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If you plan to use FOB at 10th level, you probably would pick up a stance before then. Stumbling and gorilla are the choice ones because of the absence of unarmored as a requirement.Most classes don't actively synergize with flurry of blows unless you pick up Monk Weapons. Namely because weapons are not unarmed strikes. That is a distinction that is important to remember.I think that at levels 10+ monks start to lose their lustre. Lots of other classes can poach flurry of blows and often use it better than the monk. And others can generally be fast enough with long strider and boots of bounding. At that point their defences are one of their best features (the AC issue doesn't kick in until level 17).
But prior to level 10 flurry is the best action economy boost in the game. They're mobile. They're tanky (especially when using a shield). They're fun to play.
Judging a class only on how they perform at high levels just seems wrong to me.
Amongst other choices, Flurry goes REALLY well with a wild shaping character, an animal barbarian or a rogue. Of those, only the rogue gains from a stance (getting a D8 agile finesse backstabbing attack is well worth the action and the feat IMO, especially when the base d6 fist is still fairly decent if you haven't the actions to get into stance in round 1). The others (assuming human or adopted by humans) can just dip in at level 9 with an ancestry feat and then only spend their level 10 class feat.
But yeah, if you want to do something like sword and board you'll need monastic weaponry. Or a stance for fist and shield.
But I always like when I remember the animal barbarian flurrying with d12s. One of my favorite "busted" builds.
How is it busted? The Multiple Attack Penalty still applies. So you are looking at having one extra action a 1d12 attack at -10 (or a 1d8 agile attack at -8 and reduced rage damage).
The big win is the effectively extra action you get. But thats something you can get via an independant mount or a haste spell, or another reaction...
I mean to say I agree it is really good, but busted its not.
If you want the best out of one of the best flourishes in the game, FOB, animal barbarian does it best. Action economy is great. Haste or mounts need extra effort, plus you could have both. Not busted but performs better in a vacuum than weapon based barbarians. That's the purpose of the quotes.But I always like when I remember the animal barbarian flurrying with d12s. One of my favorite "busted" builds.How is it busted? The Multiple Attack Penalty still applies. So you are looking at having one extra action a 1d12 attack at -10 (or a 1d8 agile attack at -8 and reduced rage damage).
The big win is the effectively extra action you get. But thats something you can get via an independant mount or a haste spell, or another reaction...
I mean to say I agree it is really good, but busted its not.
If you really want the best at FoB, you need to look at the Fighter Mutagenist. But we are speaking of a level 16 build, now.
Animal barbarian are already pretty damn effective though. Predators pounce +mighty rage is brutal, In 1 action you can rage+stride+attack.
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I ran a monk from level 1 to level 11 in Age of Ashes, a notoriously hard AP with a GM that doesn't roleplay the monsters, just uses them as unthinking killing machines and with a house rule of "villain points" (monsters get Hero Points if the party rolls a 1, which we did. A lot. Once or twice the GM hit the cap on Villain Points). I probably managed to carry at least one or two fights with my Tiger Monk and we survived some beyond extreme encounters when our GM threw several encounters at us at the same time (a few times with just 1 round between of respite).
The highlight of my character was being the last party member standing after a whooping 14 enemies meat grinder (two or three encounters at the same time, I'm not exactly sure). On the tail end of the fight my monk was the only one up with 70 HP (roughly 40%hp) against 4 enemies. Three Party Level-2 enemies at full health and a hurt Party Level -1 enemy that had a mini-boss template (One-Eyed Armin from Age of Ashes), basically a fighter with Flurry of Blows (with a two handed d12 weapon and a kick) with Barbarian damage. I beat all of them down by outmaneuvering (Winding Flow) and stunning them (Stunning Fists).
I ended the fight with 19HP and managed to save my teammates, we probably would have lost if one of our players hadn't retired their Alchemist and rolled up a Redeemer Champion.
Across all those levels, I felt that my character was mechanically satisfying to play and the options presented to me were interesting, specially after I've got to try them in play (Winding Flow was a pleasant surprise).
Monks are definitely among the best classes to build in PF2e, they have a solid chassis, which allows you to feel satisfied with whatever build route you want to go, full of flavorful feats and even cooler Focus Spells if that's what you're looking for.
@lightning raven
I think I'd be curious to see how a post 5 monk performs, so far from what I've seen of 1-5 monks across 3 different builds they drastically underperform other martials.
Perhaps as you get more stats and upper feats that will be corrected ?
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I don't know what you mean by "underperform". If you pick a Monk, it will perform the tasks you want out of it satisfactorily at your table. Wanna focus on maneuvers? You have flexibility and defenses to do that. Want to deal a lot of damage? You can also do that by picking one of the high damage stances and using Ki Strike to add 2d6 to your d8/d10 damage.
