys compare the Unchained rogue vs. the hypothetical regular CRB rogue that had a strong Will save progression? It's starting to sound like people here have a very high opinion of saves and would prefer the latter. Whereas, as someone who has played a good number of monks, I can't wait to use the Unchained monk, and as someone who has done a lot of thinking about the rogue, I would much prefer the Unchained rogue to the hypothetical Will save rogue I just mentioned.
One thing about all these Unchained classes is that actual play is going to reveal more than a read-through will. I'm looking forward to seeing how these classes turn out in everyone's games!
I think the new rogue got enough upgrades to replace a strong will save.
I don't have the book so I am going off of hearsay. Talents are improved. It can sneak attack even with concealment being involved. It can provide status affects. It gets something close to 3.5's skill tricks, and probably some other things I have not heard of. Will saves also don't seem like something that should be ingrained into the class, which is another problem with taking it away from the monk.The trade is not a bad one. I think the monk would have had less complaints had the improvements been better in other areas.
Short version: The rogue got direct upgrades. The monk got some tradeoffs that left it close to where it was before. <----I was assuming you were trying to find out why the rogue was getting less complaints.
I've bolded the parts to which I'd like to respond in particular. As someone who doesn't have the book and is depending on that hearsay, I think that perhaps that's actually not what has happened. You're at a time when someone in that position can't get accurate data about the improvements in other areas because of the over-prominence of the discussion on the saves that drowns it out. For the rogue, since there wasn't something like that, there's more discussion of the improvements. If the rogue had gotten even more boosts and, say, dropped to 6+Int skill points, it's possible that a similar thing might have happened over there.
It's a power word stun on that demon, so no save. I know because I was in the same situation (also a glabrezu), and it was pretty much the only time my PFS monk was ever disabled. Someone at the table was like "Whooooah, I've never seen Fasch get disabled!"
Yeah, I phrased that poorly. I meant the glabrezu story as an example that "being out of combat for lots of time because of condition X sucks". Should probably have moved it down till after my sidetrack on SoS spells. You are absolutely correct that the spell used was Power word Stun, and that it has no save!
I have a bad habit of posting things, then spending the next five minutes editing the post to fix the phrasing and finish my train of thought. :-/
I'm curious in general, going forward. How would you guys compare the Unchained rogue vs. the hypothetical regular CRB rogue that had a strong Will save progression? It's starting to sound like people here have a very high opinion of saves and would prefer the latter. Whereas, as someone who has played a good number of monks, I can't wait to use the Unchained monk, and as someone who has done a lot of thinking about the rogue, I would much prefer the Unchained rogue to the hypothetical Will save rogue I just mentioned.
One thing about all these Unchained classes is that actual play is going to reveal more than a read-through will. I'm looking forward to seeing how these classes turn out in everyone's games!
The CRB rogue did not have a strong will save progression. If it did and then lost it, the unchained rogue would still be better because the old rogue was laughably awful at everything. Full will save progression on a rogue would still lead to 12 +5 + no wis, which is still only a +17. With a plus 6 wis item, a rogue with "good" will save progression could manage a +20 by 20 without investment, which is still a bad save, just acceptably bad.
Old monks were actually good at will saves and have now been moved to needing investment to be reasonably bad at will saves. That is a very different trade.
I have a bad habit of posting things, then spending the next five minutes editing the post to fix the phrasing and finish my train of thought. :-/
Heh! I do this too. The preview function is a wonderful thing but I rarely use it. Instead of reread my post after it's been posted and hit the edit button 3-5 seperate times.
I'm curious in general, going forward. How would you guys compare the Unchained rogue vs. the hypothetical regular CRB rogue that had a strong Will save progression? It's starting to sound like people here have a very high opinion of saves and would prefer the latter. Whereas, as someone who has played a good number of monks, I can't wait to use the Unchained monk, and as someone who has done a lot of thinking about the rogue, I would much prefer the Unchained rogue to the hypothetical Will save rogue I just mentioned.
The Unchained Monk and Rogue both make the classes more fun to play by giving them more varied actions and cool shticks that are only theirs, both in terms of flavor and mechanics. Better saves don't increase fun from flavor or mechanics, but they're necessary to play at all. As character level or optimization level increases, saves quickly become the most important numbers on your character sheet, as they'll be what makes or breaks you in most combat situations.
Ideally, classes would have good enough saves to provide a reasonable chance of being allowed to continue playing while offering fun, flavorful actions to perform. The problem with the Rogue and Monk is that they're competing with classes like the Barbarian that has fun, flavorful abilities as well as abilities that nearly guarantee continued play.
