Books are at the printer. We’re here at the Warrens putting together the rest of the first act after the Tales of the Valiant Player’s Guide and Monster Vault.
Over on the Kobold Press Discord server, the fans have spoken! They want to see what we did with the monk class! The two pages here give you the beginnings of the class and the progression table for all 20 levels.
1. I’m a big fan of your stuff.
2. Why did both of the major publishers of games leave Monk to the end? Ya’ll both knew it was the weird one that needed help. Ya’ll both knew that Monk needed a push-up in power to be equal to the other base classes.
3. So all the power for these is in the subclasses? I don’t see much of a push-up in the base class. I also don’t see Stunning Strike because of the layout.
4. d4 on punches again? So I am to believe the subclasses are so strong that the base class would throw off the damage curve way too much if they were set from d6-d12 on unarmed strikes?
5. Lowest hit dice and lowest AC of the frontline options. Still? Am I supposed to be thinking of Monks as Warlocks and not Martials? Or are you telling me that Monks should be ranged characters?
6. You thought technique points were plentiful enough? We couldn’t go with level + Wisdom Mod or Dex, or maybe even Con Mod?
7. I can take a Flurry of Blows Bonus Action AFTER my Action (2 unarmed strikes for 1 Tech Point). Thanks, that’s good flexibility. Can I take my Action as a Dodge action? Also, Step of the Wind is a Tech point for a Disengage OR a Dash bonus action? Not both? So that means I can Dodge and Flurry to have some enhanced mele defense, OR I can Mele Attack on main action and Disengage on bonus and use my movement phase. It still feels expensive at low levels.
8. Are we getting more than one stunning strike attempt in a round?
In comparison to previous Monk version from the OTHER game system:
One of the issues Monk had before was that it was a Support Class that wasn’t explained like a support class or that it needed additional support to do it’s thing. They didn’t tell you that as a monk, you needed to have a bard or a divination wizard with Portent willing to support your actions so you could do your cool thing (stunning strike) because Constitution saves are very unreliable. Why does a supporting character need additional support? Why is it designed that way? Also, even IF you have other support characters with reactions that can help you, they want to save those actions for THEIR cool thing (2x per long rest or Proficiency X per day- not sure which) – because they get less of them than you get Tech Points (level dependent).
Thank you for sharing the article, it is well written.