| 8 people marked this as a favorite. |
It will probably be a few weeks before we get a monk blog, and they probably won't talk much about unarmed until then. But there are definitely things I want in this arena! I think I'll go over unarmed-in-general first, then the monk specifically.
Unarmed Combat and Maneuvers
- Unarmed and natural "weapons" needs to be a "weapon" group like any other. If your class gives you 3 weapon groups, you should be able to just pick Unarmed as one of them instead of needing a special feat for it.
- Following that line of thought, natural weapons should be freely combinable with unarmed strikes in combos. If you have a feat or Proficiency upgrade that improves your unarmed strikes, that should also apply to your natural weapons.
- Unarmed strikes and natural weapons should be Finesse weapons, whatever that ends up meaning in PF2. They should be as good with Dex as with Str. Like, what the hell, Starfinder?
- Please continue to let us freely mix trained unarmed strikes in with normal weapon attacks. When using TWF, you should be able to mix in unarmed as your primary or offhand weapon.
- Gauntlets and boots and the like should just improve your unarmed damage by a step, instead of replacing it with a separate damage value.
- Magic gloves or armwraps or whatever to improve unarmed shouldn't be grotesquely more expensive than an equivalent +1 sword.
- Magic Weapon and Magic Fang do not need to be separate spells that do exactly the same thing for an artificial distinction of targets. Reduce the bloat. One spell will do, thanks.
- Most maneuvers should be usable with most weapon groups. Only a very few like Grapple should be tied to Unarmed.
- DO NOT REPLACE CMD WITH AC+8 LIKE Starfinder DID.
- Maneuvers should be doable without a ton of feat taxes. Feats to improve and specialize in particular maneuvers and gain additional special effects are great; needing feats to have any chance at all of being remotely competent would be terribly bad.
- Maneuvers should never provoke, except maybe if you are untrained.
- Reduce the huge modifiers that size gives to maneuvers. A +/- 2 modifier per size step is fine, or maybe even +/- 1 depending on how PF2's combat math works; +/- 4 is not.
- Pathfinder is awesome unrealistic fantasy, so let my martial artist do awesome unrealistic things. If a 20 ton hexapodal lizard can fly and breathe fire, my monk should be able to do a flying bicycle kick as a charge, and I should be able to reliably suplex a Ghost Train at Master or Legend Proficiency.
The Monk class and Brawler Fighter
- Using weapon styles as metaphors, I'd be happy if you let the Brawler Fighter be the brutal axe reaver to the Monk's elegant rapier duelist. Both should feel very different while being equally viable. To use a Mortal Kombat example, the former should be Jax while the latter is Liu Kang.
- When you enter Monk, you should pick a discipline or fighting style. This is bolted onto a base Monk chassis that includes a base level of Ki power and so on.
- If you're going to give weapons to the monk, let them actually be GOOD with those weapons and be able to use their unarmed powers with them. To account for multiclass and hopefully a weapon group system, maybe say (or have as a feat) that the monk gets to choose one weapon group in which they are proficient and apply their abilities to it.
- Let improvised weapons actually be viable!
- Even if it's the Brawler Fighter instead of the Monk, let at least some martial artists be decent in armor without losing their class features! If I want to build Vegeta, I should be able to do that.
- Maybe let the Monk pick Proficiency in any two saves of their choice instead of automagically getting all three, to reflect the particulars of how their school or Master taught them and what they consider important.
- IF you really have to break a fighting style into multiple feats instead of just one, PLEASE make every feat in the chain actually GOOD. Don't force us to slog through boring or wonky situational feat taxes to get to the part of the style that actually feels like that style and makes the character better.
- Let ki powers be more customizable, like the Unchained Monk. I want a monk that can reliably produce ki blasts, Kamehameha, Spirit Bomb and Instant Transmission. If someone wants to build a more traditional monk with Empty Body and other weirdness, they should be able to do that too.
- Let the Brawler Fighter be the master of getting lots of fighting styles with just some instinctual Ki dabbling, while the Monk gets lots of Ki stuff with a focus on one fighting style. Each should be able to spend class feats to dive deeper into the side of the pool that belongs to the other.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I'm mostly in agreement (though I care a lot less about 'fighting style').
That said, we do know something about how Combat Maneuvers are gonna work: They apparently run off the Athletics Skill. Which is interesting.
Do we know the DC? I agree that SF-style "AC+8" is totally whack.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I'm mostly in agreement (though I care a lot less about 'fighting style').