If the rogue had gotten even more boosts and, say, dropped to 6+Int skill points, it's possible that a similar thing might have happened over there
Well no, those last two skill points are pretty worthless. It would not be hard to convince someone the rogue became a better skill monkey with more features.
A tougher sale would be reducing the skill points and increasing offense or defense instead. THAT would have people annoyed because you would have removed a mechanic that lended itself to the key thematic of the rogue but then added nothing to that mechanic in return.
I'm curious in general, going forward. How would you guys compare the Unchained rogue vs. the hypothetical regular CRB rogue that had a strong Will save progression? It's starting to sound like people here have a very high opinion of saves and would prefer the latter. Whereas, as someone who has played a good number of monks, I can't wait to use the Unchained monk, and as someone who has done a lot of thinking about the rogue, I would much prefer the Unchained rogue to the hypothetical Will save rogue I just mentioned.
One thing about all these Unchained classes is that actual play is going to reveal more than a read-through will. I'm looking forward to seeing how these classes turn out in everyone's games!
Well... Core Rogue with good Will save would still be garbage... Just not as... uh... garbagey the current version.
The problem with removing the good Will save from Monks is that not o ly it goes against the class' flavor, but it's also a completely unnecessary nerf. The Monk has been given new strengths and weaknesses, so it ended up better than the Core Monk... But not by much. It's still MAD as hell, still pays twice as much gold (and one item slot) for their enhancements, still has really bad AC at low levels, still has a very limited Ki supply... And now it has the added problems of having a weak Will save, greater expensiture of Ki and access to an "ability" that works against them that and is basiclally nothing more than a way for GM to screw players while being all but completely useless to PCs. (Formless Master - One of the worst designed abilities in PF).
It's like Paizo has no idea what were the problems with the Monk classor what to do about them, so they decided to throw a bunch o shit on the wall to see what sticks.
no more immunities either.Unchained monk is still immune to disease, just like before.
Indeed. The only immunity it lost was poison, for a flexible ki power. And as I mentioned upthread (and posters generally agreed), back with the regular monk, people usually traded diamond body for a qinggong power anyway.
Also, nitpick:a focused enchanter would be arcane kitsune for +7 to DC over your build when using metamagic'd spells (which an enchanter should be using, because quicken and persistent are amazing, and high level enchantment spells mostly suck).
I didn't use Kitsune as I expect they aren't always allowed at all tables, but it's very rare when I've heard of a group where Humans weren't allowed. I'm curious about the +7 to DC over using a 9th level slot. I found 1 from Kitsune, 5 from Favored Class Bonus, and a +1 if you use a metamagic other than Heighten. If you're using a 9th lvl slot to cast a metamagic enhanced Dominate Person you have 10 + 5 (spell level) + 1 arcane bloodline arcana + 2 Spellfocus/Greaterfocus + 5 Favored Class + 1 Racial + 13 (using my cha mod from earlier) + 2 fey bloodline (let's just be crossblooded while we're at it) = 39. I only got it 3 points higher. If we just heightened it I think it'd come out to 42?
When I was just glancing at level 10 save DCs for some Enchantment effects that may come off monsters the DCs ran the spectrum from 14 to 20. The highest Will dc I saw in my quick glance through was 22 and it was a fear effect not an enchantment effect. I expect the number of times a group of players encounters an optimized opponent isn't that often outside of a homebrew game.
Indeed. The only immunity it lost was poison, for a flexible ki power. And as I mentioned upthread (and posters generally agreed), back with the regular monk, people usually traded diamond body for a qinggong power anyway.no more immunities either.Unchained monk is still immune to disease, just like before.
Did they? Immunity to Poison is really good (immunity to disease is okay, but irrelevant most of the time).
I usually traded away Feather Fall and Spell Resistance, but I always kept immunity to poison. Poison (well, monsters' poison... Not the ones PC get to craft). can be really freaking deadly.
Indeed. The only immunity it lost was poison, for a flexible ki power. And as I mentioned upthread (and posters generally agreed), back with the regular monk, people usually traded diamond body for a qinggong power anyway.no more immunities either.Unchained monk is still immune to disease, just like before.Did they? Immunity to Poison is really good (immunity to disease is okay, but irrelevant most of the time).
I usually traded away Feather Fall and Spell Resistance, but I kalways ept immunity to poison. Poison (well, monsters' poison... Not the ones PC get to craft). can be really freaking deadly.
I dunno. Rynjin said he usually traded it for ki leech. I almost always played an archetype that traded it, so I'm not as familiar with the best qinggong powers at that level. With my strong Fort, I've more-or-less never failed a save against poison anyways.
