|
Its literally staff used by monks that is sometimes used in martial arts especially in wuxia genre :O
Actually, why does monastic weaponry feat not just give monks scaling profiency in martial weapons? Lot of the non monk weapons could be used by variety of different monks and martial artists when you think about it :'D
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
They don't want monks flurrying outside of a subset of weapons. Nothing else to it.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Isn't flurry of blows unarmed exclusive already?
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
Considering the Khakkara's actual real world association with Buddhist monastic traditions, to the point where it repeatedly is used in literature to symbolize "this traveler is a monk", it should really have the monk tag.
If you have to change the rest of the statline to give it the monk ta (like how the weighted scarf dropped a die size and gained finesse, since the weapon was thematically supposed to be used by dextrous, lightly armored peopl), you should.
| 6 people marked this as a favorite. |
Monk weapons continue to be a weird pain point in 2e that feels like a remnant of older editions.
Design Manager
|
| 10 people marked this as a favorite. |
Monk weapons continue to be a weird pain point in 2e that feels like a remnant of older editions.
Monk weapons are in a bit of an awkward space in that their main purpose is to make sure that monks have access to a diverse array of weapons that match a variety of popular themes, but then there's some kind of uncomfortable orientalism that occurs when every Asian-inspired weapon has the monk trait tacked on. It's one of those reasons that I try to watch for opportunities to introduce non-Asian monk weapons that still make sense for the martial artist theme, and to try and introduce one non-monk Asian-inspired weapon for each new Asian-inspired monk weapon that's introduced, but it's just hard to do without introducing things that rub some people the wrong way when the options don't match their image of a monk, or when the option isn't the most optimal one for the monk specifically.
Flurry of Blows bars monks from having full martial proficiency (basically every limitation in a monk feat or ability referencing agile/finesse/monk weapons is there to make sure you never get to break the damage ceiling by flurrying with e.g. a greatsword or similar weapon), and a closed list in the class itself starts sucking basically as soon as you publish the second book in the edition (look at rogue and wizard weapon profs, or the various alchemist abilities we recently did errata for to open them up and give more player agency.)
So the monk trait does serve a very important purpose that goes well beyond just legacy pickups. You could just make it so they can flurry with any agile or finesse weapon, but then you'd lose a whole swath of non-agile/finesse weapons that match the theme and are still appropriate. You could just not do the weapon-wielding monk, but it's a concept that exists in our game world and has been popularly riffed on by franchises like D&D, Final Fantasy, Shadowrun, and literally hundreds more, so if it wasn't there, people would be asking where it went and when they're going to get it.
Personally, if I'm around for the next full edition cycle, I think it'd be worth re-evaluating how the monk trait is deployed and retooling the class to be less "Shaolin, specifically", and more "martial artist, generally", so that you can bring in a wider array of martial arts weapons that include things like hatchets, shields, maybe even certain pistols. But that would require a much more significant rework than is likely immediately apparent.
For the khakkara specifically, since it was put in the same book as the oracle and presented as the iconic oracle's primary weapon, I'd bet that what happened was that the weapon was designed to be more appropriate for a traveling priest than a martial artist, more of a straightforward beatstick. The version you'd want for using it like it's used in Shaolin styles would probably be a lot more like the whipstaff, with a smaller damage die but the ability to parry and make sweeping attacks.
| 6 people marked this as a favorite. |
... I think there also might be too much concern over managing Flurry of Blows in general.
Monks in class have d8 agile weapons and d10 free hand not-weapons, literally better than any published weapon in the game. The stances that give those attacks have other benefits too like being able to step farther or ignore difficult terrain.
These aren't esoteric power gaming options either, they're level 1 feats.
Given that those things exist, idk it feels kind of weird to have this carefully constructed and highly restrictive system put in place to make sure monks don't use longswords.
Even a greatsword only breaks the damage ceiling by a hair. The damage gap between d10 backswing and d12 is extremely marginal, especially considering this hypothetical character is going from a zero-hand 'weapon' to a two-hander, with all the downsides that entails. Usually 1h>2h is worth two die sizes, not less than one.
I'm honestly less concerned about "what weapons a monk can flurry with" than "what weapons someone with the monk archetype can flurry with once they gain FoB at 10th level."
So I wonder if something like "greatly increasing the class of monk weapons" could be done with a higher level monk feat, so that it's impossible (or simply painful) to do so on non-monk chassis.
I really enjoyed seeing monk step away from a forced perspective in character creation as all magic in the class became opt-in. I would be equally as happy for it to continue in this direction in future editions maybe even changing names to martial artist/pugilist.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
... I think there also might be too much concern over managing Flurry of Blows in general.
Monks in class have d8 agile weapons and d10 free hand not-weapons, literally better than any published weapon in the game. The stances that give those attacks have other benefits too like being able to step farther or ignore difficult terrain.
These aren't esoteric power gaming options either, they're level 1 feats.
Given that those things exist, idk it feels kind of weird to have this carefully constructed and highly restrictive system put in place to make sure monks don't use longswords.
Even a greatsword only breaks the damage ceiling by a hair. The damage gap between d10 backswing and d12 is extremely marginal, especially considering this hypothetical character is going from a zero-hand 'weapon' to a two-hander, with all the downsides that entails. Usually 1h>2h is worth two die sizes, not less than one.
