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So do Wizards...
But how does one DO anything by having better will saves?
Well, failing a Will save can indeed give you new opportunities, such as "benefiting" from many interesting conditions, being confused or even attacking your fellow PCs.
IMHO, the Monk is what happened when the developers decided to create a class that would get very good saves across the board.
Not only did they give it only good base saves, they made the relevant abilities important to the class by making it a melee combattant with no armor (ie, needs DEX, which will boost Reflex saves, and CON, which will boost Fortitude saves) and giving it much needed additional AC based on WIS (which will boost Will saves).
And what do you do with a melee combattant that will succeed at almost every save ? You sick him on the spellcasters.
And because spellcasters are behind the tanks, you give him boosted mobility to reach them.
Of course, you will have to make him worse than the fighter at dealing damage or no one will play a fighter anymore. And that is how you end up with a 3/4 BAB melee class with suboptimal weapon choices.
How many of those who are strong proponents of the monk roll for stats as opposed to using point buy?
For the monk that I played, I rolled for his stats.
He came out with a 13 Int, allowing him to take Greater Trip, cool stuff.
However I've only ever rolled for stats.
On the flip-side, I'm not 100% sure how prevalent rolling is as compared to point buying or templates.
How many of those who are strong proponents of the monk roll for stats as opposed to using point buy?For the monk that I played, I rolled for his stats.
He came out with a 13 Int, allowing him to take Greater Trip, cool stuff.
However I've only ever rolled for stats.
On the flip-side, I'm not 100% sure how prevalent rolling is as compared to point buying or templates.
Judging from responses to threads on this in the past, I think rollers are in the minority, but it is a pretty bug minority, particularly among the grognards.
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Depends on what you need.
Every character should be built in the context of the party. A monk can fill a number of roles in a given encounter or group, depending on what is needed. That is what I like about the class.
Roles such as?
Take this post, for example, illustrating practical examples of how this tiering system works. Now, since my post was written, the monk has gained the ability to rock someone's face with a full attack (although not really at any other time), so the monk is in more or less the same situation as the fighter.
What role can the monk take in those situations?
The problem with the tier argument is that it ignores synergies.
The classic 4 group is Fighter, Wizard, Cleric, Rogue. This group pretty much covers any situation that could come up and has classes that compliment. Fighter can keep things off the casters so they can blast, while flanking with the rogue and being healed by the cleric. Wizard can focus on casting and knowledge because the rogue is handling the other skills, and the cleric can heal everyone and take a few hit, while again deferring to the skill monkey for those issues and generally hanging back with the Wizard to provide some protection.
Each is less than the sum of the parts.
Now let’s change a bit and make the Fighter a Paladin. Now we don’t need as much healing from the cleric, so maybe we go with a Bard, meaning we don’t really need the rogue skill monkey, but we would still like to have a scout who could also get to the back to protect the caster if something comes up from behind and we have a paladin who can only move 20ft…
You build your character in the context of what your party needs, or if you play from level one they develop synergies over time. You can have a party with a Bard, Inquistitor, Monk and a Magus that would be very potent and not have a single full BAB or full caster class and be very successful, even though none of them fit cleanly into the roles defined at all times.
But then I love speed. In just about every RPG or military game I've ever played, I've always been happy to sacrifice punching power or defense for pure speed. Speed kills. It lets you...
Al davis posts on paizo?!
And what do you do with a melee combattant that will succeed at almost every save ? You sick him on the spellcasters.
And because spellcasters are behind the tanks, you give him boosted mobility to reach them.
Of course, you will have to make him worse than the fighter at dealing damage or no one will play a fighter anymore. And that is how you end up with a 3/4 BAB melee class with suboptimal weapon choices.
But what if I don't wanna play the dedicated anti-caster class? Hell, what if the campaign is more martially orientated and you're not facing wizards, but more tanky dudes.
One of the design flaws of the monk (and this applies to the soon to come gunslinger as well) is that it funnels thought and caracter concepts in a particular direction.
Many folks builds monks and expect Street Fighter, Tekken, Jacki Chan, or Bruce Lee.
Some folks go into it and think of Tyson and Ali, though the above is more common.
But they're all dudes who use their hands to pummel their foes, and some folks wanna be able to take on all comers, Tanks and Wizards a like.
Folks don't really want to dedicate themselves to only anti-casting, especially if they're not seeing too many of them, and if that's not their character concept.
Hell, both the monk and gunslinger even discourage you from doing things like taking other weapons, or even off-beat combat feats.
