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Yeah, I don't think I expressed myself too clearly above. Three aims, I guess:
(1) Evaluating Unchained Monk should just ask whether it's in-line with most standard melee PF characters, not questioning the problems there. The standard of judgment at this level should be fit with the general features of the current ruleset, whatever problems we may have with those features.
(2) I recognize the issue of dependence and if we were redesigning from the ground up I agree it would be good to lessen it compared to how it is in PF as-is.
(3) Personally, I'm not as bothered by the dependence problem as you & others are. Just personal preference, doesn't bug me so much. (If we were redesigning, I agree it would be good to lessen, but I guess it just doesn't bother me as much.)
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I agree that it may be a bit unreasonable to expect the Unchained Monk to have the level of backing the Barbarian has, but... at the same time stuff like unassisted flight is really basic and should have come in Unchained.Yeah, I think that might be where our judgments diverge. I see the concern but I don't so much share it myself (see the ETA to my previous post). I don't really mind that Fighters need the help of Wizards and Clerics at higher levels. (At least within the PF ruleset, flaws and all, as it exists.)So you feel a party should be better off with a Druid or Cleric or Bard or Magus or Inquisitor filling the Martial role, so the casters don't have to waste resources bringing the Martial up to par.
Got it.
I'd say that this is a cooperative team game and that I wouldn't call a Wizard casting Fly on the Fighter a "waste," I'd call it smart tactics and good teamwork.
But regardless, my claim about standards is where I'm coming from re the Monk, not our apparently divergent assessments of the caster/martial issue.
:-)
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@kyrt-ryder:
(1) Evaluating Unchained Monk should just ask whether it's in-line with most standard melee PF characters, not questioning the problems there. The standard of judgment at this level should be fit with the general features of the current ruleset, whatever problems we may have with those features.
(2) I recognize the issue of dependence and if we were redesigning from the ground up I agree it would be good to lessen it compared to how it is in PF as-is.
(3) Personally, I'm not as bothered by the dependence problem as you & others are. Just personal preference, doesn't bug me so much. (If we were redesigning, I agree it would be good to lessen, but I guess it just doesn't bother me as much.)
***
But regardless, my claim about standards is where I'm coming from re the Monk, not our apparently divergent assessments of the caster/martial issue.
I don't really want to hate on the class, because its obvious that a ton of effort was put into it, at least trying to deal with some of the problems the old class had. On the other hand though, it really feels like the Unchained Monk took a step forward, and then took a step back again, the class hasn't really "improved" from where it was, and it still lacks its identity as a class. If you stick to paizo's ideal as to what a monk should be, then it comes up short, and if you go with an identity that various films give you, then well, you still come up short. Some of the changes were/are great, and I guess its still pretty mobile as a character, so its still got that cool niche, its just a little disappointing that the class itself didn't really improve very much from what it originally was.
This....just this.
Given Mark's earlier comments on this thread about how Jason's first crack at the Unchained Monk was substantially weaker and he had to be argued into upgrading it into the final version, I think the problem isn't so much that Paizo has no idea how to improve the monk as it is that what they have in mind for an improved monk is far different from what the players wanted.
I would say that they didn't really have a clear concept of a monk - or if they did, they divorced it completely from the mechanics they were designing.
I mean, if you take a look at Dabbler's changes to the Monk, they're really simple changes that, as a bonus, don't change the word/spacing of the original Monk. It gives it the bump it needs to be competitive as a frontliner, without really stepping on anyone's toes to do so. He's a warrior who is strong of mind and of body, but he doesn't pull off the raw damage numbers that other classes do. With his ability to penetrate DR, he will 'always' be able to contribute to an encounter.
His changes makes for a Monk that does consistent damage, no matter the enemy. Consistent damage that doesn't edge into the realm of ridiculous or "Lawl, 1-rounded Cthulhu" like other classes can (Paladin, Barbarian, Cavalier, looking you).
If they had just taken some legitimate time to look at what's been developed for the Monk in the Suggestions/Houserules/Homebrew section, this side-grade never would have happened. Hell, at the very least I think they should have contacted the most 'prolific' Monk people on the boards and asked for their input.
Tels, I'm blushing...but thank you. For those interested I have posted up the complete play-test I have been running here.