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I'm curious in general, going forward. How would you guys compare the Unchained rogue vs. the hypothetical regular CRB rogue that had a strong Will save progression? It's starting to sound like people here have a very high opinion of saves and would prefer the latter. Whereas, as someone who has played a good number of monks, I can't wait to use the Unchained monk, and as someone who has done a lot of thinking about the rogue, I would much prefer the Unchained rogue to the hypothetical Will save rogue I just mentioned.
One thing about all these Unchained classes is that actual play is going to reveal more than a read-through will. I'm looking forward to seeing how these classes turn out in everyone's games!
I would still take the Unchained Rogue, because it gets a lot of OTHER improvements.
But yes, I value saves highly. Saves are, in general, the things that will most ruin your fun at a table. Barring a fluke Scythe crit that takes you from full HP to dead in one shot, there is nothing more binary in this game than a failed Will save (except a failed Fort save against some effects).
A failed save immediately f!+#s up your day. There is no period of incrementally moving towards death, with several rolls involved (Attack vs AC, damage vs HP, potential counters to hits, miss chance, etc.) you simply roll a d20, add you save bonus, and hope you can still play the game next round. Having great saves and then rolling a 1 is already frustrating enough. Not having good saves in the FIRST place is even worse.
Good saving throws was the Monk's THING. It was his sole defensive advantage over other classes. He had no weak points in saves to exploit. His AC might be shit (if he wants a good offense), he might not have any non-AC defenses like DR, massive amounts of HP, miss chance, and the ike. But damn it, his saves were rock solid.
That was removed, and nothing (defensively) was given in exchange. In fact, one of his minor defensive options (the Ki Pool ability to add to your AC) was taken away as well.
I've bolded the parts to which I'd like to respond in particular. As someone who doesn't have the book and is depending on that hearsay, I think that perhaps that's actually not what has happened. You're at a time when someone in that position can't get accurate data about the improvements in other areas because of the over-prominence of the discussion on the saves that drowns it out. For the rogue, since there wasn't something like that, there's more discussion of the improvements. If the rogue had gotten even more boosts and, say, dropped to 6+Int skill points, it's possible that a similar thing might have happened over there.
I think the new rogue got enough upgrades to replace a strong will save.
Talents are improved. It can sneak attack even with concealment being involved. It can provide status affects. It gets something close to 3.5's skill tricks, and probably some other things I have not heard of. Will saves also don't seem like something that should be ingrained into the class, which is another problem with taking it away from the monk.I don't have the book so I am going off of hearsay.
The trade is not a bad one. I think the monk would have had less complaints had the improvements been better in other areas.
Short version: The rogue got direct upgrades. The monk got some tradeoffs that left it close to where it was before. <----I was assuming you were trying to find out why the rogue was getting less complaints.
No, it's EXACTLY what's happened. The Unchained Rogue is a direct improvement over the normal Rogue.
It loses none of its class features, proficiencies, saves, skills, or anything else from its basic chassis.
It gains NEW class features.
It gains improved versions of old class features.
Which is how buffing of a weak class SHOULD be done. You make it unilaterally stronger unless what you're adding to it would make it way overpowered. In which case, you're probably better off just dialing it back instead of trimming other bits.
The Unchained Monk, by contrast, loses as well as gains. It loses its Will save. It loses 2/3 of the basic function of its Ki Pool. It loses most of its always on class features.
In exchange it gets a better BaB (good) better HD (meh), Style Strikes (good) and new Ki Powers (half of which were abilities it already got, and most of those are now DOWNGRADED), which are a mixed bag at best. And a few more proficiencies (which it should have had anyway).
That is not how you buff a class. You do not take away its strengths (creating new weaknesses) and add other strengths in turn...that just leaves it at the same spot it was already in, overall.
You guys made a mistake, flat out. You spent too much time worrying about whether the class would make too good of a dip, and then worrying about how exactly to strategically weaken it to best fit an old set of abilities you should not have been CHAINED to (get it?) to begin with to actually make sure the class was balanced and good on its OWN merits, not just in relation to other classes that might want to take levels in it on the side.
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Indeed. The only immunity it lost was poison, for a flexible ki power. And as I mentioned upthread (and posters generally agreed), back with the regular monk, people usually traded diamond body for a qinggong power anyway.no more immunities either.Unchained monk is still immune to disease, just like before.
I'm with Lemmy on this one; unless I have a really really good reason to trade-out diamond body (archetype or a very specific character build) there is no way I'll give up diamond body. Poison immunity is great.