At least the fighter actually has some flexibility in where they can go depending on concept, whether it's the traditional lucky 7 in each mental stat, or pumping into Charm, or Int, or Wis, or all of them.
I have never seen a monk or fighter with nothing to do outside of combat. My players use their skills and feats that are not combat oriented every session. I don't understand the idea that they are useless out of combat. No class can cover every situation. If the players build their characters in a vaccuum and never consider what's going on with the party, it may look like one class overshadows another but I have noticed that is a party dynamic problem not a character problem. These types of games tend to have GMs that have favorite classes as well and only have situations that favor those classes while disregarding what the party may consist of. That's fine for some games but it isn't for others.So... what are monks contributing out of combat? They don't get any non-defensive, non-hitting-people abilities other than moving really fast, and they don't get any more non-hitting-people feats than anyone else. Hell, they aren't even that great at skill use, since they're a MAD non-int class with 4+int skill points and only get Perception and Stealth as problem-solving skills.
If monks have a ton of ways they can contribute other than punching people or running fast, name some of them.
If you can't figure out how to use your skills and abilities out of combat there's not much I'm going to be able to do to help. The monk can be a great asset out of comabt if you want. With the boost to speed and jumping, traps can be avoided, climbing can be made easier (the monk can set up a balay, which I'm probably spelling wrong), he can be an advance scout and be able to get back to the party with ease, etc.
Many skills are Dexterity and Wisdom based which are two attributes that are key to the monk's success. With dimension door the monk can get to places others may have a more difficult time with. Some feats are tied to the monk's abilities more than other classes.
It's not up to me to show you how a character functions out of combat. That's up to the players and GM to make sure they have something to do.
So do Wizards...
But how does one DO anything by having better will saves?Well, failing a Will save can indeed give you new opportunities, such as "benefiting" from many interesting conditions, being confused or even attacking your fellow PCs.
IMHO, the Monk is what happened when the developers decided to create a class that would get very good saves across the board.
Now we only need to find a way to make the enemy target the Monk and that becomes a relevant combat ability!
Not only did they give it only good base saves, they made the relevant abilities important to the class by making it a melee combattant with no armor (ie, needs DEX, which will boost Reflex saves, and CON, which will boost Fortitude saves) and giving it much needed additional AC based on WIS (which will boost Will saves).
Wow. That's quite the stretch to achieve justification.
And what do you do with a melee combattant that will succeed at almost every save ? You sick him on the spellcasters.
And because spellcasters are behind the tanks, you give him boosted mobility to reach them.
Or you just roll a ranged combatant. Or another spellcaster.
Better yet - you can just roll a Druid and be better than the Monk in every way.
The Monk is a legacy class that no one could be assed to make not suck since it debuted back 30 years ago, and then add in that no one has touched the sacred cow divine casters and you end up with an extra horrible class shown up at its own game by the other melee classes and then shown up by at least 1 SPELLCASTING class with one hand tied behind its back.
I'd like to mention that a monk can be a ranged Combatant by being a Zen Archer.
And a pretty lulzy imitation of a blaster caster (with Higher DCs for several spells)
Al davis posts on paizo?!
But then I love speed. In just about every RPG or military game I've ever played, I've always been happy to sacrifice punching power or defense for pure speed. Speed kills. It lets you...
Take that back! I'm a bleeds black and gold Steelers fan, and having grown up in the Seventies, Al Davis and the Raiders were the incarnation of all that is evil in football. Now, they're just kind of pathetic.
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The classic 4 group is Fighter, Wizard, Cleric, Rogue. This group pretty much covers any situation that could come up and has classes that compliment. Fighter can keep things off the casters so they can blast, while flanking with the rogue and being healed by the cleric. Wizard can focus on casting and knowledge because the rogue is handling the other skills, and the cleric can heal everyone and take a few hit, while again deferring to the skill monkey for those issues and generally hanging back with the Wizard to provide some protection.What can I say, when you describe "being healed" as a useful role?
I asked you what a monk could do in those different challenges. You talked about everything but monks. Sure, the party could be successful, if other characters can solve the posed challenges. It's just that the monk isn't helping.
You can have a party with a Bard, Inquistitor, Monk and a Magus that would be very potent and not have a single full BAB or full caster class and be very successful, even though none of them fit cleanly into the roles defined at all times.Problem is, if you replace the monk with a rogue, bard, cleric, or druid, you have a party better equipped to handle a larger variety of challenges, more effectively, while losing no capability in any challenge that wasn't a footrace.
Especially in that party, you'd have a lot of trouble setting up challenges for the monk that the other characters aren't better at.
