Raniel Kavilion's page

Nefreet wrote:

A Necromantic version of Rhapsodic College Dropout might have wrote:

I know the topic of animal abuse has been discussed in length on the forums, but I just don't see how a druid (especially one with a good alignment) should be allowed to tame wild animals and drag them with him to the ends of the earth just to watch them suffer and die. At least my minions don't have a soul, don't feel pain, and certainly don't need to be "pushed" against their will.

Actually, that's why Gormheir doesn't name his riding gecko, and uses it like expendable cover. He sees it as expendable as the cow that was his dinner last night. If he didn't he would never take it into combat, because if he cared about it, that would just be cruel.

Hah, I like Gormheir. Of course the first thing that comes to mind is that Living Greyhawk module that had the PCs going to the Beastlands to participate in some kind of pan-Dimensional games. The former animal companions, familiars, and mounts of all the characters (yes ALL of them, from Sir Barksley the First to Barksalot the 558th) confronted the PCs in front of the very powerful, very human-unfriendly greater powers about what murderers and abusers the PCs were for taking the off and getting them killed. It was a load of fun, at least for the one PC who had to that point never gotten an animal companion/familiar/mount killed.

TheSideKick wrote:

ok i dont mean to sound like a dick, or derail this thread, but this mentality annoys me. a magus is a better 3/4th bab class then a monk. as much as i love monks its true. the fact that they can cast spells with more utility then DD, wear armor without ASF, and deal massive ammounts of pain with a higher to hit then a fighter. a cleric, magus, alchemist, and oracle all contribute more to the group then the monk. whats worse is they are all better without archetypes.

I've mentioned it before, but I think that we shouldn't be focusing on comparing the monk to the barbarian, ranger, and fighter.

We'll the big idea here is that the barbarian, fighter, monk, and ranger are both Core and melee. Okay, base the barbar, fighter and ranger are full BAB and the monk is 3/4. The monk should be compared to the other 3/4 BAB classes in Core. Problem is, somebody picks up the CRB and reads how monks get full BAB when the flurry, and most of the weapons a monk can use in a flurry are melee weapons, and flurry is a variation on two-weapon fighting. This hypothetical somebody is going to think, "melee guy! I'm gonna punch something!"

This person then sees how the monk will have a good AC thanks to adding Wisdom and Monk Bonus to AC and CMD. Speaking of Combat Maneuvers, there is the Maneuver Training class feature, so now the monk is as good as any full BAB class there as well. Right? Oh and hey, here is this feat Defensive Maneuver Training, so that little gap is plugged as well. And there's a whole host of magic items (monk's robe, headbands of this, belts of that, bracers of armor, and amulets, oh my!) that will boost AC, Save DC's, Ki pool.

Oh and look, one of their early features requires you to punch someone in the face to work (Stunning Fist). And there are all these bonus feats about Combat Maneuvers. Yep, melee guy.

Now, when you think melee guy, do you think rogue? Bard? Cleric? Or do you think Fighter, Barbarian, and Ranger?

Anburaid wrote:

Ashiel wrote:

Except that they cannot legally make unarmed strikes via haste. Haste does not enhance or improve a weapon or natural attack. They cannot legally as in within the rules make an extra attack via haste with an unarmed strike. With a kama, sure, but then you need to split your GMW between unarmed or kama, and you're stuck dealing 1d6 damage instead of enjoying your class feature.

I see how you can come to that conclusion, but I believe that line in the Unarmed Strikes section of the monk description is referring to spells like greater magic fang being applicable to unarmed strikes. I find it highly unlikely that unarmed strikes were intended to be left out of haste entirely. That is just rather arbitrary. But then debating RAI is always murky.

I'm not really advocating that monks shouldn't be able to. In fact, I think it's kind of sad. But RAW, they can't. Since the one thing we all share online while discussing the classes is the RAW, I tend to stick to it as closely as possible when I'm examining, critiquing, and commenting on the classes.

Incidentally, if you house ruled it to allow monks to get the extra attack via haste, the monk still doesn't catch the ranger in damage per round, but it does at least make it a little less embarrassing.