Not only that, but Monk are kings of the action economy. You have free hands to grab items as you desire, if you get downed you don't need to spend actions retrieving your weapons (your base 1d6 stance is quite fine in a pinch and it can be an upgrade if your main stance is a d4 damage like Crane). Your mobility also makes so that tough situations are barely inconveniences to you, such was when I crit failed a Phantasmal Killer but survived the death effect and ended up using three actions to run away... I got back with one action to spare and kill two mooks with a flurry of blows.
If a class manages to satisfy several concepts, offers different flavors with meaningful mechanic differences, has interesting feats on paper and in practice and doesn't have any major issues with its chassis (like Alchemists, Warpriests and Witches, for example), then I consider it a good class. It doesn't need out-damage a Barbarian, hit more frequently a Fighter or have more skills than a rogue. It needs successfully perform the role the player wants it to perform. Which the Monk does. Quite well.
Otherwise, the game would just need to have four classes. Fighter, Rogue, Bard and Cleric. Best DPR, best skills (because of its broke ass chassis on top of good combat prowess), best class in the game and best healer, respectively. Since we're assume that if the class is not being the Top 1 at its one thing, then it doesn't cut it.
Pathfinder doesn't have broken classes, you can pick anything and it will do fine. The only problem classes are those that can't satisfy multiple concepts and offer several interesting mechanical choices like the others.
OP, you seem like someone for whom optimization is the end-all, be-all - and that's okay! The Monk is a fun class that can be on par at level and has some fun tricks, but I don't believe it's at the cutting edge of mechanical perfection. People come to the class because they want the fantasy of being a martial artist who can do cool stunts, not because of its abstract DPR.
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OP, you seem like someone for whom optimization is the end-all, be-all - and that's okay! The Monk is a fun class that can be on par at level and has some fun tricks, but I don't believe it's at the cutting edge of mechanical perfection. People come to the class because they want the fantasy of being a martial artist who can do cool stunts, not because of its abstract DPR.
Like I mentioned before, it's not that it's the end all be all, it's that I need to find that I'm contributing in a valid manner to combat and exploration.
So if we compare the 3 monks I have seems played to their party:
Party 1: (plaguestone)(got to level 5)
Monk (elf, wolf style)
Dragon Barbarian
Fencer Swashy
Thief rogue
Bomber alchemist
Cloistered cleric (me)
Party 2: (Japanese themed campaign)(got to level 3)
Monk (human, tiger style)
Gravity weapon precision ranger
Angel summoner
Curse witch (me)
Party 3: (dark sun's themed campaign)(got to level 3)
Monk (Leshy mushroom, ki strike)
Dragon Barbarian
Mastermind rogue
Cloistered cleric
Evoker wizard (me)
In all of those parties, the monk got either MASSIVELY outdamaged by the barbarian (1d8+2 or 1d6+2 vs 1d12+8, even with ki strike it went to 2d6+2, which is still lower than 1d12+8 and only for a round) or the ranger (1d10+1d8+6 on first strike) or outskilled by the rogue, and as for maneuvers the ranger or barbarian, who both favored two hand trait weapons (bastard sword and katana) were better at athletics check skills than the monk.
For other skills the rogue did better on dex skills and the cleric did better on wisdom skills. The summoner also outperformed on all these aspects, on top of having spells. The swashy had higher AC with twin parry/buckler dancel/the third one too, since the players didn't like the idea of a Monk with a shield (and had the shield cantrip), and finisher moves once again outperformed on damage, and acrobatics/deception was rolled better by swashy who doubled as a face too.
If you've noticed, I played casters in all 3 games. When I was preparing my spells, I never kept the monk in mind because of those reasons. I could prepare magic weapon, but that wouldn't affect the rogue so when I bugged someone it was the Barb or Ranger because they could actually benefit from it ! And then it was 2d12 +8 vs the monks 1d8+2.
If I had to pick a target to frighten, trip or render clumsy with spells, I would always prioritise targets currently engaged with the ranger or barb or summoner because those were the targets that gave me actual return for my spell investment. A target made prone with grease or frightened with evil eye would actually stay down after it was hit by one of those martials. It wouldn't when targeted by the monk.
All the monks in those games did have their time to shine and fun rounds, but it was more often due to lucky dice rolls rather than their kit.
So to summarize the point here, it's not really about optimisation, it's about finding it sad to play something that underperforms because you feel like you're bringing less value to the party. And the party's support characters, in exchange, provide less value to you with their limited ressources.
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Now I want to recount two situations where I could have maybe had a Monk but they were ignored in favor of another class. This is from a GM's perspective with players who are not mechanically inclined so I help them build their characters.
