The Monk Issue: Breaking it down.


Rules Questions

Liberty's Edge

This is an attempt to break down the various "changes" concerns and issues to try to figure out what we all want.

It seems the intent was to make it functionally full BaB TWF following the TWF progressions at the appropriate levels. The concept being the monk should be comparable to a TWF martian class. This isn't comprehensive, feel free to add.

Power Problems with the "old" way:

1. Allowing a single weapon to be used as frequently as a twf uses two separate weapons is a huge advantage.

2. There was a lack of clarity if you could use THF and flurry.

3. You allow players to avoid having to deal with offhanded attack.

4. You marginalize unarmed, since it is fair cheaper and more effective to boost a single weapon than go with AOMF.

Lack of power problem with the "new" way

1. You functionally get TWF, but you don't get access to any of the bonus feat chains.

2. You still have the limitation of only being able to do it with suboptimal (and and generally more rare) monk weapons.

Problems both ways.

1. Unarmed damage goes up, but attack bonus doesn't. Amulet of Mighty fist caps at +5 with a cost greater than two weapons, and takes up a weapon slot. So unarmed is far worse than using a monk weapon, despite being the iconic concept of the class.

2. Monks generally have lower strength than martial classes, given the need to spread out ability scores more, making the attack bonus even lower.

3. You are more likely to hit with a flurry than with a single attack, which is kind of silly.

The monk is a fun class, but it has become a patchwork class. I hope the Devs take this opportunity to figure out what they want the class to be.

The last several books a "too many cooks in the kitchen" problem has seemed to emerge that isn't the fault of any specific Dev (I think they are all quality) but rather from what I view as a lack of a clear definition of intent for each class.

And frankly, I don't think any of the Devs are big monk players or this would have been cleared up a long time ago.

So I hope however it works out, this time it isn't a bandaid.

Figure out what the Pathfinder monk is supposed to be, and make it so.

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