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I've seen a lot of discussion about what does or doesn't meet the requirement, but none that I recall about why it's there, and I want to know.
Is it for flavor?
Is it for realism?
Is it for balance? How would the stance be overpowered without the requirement, and how does the requirement fix that?
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Because it's the only Stance that lets you dump dexterity to 10 at level 1. That is mechanically powerful.
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Because it's the only Stance that lets you dump dexterity to 10 at level 1. That is mechanically powerful.
I wouldn't call it that powerful. You are spending a class feat to get heavy armor that you have to activate with an action every fight. Building for it also locks you out of most combat uses for every other stance. Hope you don't get attacked before you get it started either; no Dex and no armor means crits.
I think the restriction is fluff. Fluff that makes an interesting build choice a headache.
Because it's the only Stance that lets you dump dexterity to 10 at level 1. That is mechanically powerful.I wouldn't call it that powerful. You are spending a class feat to get heavy armor that you have to activate with an action every fight. Building for it also locks you out of most combat uses for every other stance. Hope you don't get attacked before you get it started either; no Dex and no armor means crits.
I think the restriction is fluff. Fluff that makes an interesting build choice a headache.
This is GM dependant. How often do you end up in combat's that are not on stable surface?
How often do your plate mail wearing players end up in fights because they cannot sleep in their armor and it takes literally minutes to Don that heavy armor.
How often do heavy armor characters end up with 50ft movement.
Fact is it's 6 points, modifier of 3 you can choose to ignore and put points elsewhere that you cannot on any other monk stance
So if your GM is prone to having you fight on unstable ground and doing incorrect 5e DND style surprise rounds, and gets into technical arguments with you over what constitutes ground. You probably shouldn't play mountain stance.
But in the end, I disagree, I do think it's that powerful.
Martialmasters, I'm confused. You seem to be arguing all of:
(1) Mountain Stance is overpowered.
(2) The ground restriction is there to restrict its power.
(3) The ground restriction doesn't actually restrict its power because it will so rarely come into play.
While it is certainly not a contradiction to assert all three, because (2) is about intent and (3) is about actual effect, together they do seem to imply the devs are rather stupid....
Am I misunderstanding something?
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While there's enough flavor to warrant it, PF2's too balanced otherwise so I think it's ultimately a mechanical choice. Martials have multiple build types and Mt. Stance is a way of representing the slow & sturdy build, giving up mobility for toughness. That's hard with a class that naturally can zoom & bounce all around. So devs lowered the zoom a notch and cut out the bouncing.
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i never said it was overpowered.
the ground restriction is there to restrict its power yes. because multiple monk features involve jumping or pseudo flying, wich you cannot do and maintain this stance.
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Indeed it allows you to dump a whole stat, but if I were to set a trade off for the stance I'd go with stuff like the one already in the descritption:
- Limited type of attacks
This is pretty standard for many Stances (only Dragon, tiger, and Wolf lack this language). The attack is pretty good so this is neither an upside nor a downside compared to other Stances, IMO.
- Limited stance AC ( -1 compared to light/medium armor and -2 compared to heavy armor ).
This is untrue in practice. In practice, going Mountain Stance gets you the highest AC a Monk can achieve at 1st level, but with better damage (since you get the equivalent of a Dex 18 Monk's AC but with Str 18), and in the long run, as you pursue the Feat chain, you wind up with needing Dex 14 (but not until after 10th level), but increasing your Dex + Mountain Stance bonus to +6, and thus the equal of Heavy Armor...one AC higher than other Monks can get.
Combined with eventual Legendary defensive Proficiency, a Mountain Stance Monk is tied for highest AC in the game, with only Champions and Crane Stance Monks (the latter doing much lower damage) equaling them.
- Reduced Speed
This, touching the ground aside, is the indisputable downside of the Stance.
I think their intent was to give a dwarven static and inamovible stance ( and because so, with limited movement and tied to the ground, as a real mountain ).