Case 1:
Player wanted to play a fancy fast kitsune dhampir character that fought with a war fan and had a chaotic evil airhead style to her. Initial concept was monk, which was suggested to her by her boyfriend, who on top of that said I wouldn't suggest it because I had a hate boner against monks (to be fair he ain't wrong) so I was motivated to prove him wrong!
Me and the player looked at everything and she was extra non plusses that in order to hit for 1d4+2 with her war fan she'd have to spend her only level 1 feat to even wield it. Then she could flurry of blows with foxfire but that was just 1d4 damage so she didn't like that. And the fact that kitsune auto boost charisma meant that this was a stat that did not synergyse with her build at all and she likes charisma characters.
We then instead took a small peak at the battledancer swashbuckler, who had tumble through and fascinating dance as ways to generate self buff in the form of panacea, and on top of that could blow thatpanache for an extra 2d6 damage on top of the base damage with war fan, and we're about as fast, and the player ended up going for battledancer instead.
Case 2:
New player, first time playing ttrpg, first time playing pf2e. This was my girlfriend's group of friend, she had player but all of her friends had never played so we told them to pick fun anime/cartoon inspirations for their characters. This player had picked sonic the hedgehog.
The core concepts were : being fast, being spiky, being sassy, be hard hitting in relation to speed.
Ancestry wise half elf was chosen because of fleet+nimble elf combo at 1 and no cons penalty (vs elf). Gnome was considered but discarded because of lack of fast options.
Then for class monk had the speed advantage because of ki rush, but the hedgehog animal instinct barbarian (reflavored from bear) had sudden charge at 1 and had a bigger speed boat until the mid tier levels vs the monk because of the +10 status bonus that you can snag at level 4. The player weighted all options and went with the ragey, spikey, chargey bro barbarian build, and eventually even got ki rush through multitalented and class feats.
So in both cases options were presented on a non optimised concept based approach, but when looking at how well the mechanics of the class fit their concept, the players chose to go with something else.
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Now I want to recount two situations where I could have maybe had a Monk but they were ignored in favor of another class. This is from a GM's perspective with players who are not mechanically inclined so I help them build their characters.
Case 1:
Player wanted to play a fancy fast kitsune dhampir character that fought with a war fan and had a chaotic evil airhead style to her. Initial concept was monk, which was suggested to her by her boyfriend, who on top of that said I wouldn't suggest it because I had a hate boner against monks (to be fair he ain't wrong) so I was motivated to prove him wrong!Me and the player looked at everything and she was extra non plusses that in order to hit for 1d4+2 with her war fan she'd have to spend her only level 1 feat to even wield it. Then she could flurry of blows with foxfire but that was just 1d4 damage so she didn't like that. And the fact that kitsune auto boost charisma meant that this was a stat that did not synergyse with her build at all and she likes charisma characters.
We then instead took a small peak at the battledancer swashbuckler, who had tumble through and fascinating dance as ways to generate self buff in the form of panacea, and on top of that could blow thatpanache for an extra 2d6 damage on top of the base damage with war fan, and we're about as fast, and the player ended up going for battledancer instead.
Case 2:
New player, first time playing ttrpg, first time playing pf2e. This was my girlfriend's group of friend, she had player but all of her friends had never played so we told them to pick fun anime/cartoon inspirations for their characters. This player had picked sonic the hedgehog.The core concepts were : being fast, being spiky, being sassy, be hard hitting in relation to speed.
Ancestry wise half elf was chosen because of fleet+nimble elf combo at 1 and no cons penalty (vs elf). Gnome was considered but discarded because of lack of fast options.
Then for class monk had the speed advantage because of ki rush,...
Then those people weren't looking to play a monk ......idk what to tell you. The monk is perfectly fine if you're looking to play a martial martial artist. Did case 1 imagine their character as a sassy person of daring do? Did case 2 imagine their character as a raging beast mode person? If they didn't, monk would have served them better in the long run.
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They didn't, because they don't imagine characters along dnd class lines, they imagined their characters as characters with traits and then found a mechanical adaptation that was as close to their imaginative framework as they could.
As mentioned above: case 1 wanted to play a swift and dextrous kitsune fighter with a fan. Case 2 wanted to play a sonic the hedgehog like character without weapons. Swashbuckler fit the bill more in case 1 and in case 2 barbarian did more.
If the only niche a Monk can fill is martial martial artist then it is a very limited niche, as I can find at least 5-6 niches per class outside of it.
Part of that is the fact that these classes have flavour in built through their sub-class system (instinct, edge etc. Etc.)