I realize this is about 2 months old, but I really had to jump in here. Haste affects the person, not the weapon. Haste does not magically make the weapon +1 more AND hit faster. Haste makes the person able to hit faster. It doesn't matter what is in the person's hand when they go to hit. It matters that the person has been affected by a haste effect (spell, boots, speed weapon, etc). This is no different than Bard song. The Bard is not giving a morale boost to the sword when he uses Inspire Courage. The Bard is giving a morale boost to the person and the person can do better at hitting.

Let's go to the PFSRD:
Haste: The transmuted creatures move and act more quickly than normal. This extra speed has several effects.

When making a full attack action, a hasted creature may make one extra attack with one natural or manufactured weapon. The attack is made using the creature's full base attack bonus, plus any modifiers appropriate to the situation. (This effect is not cumulative with similar effects, such as that provided by a speed weapon, nor does it actually grant an extra action, so you can't use it to cast a second spell or otherwise take an extra action in the round.)

A hasted creature gains a +1 bonus on attack rolls and a +1 dodge bonus to AC and Reflex saves. Any condition that makes you lose your Dexterity bonus to Armor Class (if any) also makes you lose dodge bonuses.

Bold added. So that is the creature that is affected, not his weapons. The ranger doesn't get an extra attack because his weapon was affected. The ranger gets the extra attack because the ranger was affected. How is it you change the weapon used (bow, sword, club, unarmed strike) that suddenly haste no longer affects a guy it would otherwise affect? Equally, if unarmed strike for a monk is both natural and manufactured, how is it that haste that affects both natural and manufactured doesn't affect the monk's unarmed strike?

Just sayin'.

I would just do the google doc, if for no other reason than if you make an error you can always change it, or if one of us points out that you should use feat X and not feat Y you can change that also.

Yeah, that was the plan. I was just setting up the doc to get the link on the first page. I'm slow, but I get there eventually!

So without too much more fuss. . .

Monk by the Numbers

*sigh
Yes another post on monks and how much they do or don't suck.

In a previous post, I stated my incredulity at the Monk’s being as weak as many claim. Mostly, I feel this way because I see anecdotal accounts of monk “weakness” that then sets up a situation that plays to a monk’s “weakness” has the monk face it without certain magic items or feats to boost that “weakness” and the poster says “see, weak sauce!” I equated what I was seeing to the argument that wizards shouldn’t do direct damage because it seems a statistical majority of the monsters a boom mage would face have spell resistance, energy resistance AND evasion/improved evasion. Who knew every monster had rogue levels and just the right ER to beat the mage?

As Tels and Dabbler pointed out in that other thread:

I really, really, really don't want to derail this into another 'Monk is weak' thread. Most every Monk thread that gets created, quickly becomes a thread complaining about how bad the Monk is, the Monk needs to be fixed, etc, etc. If you want to talk about the Monk, there are numerous threads out there that do so.

Tels is right, let's take this to the other thread and we'll show you the numbers there.

So, I figured, “let’s do this with maths!” The general idea is to try and see how weak the monk is by the numbers and not vague feelings or anecdotal evidence. I’ll build fighter, ranger and monk builds (others if folks really demand it) to see how well I can map a monk’s shtick to another class and “do it better” with that other class. The hard part will be doing a full on replacement as that requires at least 51% of a quorum to agree what the monk’s “shtick” really is. I posit the monk punches folks in the face with flurry (so full attack and two weapon fight), while have good defenses (monk AC, Wis to AC, Dex to AC, etc).

