So sell me on the Monk class, 'cause it doesn't look very good to me...

[samcifer]

So in making up a few backup characters, I came across the monk class and fail to see the appeal to playing one. I love kung fu movies, but the monk as a class in D&D, 5e, at least, doesn't look like a decent class. They look very underpowered to me and I feel that using a weapon would be far better on damage (not counting Kensai) to be worth going the unarmed route. Is it actually any good?

[The_Jette]

The only way you'll ever know if the class is one you'd enjoy playing is by playing one. I haven't played one in 5th edition, yet. But, I've seen them played. They have pretty good nova damage, early game. They're able to get in a lot of attacks, quickly. And, they slowly get enhanced speed. It's a fairly solid build, but not one that would be perfect for everyone, and their archetypes are a little bland, tbh. They're just one of those classes that don't really seem all that impressive on paper, but might change your view once you try them out in game.

[Grod_The_Giant]

You start out two-handing a spear or quarterstaff, getting you two attacks/turn for 1d8+dex/1d4+dex, with a solid AC of 16 and a d8 HD. At second, you start racking up ki points for another d4+Dex attack, bonus-action withdraw, or bonus-action DODGE. At 5th, you get to spend 1 ki PER HIT to force a save-or-stun. That's damn solid.

[JellyPooga]

Monks are all about managing their Ki resource. It may feel like a disadvantage that practically all their abilities key off of this one pool, but it actually makes them very engaging to play, as well as giving them a remarkably impressive nova capability.

Also...Stunning Strike. Just...yeah. 'nuff said.

Monks have pretty much the same or better combat ability as a Fighter, except instead of standing still and taking it like a chump champ, the Monk gets in, does his business and gets out of the line of fire. Not exactly party friendly, but when his "business" is knocking enemies prone or stunning them, it's all good.

[nickl_2000]

Monks also have some amazing utility in battle with deflect missiles, slow fall, and running up walls and over water. You get evasion and eventually you are proficient in all saving throws too.

[qube]

Monks also have some amazing utility in battle with deflect missiles, slow fall, and running up walls and over water. You get evasion and eventually you are proficient in all saving throws too.

and eventually invisibility & resistance to all but force damage for 4 ki points ...

[JAL_1138]

Monks are highly-mobile, hard-to-kill battlefield controllers and get some really nifty baked-in utility features. And that's before you start getting into their subclasses. Monk damage is merely decent, but not great—but damage isn't their main purpose, so it doesn't need to be stellar. They're kind of a support-y class, best used in tandem with a heavy-hitter who significantly benefits from getting Advantage, like a Rogue, Paladin, GWM-user, or a Sharpshooter archer. They're also great at shutting down enemy spellcasters, because their mobility lets them get to the back lines quickly and they can force a lot of Concentration checks via Flurry and can potentially Stun the caster as well.

Stunning Strike is amazeballs. The stun lasts until the end of your next turn, so you can potentially just keep on stun-locking them, and it gives your whole party the ability to whack them with Advantage in the interim without worrying about initiative order.

Unless you have a magic weapon—and a particularly good one at that—your Martial Arts damage dice mean that eventually it doesn't much matter if you're using a weapon or fighting unarmed; you'll get a d10 either way.

[Spacehamster]

Monks are highly-mobile, hard-to-kill battlefield controllers and get some really nifty baked-in utility features. And that's before you start getting into their subclasses. Monk damage is merely decent, but not great—but damage isn't their main purpose, so it doesn't need to be stellar. They're kind of a support-y class, best used in tandem with a heavy-hitter who significantly benefits from getting Advantage, like a Rogue, Paladin, GWM-user, or a Sharpshooter archer. They're also great at shutting down enemy spellcasters, because their mobility lets them get to the back lines quickly and they can force a lot of Concentration checks via Flurry and can potentially Stun the caster as well.

Stunning Strike is amazeballs. The stun lasts until the end of your next turn, so you can potentially just keep on stun-locking them, and it gives your whole party the ability to whack them with Advantage in the interim without worrying about initiative order.

Unless you have a magic weapon—and a particularly good one at that—your Martial Arts damage dice mean that eventually it doesn't much matter if you're using a weapon or fighting unarmed; you'll get a d12 either way.