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Thinking back to something Alastar said... Mobility only matters in 30-40% of fights. But that 30-40% are the ones people remember. An example: 10th level monk in my game was fighting wvyern riders. He ran up a building and wall jumped off of it to reaach an injured wvyern and hit it with a flurry in one turn, slaying it and dropping the rider out of the sky for his allies to stomp on. The other riders took heed of this and gained altitude to 75 feet and started raining arrows.
The next round, the monk combined 2 ki powers to leap 65 feet straight up, landing on a wvyern and flurrying the rider. Another rider flew over to try nd help fight this crazy monk.
The next round, the monk flurries the hurt rider, killing him with a flaming headbutt. Then he reaches over and grapples the other rider, and uses his Whirling Throw feat to toss him off the wvyern and at a huge sized enemy on the ground. At this point, the wyverns don't have their riders, so they just try and buck him off. One succeeded in doing so... but the monk used a grab edge reaction to snag onto the other wvyern. That is where we paused for the night.
The next night, the monk messed up the dragon's wing and surfed it out of the sky and into the battle. (Fun fact: trip works on flying enemies.)
Now admittedly, this did involve some house rules on my part. The rules being silent on the topic of monster riding and climbing is an issue, for example. But everyone at the table is going to remember the monk as the star of that particular show, despite the fighter putting up bigger damage numbers on the ground.
Thinking back to something Alastar said... Mobility only matters in 30-40% of fights. But that 30-40% are the ones people remember. An example: 10th level monk in my game was fighting wvyern riders. He ran up a building and wall jumped off of it to reaach an injured wvyern and hit it with a flurry in one turn, slaying it and dropping the rider out of the sky for his allies to stomp on. The other riders took heed of this and gained altitude to 75 feet and started raining arrows.
The next round, the monk combined 2 ki powers to leap 65 feet straight up, landing on a wvyern and flurrying the rider. Another rider flew over to try nd help fight this crazy monk.
The next round, the monk flurries the hurt rider, killing him with a flaming headbutt. Then he reaches over and grapples the other rider, and uses his Whirling Throw feat to toss him off the wvyern and at a huge sized enemy on the ground. At this point, the wyverns don't have their riders, so they just try and buck him off. One succeeded in doing so... but the monk used a grab edge reaction to snag onto the other wvyern. That is where we paused for the night.
The next night, the monk messed up the dragon's wing and surfed it out of the sky and into the battle. (Fun fact: trip works on flying enemies.)
Now admittedly, this did involve some house rules on my part. The rules being silent on the topic of monster riding and climbing is an issue, for example. But everyone at the table is going to remember the monk as the star of that particular show, despite the fighter putting up bigger damage numbers on the ground.
That does sound epic !
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If you've noticed, I played casters in all 3 games. When I was preparing my spells, I never kept the monk in mind because of those reasons.
Which is an asset of the Monk: Self sufficiency.
I also think the Monk is not a good fit in every party (like every class actually).The strength of the Monk is a combination of mobility, defense, action economy and free hands. These are all assets, but they are situational.
The question is: Will the situation arise? And that's is highly GM dependent.
For example, my intelligent monsters always run away to grab reinforcements when they realize they are getting pounded. I TPKed a party because of that: having the enemies moving at 30ft. and no PC able to go faster proved itself deadly. Had they had a Monk to move fast and block the door, maybe it would have been different (and maybe not). At least, they would have had a chance to save the situation.
Also, you speak about Swashbuckler. Man, low level Swashbuckler is hard to play. I GMed 2 of them through Abomination Vaults, and it took a lot of time for them to start shining. At low level, they do very low damage and even if they can be quite good defensively speaking so is the Monk. I prefer to play a Monk over a Swashbuckler ten times at low level.
I won't say that the Monk is the best class out there. In my opinion, it's a complicated class to play: the asset of their free hands is calling for non-classical styles of play and action economy is an asset only if you can use it. But I'm pretty sure I can play a Monk, even a very classical one, who doesn't feel bad next to Barbarians, Fighters and such. But definitely not in terms of damage output solely, on that we agree.
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That does sound epic !Thinking back to something Alastar said... Mobility only matters in 30-40% of fights. But that 30-40% are the ones people remember. An example: 10th level monk in my game was fighting wvyern riders. He ran up a building and wall jumped off of it to reaach an injured wvyern and hit it with a flurry in one turn, slaying it and dropping the rider out of the sky for his allies to stomp on. The other riders took heed of this and gained altitude to 75 feet and started raining arrows.
The next round, the monk combined 2 ki powers to leap 65 feet straight up, landing on a wvyern and flurrying the rider. Another rider flew over to try nd help fight this crazy monk.