Don’t be ridiculous. Soaking damage is a role in combat. Do you keep your arcane casters on the frontline? Of course not, you send someone in to take the hits and keep them off the casters. And the person who soaks generally needs to be healed. That damage is going somewhere.
I’ve posted many, many times what roles monks can fill in a group, but one more time so you don’t have to scroll through the soon to be 1400 posts…
Blocker for arcane casters – Can’t soak as much as a fighter, but can get to spots more quickly and can use this to stay between the brute and the casters. Not to mention being able to burn a ki to boost AC or movement in a pinch.
Flanking buddy for Rogue – Can get to more spots more quickly than other classes that would delve into melee. Particularly if they burn a ki point.
Scout – High saves and movement combined with evasion and wisdom synergy with perception checks and no armor penalties (not to mention looking fairly innocuous relative to other melee classes). Can get away if spotted and back to the party using movement and even heal myself a bit.
Arcane caster killer – Stunning fist is against low save, high saves and at higher levels SR, high movement to get around blockers. And at high levels, you have a save or die in quivering palm that is also effective as an interrogation tool. “Talk or I will activate and you will die”
Battlefield reinforcement/strategy – Able to get to any spot you need someone at in a single round.
Combat Maneuvers – Can do them almost as well as full BAB classes.
Official taster – Immune to poison, why not. And while you are at it, go ahead and poison your weapons. Who cares if you accidently poison yourself, you are immune. Also why carrying potions is helpful, since your ability scores are so valuable to you, things like Owl’s wisdom, Cat’s grace, and Bull’s strength can be major situational boosters when needed.
Float like a butterfly – Use your mobility to plink the enemy to death, particularly useful with spring attack and force them out of what they like to do.
Obviously other archetypes will have other abilities and/or not be able to do the above as well. Just like some variations of other classes will have different emphasis.
The point is that having a monk in your group means you have a class that can fill a number of roles your group may need filled at a given time. Just like other classes can fill other roles.
Now we only need to find a way to make the enemy target the Monk and that becomes a relevant combat ability!The Monk is a legacy class that no one could be assed to make not suck since it debuted back 30 years ago, and then add in that no one has touched the sacred cow divine casters and you end up with an extra horrible class shown up at its own game by the other melee classes and then shown up by at least 1 SPELLCASTING class with one hand tied behind its back.
The monk could Antagonize the enemy with a certain feat.
The classic 4 group is Fighter, Wizard, Cleric, Rogue. This group pretty much covers any situation that could come up and has classes that compliment. Fighter can keep things off the casters so they can blast, while flanking with the rogue and being healed by the cleric. Wizard can focus on casting and knowledge because the rogue is handling the other skills, and the cleric can heal everyone and take a few hit, while again deferring to the skill monkey for those issues and generally hanging back with the Wizard to provide some protection.What can I say, when you describe "being healed" as a useful role?
I asked you what a monk could do in those different challenges. You talked about everything but monks. Sure, the party could be successful, if other characters can solve the posed challenges. It's just that the monk isn't helping.
You can have a party with a Bard, Inquistitor, Monk and a Magus that would be very potent and not have a single full BAB or full caster class and be very successful, even though none of them fit cleanly into the roles defined at all times.Problem is, if you replace the monk with a rogue, bard, cleric, or druid, you have a party better equipped to handle a larger variety of challenges, more effectively, while losing no capability in any challenge that wasn't a footrace.
Especially in that party, you'd have a lot of trouble setting up challenges for the monk that the other characters aren't better at.
Don’t be ridiculous. Soaking damage is a role in combat. Do you keep your arcane casters on the frontline? Of course not, you send someone in to take the hits and keep them off the casters. And the person who soaks generally needs to be healed. That damage is going somewhere.
I’ve posted many, many times what roles monks can fill in a group, but one more time so you don’t have to scroll through the soon to be 1400 posts…
Blocker for arcane casters – Can’t soak as much as a fighter, but...
Summary of all Monk jobs, in order:
1) Bad Summoned Monster2) Threatening post
3) Bad Ranger
4) Bad every class in the game
5) Bad Summoned Monster
6) Bad Fighter
7) Pointless character concept or Bad Alchemist/Assassin
8) Possibly the only real use for a Monk assuming the enemies can't fly or keep you from getting completely out of reach in one round/useless in dungeons. Or, Bad Mounted Character
I think the big lesson to learn from all these posts is simply that you must roll a cleric or wizard to win the game. No other choice makes sense. Barbarians, rogues, fighters, monks and rangers don't make sense since they can't even fly. Bards, Summoners, Paladins and witches don't have 9th level spells. Sorcerers and Oracles are a level behind in spell progression too so that makes them bad wizards and clerics respectively.