To be (slightly) fair to the devs, there might be rules about them not checking out people's homebrew similar to how lots of show writers aren't allowed to read fanfiction. The last thing they need is any "Paizo stole my homebrew!" drama.
Even when just about all of us put in "Paizo are free to use this" in our text? Also, I took part in some Dreamscarred Press development, and they used some of my ideas, and I consider that a compliment.
That aside, I do suspect that part of why Paizo was so hush-hush about the content of Unchained and didn't do any public playtesting for it was that they knew there would be at least some backlash from people who wanted bigger changes. Honestly, I think the thing that bugs me most about the variant classes in Unchained is that they just show how much Paizo is chained to their own rigid paradigms when it comes to class design.
Actually, I think that's WHY they should have done a public play-test. That way they could have at least looked at the criticisms before they put anything in stone.
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Dang, forgot Critical Focus on my TWF build. Numbers adjusted (though it doesn't substantially alter the result):
# Two Weapon Tom #
AC 27; HP 103
Fort/Ref/Will +12/+12/+10
Attack kukri +19/+14/+9 (1d4+16/15-20x2), kukri +18/+13 (1d4+12/15-20x2); Special Critical Focus, Rend (1d10+4)Results (with other builds' results for reference):
# CR 13 MONSTER #
AC 28; HP 180
Attack +22 (60 dmg)
Primary Ability DC 21# Two Weapon Tom Lvl 11 v. CR 13 #
AC = 27
Fort, Ref, Will = 60%, 60%, 50% success
DPR = 48.6 (27%)DPR = 52.9 (29.4%)# Unarmed Oona Lvl 11 v. CR 13 #
AC = 26/30
Fort, Ref, Will = 55%, 60%, 60% success; +10% v. ench, improved evasion; (+10% v. paralysis, sleep, stun)
DPR = 54.9–63.6 (30.5–35.3%)# Temple Sword Tina Lvl 11 v. CR 13 #
AC = 26/30
Fort, Ref, Will = 55%, 60%, 60% success; improved evasion
DPR = 65.4–76.1 (36.3–42.3%)# Falchion Fred Lvl 11 v. CR 13 #
AC = 27
Fort, Ref, Will = 60%, 40%, 50% success
DPR = 65.3 (36.3%)# Longsword Lou Lvl 11 v. CR 13 #
AC = 32/27
Fort, Ref, Will = 60%, 40%, 50% success
DPR = 47 (26.1%)
Every Fly the Wizard has to cast on the Fighter is a Haste, Dispel Magic, Sleet Storm, Stinking Cloud, Hold Person, Displacement, Ray of Exhaustion, Paragon Surge or Slow that the Wizard isn't casting for the party.
Why would the party wizard need to cast fly for the fighter to drink a potion of fly? If the fighter is doing his job and purchasing basic combat gear, the wizard should rarely, if ever, need to cast common situational buffs on the fighter.
Funny, I thought the Monk was the guy on the receiving end in both GIFs. First one the Monk can avoid everything but has no ability to return, second one the Monk is much stronger-looking but has lost its ability to avoid being wailed on.
Why would you risk the big bad closing in with your spellcaster in the turn it takes the fighter to drink that potion and not attack?
Are you going to stop adventuring to spend a week running to and from town to refill your potions? Or will you have the wizard burn TWO 5th level slots for a teleport?
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Why would you risk the big bad closing in with your spellcaster in the turn it takes the fighter to drink that potion and not attack?
Are you going to stop adventuring to spend a week running to and from town to refill your potions? Or will you have the wizard burn TWO 5th level slots for a teleport?
Or instead of potions, you could simple buy a pearl of power for the wizard to cast fly with. Or you could buy any number of flying magic items. Potions are enough to last the one or two encounters per adventure where you need flight until you can afford a more permanent solution.
Unchained is what the developers would do without having to concern themselves with earlier editions. It does not have room for opinions from the player base.
Which apparently means what they'd do is leave all the classes but Summoner (which was ALREADY unique from older editions) largely the same, except for shuffling around some abilities and adding some new ones.
Joe said something about the Unchained Monk not excelling because it wasn't compatible with older material. Which is true, but that is a flaw in and of itself. It was neither changed enough to truly excel on its own, nor changed so little (like the Rogue and Barbarian and even the Summoner) that it was largely compatible with older archetypes.