The next round, the monk flurries the hurt rider, killing him with a flaming headbutt. Then he reaches over and grapples the other rider, and uses his Whirling Throw feat to toss him off the wvyern and at a huge sized enemy on the ground. At this point, the wyverns don't have their riders, so they just try and buck him off. One succeeded in doing so... but the monk used a grab edge reaction to snag onto the other wvyern. That is where we paused for the night.
The next night, the monk messed up the dragon's wing and surfed it out of the sky and into the battle. (Fun fact: trip works on flying enemies.)
Now admittedly, this did involve some house rules on my part. The rules being silent on the topic of monster riding and climbing is an issue, for example. But everyone at the table is going to remember the monk as the star of that particular show, despite the fighter putting up bigger damage numbers on the ground.
I've had games where my monk really shined in similar scenarios. And I've had games where my monk was terribly crippled due to GM restrictions and strict rules reading.
Be sure to check with your GM on just how strictly they read the rules. For example: Whether or not they are okay with treating another creature as "an edge."
Also, talk to your fellow players and develop strategies and set expectations in advance. I lost a monk not because I ran too far ahead (30 to 60 feet), but because my supposed allies weren't willing to spend any actions to support me. (They literally took a 10 minute rest to heal themselves while a spider swarm munched on my unconscious monk.)
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That does sound epic !Thinking back to something Alastar said... Mobility only matters in 30-40% of fights. But that 30-40% are the ones people remember. An example: 10th level monk in my game was fighting wvyern riders. He ran up a building and wall jumped off of it to reaach an injured wvyern and hit it with a flurry in one turn, slaying it and dropping the rider out of the sky for his allies to stomp on. The other riders took heed of this and gained altitude to 75 feet and started raining arrows.
The next round, the monk combined 2 ki powers to leap 65 feet straight up, landing on a wvyern and flurrying the rider. Another rider flew over to try nd help fight this crazy monk.
The next round, the monk flurries the hurt rider, killing him with a flaming headbutt. Then he reaches over and grapples the other rider, and uses his Whirling Throw feat to toss him off the wvyern and at a huge sized enemy on the ground. At this point, the wyverns don't have their riders, so they just try and buck him off. One succeeded in doing so... but the monk used a grab edge reaction to snag onto the other wvyern. That is where we paused for the night.
The next night, the monk messed up the dragon's wing and surfed it out of the sky and into the battle. (Fun fact: trip works on flying enemies.)
Now admittedly, this did involve some house rules on my part. The rules being silent on the topic of monster riding and climbing is an issue, for example. But everyone at the table is going to remember the monk as the star of that particular show, despite the fighter putting up bigger damage numbers on the ground.
I've had games where my monk really shined in similar scenarios. And I've had games where my monk was terribly crippled due to GM restrictions and strict rules reading.
Be sure to check with your GM on just how strictly they read the rules. For example: Whether or not they are okay with treating another creature as "an edge."
Also, talk to your...
Yeah, a permissive GM is important if you want to play monks, swashbucklers, or other cinematic characters.
I think one thing that has gone unsaid is the reliability of the monk. A precision immune enemy destroys a rogue or Swashbuckler damage. Calm emotions, enemies using hit and run or being knocked unconscious stops a barbarian raging. Damage resistance hurts a fighter more than a monk (monk can access different damage types through feats but all of them will be buffed by one set of runes.)
A monks optimal might not be as high as some other classes but it is also very hard for them to operate at anything less.
That's actually a good point !
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(They literally took a 10 minute rest to heal themselves while a spider swarm munched on my unconscious monk.)
From this and other posts you've made, you've REALLY got to find a better group. Come online if necessary. You seem to be playing with a bunch of complete asshats and I think it is definitely skewing your opinions.
(They literally took a 10 minute rest to heal themselves while a spider swarm munched on my unconscious monk.)From this and other posts you've made, you've REALLY got to find a better group. Come online if necessary. You seem to be playing with a bunch of complete asshats and I think it is definitely skewing your opinions.
The rational used was "The bad guy (presumably a boss) dragged you into a cave. We don't know what's in the cave except for one or more bad guys and you (and you're not going to be of any help). We're not going in there unprepared. A TPK won't help anybody."
More or less.
That's actually a good point !I think one thing that has gone unsaid is the reliability of the monk. A precision immune enemy destroys a rogue or Swashbuckler damage. Calm emotions, enemies using hit and run or being knocked unconscious stops a barbarian raging. Damage resistance hurts a fighter more than a monk (monk can access different damage types through feats but all of them will be buffed by one set of runes.)
A monks optimal might not be as high as some other classes but it is also very hard for them to operate at anything less.