That said, we do know something about how Combat Maneuvers are gonna work: They apparently run off the Athletics Skill. Which is interesting.
I'd love to see "Power" maneuvers like Shove separated from "Finesse" maneuvers like Disarm and put under two different skills.
Do we know the DC? I agree that SF-style "AC+8" is totally whack.Not as of yet. We have no info on how Combat Maneuvers actually work beyond being skill checks of the Athletics skill.
I thought I recall it being vaguely opposed skill checks, so AC wouldn't necessarily come into it (at least not for say two humanoids?)
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I actually like a lot of this.
I do like size playing a factor. If we are going to go with opposed athletic checks for maneuvers, than something that is huge should be a lot more difficult to trip/toss/etc for a normal character. I am fine however if specific classes have an easier job of that, or if there are options to allow a character to sidestep some of those issues at later levels
I like it minus dex to damage. I want to keep the monk MAD (I want everybody MAD) Im cool with everyone doing maneuvers but monks are the best at it.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I could get behind most of this! Monks and unarmed combat are my favorite style, and I'm hoping that the streamlining of the various combat and skill rules really play into this. Let our unarmed warriors do awesome things by honing mind, body, and spirit as weapons, and let me play a Monk leaping and dancing gracefully about the battlefield, even as she dispenses wise remarks.
And kicks. Lots of kicks.
Man I haven't even thought about monks since I heard about this. We could get some cool stuff this time around! kind of excited for their preview. I think we'll probably get a caster next however :(
While I'm hopefully sure that the devs will get the combat parts much better, I'm more concerned of them keeping their "ribbon" wuxia abilities, particularly the ones that have to do with their ascension to pseudo-immortality (Purity of Body, Diamond Body, Diamond Soul, Timeless Body, Perfect Self, etc.). They are the ones I strongly believe to be integral for all monks to properly represent wuxia heroes, so must stay at all costs...
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I bet they will be monk feats for higher levels. So maybe someone wants that sort of monk while someone else might want a different kind.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Monks should be able to go completely weapon based, with no required class features for unarmed combat. It's too limiting to have a whole class with lots of potential to represent a large range of character concepts be so narrow in as to just work with a single combat style. I hope we can make a weapon using mystic warrior using the monk class.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Fuzzy Paws, I agree with everything you said.
Something I haven't seen floated around yet, what if the 4th spell list is ki powers?
I'm really excited for what the new action economy might mean for monks. The idea of them getting fighting styles like the style feats from pf1 that can work into a 3 strike combo system.
I'm hoping the monk isn't too close to the Unchained monk. While it worked well it was very limiting in the style of character it could represent. I do want to be able to make a big tough brawler but I would also love to make a ki blasting sage or a wise old maneuver specialist sensei throwing people around the battlefield.
One thing we might see with monks that would be kind of wild but pretty cool is for them to be masters of the new stat upgrade system. They have always been the most MAD class, use that to their advantage and give them more stat boosts than anyone else, representing their pursuit of physical or mental perfection, which is the one constant of every instance of monk character I have seen.
Also don't limit monks to far eastern ideas. One of the coolest versions of a monk in recent memory is the one from Diablo 3 who felt like he was based on Rasputin.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
snip
Yup, all that sounds pretty good to me.
Something I haven't seen floated around yet, what if the 4th spell list is ki powers?
Seems doubtful. The Qinggong Monk has it's place, but I doubt very many players want to play their Monk as a spellcaster.
I'm hoping the monk isn't too close to the Unchained monk. While it worked well it was very limiting in the style of character it could represent. I do want to be able to make a big tough brawler but I would also love to make a ki blasting sage or a wise old maneuver specialist sensei throwing people around the battlefield.
Yeah, I found the unchained monk very underwhelming. They made it simpler, and more competitive with the Fighter for Attack/Damage, but not much else.
One thing we might see with monks that would be kind of wild but pretty cool is for them to be masters of the new stat upgrade system. They have always been the most MAD class, use that to their advantage and give them more stat boosts than anyone else, representing their pursuit of physical or mental perfection, which is the one constant of every instance of monk character I have seen.
Could be interesting.
Also don't limit monks to far eastern ideas. One of the coolest versions of a monk in recent memory is the one from Diablo 3 who felt like he was based on Rasputin.
Well the monk is based off of mostly East Asian inspirations. But yeah, it would be cool if they could allow for some more variation in it.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Ra ra Rasputin
Lover of the Russian queen
There was a cat that really was gone