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Which apparently means what they'd do is leave all the classes but Summoner (which was ALREADY unique from older editions) largely the same, except for shuffling around some abilities and adding some new ones.
Weren't you here for the Beta playtest? To quote my most recent favorite movie, "you didn't see that coming?"
Unchained is what the developers would do without having to concern themselves with earlier editions. It does not have room for opinions from the player base.Which apparently means what they'd do is leave all the classes but Summoner (which was ALREADY unique from older editions) largely the same, except for shuffling around some abilities and adding some new ones.
Joe said something about the Unchained Monk not excelling because it wasn't compatible with older material. Which is true, but that is a flaw in and of itself. It was neither changed enough to truly excel on its own, nor changed so little (like the Rogue and Barbarian and even the Summoner) that it was largely compatible with older archetypes.
Ah, but this way they can get another $10 for an Unchained Monk Archetypes companion book.
Which apparently means what they'd do is leave all the classes but Summoner (which was ALREADY unique from older editions) largely the same, except for shuffling around some abilities and adding some new ones.Weren't you here for the Beta playtest? To quote my most recent favorite movie, "you didn't see that coming?"
I was not.
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Last I checked those forums were still visible for viewing if desired. Suffice it to say that there was a lot of really, really good feedback and Paizo cherrypicked a little bit that fell into their design philosophy and rejected most of the good stuff.I was not.Which apparently means what they'd do is leave all the classes but Summoner (which was ALREADY unique from older editions) largely the same, except for shuffling around some abilities and adding some new ones.Weren't you here for the Beta playtest? To quote my most recent favorite movie, "you didn't see that coming?"
Yeah, but at least then they had the excuse of "maintaining backward compatibility".
This is just straight up lying to the customer.
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Yeah, but at least then they had the excuse of "maintaining backward compatibility".
This is just straight up lying to the customer.
If anything, the idea that they didn't change anything because 'backwards compatibility' would be the lie. They straight up said they would be doing their own thing this time.
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I think there might be some difference in how "unchained" folks expected these unchained classes to be. It sounds like some posters wanted classes that really broke out of the usual neighborhood of PF design. Say, a martial character that we might prefer if we were redesigning the system from scratch. But if you view the goal of the class revisions to update these four classes to be a better fit *within* the current PF ruleset, I wonder if that's a better perspective from which to evaluate them? I.e., we might say that they have been "unchained" from 3.5 backwards compatibility or inertia, but not "unchained" from PF. And put that way, it makes pretty good sense I'd say. Unlike the rest of the book, these reworked classes shouldn't be disruptive or out of sync with a standard PF game. Might think that's why they fit easily into PFS where other parts of the book wouldn't.
In other words, different levels of "unchaining" are appropriate for the different goals of the different parts of the book.
(This all a version of the thought I've been working on that the appropriate standard of comparison for the Unchained Monk isn't some dreamworld PF 2.0 melee class, but the basic melee class of PF as it is flaws and all.)
It doesn't have to break from normal PF conventions (though that would be nice), but it should be a completely different class from what it was before.
The Unchained Monk is "tweaked Monk" not "re-designed Monk".
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It was neither changed enough to truly excel on its own, nor changed so little (like the Rogue and Barbarian and even the Summoner) that it was largely compatible with older archetypes.
How many classes would you say "truly excel on their own," meaning "excel" by whatever standard you prefer using only CRB + Basic Traits?
If the answer, as I'm guessing, is "very few," then I'd suggest that this isn't so much a problem with the Unchained Monk as a class rather than with the Unchained Monk's unique lack of support from supplemental material.
Or, to put it in a more optimistic light, imagine that Paizo publishes, say, and Unchained Monk Archetypes supplement to bring the Unchained Monk "up to speed" a bit, and then continues to support the Unchained Monk over the next couple years with the usual set of character options.
If that happens—and I don't know that it will but I hope it does—, then how would you figure the Unchained Monk would fare? I'd bet it would be doing pretty well, compared to the other PF melee classes, by whatever standard you like. (And if you think that the PF melee classes are generally too weak or lacking in some way, then I'd say again that that's a complaint against the general tendencies of the PF ruleset and not a complaint against the Unchained Monk, which I think stacks up pretty well, as a class, compared to other PF melee classes.)