I'm curious in general, going forward. How would you guys compare the Unchained rogue vs. the hypothetical regular CRB rogue that had a strong Will save progression? It's starting to sound like people here have a very high opinion of saves and would prefer the latter. Whereas, as someone who has played a good number of monks, I can't wait to use the Unchained monk, and as someone who has done a lot of thinking about the rogue, I would much prefer the Unchained rogue to the hypothetical Will save rogue I just mentioned.
One thing about all these Unchained classes is that actual play is going to reveal more than a read-through will. I'm looking forward to seeing how these classes turn out in everyone's games!
Even if the CRB Rogue had an ability that made it entirely immune to all save-based effects forever it would still not be viable. The hypothetical "good saves" Rogue would simply be in the same situation as the CRB Monk; really good defenses, but without any sort of threat (threat defined as the ability to buff, debuff, or do direct damage) so enemies are entirely capable of ignoring those defenses.
I think the Rogue needed the threat the Unchained Rogue gets and the defensive strength that having two good saves gives. I haven't seen the Unchained Rogue in full so having abilities that gives it pseudo-good saves (like the Eldritch Guardian's bravery replacement scaling his will save at the same rate as a good will save character) would also be acceptable.
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With a poor will save, the Unchained Monk loses somewhat on one of his classic selling points: making casters shake (a little) in their slippers.
On a related note: keeping diamond soul as a constant effect but allowing spells denoted as "harmless" to bypass the spell resistance would have made everybody forget about the will save issue.
I still wonder... Why did Jason (or whoever designed the class) feel the need to add new weaknesses to a class that needed a revision specifically because it was too weak? Why nerf the will save? Why remove immunity to poison? Why make Monks have to pick abilities and spend their (very limited) Ki to use them when as before those abilities were free and always on? Why not address two of the biggest problems with the class (extreme MADness and expensive enhancement)?
It makes no sense. If the a good class is worth 10 points and the Monk is worth 5, why would you add 4 points and them remove other 3, making the final result barely any better than it was?
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As an aside on enhancement cost, I definitely recommend using Automatic Bonus Progression in general to negate the need for Big 6, and if you do, it essentially gives the monk the cheaper enhancement cost.
As another aside, lot of these previews for Unchained monk have been leaving out the fact that Unchained flurry does not give any attack roll penalty. In terms of damage output, that +2 is worth a considerable amount; it's pretty important, and it's being overlooked.
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@Mark Seifter: there's a different issue that I would like to see corrected that relates to the monk. The Stunning Fist feat benefit states:
"A defender who fails this saving throw is stunned for 1 round (until just before your next turn)."
The part in parenthesis is, to my knowledge, supposed to be a reminder for the normal duration of "1 round". However, I've seen it stated by various people (including James Jacob) that read the parenthesis literally to mean that in a successful Stunning Fist as part of an Attack of Opportunity, the effect still wears off at the start of your next turn - rather than at the start of the creature's turn who's initiative was active at the time.
So... assume for the moment that I'm building a strength based unchained monk that intends to take the pummeling style feat chain and use a bodywrap of mighty strikes.
With flying kick out (since I'll have Pummeling charge eventually), what's the best attack to take? I'll probably want something that has some utility, since I'll have to come out of pummel to use it (unless the special effects are included in the pummel strike?). so I'm thinking foot stomp at the moment.
Are there any other abilities that would go along with this particularly well?
@Mark Seifter: there's a different issue that I would like to see corrected that relates to the monk. The Stunning Fist feat benefit states:
"A defender who fails this saving throw is stunned for 1 round (until just before your next turn)."The part in parenthesis is, to my knowledge, supposed to be a reminder for the normal duration of "1 round". However, I've seen it stated by various people (including James Jacob) that read the parenthesis literally to mean that in a successful Stunning Fist as part of an Attack of Opportunity, the effect still wears off at the start of your next turn - rather than at the start of the creature's turn who's initiative was active at the time.
Huh, you should FAQ that. I'm partial to your interpretation.
...still pays twice as much gold (and one item slot) for their enhancements, still has really bad AC at low levels...With the new FoB mechanic I think my future monks will probably be using a two handed weapon and an amulet of natural armour to help mitigate this. Unarmed attacks will probably only be used for abilities that require them and the occasional aoo.
Well... You could already do that. Flurrying with a Temple Sword was pretty good. Cost of enhancement has always only been a problem to unarmes combat... You know... Monk's most iconic combat style.
I have a bad habit of posting things, then spending the next five minutes editing the post to fix the phrasing and finish my train of thought. :-/Heh! I do this too. The preview function is a wonderful thing but I rarely use it. Instead of reread my post after it's been posted and hit the edit button 3-5 seperate times.