Theme is definitely part of it, but I'd argue balance is definitely also involved. Mountain Stance is really good compared to other available Stances. Better? Probably not given its restrictions. Better if it was unrestricted? Maybe.
(only Dragon, tiger, and Wolf lack this language).
And ironblood, tangled forest, wilds winds and clinging shadows stances.
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It is also based on real life martial arts and is like an earth stance (Shi no Kata). So it is also a lot of real life flavor.
Now I wonder something else. How granular are people treating this? I'm imagining a GM trying to slide a hand under the monk like a wrestling referee checking if shoulders are on the mat. I'm guessing RAI is that you're still allowed to do modest hops, run, avoid legsweeps, that sort of thing.
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Now I wonder something else. How granular are people treating this? I'm imagining a GM trying to slide a hand under the monk like a wrestling referee checking if shoulders are on the mat. I'm guessing RAI is that you're still allowed to do modest hops, run, avoid legsweeps, that sort of thing.
Yea, it's mostly about the Strikes, though I would imagine a Monk trained in it would be trained to physically resist attempts to force movement, rather than dodge them.
Now I wonder something else. How granular are people treating this? I'm imagining a GM trying to slide a hand under the monk like a wrestling referee checking if shoulders are on the mat. I'm guessing RAI is that you're still allowed to do modest hops, run, avoid legsweeps, that sort of thing.
Well, technically speaking you are not touching the ground even when just moving fast, i.e. normal running, if you do not use some kind of racewalking techniques. However I would never ever consider this an issue at all (and even if it were an issue it is probably already covered by the speed penalty incurred by the stance) and thus not question the requirement any further. Going too deep here is nonsense.
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- Limited stance AC ( -1 compared to light/medium armor and -2 compared to heavy armor ).
While in Mountain Stance, you gain a +4 status bonus to AC and a +2 circumstance bonus to any defenses against being Shoved or Tripped.
Compare the AC of a Mountain Stance monk to that of a Rogue, Dex based Monk and a Champion. At level 1. We leave out the shield because all of them could get the same bonus from that.
Rogue: let's say Dex 18, Leather Armor, Trained in Light Armor: 4+1+3+10 = 18
DexMonk: Dex 18, unarmored, Expert in Unarmored: 4+0+5+10 = 19
Champion: Dex 10, Full Plate, Trained in Heavy Armor: 0+6+3 = 19
Mountain: Dex 10, unarmored, Expert in Unarmored, Status: 0 + 0 + 5 + 4 = 19
As you see, the Mountain monk isn't behind on anyone while in the stance.The comparison with armors was flawed because no other class starts with Expert in any armor proficiency.
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Now I wonder something else. How granular are people treating this? I'm imagining a GM trying to slide a hand under the monk like a wrestling referee checking if shoulders are on the mat. I'm guessing RAI is that you're still allowed to do modest hops, run, avoid legsweeps, that sort of thing.Well, technically speaking you are not touching the ground even when just moving fast, i.e. normal running, if you do not use some kind of racewalking techniques. However I would never ever consider this an issue at all (and even if it were an issue it is probably already covered by the speed penalty incurred by the stance) and thus not question the requirement any further. Going too deep here is nonsense.
How I handle this is to say that a monk in mountain stance must at some point in their turn be on the ground. What's a big no-no is not touching the ground at all during one's turn, say by flying or swimming.
Mind you, this is how I'm interpreting this as a player. However, I've never had a GM go, "You just did a long jump, so you are no longer in mountain stance."
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Now I wonder something else. How granular are people treating this? I'm imagining a GM trying to slide a hand under the monk like a wrestling referee checking if shoulders are on the mat. I'm guessing RAI is that you're still allowed to do modest hops, run, avoid legsweeps, that sort of thing.Well, technically speaking you are not touching the ground even when just moving fast, i.e. normal running, if you do not use some kind of racewalking techniques. However I would never ever consider this an issue at all (and even if it were an issue it is probably already covered by the speed penalty incurred by the stance) and thus not question the requirement any further. Going too deep here is nonsense.How I handle this is to say that a monk in mountain stance must at some point in their turn be on the ground. What's a big no-no is not touching the ground at all during one's turn, say by flying or swimming.
