D&D (2024) Playtest 8 Monk Discussion

[Horwath]

in last UA , it was at least weapons mastery.

 

[Bolares]

in last UA , it was at least weapons mastery.

the last UA monk was the worst monk they've made for 5e...

 

[Maxperson]

Whoops!

 

[Horwath]

the last UA monk was the worst monk they've made for 5e...

I can agree to that, but removing mastery did not help this version of it.
This is better, but it would be even more so with mastery.

just take lvl1 fighter vs. lvl1 monk.
fighter gets a lot more.

 

[Bolares]

I can agree to that, but removing mastery did not help this version of it.

I actually disagree with this. Mastery did little to nothing good for the monk before. It made for a weird tug of war, where you had to choose between doing higher damage with your unnarmed strike or having the utility of the mastery. Unless you make a mastery for unnarmed strikes, or do something clunky like what they did for the brawler, mastery will always interact badly with the class. Also there is th point of the "power budget" for the class. This version gave us a lot of improvement, and some of that improvement would have to be cut to keep weapon mastery.

 

[Kurotowa]

1) Deflect Attack honestly maybe OP. Basically once every round, you will knock out damage = 5 + Monk Level + 1d10. That's practically just dropping the damage of most attacks to 0. And then not to mention you can spend points to damage other targets. Now that its both melee and ranged, this maybe one of the new go to damag reduction options....enough that even barb's might feel a bit jealous at times. Its a brand new ballgame in Monk defense.

It's a good counterpart to the Rogue's Uncanny Dodge, with enough downsides that I don't think it'll make them into tanks. It has a higher minimum than Uncanny Dodge, able to negate smaller hits entirely, but doesn't scale up against big hits. It only works on physical damage until 13th Level, which might or might not be a big deal depending on how the Monster Manual is styled now. And it only works on one hit a round, so it's not as good at holding the front line against multiple foes as a Barbarian, say.

All in all, a very solid defensive upgrade to a notoriously squishy class, but the utility will rather depend on the DM's encounter design style.

 

[Horwath]

I actually disagree with this. Mastery did little to nothing good for the monk before. It made for a weird tug of war, where you had to choose between doing higher damage with your unnarmed strike or having the utility of the mastery. Unless you make a mastery for unnarmed strikes, or do something clunky like what they did for the brawler, mastery will always interact badly with the class. Also there is th point of the "power budget" for the class. This version gave us a lot of improvement, and some of that improvement would have to be cut to keep weapon mastery.

or just add weapons masteries to this version and be done with it.

and return deflect attacks to deflect arrows.
There is solving an issue and there is overdoing it where no one asked for it.
deflect missiles is for monks general lack of good ranged options.

 

[Bolares]

or just add weapons masteries to this version and be done with it.

and return deflect attacks to deflect arrows.
There is solving an issue and there is overdoing it where no one asked for it.
deflect missiles is for monks general lack of good ranged options.

I would much rather have deflecting attacks than weapon materies. Weapon masteries serve to give a class utility options and tactical choices. The monk always had those, so adding masteries, without creating unarmed masteries would be, as crawford said, "a hat on a hat" and a clunky secondary hat at that.

Meanwhile, deflect attacks helps with one of the majors problems with the monk, it's survivabillity.

So to me, this suggestion is taking an inportant balancing feature just to give the monk the shinny (but mostly superfluous) new thing.

 

[Neonchameleon]

the last UA monk was the worst monk they've made for 5e...

At least since 2014. It was an improvement over the PHB monk. But this is looking a lot better.

 

[Bolares]

And if you really want to play a monk with masteries, there are two viable options, a mastery feat or just playing the warrior of the hand subclass, that has features that work very similarlly to the masteries... and that is not even considering multiclasses.