| Douglas Muir 406 |
We're switching from PFRPG to 5e but porting over a couple of existing characters. One of them is a 10th level unchained monk who's taken the Snake Style feat chain and who is otherwise a big fan of grappling.
Looking at the monk options in the 5e Player's Guide... meh? It's plain vanilla, or ninja / shadowdancer, or elemental. None of those seem a very good fit thematically for this guy. Are there other monk options in any of the splatbooks? Failing that, can anyone suggest some feats or items that might help?
Thanks in advance,
Doug M.
| Douglas Muir 406 |
Okay, poking around I see three other monk archetypes from the splatbooks. I gotta say, one seems really blah (the healbot) and the other two are flavorful but painfully underpowered (the drunken master and the necro-monk).
Overall the 5e monk is looking pretty meh, especially compared to classes like the sorceror, warlock or rogue (all of which are really fun to play in 5e). Am I missing something here?
Doug M.
| ENHenry |
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5e monks excel at the same things that basic PF monks do: high mobility, melee (while not necessarily as good as a barbarian, Paladin, or Fighter) and defense. It is true that there is not a good "Tetori" style monk subclass/archetype yet, but there are a few workarounds for the time being:
1) Using a STR-focused monk with the Grappler feat, or using a DEX-focused monk and pointing the DM to page 175 and realizing that this gives the DM tons of rules-leeway to allow the monk to substitute DEX for STR in their Athletics Checks. Voila! Instant grappler that can immobilize their enemies and beat them senseless at the same time. Mathematically, it still works out fine because beyond the proficiency bonus and the ability score there are very few other bonuses to add to the rolls, meaning that their scores will not be unbalanced one with another. (After all, the defender gets to use either Acrobatics or Athletics to defend, I've often thought the attacker should be able to do the same...)
2) If the DM does not allow it, then one could dump DEX (not entirely, see below), boost STR, and multiclass for one level in barbarian. This does give you rage (which admittedly you might not want), but does give you a different unarmored defense character feature, that uses CON in addition to DEX to determine AC. Remembering that in 5e, a starting AC of 15 to 17 is actually pretty good, and will get better as they improve their CON over time, something a grappler wants to do anyway, and get access to things like Bracers of Defense. Most 5e characters don't have ACs above low 20s, anyway, and the Monk has several things such as Patient Defense and Deflect Missiles to boost AC as needed.
3) The DM's Guild site run by Drive Thru RPG and licensed from WotC has a number of alternate subclasses for characters on it, including one of my favorite, the Pugilist (https://www.dmsguild.com/product/184921/); this 3rd party class has the "Squared Circle" subclass which is definitively a wrestler/grappler, and is pretty well balanced.
Just like PF, 5e is built and encouraged to incorporate 3rd party material - and as long as creators don't go stacking tons of bonuses on their subclasses or variants, then they work just fine. It can just be harder for some PF players to come with terms with using 3rd party material after being so hesitant to use it for PF games - I'm about to run a short campaign for my PF group now, and that's probably my biggest concern that they will feel as if they shouldn't be asking for tweaks or third party material for their characters, and feel somewhat constrained as a result -- which is ironic considering that's how I ran my 1e and 2e D&D games for years, because we didn't have tons of supplementary material to tweak PCs with.