Mind you, this is how I'm interpreting this as a player. However, I've never had a GM go, "You just did a long jump, so you are no longer in mountain stance."
I think a jump action would be an obvious end for Mountain Stance.
And I don't think it's the GM's responsibility, rather the player's.
I think a jump action would be an obvious end for Mountain Stance.
And I don't think it's the GM's responsibility, rather the player's.
Not at all being argumentative, but what if I don't think a jump action should be "an obvious end for Mountain Stance?"
And I totally agree with you that it's the players' responsibility to follow the rules, not do whatever you want until the GM says you have to stop. However, this is a case that I've thought about a lot, and I've followed and sometimes contributed to the various discussions on this topic. As I see jumps are done as part of "ground" movement. They're not flying. So, to my mind, executing a jump action should not end mountain stance.
I guess this is a subset of a broader topic. If there is an unclear or contested rule that affects one's character, is it the player's responsibility to bring this to the attention of the GM and tell the GM how they're interpreting the rule in question?
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Yes, if you're relying on an interpretation of rules that you know get a lot of argument like the one under discussion here (though I don't think I've actually seen anyone using this reading that's apparently common in your circles of play with regard to jumping) or particularly complicated rules with a lot of fine detail (like grapplers and mounted combatants in PF1) you should say something to the GM before the game, so they have a chance to check the rules (or the arguments around them). They could certainly decide that they'd rather just trust your reading to be correct, but giving people the chance to know about potential issues in advance is just basic courtesy.
Interestingly, one of the stupider theory craft builds that's been thrown around actually relies on jumping ending Mountain Stance.
Does this line of reasoning hold water?
(1) Mountain Stance is quite powerful and the ground restriction is meant to rein it in to a meaningful extent.
(2) If jumping ends the stance, then the ground restriction is meaningfully restrictive, i.e. does its job.
(3) If jumping doesn't end the stance, then the ground restriction really doesn't do much, i.e. doesn't do its job.
(4) The devs who wrote it are good at their jobs, so we ought to assume what they wrote does its job unless we have reason to believe otherwise.
(5) It follows that jumping ends the stance.
I am not personally thrilled with the conclusion, but if (1) is true I tend to believe the rest. Before this thread I had not realized Mountain Stance might be considered significantly more powerful than other stances.
The tricky bit is that this is yet another meta-question. What are acceptable sources of evidence for ruling one way or another on a contested rule?
For better or worse, I'm trying to stay as textual as possible. I'd like to avoid having to depend on judgements about whether or not something is "meaningful" or if the devs are "good at their jobs."
So, my understanding of mountain stance is firmly rooted in a reading of the CRB where the only reference to "ground" is in the section on Movement where the subsection on Speed (p. 463) reads:
"Most characters and monsters have a speed statistic— also called land Speed—which indicates how quickly they can move across the ground. When you use the Stride action, you move a number of feet equal to your Speed. Numerous other abilities also allow you to move, from Crawling to Leaping, and most of them are based on your Speed in some way . Whenever a rule mentions your Speed without specifying a type, it’s referring to your land Speed."
Ground is defined as something you move across using your land speed, and this section also includes a reference to Leaping (see the bolded sentence above).
In the section on Leap on p. 242, there is no mention that leaping causes you to exit land/ground speed.
If there is textual evidence which contradicts my position, I'd be happy to see it. I'm taking this position not so as to be an ass (or so I hope) but to try and make the interpretation of the rules as clear and simple as possible.
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There are a lot of words in a 600+ page rulebook that don't have special rules definitions, leaving us with only their normal English meaning. (With translated copies you do get one more possible layer, if there's a question of whether the translation of a particular passage is good or changes meanings a bit).
Your leaping distance being governed by ground speed doesnt mean you are on the ground. Jumps having a vertical distance listed means that you aren't.
