Number-Crunching the "New" Monk?

[see]

Covent --

Looking at the spreadsheet, the monk is not getting the additional attack at highest bonus from expenditure of a ki point at levels 4th and above, and the build lacks Furious Focus at any point for the monk (first opportunity would be at 5th level), though it includes it for the fighter and paladin from level 1.

The first would definitely improve monk DPR, of course, and would be a downright rountine use of the ki pool. I guess the debate is whether you should build it into DPR calculations.

Delaying Tiger Pounce to take Furious Focus will add four levels of mildly increased DPR for two levels of lower DPR and higher AC, of course.

Huh. A Weapon Adept archetype monk would at 2nd level gets free Weapon Focus (Temple Sword) (upping his DPR earlier). He can then take Furious Focus as his 5th level feat or start the Tiger chain at 5th, and he picks up Weapon Specialization at 6th for extra damage on every hit, too. (Weirdly, the result is a monk with Perfect Strike who doesn't use Perfect Strike with the weapon he's built around. I guess you could sub in the quarterstaff wielded in two hands, but that would halve the crit range versus the temple sword . . . )

[Atarlost]

So, it seems the unarmed monk is still hopeless and the single weapon monk still has flurry of misses (because his bonus damage source is more efficient power attack), but at least does damage when he connects now.

We can better this in a couple ways.

Martial Artist can get weapon specialization and gets an unreliable accuracy and DR penetration bonus starting at level 4.

Sohei can get weapon training and can flurry with better weapons starting at level 6. The urumi (1d8; 18-20 x2) looks like the best bet. It's not a monk weapon, but it's in the monk weapon training category. It needs an exotic proficiency, but I'm not sure the weapon monk needs much besides power attack and, if he can't count on getting a keen weapon, improved critical. Since the Urumi and the god most associated with monks are both from Vudra the exoticness is less of a fluff problem than many exotic weapon choices would be.

Does either of these get solidly into the martials?

[johnlocke90]

Covent wrote:

johnlocke90 wrote:

see wrote:

Hmm.

The way to exploit the new rulings, I think, is to have a monk who uses one highly-enchanted temple sword with both hands.

This gives you an interesting hybrid of the two-weapon fighter and two-handed weapon fighter approaches. This monk makes the the same number of attacks as the two-weapon fighter, but is getting his full Str bonus on every blow (instead of half Str damage on half the attacks, because flurry means full Str on all blows), and a 3:1 Power Attack ratio on damage (because Flurry of Blows doesn't do anything to Power Attack's increased damage for using two hands on the weapon).

This monk doesn't even think about the AoMF; he's using an enchanted weapon to do damage like a standard two-handed-weapon fighter, not unarmed strikes.

My friend does this. ALso make sure to put the guided property on your weapon. Then you dump strength and use wisdom for attack rolls, damage, AC and ki pool.

While being purely wisdom based and using the "Guided" property is definitively the best late game option available, it is extremely punitive in the early game as you will not be able to afford a guided AoMF until level 4 or a +1 Guided temple sword until level 5. Even then you are spending the majority of your WBL on your weapon which will mean your AC will not be able to keep up. Reasonably you will make these purchases at levels 6-8 which means your character will be doing very little in combat for 3-7 levels. I believe most players would find this unpalatable.

Now if the character was created past level 8 then it will not experience this problem, my question as a GM would be; How did this character survive until this level?

You wouldn't lag on AC due to adding your wisdom to AC. Pre level 8, you would be decently tanky while not having good offense. You could definitely survive it simply because melee classes are strong at low levels. Granted, you would be carried by the party, but you could definitely have this item by level 6(not 8) if you focused on getting it.

[johnlocke90]

Lemmy wrote:

Relying on a very specific weapon enhacement for your main fighting style doesn't seem like a good idea to me.

I've done things like giving an Agile cestus to my Gunslinger, because melee is not something he wants to be doing very often.

But I'm not sure if giving up Strength because of an weapon property is a very smart idea.

1- you can lose your weapon. It can be stolen/sundered... whatever
2- How do you survive 'til you get that enhancement?
3- How can you eb sure that you get said enhancement?

So, Agile/Guided weapons are, IMO, pretty awesome for someone who doesn't depend on the enchanted weapons. But buying a Guided AoMF so the Monk is not as MAD is a pretty risky gamble IMHO.

Any enemy attempting to sunder or steal the weapon will have to make it past the monks high CMD(thanks in part to a high wisdom). Unless the party is fighting one big monster, the sunder maneuvers should fail. And if this is a big monster trying to sunder, then its going to die on action economy.