Flurry doesn't increase damage the way sneak attack or finishers do... it definitely isn't a balance concern, and more or less just comes down to if you never want to see a greatsword monk aesthetically. I don't personally feel that the monk trait adds anything of value to the game, it's the same sort of traditionalist flavor barrier that the rogue weapon proficiencies are.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I'm honestly less concerned about "what weapons a monk can flurry with" than "what weapons someone with the monk archetype can flurry with once they gain FoB at 10th level."
Barbarians can already flurry with a 0-handed d12 reach (non)weapon.
Does any other published weapon or class feature come close to that, even if Monastic Weaponry was open to everything?
Not rhetorical, genuinely curious what the worst case scenarios here would be and how it compares to stuff you can just already do.
|
Design Manager
|
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Barbarians can already flurry with a 0-handed d12 reach (non)weapon.
At 10th level, after having spent two feats and chosen a specific class path. That's wildly different than being able to do it at level 1. Those same two feats can pick up the damage difference on another build with different choices, so the ceiling at level 10 is still the same. A monk with Ki Strike and Jalmeri Heavenseeker will also be in that same window, which is very different than a level 1 monk being able to flurry with a greatsword.
"How" and "when" are as important to a discussion as "if", because everything in the game exists within the context of its environment. It's kind of the same thing as saying that flurry doesn't add damage; it very much does. Getting to make two attacks with a single action means you have more actions to position, debuff, stay in range, etc. You'll attack more often, have flanking more often, lose less output to enemy tactics, etc. Analyzing an option without looking at the context it lives in is always going to create an incorrect impression of the option.
Rangers also flurry with weapons out of the box.
Rangers have a flurry edge that reduces their MAP penalty. They have to spend a feat to get Twin Takedown to actually have an ability equivalent to Flurry of Blows, and in many ways Twin Takedown is even more limited than the monk's Flurry of Blows; it can't be used with unarmed attacks, it requires two one-handed melee weapons, you need a completely different feat if you also want to "flurry" with a ranged weapon, etc.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
I agree that the game is overly concerned with what a Monk can and can't wield for no good reason. Yes, Flurry is a powerful feature like Michael said, but the Monk already pays a lot for it, and like others said, Flurrying with a Greatsword requires using two hands instead of zero and isn't really that much better than Dragon Stance.
The only thing I could see breaking if you allowed any melee weapon is not Monk, but things like Fighter + Monk + Heaven's Thunder + Flurry at level 10+. But if that's the issue, those things should be adjusted (Monk MC probably shouldn't even get Flurry in the first place) instead of pigeonholing the Monk into using specific weapons.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
At 10th level, after having spent two feats and chosen a specific class path. That's wildly different than being able to do it at level 1.
Well yeah, because the thing I was responding to was talking about potential interactions with the monk archetype.
which is very different than a level 1 monk being able to flurry with a greatsword.
Right, but a hypothetical level 1 monk with a greatsword is instead comparing themselves to a level 1 monk with dragon stance, and that's still not a particularly strong showing for the greatsword. D12 isn't that far ahead of d10 backswing, and you'd be paying in bulk and hand economy to do it (and losing the difficult terrain avoidance dragon stance gets too).
The greatsword is also the most extreme example here. The comparisons skew much more in the unarmed attack's favor if our monk instead wants a longsword or the OP's khakkara or a warhammer (etc) instead.
I agree completely that you have to keep context in mind, but part of that context is that the level 1 stance feats beat out pretty much every weapon in the game.
Things like d12 weapons and d10 reach are conspicuously missing, but if those are red lines I can't help but think there might be a better way to do that that doesn't leave dozens of other options out in the cold too.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The elephant in the room here is, as always, how ludicrously good the style strike feats are. They already manage to render all non-reach monk weapons noncompetitive.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
The elephant in the room here is, as always, how ludicrously good the style strike feats are. They already manage to render all non-reach monk weapons noncompetitive.
It feels like "style feats are pretty much all good" is part of the class budget as the monk. Not taking them feels like a mistake, which is why there's only like 2-3 weapons that make a weapon-wielding monk seem viable by comparison (the bo staff, the kusarigama, and the gakgung by my count.)
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Well, they're advanced weapons, and appropriately budgeted for a weapon that costs a class feat. The problem is that martial weapons are... not worth a class feat. It wouldn't be a problem if you just got monastic weaponry by default and the manufactured weapons were only competing with the d6 Powerful Fist.
|
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
... I think there also might be too much concern over managing Flurry of Blows in general.
Monks in class have d8 agile weapons and d10 free hand not-weapons, literally better than any published weapon in the game. The stances that give those attacks have other benefits too like being able to step farther or ignore difficult terrain.
These aren't esoteric power gaming options either, they're level 1 feats.
Given that those things exist, idk it feels kind of weird to have this carefully constructed and highly restrictive system put in place to make sure monks don't use longswords.
Even a greatsword only breaks the damage ceiling by a hair. The damage gap between d10 backswing and d12 is extremely marginal, especially considering this hypothetical character is going from a zero-hand 'weapon' to a two-hander, with all the downsides that entails. Usually 1h>2h is worth two die sizes, not less than one.
This is main reason why I'm wondering why monks couldn't just get martial proficiency yeah
Hopefully this gets addressed in the remastered books