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It was neither changed enough to truly excel on its own, nor changed so little (like the Rogue and Barbarian and even the Summoner) that it was largely compatible with older archetypes.How many classes would you say "truly excel on their own," meaning "excel" by whatever standard you prefer using only CRB + Basic Traits?
If the answer, as I'm guessing, is "very few," then I'd suggest that this isn't so much a problem with the Unchained Monk as a class rather than with the Unchained Monk's unique lack of support from supplemental material.
Or, to put it in a more optimistic light, imagine that Paizo publishes, say, and Unchained Monk Archetypes supplement to bring the Unchained Monk "up to speed" a bit, and then continues to support the Unchained Monk over the next couple years with the usual set of character options.
If that happens—and I don't know that it will but I hope it does—, then how would you figure the Unchained Monk would fare? I'd bet it would be doing pretty well, compared to the other PF melee classes, by whatever standard you like. (And if you think that the PF melee classes are generally too weak or lacking in some way, then I'd say again that that's a complaint against the general tendencies of the PF ruleset and not a complaint against the Unchained Monk, which I think stacks up pretty well, as a class, compared to other PF melee classes.)
Most of the non-casters who really do well came out in later books (Slayer makes a great Fighter AND Rogue replacement!), but Paladin and Ranger do pretty damn well for themselves with just Core.
And again, the class neither getting new stuff to play with nor being able to play with its old stuff is a design flaw in itself. It doesn't matter if new stuff is released or not. RIGHT NOW the class has problems.
The ACG classes came pre-baked with several archetypes and specific class options. They could have done the same here, but chose not to. The Barbarian, Summoner, and Rogue are almost entirely backwards compatible.
If they were going to put the Monk at a halfway point between "old" and "actually redesigned from scratch" the least they could have done was make some archetypes and Feats for it (Extra Ki Power and Extra Style Strike are quick and easy ones).
Got to see the new monk in play recently. It did fantastic and was deadly in DM hands.
It's also much easier to use as opponents, and may be taking the place of some of your traditional "lots of natural attack" beasties.
Thanks for the work.
Got to see the new monk in play recently. It did fantastic and was deadly in DM hands.
It's also much easier to use as opponents, and may be taking the place of some of your traditional "lots of natural attack" beasties.
Thanks for the work.
I'll take the thanks to Jason, and as someone who got to contribute a little to the Unchained monk, I'm personally glad you enjoyed!
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Lost a post due to poor connection. Basically, Rynjin, I agree that the Unchained Monk is lacking in dedicated supporting character options right now and I really hope that gets addressed, but I'm glad they used the space in unchained for more optional rules rather than a suite of Unchained Monk options, even if that leaves the Monk a bit poorly off in terms of dedicated support options for now.
I'd settle for Paladin or Alchemist.
Wouldn't everyone just immediately choose fuse styles (from master of many styles) if they saw that though? It normally replaces flurry of blows, but only flurry of blows. Seems too strong of an option to gain with a single power selection.
EDIT: Okay, upon reflection, that may not work. You'd be swifting to spend the ki and then swifting to fuse styles. A GM might allow you to combine the two options (after all, it's what you are using that swift action to spend the ki for) but it could end up a table variation thing. It would have opened the door to a whole bunch of errata possibilities, which is enough of a reason not to include it in a book with limited text space.
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A better option would have been to just say "OK, if an archetype replaces X class feature that the Monk no longer has/has been turned into a ki power, it instead replaces the ki power gain at level Y".
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To be honest I'm stunned that it's 2015 and Pathfinder people [be they Paizo staff or forumposters] are still concerned about the dippability of a class.
I agree, after some of the archetypes made for dipping, it is as I described above, shutting the monastery door after the MoMS has done a runner.
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To be honest I'm stunned that it's 2015 and Pathfinder people [be they Paizo staff or forumposters] are still concerned about the dippability of a class.
Some people are concerned about dipping. Some people are concerned about poor Will saves. It's 2015 and I'm stunned that you can still be stunned that someone won't like or will be concerned about *something*, no matter how small it might seem to someone else.