[Sangalor]

I also would not go this route, at least not dump strength more than under 13, so you can at least still take power attack and are not completely hopeless without your special item

And regarding the CMD, the bonuses from WIS will be offset by a low strength since that gets factored in as well. Even though a monk CMD is not bad, a strong opponent is not unlikely to make that CMB roll.

So yeah, use it to boost your character later, but not build around that item :-)

[Covent]

see wrote:

Covent --

Looking at the spreadsheet, the monk is not getting the additional attack at highest bonus from expenditure of a ki point at levels 4th and above, and the build lacks Furious Focus at any point for the monk (first opportunity would be at 5th level), though it includes it for the fighter and paladin from level 1.

The first would definitely improve monk DPR, of course, and would be a downright rountine use of the ki pool. I guess the debate is whether you should build it into DPR calculations.

Delaying Tiger Pounce to take Furious Focus will add four levels of mildly increased DPR for two levels of lower DPR and higher AC, of course.

Huh. A Weapon Adept archetype monk would at 2nd level gets free Weapon Focus (Temple Sword) (upping his DPR earlier). He can then take Furious Focus as his 5th level feat or start the Tiger chain at 5th, and he picks up Weapon Specialization at 6th for extra damage on every hit, too. (Weirdly, the result is a monk with Perfect Strike who doesn't use Perfect Strike with the weapon he's built around. I guess you could sub in the quarterstaff wielded in two hands, but that would halve the crit range versus the temple sword . . . )

I did not include anthing that could not be kept up all the time. I agree a monk can spike slightly higher than the spreadsheet however with how small a monk's Ki pool is I thought it best to not include it.

As for furious focus it is overall a DPS loss to take it.

As displayed below.

Level__DPR change
5:_____+0.31
6:_____-0.8525
7:_____+1.705
8:_____+3.5475
9:_____+3.5475
10:____+3.87
11:____-6.75
12:____-14.43

It does however gain you +1 AC at level 11 and +2 AC at level 12 as well as granting you access to a +3 temple sword at 11 versus 13.

I would say that I personally would not want to suffer through level 12 however, I would not disparage someone who built their PC that way.

I must also apologize my earlier spreadsheet had a very slight error at level 10 which inflated the monks DPR by 2 points.

To address the idea of archetypes, I agree that some monk archetypes are good or even excellent, however this was all purposefully done on the core monk to see the effect of the changes there due to the fact that most of the concern over the monk has been for the CRB monk.

Monk with FF

Monk without FF

[johnlocke90]

Sangalor wrote:

I also would not go this route, at least not dump strength more than under 13, so you can at least still take power attack and are not completely hopeless without your special item

And regarding the CMD, the bonuses from WIS will be offset by a low strength since that gets factored in as well. Even though a monk CMD is not bad, a strong opponent is not unlikely to make that CMB roll.

So yeah, use it to boost your character later, but not build around that item :-)

I know a strong opponent could make it through, but it seems pretty unlikely that you are going to meet many enemies who are strong enough to beat your CMD and smart enough to know to focus the monks guided weapon. And even then, its not generally an efficient use the monsters time in a 1 v 4 battle. A +1 guided weapon is at 15 hitpoints and 12 hardness. It would take a lucky round for the monsters to destroy it. Likely 2 rounds. And this is if your GM decides to send a sunder monster at you right after you acquire the weapon.

Once you make the weapon impervious and adamantine(6000 gold for both), its up to 24 hardness and 33 hitpoints. Easier to kill the monk than his weapon at that point.

[Covent]

johnlocke90 wrote:

You wouldn't lag on AC due to adding your wisdom to AC. Pre level 8, you would be decently tanky while not having good offense. You could definitely survive it simply because melee classes are strong at low levels. Granted, you would be carried by the party, but you could definitely have this item by level 6(not 8) if you focused on getting it.

Ok lets assume level 5 then for a monk.

15 point buy.

Strength: 13(Needed for PA) [3 points]
Dexterity: 13 [3 points]
Constitution: 10 [ 0 points]
Intellegence: 7 [+4 points]
Wisdom: 18 [17 points]
Charisma: 7 [+4 points]

Dodge taken at level one as a bonus feat.

This means your AC is as follows.

Level___AC
1:____17
2:____17
3:____18
4:____19 (Here you get a +1 Sword where a strength monk only has a MW sword)
5:____19 (To meet the AC of 15 + level that I have been trying to keep you cannot afford a +2 sword here, however rather than slog through more terrible levels I would lag AC by one point and grab a +1 guided sword here)

Either way you will have better AC for levels 1 and 2 and terrible DPR to the point of being absolutely useless for 4 levels. I mean worse than a summoned creature. Your only purpose will be aid another and flanking.