I don't know why, but I find it much easier to reread my post after it's been posted, rather than reading it in the preview window. Which is weird, since they're essentially identical. Oh well.
Well... You could already do that. Flurrying with a Temple Sword was pretty good. Cost of enhancement has always only been a problem to unarmes combat... You know... Monk's most iconic combat style....still pays twice as much gold (and one item slot) for their enhancements, still has really bad AC at low levels...With the new FoB mechanic I think my future monks will probably be using a two handed weapon and an amulet of natural armour to help mitigate this. Unarmed attacks will probably only be used for abilities that require them and the occasional aoo.
True, but unchained flurry would now grant the 1.5 strength modifier when fighting with a two-handed weapon. That and gaining proficiency with all monk weapons means that two-handed weapons is a really good option for a low to mid level unchained monk, you're effectively TWFing (with no penalty) with a single weapon earning THF bonuses on strength and power attack. You could even do a credible reach monk by wielding a double-chained kama or a kusarigama.
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From what I understand the monk now gains 1.5 str bonus when using a two handed weapon to flurry. (I don't have the book yet so feel free to correct me on this.) That combined with the removal of the attack penalty is going to make a high str power attacking monk be more interesting. At least to me.Well... You could already do that. Flurrying with a Temple Sword was pretty good. Cost of enhancement has always only been a problem to unarmes combat... You know... Monk's most iconic combat style....still pays twice as much gold (and one item slot) for their enhancements, still has really bad AC at low levels...With the new FoB mechanic I think my future monks will probably be using a two handed weapon and an amulet of natural armour to help mitigate this. Unarmed attacks will probably only be used for abilities that require them and the occasional aoo.
This is correct, and is the reason why Dabbler's earlier statement about the flurrying monk being out-damaged by the non-smiting paladin was factually incorrect.
I'm curious in general, going forward. How would you guys compare the Unchained rogue vs. the hypothetical regular CRB rogue that had a strong Will save progression? It's starting to sound like people here have a very high opinion of saves and would prefer the latter. Whereas, as someone who has played a good number of monks, I can't wait to use the Unchained monk, and as someone who has done a lot of thinking about the rogue, I would much prefer the Unchained rogue to the hypothetical Will save rogue I just mentioned.
Oddly enough, I think removing the the d10 HD and BAB and putting it back to d8 and 3/4 BAB while retaining the high Will Save would have been thematically preferable.
Basically, like how the Rogue was handled: keep the base Monk design, but add a few things:
1) A clause or special ability whereby the Monk counts its Monk Level as its Base Attack Bonus for the purposes of meeting Prerequisites of Feats, Prestige Classes, and special abilities.
2) A chosen "Way" which determines what special attacks (gained at every even level, starting at lv2) and what Ki Powers you have access to in addition to the generic Ki powers already granted by the class, similar to a Cavalier's Order. Possibly 13 (two for each Stat, based on the Chinese Zodiac, and one like the Ronin - "Way of the Cat" - because there is a legend about the Cat in the Zodiac who lost his place to the Rat due to the Rat's trickery)
3) A Rage/Mutation-like effect that costs 1 Ki that gives the Monk a +4 to one Stat (based on your Way, or +2 to any 2 stats if you have Way of the Cat) for a number of Rounds equal to your Monk level; at higher levels, you could spend more Ki to give yourself further boosts to your Way stat.
4) An ability which slowly improves your Attacks made as part of a Flurry - a +1 at level 5, +2 at lv10 (thus effectively removing the penalties of TWFing), and +3 at lv15, and a +4 at lv20.
5) Ki Powers from your Way that don't actually COST Ki, the same way that several Deeds work so long as you still have Panache or Grit in your Grit/Panache/Luck Pool. Not ALL of them, but a few would be nice.
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This would leave all the Monk Archetypes intact and usable, the same way the Unchained Rogue can still use all the Rogue Archetypes without issue.
This is correct, and is the reason why Dabbler's earlier statement about the flurrying monk being out-damaged by the non-smiting paladin was factually incorrect.From what I understand the monk now gains 1.5 str bonus when using a two handed weapon to flurry. (I don't have the book yet so feel free to correct me on this.) That combined with the removal of the attack penalty is going to make a high str power attacking monk be more interesting. At least to me.Well... You could already do that. Flurrying with a Temple Sword was pretty good. Cost of enhancement has always only been a problem to unarmes combat... You know... Monk's most iconic combat style....still pays twice as much gold (and one item slot) for their enhancements, still has really bad AC at low levels...With the new FoB mechanic I think my future monks will probably be using a two handed weapon and an amulet of natural armour to help mitigate this. Unarmed attacks will probably only be used for abilities that require them and the occasional aoo.