Seems hit dice are important too. I’ve seen enough tanking clerics that I question the “D10’s rule, D8’s suxors” line of thought. Is +2 hp at first level and +1 hp every level thereafter really that big a deal? And why does the Barbar’s d12 not make the Fighter’s d10’s look equally wimpy? Okay, not a fair question. The reason is Raging. Raging nerfs a Barbar’s AC and so the main defenses a Barbar has are DR/- and HP’s. But my general idea is to compare:

1)Damage output as a monk does damage (to whit flurry of blows and its nearest equivalent two-weapon fighting, cause yes you auto win with two-handed power attacking)
a. Look at the numbers as dice (i.e. monks do xdy+z, twf rangers do adb+c, and twf fighters do edf+g)
b. Look at the damage per round (DPR) to see what the above number mean against the typical AC at the appropriate encounter level

2)Armor Class
a. Monk’s AC with a monk optimized to hit and damage, not turtle, as what is the point of “turtle”-ing if you can’t hit monsters to make your AC useful by forcing monster to pay attention to you with hits and thus waste their swings on your AC
b. TWF-fighter as a sword and board to bring in shield and Shield Focus and Shield Bash/twf feat chains
c. TWF-fighter relying solely on Armor Training to wear full-plate with good dex (though how much Dex is reasonable to take advantage of Armor Training while keeping Str and Con up to do their work?)
d. TWF-ranger in appropriate armor.
e. I'll probably include other non-similar builds (i.e. raging two-handed barbar, two-handed fighter, the tanking paly or cleric) as these are the front line and a monk has to be on the front line to make flurry of blows worthwhile.

3)Hit points, where the questions are:
a. How much Con is just right for each of the above builds?
b. Do Fighters and Rangers take toughness as a matter of course or only as a feat isn’t taken up by a “required” feat for their build?
c. Does the fighter or ranger always use the favored class bonus on hit points? Skill points? Something else from the APG? Does the monk choose hp or something else?
d. With the above ideas, can a monk gain parity? Does parity here require sacrificing some other point of effectiveness (taking Toughness instead of some other feat that is more useful to combat)?

4)Special abilities will come into play based on the idea of four combats a day at 5 rounds per combat. In my experience with Living Greyhawk (WotC’s 3.5 worldwide shared world campaign), Pathfinder Society (Paizo’s 3.P worldwide shared world campaign), Pathfinder’s Adventure Paths and the home games I’ve played in, this is a reasonable assumption. Though truth be told the four combats a day happens more in line with home games or special dungeon crawl type modules in LG or PFS. LG had a 3 to 4 fights per module, with many mods lasting over many days. PFS and AP’s aren’t too different in my experience. I’ve only seen fights lasting 10+ rounds in 4e and that was a function of everybody having more hp’s combined with the players all having healing surges to make combat a slog of attrition no matter how you fight.

5)Magic items and spells will come into play if they are:
a. necessary
b. not universal as the idea is to highlight differences, if everyone gets haste, then it doesn't help differentiate who is better (and yes, I realize DPR takes into account gaining extra attacks and +1 to hit and +1 to dmg)
c. reasonable as it is assumed these guys are in a party with support of wizards, sorcerers, clerics, and/or druids able to provide these buffs.

6)Builds will be straight classes because the idea is to prove a monk is a viable class, not to prove the monk is a viable couple of levels of dip. So straight monk to 20, with stops at 1, 5, 10, and 15 along the way, is the idea here. As such it seems only fair to compare with the same progressions for the other classes. I’ll only consider dips in other classes or pclasses if the argument can be made that no one would ever go straight fighter or straight ranger because that is sub-optimal. Though my understanding is Paizo did their best to make the base classes more than viable at all 20 levels. Not saying Paizo succeeded in all cases, just that they tried.

What do I expect out of this? Numbers that show how the monk stacks up to a near similar fighter or ranger based on damage output (twf dpr) versus defense (AC and HP). I expect to see the monk fall behind, but am not sure how much. Will he be able to stand on the front line? Visit the front line from time to time? Need to leave the battlefield and go drink tea with his master while the “big boys” settle the fight? Meditate on the meaninglessness of it all since this reality is but an illusion and achieve enlightenment and move on to the next higher plane of existence?

edit: the goal here is not some kind of pvp deathmatch where the winner wins the internets. It is to examine whether the monk can do what flurry of blows implies he must do, stand on the front lines and punch things. From here it is a matter of whether the monk is so far behind this ideal as to be pointless, near enough to the ideal it is worth the wizard's time to support the monk with more than party wide buffs, or so uber it should be nerfed into non-existance (not likely, but hey, you never know, I might have mad leet optimization skillz).