I would never play a character like this, however if you have fun with it then good for you.

Effectively the party will have to give you a share of treasure even though a Commoner could fill your spot.

After level 5 however you are golden, as long as nothing happens to your weapon and you always have it in your hand.

Commoner Math

This is with the standard array BTW so with a 3 point buy...

[Covent]

johnlocke90 wrote:

Sangalor wrote:

I also would not go this route, at least not dump strength more than under 13, so you can at least still take power attack and are not completely hopeless without your special item

And regarding the CMD, the bonuses from WIS will be offset by a low strength since that gets factored in as well. Even though a monk CMD is not bad, a strong opponent is not unlikely to make that CMB roll.

So yeah, use it to boost your character later, but not build around that item :-)

I know a strong opponent could make it through, but it seems pretty unlikely that you are going to meet many enemies who are strong enough to beat your CMD and smart enough to know to focus the monks guided weapon. And even then, its not generally an efficient use the monsters time in a 1 v 4 battle. A +1 guided weapon is at 15 hitpoints and 12 hardness. It would take a lucky round for the monsters to destroy it. Likely 2 rounds. And this is if your GM decides to send a sunder monster at you right after you acquire the weapon.

Once you make the weapon impervious and adamantine(6000 gold for both), its up to 24 hardness and 33 hitpoints. Easier to kill the monk than his weapon at that point.

Impervious is a 3,000 gp tax for having to use a specific weapon.

You have to originally create the object out of adamantine, it cannot be added later, which means you are delaying your acquisition of said item even longer and creating more terrible levels.

As, I said earlier, the only reason that such a PC would exist is if the other Players not characters meta-gamed to carry him, or if the creating player and GM meta-gamed, to create him at a later level. Even then you are one dispel magic or greater dispel magic away from being useless again.

However while I dislike the idea of said character, I have no problem with you enjoying it and am not trying to say WrongBadFun, I am just expressing my opinions.

[princeimrahil]

Hmmm... what about the Monk/Duelist build? Seems like that gets a good bit better with the new flurry ruling - monk/duelists get to combine the benefits of TWF with all of the "leave one hand empty" bonuses of the duelist.

[Atarlost]

Wait, impervious, adamantine? You're talking about Guided weapons, right? The only bonus damage source the armed monk has is getting twice the normal benefit fro power attack, which already requires 13 strength, and they don't use stunning fist and can use their neck slot for an amulet of natural armor so they need wis to AC less. Why would they want to mess around with the guided property? Unarmed monks are the ones that need it.

The weapon monk just has a temple sword (or maybe urumi if a sohei) with mostly basic plusses and maybe holy. They can just keep the cold iron version they kept around to bypass DR before they got their main to +3 and bum a GMW off the cleric if something happens to their main.

[Darth Grall]

All I know is I wanna make a Katana wielding Monk now(since there's a Katana from UE that counts as a Monk Weapon).

[Lemmy]

johnlocke90 wrote:

Lemmy wrote:

Relying on a very specific weapon enhacement for your main fighting style doesn't seem like a good idea to me.

I've done things like giving an Agile cestus to my Gunslinger, because melee is not something he wants to be doing very often.

But I'm not sure if giving up Strength because of an weapon property is a very smart idea.

1- you can lose your weapon. It can be stolen/sundered... whatever
2- How do you survive 'til you get that enhancement?
3- How can you eb sure that you get said enhancement?

So, Agile/Guided weapons are, IMO, pretty awesome for someone who doesn't depend on the enchanted weapons. But buying a Guided AoMF so the Monk is not as MAD is a pretty risky gamble IMHO.

Any enemy attempting to sunder or steal the weapon will have to make it past the monks high CMD(thanks in part to a high wisdom). Unless the party is fighting one big monster, the sunder maneuvers should fail. And if this is a big monster trying to sunder, then its going to die on action economy.

I'm not saying it's impossible, just that it's risky. A bit too risky for my taste. I mean, a Fighter, Barbarian or Paladin who loses his weapon of choice may lose his 4~6 of his feats, so his efficiency will suffer greatly, but he can still grab a nearby club and contribute. A Monk with no Str that loses his Guided AoMF is pretty much dead weight. And replacing it would be more expensive than replacing a magic sword.

I'd consider a relying on a Guided AoMF for melee if my character was a Zen Archer Monk, otherwise, I'd feel better investing in Str.