So, when one runs, it's very possible for both feet to be off the ground at the same time. Does that mean running should remove you from mountain stance?
Also, the "normal English meaning" for ground includes earth, dirt, rock, etc. If that's the criteria for making rules judgements, one can then make an argument that you go out of mountain stance as soon as you step on a wooden floor.
When I started trying to figure this out, I didn't know what I'd find. I didn't go into this thinking, "I want to be able to jump while in mountain stance, let's cherry pick or construct an argument that allows that." I went into it with a method, using the text that's available to us in the rules, and I came to the conclusion that jumping does not force one out of mountain stance.
To my mind, trying to stick as close as possible to the text of the rules provides the best chance of avoiding what are often endless and unresolvable debates.
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That was my point.
Comparing that specific stance to another one, in my opinion, it seemed balanced and thematic with the stance itself ( no agile or finesse ).
I was mostly disagreeing on the AC thing. The other points were just me stating my opinions on them, not really intended as inherently a disagreement.
Isn't equal to any other dex based monk?
+4 dex/+4 status ( and not dex ) + expert proficiency + lvl + Circ ( Shield )
It's equal to Dex based Monks at 1st level, with the other Feats in the chain it eventually exceeds them.
To me it's the opposite.
Given how much speed gets the monk class:and because of feats like fleet ( which anybody has ) and an eventual ancestry feat ( like nimble Elf or Nimble Hooves ), I think that a -5 ac is not a big deal. It count's as a malus, but given the class and its speed it's just a small one.
Oh, I agree it's not huge, I was just noting it as a real down side.
Does this line of reasoning hold water?
(1) Mountain Stance is quite powerful and the ground restriction is meant to rein it in to a meaningful extent.
(2) If jumping ends the stance, then the ground restriction is meaningfully restrictive, i.e. does its job.
(3) If jumping doesn't end the stance, then the ground restriction really doesn't do much, i.e. doesn't do its job.
(4) The devs who wrote it are good at their jobs, so we ought to assume what they wrote does its job unless we have reason to believe otherwise.
(5) It follows that jumping ends the stance.I am not personally thrilled with the conclusion, but if (1) is true I tend to believe the rest. Before this thread I had not realized Mountain Stance might be considered significantly more powerful than other stances.
I don't think Point #3 follows logically from the other points at all. The Stance indisputably doesn't work while swimming, climbing most things, or flying even if jumping works and the flying in particular is already a large restriction on it, even if jumping functions normally.
I'm not sure whether it should work while jumping or not, but your chain of logic fundamentally doesn't seem to hold up to me.
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I don't think Point #3 follows logically from the other points at all. The Stance indisputably doesn't work while swimming, climbing most things, or flying even...Does this line of reasoning hold water?
(1) Mountain Stance is quite powerful and the ground restriction is meant to rein it in to a meaningful extent.
(2) If jumping ends the stance, then the ground restriction is meaningfully restrictive, i.e. does its job.
(3) If jumping doesn't end the stance, then the ground restriction really doesn't do much, i.e. doesn't do its job.
(4) The devs who wrote it are good at their jobs, so we ought to assume what they wrote does its job unless we have reason to believe otherwise.
(5) It follows that jumping ends the stance.I am not personally thrilled with the conclusion, but if (1) is true I tend to believe the rest. Before this thread I had not realized Mountain Stance might be considered significantly more powerful than other stances.
My bad for not noting which points were premises (1-4) and which conclusion (just 5). That is, (3) isn't supposed to follow from the prior points, it's supposed to strike you as true on its own. I probably should have labeled it a "syllogism" rather than a "line of reasoning."
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My bad for not noting which points were premises (1-4) and which conclusion (just 5). That is, (3) isn't supposed to follow from the prior points, it's supposed to strike you as true on its own. I probably should have labeled it a "syllogism" rather than a "line of reasoning."I don't think Point #3 follows logically from the other points at all. The Stance indisputably doesn't work while swimming, climbing most things, or flying even...Does this line of reasoning hold water?