Flurry also helps with that consistency since a monk can almost always get two attacks into a round where other martials find themselves running out of actions. For example, the barbarian hits harder but even with Sudden Charge they only get 1 attack on the round they raged if they had to move or draw a weapon. (Though Pounce obviously changes that eventually.) Same with a precision ranger. Hitting harder only helps if you actually land the hit.
That said, monks do get some major spikes once metal strikes comes into play.
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(They literally took a 10 minute rest to heal themselves while a spider swarm munched on my unconscious monk.)From this and other posts you've made, you've REALLY got to find a better group. Come online if necessary. You seem to be playing with a bunch of complete asshats and I think it is definitely skewing your opinions.The rational used was "The bad guy (presumably a boss) dragged you into a cave. We don't know what's in the cave except for one or more bad guys and you (and you're not going to be of any help). We're not going in there unprepared. A TPK won't help anybody."
More or less.
Well, in that case, all that I can say is
You seem to be playing with a bunch of complete asshatsThat is a pretty feeble excuse :-(
And also at least a slight shift to neutral if their characters were good. Or even to evil if neutral. Though I suspect these players won't care.The rational used was "The bad guy (presumably a boss) dragged you into a cave. We don't know what's in the cave except for one or more bad guys and you (and you're not going to be of any help). We're not going in there unprepared. A TPK won't help anybody."
More or less.
<...>
That is a pretty feeble excuse :-(
Doubt it. When I exclaimed "You're going to wait 10 minutes before coming after me!?" The GM essentially told me to stop whining and get on with the game.
Except there was no game for me to get on with, because my monk got too far ahead and died. >8C
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And also at least a slight shift to neutral if their characters were good. Or even to evil if neutral. Though I suspect these players won't care.The rational used was "The bad guy (presumably a boss) dragged you into a cave. We don't know what's in the cave except for one or more bad guys and you (and you're not going to be of any help). We're not going in there unprepared. A TPK won't help anybody."
More or less.
<...>
That is a pretty feeble excuse :-(
Doubt it. When I exclaimed "You're going to wait 10 minutes before coming after me!?" The GM essentially told me to stop whining and get on with the game.
Except there was no game for me to get on with, because my monk got too far ahead and died. >8C
Well at least the rest of your evening was free. That's when you bounce and start working on your next character.
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Yeah Imma have to agree that that is not a good group and you should gtfo !
Ideally, I'd like to see the Monk split into at least two classes (Martial Artist and Wuxia Weapons Master) with room for a 3rd (Wise Mystic) just to help clarify and tighten up the class a little bit. Even with that minor gripe in mind, I think the PF2 Monk is the best D&D adjacent Monk we've had yet. They're still a bit MAD but most PF2 classes are and their lack of focus doesn't hurt as much in a system where one builds wide more often than they build tall. The Monk is one of the bigger PF2 glow-ups coming in only behind the Fighter.
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Ravingdork, I'd be curious to hear the rest of that story. Based on your party taking a rest it seems like the party was already a bit banged up and your character being ahead caused a fight before the group was ready to go again. In that case, I'm with the party on not rushing in after you.
If they were all 100% healthy and good to go then there's not much excuse for not saving you, though OOC if they'd been asking you not to rush ahead and you kept doing it I can understand the motivations.
If I'm off-base and they were just being dicks, then I agree with everybody above in that you should find a new group. Heck, even if there were other circumstances you and the rest of the party clearly have different views on how to play so you might want to find a new group anyway.
The monk seems like a class that's really defined by how dynamic of a battlefield your GMs create.
It has a lot of abilities, both innate and from feats, that could be game changers in the way they let the monk interact with the world around them... or might not matter at all.
They also suffer a lot, albeit not as badly as in PF1, from being kind of MAD.
Which is doubly a shame because Cha and Int are both the easiest stats to ignore as a Monk and arguably some of the best at fueling extra actions on a class with phenomenal action economy.
That's not to say the class is bad per se, but I think it's understandable why it feels awkward for some of the people here, because it doesn't slot in as neatly as a Barbarian or Fighter. My monk may be able to slide down a cliff without taking fall damage and then sprint across a river and still get off two attacks in a round... but most published adventures will give you few, if any, chances to do anything like that.
I think the PF2 Monk is the best D&D adjacent Monk we've had yet.
PF2 monk is pretty good, but I think 4e's Monk did a better job carving out its own identity and PF1's uMonk was pretty fantastic too.
I find myself missing style strikes quite a bit and Ki-as-focus-spells feels kind of frustratingly limiting to me compared to how Ki works in PF1 or even 5e (though 5e's monk has some serious problems of its own).
This is essentially what happened to my monk.
The monk seems like a class that's really defined by how dynamic of a battlefield your GMs create.