At first I was writing this to be satirical but I've managed to see that spells win and everything else just tries to emulate what magic does better.
I hope that ultimate combat brings out options to make martial classes more on par with spell casters, especially clerics. They need unique abilities that can't be easily replaced with second or third level spells.
Sarrion, you are completely right and completely wrong.
You are completely right because the game is fun with all the unbalanced things, balance is not the primary goal, and an obsessive search for balance can lead to dull blandness - it happened.
Nevertheless, you are IMO completely wrong because the game itself can be improved withou removing the fun - the mere existence of PF is an evidence for it.
These discussions can be useful to spot on what's missing.
These discussions can be useful to spot on what's missing.
Of course you can make the argument that they become slightly less useful after the first hundred posts or so, when most of the best pro and con arguments have already been made and are just being repeated over and over again with varying levels of sincerity, sarcasm, anger and insult mixed in. After that, the only real value comes from the occasional interesting tangent or the very rare moment when someone looks at the original issue from a fresh angle.
Sarrion, you are completely right and completely wrong.
You are completely right because the game is fun with all the unbalanced things, balance is not the primary goal, and an obsessive search for balance can lead to dull blandness - it happened.
Nevertheless, you are IMO completely wrong because the game itself can be improved withou removing the fun - the mere existence of PF is an evidence for it.
These discussions can be useful to spot on what's missing.
The game is flawed in trying to balance other classes against magic. Fourth Edition was boring for most people because it was too balanced, it was as if your class was just a label but fundamentaly each one could do the same thing with a different title. That's my own take on that system based on the experiences I had.
Monks and rogues get a particulary bad reputation because the majority of their abilities can be emulated or replaced with spells. What would improve them is having niches which they can consistently fill in order to validate their presence in a party.
While it's great to be able to scout ahead, the advantage gained is not that great in actual gameplay. Maybe the party gets a chance to buff up, but half the time the scout is contending with light sources and descriptions that take 5 minutes for every room. That's assuming they are even successful. Meanwhile the scrying wizard can give you the history of every living creature in the dungeon. It just seems to be an exercise in futility to have have a scout.
Traps are definitely an encounter to be wary of but again, they don't provide enough of a threat at higher levels to be taken seriously. By then it's easier to use a summoned monster who can trip them or just to heal through the damage unless the traps are customized to be deadlier.
The best level 1 - 20 party compositions (outside of roleplaying) would probably be clerics with wizards and maybe a bard for some competence bonuses, an archivist would be nice because they can give negatives to saves on successful knowledge checks.
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The game is flawed in trying to balance other classes against magic. Fourth Edition was boring for most people because it was too balanced, it was as if your class was just a label but fundamentaly each one could do the same thing with a different title. That's my own take on that system based on the experiences I had.
Monks and rogues get a particulary bad reputation because the majority of their abilities can be emulated or replaced with spells. What would improve them is having niches which they can consistently fill in order to validate their presence in a party.
However spells are
a) A limited resource
b) need to be cast.
I particularly love the summonr example, since a caster has to stand vulnerable for a full round in order to summon something, with any damage taken potentially breaking the spell...
In game with a decent DM and avoiding the 15 minute day the balance is fine.
But that is a whole other 1400 post thread in and of itself...
Really the problem is the 15 minute workday.
Especially if the character just pumps out all of their higher level spells with no concern for the future.
This makes classes with powerfull limited resources (Caster, he's looking at you) disproportionately powerful.
On the flip side, running a more resource intensive day can be taxing on both the players and the PCs.
Probably one of my favorite encounters that I've had thus far involved Devils attacking the city that the PCs currently lived in. Like a lot of devils, so many that the garrisoned army + Hellknights + Paladins had to come out and fight.
The first encounter was a slugfest where the environment was eventually set on fire, and we had to deal with both it and like 12 Barbazu.
Second one was protect the NPCs, who were supposed to deal with a Hamatulatsu while the PCs made sure that the hoard of other baddies didn't kill the important NPCs.
Third encounter was going to be a Zombie blind-fight, but by that time everyone was really tired, and it was about 10:00ish (We'd been gaming since about noon) and so that got dealt with by a single fireball. Essentially skipping the encounter.
Last encounter for that day was a pretty sweet RP + Chase with a Pit Fiend. A couple of characters almost died due to bad rolls, but everyone made it in the end.