It still kinda leaves unarmed monks out to dry. I mean, my next monk is going to use a nine-section whip regardless (because hell yeah improved proficiencies) but the monk should be pretty good at punching people.
Back in the day I played around with some homebrew where a monk could choose between three paths that helped define "what type" of monk he was: Tiger path (agile monk), Ox path (brawny monk), or Ram path (wise monk). Depending on what path you chose, you got class features that would encourage a certain style of play and approach to combat. For example the brawny monk would base his AC on his wisdom modifier and his constitution modifier rather than dexterity, the agile monk based to hit and damage off of dexterity rather than strength, while the wise monk had a number of unique Ki powers and added his wisdom modifier to combat maneuvers. The brawny monk was very durable and a bit more defensive, the agile monk had strong offense but focused on high risk/high reward gameplay, and the wise monk played more like the sensei archetype - he had more ki powers, stunning fist options etc.
Looking back on it now the balance is shaky at best, but I think the core concept wasn't too far off. If nothing else it helped the monk become a bit more focused and a lot less MAD.
It makes no sense. If the a good class is worth 10 points and the Monk is worth 5, why would you add 4 points and them remove other 3, making the final result barely any better than it was?
Because the whole is different than the sum of its parts, and that's always been one of the big problems with the monk class ever since 3.0, the monk looked good on paper (so many special abilities, such good defenses, etc) but just didn't come together in actual play, and, in particular, a class can have enough overall stuff to be balanced in its amount of abilities, but if too much is defense and it doesn't have something useful to contribute, then the rest doesn't matter.
Let's use the rogue as a case study. Upthread, people have stated that even if the normal rogue got all three strong saves (let's call it the save rogue), the Unchained rogue would still be better because the normal rogue is too wimpy, so surviving doesn't matter if you can't do anything in the first place. In that regard, people said upthread that they would prefer the Unchained rogue (with its only good Ref) to the save rogue. The rogue's issue in a fight was that it combined poor defense with offense that was situational at best.
In that vein, consider also a hypothetical class called "Turtle" that basically had the ability to turn all attacks against it into auto-misses and auto-succeeded at all saves, but literally could do nothing except sit around on its turn. This class is terrible! It's probably the weakest class in the game. If we were trying to fix the turtle class, we would need to add some ability to do something, for sure. Let's give it effective offense commensurate to a combatant PC. But once we make the turtle useful at fighting, we definitely need to weaken those auto-win abilities I mentioned earlier, even though it was the weakest class in the game before we added the offense. Sometimes, something can be a bad sum of its parts while having enough parts, and be made into something really fun by rearranging, rather than adding.
No Lawful Alignment Restriction: It's a stupid restriction in my opinion. I would obviously tweak the abilities based on the characters alignment, as obviously having your fists count as Lawful makes no sense for a Chaotic character.
Don't mean to ambush you or snipe-quote, but Unchained has a separate chapter on how to strip alignment both for classes and for the entire game. Keeping the unchained monk alignment unchanged means that it has a better chance of being allowed into games with the old guard DMs (not GMs mind, DMs) who'd harrumph loudly at chaotic monks, whereas if you find the alignment restriction annoying they offer the tools to remove it painlessly in the same book.
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It still kinda leaves unarmed monks out to dry. I mean, my next monk is going to use a nine-section whip regardless (because hell yeah improved proficiencies) but the monk should be pretty good at punching people.
Last year I played a monk 4/paladin 7 (hit 8th level about halfway through) all the way through Ruby Phoenix Tournament in a PbP on the boards. She could flurry with a glaive, made most saves on a 2+, and pretty much soloed a non-evil dragon (no smite) shortly after leveling up.
My Dragon Fist Style test unchained!monk has more attacks for more damage at better attack bonuses, has way better AC, more maneuverability and every once in awhile can just punch people as a touch attack because he feels like it. Oh, and his saves? -1 Fort, +1 Ref, -2 Will to hers. Not exactly character-breaking.
The sturm und drang about the poor poor monk is rather seriously overblown from where I am sitting.
Mark, there is one thing I wondered about with the unchained monk... Did the playtest team consider changing the movement bonus from enhancement to something less common, or let it work on multiple modes of movement rather than just land speed?