Indeed. When the party encountered an enemy blocking their path high on the castle walls with the macguffin, I tried to get the jump on him by climbing along the outside of the crenallations. The GM set the DC so high though, that there was a 75% failure rate per check, and I needed several to get the distance necessary to climb up behind the target.
Made playing a monk decidedly uncinematic.
This is essentially what happened to my monk.
** spoiler omitted **
The monk seems like a class that's really defined by how dynamic of a battlefield your GMs create.Indeed. When the party encountered an enemy blocking their path high on the castle walls with the macguffin, I tried to get the jump on him by climbing along the outside of the crenallations. The GM set the DC so high though, that there was a 75% failure rate per check, and I needed several to get the distance necessary to climb up behind the target.
Made playing a monk decidedly uncinematic.
I just checked, and the DC given for the broken down areas of the outer walls is dc20. I'm not sure how good at climbing your monk was or what level you attempted this at, but I can easily see you having a 60-70% fail rate trying it if your GM lazily reused the DC in a different context.
As for leaving you to die, my party did something similar in AoO. Poor rogue simply couldn't contribute well during harder encounters so if he went down he stayed down and we focused our resources on making sure our win condition (the fighter) never fell instead.
So real fast there those exemples outline my issues with the monk.
Despite being the "mobility" class, your monk was MAD and had something like 14 STR and you probly boosted acrobatics or stealth to expert at 3 (if it's the dmiri fight ) so you only had +7 athletics (+5 if it was the helllnight hill walls).
Meanwhile a level 1 barb/fighter with athletics is 2 points higher than you, making this less of an issue for them. In extinction curse chapter 3 id argue that my dwarven fighter is just as mobile as a Monk (not as fast but I have cleric archetype so I can cast fleet step) and has powerful leap, battle climber and quick leap, meaning those freaking xulgaths barricaded in their towers could do nothing but watch me climb and leap across their defenses before I hammer smashed them.
The fact that a party had to choose to ignore a downed parry member because it happened too often and was a detriment to victory conditions is kind of a telling anecdote isn't it ?
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So real fast there those exemples outline my issues with the monk.
Despite being the "mobility" class, your monk was MAD and had something like 14 STR and you probly boosted acrobatics or stealth to expert at 3 (if it's the dmiri fight ) so you only had +7 athletics (+5 if it was the helllnight hill walls).
Meanwhile a level 1 barb/fighter with athletics is 2 points higher than you, making this less of an issue for them. In extinction curse chapter 3 id argue that my dwarven fighter is just as mobile as a Monk (not as fast but I have cleric archetype so I can cast fleet step) and has powerful leap, battle climber and quick leap, meaning those freaking xulgaths barricaded in their towers could do nothing but watch me climb and leap across their defenses before I hammer smashed them.
The fact that a party had to choose to ignore a downed parry member because it happened too often and was a detriment to victory conditions is kind of a telling anecdote isn't it ?
You mean that your Dwarven Fighter with Powerful Leap, Battle Climber, Quick Leap, Fleet, Indomitable Iron and under the effects of Fleet Step competes with a featless Monk?
I agree, the Monk is soooo bad!!!!What you pay to keep up with the mobility, the Monk can pay it for something else. And if the Monk pay it for mobility, you get things like Wind Jump or Wall Run that are completely out of bounds even compared to spells.
Yah but apparently not at the lower levels, also people keep bringing up those feats but a lot of them conflict with must haves for these levels like stunning fist, brawling focus, stand still and such.
So there IS a choice for these, you lower your other options by taking them.
Much more than my fighter does for splashing some general and skill feats towards mobility.
Also I'm not arguing my fighter is more mobile, I'm arguing that compared to the cost of playing a Monk, he's mobile enough. He's also better at climbing cause of higher athletics.
Also reread wall run and wind jump and fly pretty much covers those two scenarios fairly well.
Are they cool and slightly action efficient? Sure. Are they worth 2 class feats when the party wizard's fourth level spell slot could be used to make you better than those two feats ? (We're talking at levels 11+ here) probly not.
Number of encounters where these will matter are oftentimes limited, and carrying air walk or fly is good enough for these.
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Also reread wall run and wind jump and fly pretty much covers those two scenarios fairly well.
Are they cool and slightly action efficient? Sure. Are they worth 2 class feats when the party wizard's fourth level spell slot could be used to make you better than those two feats ? (We're talking at levels 11+ here) probly not.
Number of encounters where these will matter are oftentimes limited, and carrying air walk or fly is good enough for these.
Or you can be self reliant and not need a caster bc you picked a cool class
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Pf2e is a team effort. And I'm not saying that there's not an advantage to that, I'm saying that the disadvantage of not having it is easily mitigated.
And another part of what you posted is kind of the crux here:
''Because you picked a cool class''
I am NEVER going to say that the monk is not a cool class, it definitely is !