(1) Mountain Stance is quite powerful and the ground restriction is meant to rein it in to a meaningful extent.
(2) If jumping ends the stance, then the ground restriction is meaningfully restrictive, i.e. does its job.
(3) If jumping doesn't end the stance, then the ground restriction really doesn't do much, i.e. doesn't do its job.
(4) The devs who wrote it are good at their jobs, so we ought to assume what they wrote does its job unless we have reason to believe otherwise.
(5) It follows that jumping ends the stance.I am not personally thrilled with the conclusion, but if (1) is true I tend to believe the rest. Before this thread I had not realized Mountain Stance might be considered significantly more powerful than other stances.
Just going to say that point 3 doesn't strike me as true on its own, since Mountain Stance is still unusable if you are swimming, climbing, or flying. Flying especially is a pretty hard restriction at higher levels.
So allowing the stance to function mid-jump strikes me as being less restrictive, but the restrictions are still doing their job of making a Mountain Stance Monk less mobile than a Dexterity Monk, and thus still "doing its job," as it were.
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My bad for not noting which points were premises (1-4) and which conclusion (just 5). That is, (3) isn't supposed to follow from the prior points, it's supposed to strike you as true on its own. I probably should have labeled it a "syllogism" rather than a "line of reasoning."
Okay, but as Ventnor says, I'm not at all convinced of #3 as a point on its own either, and I don't feel that your conclusion is supported by points #1, #2, and #4 without the support of #3.
As I said before, not being able to use the stance while climbing, swimming, or particularly flying is a big restriction all on its own regardless of whether you can jump while using it, and that being the case, the writers competence does not necessitate a jumping restriction in any way.
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As a DM. I look at the rules.
Rules for mountain Stance is touching ground.
Jumping is an action you can take that leaves the ground.
Jumping drops mountain Stance.
The only debate against this from my perspective is just you not liking it.
Which is fine, home brew away.
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I am personally extremely permissive with Mountain Stance, in that I only check for "are you touching the ground" at the start of your turn. So using Wind Jump to literally fly, is fine provided that you land by the end of your turn.
The point is, I believe, that you are standing on the ground so that antagonists can just walk up to you and attack you. So as long as you remain grounded so that ground-based things can attack you, I would consider the requirement satisfied. Things don't usually attack you during your turn.
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Yeah people can run it for they want, though personally I disagree on that ruling from the perspective of RAW as well as rai
Running Mountain Stance as intended heavily restricts the type of encounters that a Mountain Monk can participate in at all; you're not just bad at hitting airborne enemies, you're physically incapable of it outside of out-of-class cantrips. Can't switch to a bow or a ranged stance without eating a -4 to AC, which will certainly kill you.
Running Mountain Stance as intended heavily restricts the type of encounters that a Mountain Monk can participate in at all; you're not just bad at hitting airborne enemies, you're physically incapable of it outside of out-of-class cantrips. Can't switch to a bow or a ranged stance without eating a -4 to AC, which will certainly kill you.
This subforum is rules. Not home brew. So I assumed the goal was to establish the rules. Not discussing how they shouldn't be followed.
But I'd suggest throwing weapons and readying grapples or just taking the extra action cost into account.
Throwing weapons are also strikes that are illegal whilst using Mountain Stance.
I agree completely with you on the RAW and the RAI, though if we're discussing rules it may also be useful to discuss how the rules are so limiting as to make this feat a trap option that ruins your character once flight becomes an expected ability.
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Throwing weapons are also strikes that are illegal whilst using Mountain Stance.
I agree completely with you on the RAW and the RAI, though if we're discussing rules it may also be useful to discuss how the rules are so limiting as to make this feat a trap option that ruins your character once flight becomes an expected ability.
I don't think it ruins it, or is at the very least dependant on the game you are running.
But this is also why I wish master of many styles feat was available earlier as well.