Looking back on it now the balance is shaky at best, but I think the core concept wasn't too far off. If nothing else it helped the monk become a bit more focused and a lot less MAD.I like the idea of the Ox path granting natural armor equal to Con bonus. I may steal some ideas from your writeup.
Happy to hear it might benefit someone! Enjoy! :)
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I don't have an issue with low Will save as a balancing factor.
The opposition to this class tweak seems a bit unreasonable from a balancing point of view, and perhaps in part symptomatic of the disappearance of the good old cleric at the table. At all tables i play that have a cleric and/or a bard taking care of the party's welfare we don't run into such a fear of will saves.
It still kinda leaves unarmed monks out to dry. I mean, my next monk is going to use a nine-section whip regardless (because hell yeah improved proficiencies) but the monk should be pretty good at punching people.Last year I played a monk 4/paladin 7 (hit 8th level about halfway through) all the way through Ruby Phoenix Tournament in a PbP on the boards. She could flurry with a glaive, made most saves on a 2+, and pretty much soloed a non-evil dragon (no smite) shortly after leveling up.
My Dragon Fist Style test unchained!monk has more attacks for more damage at better attack bonuses, has way better AC, more maneuverability and every once in awhile can just punch people as a touch attack because he feels like it. Oh, and his saves? -1 Fort, +1 Ref, -2 Will to hers. Not exactly character-breaking.
The sturm und drang about the poor poor monk is rather seriously overblown from where I am sitting.
I think we'll start seeing more nuance in opinion when people start building and playing monks like your dragon fist test monk. I remember from your description it was a fairly simple build, which is good news—we want it to be super-easy to build an effective monk and not require an experienced player mastering a bunch of synergies (which could sometimes make a fairly powerful monk in the old monk, but made it really non-new player friendly).
It still kinda leaves unarmed monks out to dry. I mean, my next monk is going to use a nine-section whip regardless (because hell yeah improved proficiencies) but the monk should be pretty good at punching people.Last year I played a monk 4/paladin 7 (hit 8th level about halfway through) all the way through Ruby Phoenix Tournament in a PbP on the boards. She could flurry with a glaive, made most saves on a 2+, and pretty much soloed a non-evil dragon (no smite) shortly after leveling up.
My Dragon Fist Style test unchained!monk has more attacks for more damage at better attack bonuses, has way better AC, more maneuverability and every once in awhile can just punch people as a touch attack because he feels like it. Oh, and his saves? -1 Fort, +1 Ref, -2 Will to hers. Not exactly character-breaking.
The sturm und drang about the poor poor monk is rather seriously overblown from where I am sitting.
It's no surprise that an Unchained Monk with unarmed strikes is going to be better than a Monk/Paladin hybrid using Core. It's more useful to compare Unchained Monk with Unarmed Strikes vs. Unchained Monk with, say, the Sansetsukon. With what information I have the Sansetsukon Monk sounds quite a bit better, though the touch attack on unarmed strikes sounds pretty promising.
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I am missing your point. What do you mean?Every class gives +2 when flanking. Basically, you should set up the flank if it is feasible. Whether or not someone is playing a rogue should not be a factor.The fact that four of the six PCs in my CotCT game (all the melee characters) just grabbed Outflank as their level 7 Feat (and were happy to do so) tends to bear this out, yeah.
I was just agreeing that flanking was common, basically. Using the fact that people in my current game universally thought it happened often enough to warrant spending a Feat on making it better as an example.
I'm curious in general, going forward. How would you guys compare the Unchained rogue vs. the hypothetical regular CRB rogue that had a strong Will save progression? It's starting to sound like people here have a very high opinion of saves and would prefer the latter. Whereas, as someone who has played a good number of monks, I can't wait to use the Unchained monk, and as someone who has done a lot of thinking about the rogue, I would much prefer the Unchained rogue to the hypothetical Will save rogue I just mentioned.
I think a lot of people are missing the forest for the trees on this point, and feel it's worth examining:
While few would take the high Will Save Rogue, I would say that evidence (and by that, I mean every internet discussion of various Classes I've seen in the last several years) suggests that the Paizo design team and the player base put very divergent values on good Saves, and on which Saves are more valuable.
The design philosophy, purely looking at things like the comparison of Investigator to Slayer to Swashbuckler to Daring Champion Cavalier, seems to indicate the design team believes that bonuses to AC, offense (especially free Improved Critical), and the like can make up for a large disparity in Saves, and that all categories of Saves are equally valuable. On a slightly off-topic note, they also seem to believe that having abilities 'always on' is very valuable, and seem to consider spell casting an important bonus, but not as much of one as might be expected (on 4 or even some 6 level casters, anyway).