But it's like if I homebrewed a class called ''Explosionist'' that had a theme based around explosions, having laser eyes, being able to put ballons on the field that explode when you touch them, having rocket propelled charge attacks, and other shits like that. And everyone was like : OMG THIS CLASS IS SO COOL IT HAS ALL THE EXPLOSIONS !!
But then you look at it and you realise that in order to make the class remotely competitive with the inventor you had to invest 4 mandatory class feats, and then all your abilities did was give you mobility and the ability to do 1d6 fire damage/2 levels at a lower DC than inventor cause of MAD.
Still a cool class.... playing it kinda makes you feel like you're missing out vs the other options.
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Also reread wall run and wind jump and fly pretty much covers those two scenarios fairly well.
Are they cool and slightly action efficient? Sure. Are they worth 2 class feats when the party wizard's fourth level spell slot could be used to make you better than those two feats ? (We're talking at levels 11+ here) probly not.
Number of encounters where these will matter are oftentimes limited, and carrying air walk or fly is good enough for these.
My level 16 Sorcerer doesn't have Air Walk. At that level, I won't lose a round just to enable the Dwarf Fighter. You carry your potion of Fly, a bow or you encourage me while I kill the bad guys.
Now, the Monk does it in one action without any resource consumption when the Fighter needs one action to take the potion, one action to drink it and one action to take their weapon back. A lost round...And Wall Run is stellar, certainly the best mobility ability in the game. The number of applications are crazy and it's far better than Fly in most indoor circumstances.
Teams usually have 2 casters, and at least one of them has a fly spell for just such scenarios.
At level 16 Winged Runes are also a thing, as are boots of flying and many other ways to fly.
Like I've mentioned several times, there is an advantage to those feats. But compared to the on level options (Level 8 has 3 unique stances that are often recommended like clinging shadows, tangled forest and wild winds Level 10 has Sleeper Hold and Winding flow that have had glowing recommendations) I'm pretty sure I wouldn't take them EVEN if I was a monk. Because the alternative, while not AS effective, is still very valid and will do the trick when you're in the kind of encounter where it matters.
And in the encounters where it doesn't matter well you'll be more effective.
**EDIT**
And before this devolves into another ''well YOU just don't like mobility Alastar, we play a much more sophisticated high mobility game!'' ad hominem attack:
I DO like mobility, I like mobile builds a lot, and all of my maps as a GM include terrain elements, elevations and such. I even started using prefabs with wall heights and mutli level on foundry to make these easy to run and make wall spells even more fun.
But if I were building a monk I'd use skill feats, general feats and ancestry feats for mobility, because the opportunity cost of using class feats is IMO too great.
True but the dragon barb and monk being flying martials has to count for something. Those are spell slots your caster can save for other things. AND YOUR CHARACTER CAN INNATELY FLY......AS A MARTIAL!!!
I just checked, and the DC given for the broken down areas of the outer walls is dc20. I'm not sure how good at climbing your monk was or what level you attempted this at, but I can easily see you having a 60-70% fail rate trying it if your GM lazily reused the DC in a different context.
But that's to climb up the walls, no? I was shimmying along a ledge. I don’t recall the specific values used duringthe encounter, but I remember looking up some basic numbers and thinking to myself that the GM's DC was 5 points too high.
Looking at my character sheet now, I had a +11 or +14 (the difference between level 3 and 4), and I think I must have been competing against a DC of 25.
I had to use three hero points to avoid crit fails and falling (ultimately making no progress). After being goaded to "stop acting like an idiot" I climbed back over the wall and we all made a head long rush at the bad guy.
I just checked, and the DC given for the broken down areas of the outer walls is dc20. I'm not sure how good at climbing your monk was or what level you attempted this at, but I can easily see you having a 60-70% fail rate trying it if your GM lazily reused the DC in a different context.But that's to climb up the walls, no? I was shimmying along a ledge. I don’t recall the specific values used duringthe encounter, but I remember looking up some basic numbers and thinking to myself that the GM's DC was 5 points too high.
Looking at my character sheet now, I had a +11 or +14 (the difference between level 3 and 4), and I think I must have been competing against a DC of 25.
I had to use three hero points to avoid crit fails and falling (ultimately making no progress). After being goaded to "stop acting like an idiot" I climbed back over the wall and we all made a head long rush at the bad guy.
If this is the hobgoblin fight, you'd be either climbing a ladder (very low DC) or a tree (which should be around DC 15).
If this was in hellknight citadel, the DC is 20.
If you were shimmying along the edge in the middle of combat, I do agree you should stop dicking around, climb up on the ledge and rush the boss.
Don't know what you were trying to do though!