But yeah, a lot of things in 2e don't scale will into higher levels for some reason. The more system mastery you gain, the not you notice it. It's most prevalent within non standard character builds. They often are completely unable to be maintained into the teens. So if your character concept was heavily tied to such a thing, it feels really bad watching that investment dissolve in use ability and instead you end up just playing the class in a standard way but with more limitations since you invested into said concept.
Best example being warpriest but it applies to a lot of things.
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This subforum is rules. Not home brew. So I assumed the goal was to establish the rules. Not discussing how they shouldn't be followed.
Actually, as indicated by the title, the goal of this Rules Discussion thread is to establish why Mountain Stance has this rule. Of course, determining that tends to involve things like determining what effect it has, so most of this has been on-topic.
This subforum is rules. Not home brew. So I assumed the goal was to establish the rules. Not discussing how they shouldn't be followed.Actually, as indicated by the title, the goal of this Rules Discussion thread is to establish why Mountain Stance has this rule. Of course, determining that tends to involve things like determining what effect it has, so most of this has been on-topic.
It's already been discussed to the point where the answers won't change beyond dev feedback in here. So I'm not sure how discounting the rules is on topic with a question of how and why the rules work as they do.
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It's already been discussed to the point where the answers won't change beyond dev feedback in here.This subforum is rules. Not home brew. So I assumed the goal was to establish the rules. Not discussing how they shouldn't be followed.Actually, as indicated by the title, the goal of this Rules Discussion thread is to establish why Mountain Stance has this rule. Of course, determining that tends to involve things like determining what effect it has, so most of this has been on-topic.
If you believe that, I don't really see why you stay in the thread. But in any case, I still have hope.
If you believe that, I don't really see why you stay in the thread. But in any case, I still have hope.It's already been discussed to the point where the answers won't change beyond dev feedback in here.This subforum is rules. Not home brew. So I assumed the goal was to establish the rules. Not discussing how they shouldn't be followed.Actually, as indicated by the title, the goal of this Rules Discussion thread is to establish why Mountain Stance has this rule. Of course, determining that tends to involve things like determining what effect it has, so most of this has been on-topic.
Hope for?
A different opinion? I think the spectrum as been shared.
DM feedback? I'm always hopeful.
To those who tried that specific monk build.
Did you find yourself, during combat encounters, dealing with situations which involve jumping/leaping or similar stuff which requires you to lose the "stay on the ground" Requirements?
I found myself the only one who make use of jump/leap during encounters, and I am a liberator with the acrobat+ staff acrobat dedication.
Some sort of Daredevil ( human tiefling heritage too) which leaps and jumps instead of stride.
So it's just some flavour stuff ( I move less than I could, most of the times).
I built a lizardfolk mountain style monk. I took wall run/water walk and specialized in climbing and Athletics. Also took the ancestry feat to let me climb with my feet.
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To those who tried that specific monk build.
Did you find yourself, during combat encounters, dealing with situations which involve jumping/leaping or similar stuff which requires you to lose the "stay on the ground" Requirements?
I think my most important uses of leaping have been out of combat - jump over a gorge to fix a bridge, jump from floating platform to floating platform to impress people, etc. I have leaped over difficult terrain a couple of times in combat, but that's been less critical to the success of the adventure. However, I'm still only 5th level and haven't picked up feats such as Dancing Leaf and Flying Kick.
While I felt comfortable with my reading of the relevant rules, I am putting together an email to send to folks who GM PF2e games that I play in. We'll see what they have to say. If they disagree with my interpretation, I think I'll survive emotionally as there are a lot of interesting alternative monk features, feats, etc. If only I hadn't spent all those PFS2e achievement points to get an orc PC.
Hope for?If you believe that, I don't really see why you stay in the thread. But in any case, I still have hope.It's already been discussed to the point where the answers won't change beyond dev feedback in here.This subforum is rules. Not home brew. So I assumed the goal was to establish the rules. Not discussing how they shouldn't be followed.Actually, as indicated by the title, the goal of this Rules Discussion thread is to establish why Mountain Stance has this rule. Of course, determining that tends to involve things like determining what effect it has, so most of this has been on-topic.
Something resembling consensus.