The player base does not feel similarly. They feel that a bad Save is something that it's nearly impossible to make up via Items or Feats (a +6 is a big difference, after all) while AC, damage, attack bonus, and even improved critical range are all available in various ways with items or Feats. They also feel that certain Saves are more valuable than others (Will>Fortitude>Reflex, generally). And feel that, since nobody is gonna keep going after the healer is out of spells and you can choose to target the tough enemies, 'always on' abilities are only slightly more valuable than those with limited uses in the 3-4 times a day range (except for Save enhancing abilities since you can't target those very well). And they believe spells are one of the most important and powerful thing you can add to a character, even the kind available to 4 or 6 level Casters.
Let's take a different example to define this disparity and ask everyone: If you remove Divine Grace and Charmed Life, which is the stronger Class, the one you'd rather play (speaking mechanically, not thematically), Paladin or Swashbuckler?
I think most people will say Paladin (due to what are perceived as much better Saves even sans Divine Grace, as well as self-healing and spells), and the fact that this is true shows a profound disconnect between what the designer of Swashbuckler and the player base consider valuable (since Charmed Life is way worse than Divine Grace).
Now...that doesn't inherently make the player base right and the design team wrong, but it's good to understand the disparity between their views, since that enables the designers to abide by their own sensibilities while also giving players things that'll make them happy.
To piggy-back on what Rynjin was saying (which is a very good summation of the contrasting handling of the unchained rogue and monk), am I the only one that found the move of ki pool not only downwards in its initial usefulness but also earlier in level progress to be...odd? Moving that class feature down one level in exchange for axing two powers from it seems a bit of a weird choice, especially since one of them was so seldom used anyways (I think I saw you attest to as much earlier, Mark). This is especially the case when you consider that the only default power left to it outside of ki strike was getting another attack on a full-attack, which an improved BAB and FoB makes of secondary importance compared to the other two lost features. If the overall class feature was considered overpowered, why leave THAT of all things intact?
It also occurred to me that the monk ki pool is in a bit of an odd situation with how it's being treated relative to other classes and their features. Most other classes that use a resource pool of some kind, whether it be spells or rounds of special bonuses or an actual "<insert word here> pool" type thing, get it quite early if not immediately. The only classes that have spell-casting which don't get it immediately are the paladin and ranger, the former of which gets the multi-use Lay on Hands feature and the latter getting always-on bonuses with certain creatures and terrain types. Certain classes, like the magus, alchemist, or summoner, get both spells and a pool of another powerful resource immediately at level 1. The monk, meanwhile, still has to wait until level 3 for ki points, hasn't had the resource restriction lifted for ki strikes (I figured that, like sneak attacking in concealment, that would've gone away), the size of the pool remains the same, and the only built-in way to regain said points comes at level 20. It really does make me wonder why the core feature of the mystic brawler class that makes it 'mystical' had to be toned down.
To my mind, the unchained monk should've gone the way of the ninja and made ki pool come in at level 2 (Evasion can take its place at level 3), keep the basic uses, and lost the reliance on that last point of ki for ki strike. Also, either introduce that 'meditate to regen ki points' mechanic by default at some level, if not immediately, or make ki pool equal to monk level + Wisdom, similar to how alchemist's bombs work. With as many uses for Ki as the monk is expected to have, and with those powers being so integral to the feel and function of the class, a larger or more dynamic pool total seems a very fair trade. As a bonus, this overall change could've been used to provide a 10th ki power to the monk at level 2, allowing for extra versatility since few of the powers listed are about directly enhancing what's it's already good at in the unchained version, namely beating the crap out of things with its fists.
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It's no surprise that an Unchained Monk with unarmed strikes is going to be better than a Monk/Paladin hybrid using Core.
My point there is that the monk/paladin was using a weapon, and the unarmed unchained!monk is just punching and doing more damage.
I have a swordmonk rattling around in my head, but I haven't actually sat down to make him or compare him to anyone else yet.
I think we'll start seeing more nuance in opinion when people start building and playing monks like your dragon fist test monk. I remember from your description it was a fairly simple build, which is good news—we want it to be super-easy to build an effective monk and not require an experienced player mastering a bunch of synergies (which could sometimes make a fairly powerful monk in the old monk, but made it really non-new player friendly).
I don't think he's terribly complicated. The only "optimization trick" I'm using is the human dual-talented option (which I have heard described as a trap option recently, but I think it's a really good choice for a MAD class with several bonus feats and 4 skill points/level); otherwise the philosophy is "max Str and Wis as much as possible and about equally while buying up Dragon Style." Pretty straightforward, I think.