Monk martial arts die goes up to d10 not d12. :)

[Captain Bob]

Other than the above mentioned stuff....it's what you play when you're ship-wrecked at start. Or when your DM Doesn't give magic weapons to anyone. Or when you have a phobia of being captured and gear-stripped.

[croftstr]

I appreciate monks for their style and cinematic moments, like running up walls and leaping over chasms.

[Foxhound438]

if you're all about doing tons of damage, monk probably isn't for you, but neither would be bard, or wizard, or warlock, and so on. Most things don't really compare to a GWM/SS fighter, and they don't have to.

As others said, it's all about the utility you bring. Mobility (the thing, not the feat) is probably their strongest aspect, having bonus action dashes at level 2 and increased move speed as well. Shadow monks get excellent spells that can be good for either stealth or caster shut-downs, open hand gets free pushes that are as good as or better than battlemaster maneuvers (you don't get extra damage, but you get 2 attempts per one ki, and you have a lot more of that), 4 elements gets... well you get spells, anyways. There's also the plethora of defensive abilities scattered throughout the class- the deflect missiles that someone else mentioned, evasion, stillness of mind, and purity of body are all things you can expect to get in a long campaign, and they all can do you a lot of good given the right situation.

[samcifer]

So Rogues, Barbarians, Fighters and Sorcerers are the heavy hitters of the game? Any others I missed/got wrong?

[The_Jette]

So Rogues, Barbarians, Fighters and Sorcerers are the heavy hitters of the game? Any others I missed/got wrong?

Paladins are pretty heavy hitters, too.

[JAL_1138]

Monk martial arts die goes up to d10 not d12. :)

Correct. Must've been a typo. Fixed, and thanks.

[GlenSmash!]

Monks are highly-mobile, hard-to-kill battlefield controllers and get some really nifty baked-in utility features. And that's before you start getting into their subclasses. Monk damage is merely decent, but not great—but damage isn't their main purpose, so it doesn't need to be stellar. They're kind of a support-y class, best used in tandem with a heavy-hitter who significantly benefits from getting Advantage, like a Rogue, Paladin, GWM-user, or a Sharpshooter archer. They're also great at shutting down enemy spellcasters, because their mobility lets them get to the back lines quickly and they can force a lot of Concentration checks via Flurry and can potentially Stun the caster as well.

Stunning Strike is amazeballs. The stun lasts until the end of your next turn, so you can potentially just keep on stun-locking them, and it gives your whole party the ability to whack them with Advantage in the interim without worrying about initiative order.

Unless you have a magic weapon—and a particularly good one at that—your Martial Arts damage dice mean that eventually it doesn't much matter if you're using a weapon or fighting unarmed; you'll get a d12 either way.

An excellent summary of the Monk. I think of them as a highly mobile skirmishing stun-locker. Long Death monks have great Survivabiltiy, and Kensei lets me be rurouni kenshin.

So Rogues, Barbarians, Fighters and Sorcerers are the heavy hitters of the game? Any others I missed/got wrong?

Paladins are pretty heavy hitters, too.

^ Paladins dish out nova great damage, and with their Auras give some good defense to themselves and the party.

[Finlam]

Monks are ki starved and fragile at early levels. At level 1 and 2 expect to go down in one or two hits, have solidly OK AC, and only feel like a monk instead of a more fragile version of a fighter the one or two times you can use your most monk-ish features between rests.

At level 5, when they get Stunning Strike it eclipses their other class features so much that it becomes a waste to use them over Stnning Strike. In fact, Stunning Strike eclipses the whole class, making it feel more like a mobile status effect with HP rather than a monk.

By the time you hit level 7, you get evasion and are just starting to gain enough ki to finally use some of your monk features other than Stunning Strike on a regular basis. It requires very tedious resource management, but as you start to use the monk features you've had for the previous 6 levels, you slowly begin to feel like a monk, rather than a moving status effect.

At each level after, you begin to feel more like a monk: at 9 you can run on walls and water, also by that time you can reliably drop 100 feet and take no damage. You have to manage your ki less and less at each level which means you have enough ki to do more and more monk stuff.

Finally at level 14, you are a true monk. You gain diamond soul and have enough ki to use non-stunning strike class features regularly and you've accumulated enough class features that are ki-independant to allow you to monk it up and not worry about ki management too heavily.



In short, you are correct OP. It takes a long time for the monk class to be worth it, unless you really like being able to not use class features or you just love the **** out of Stunning Strike. I would strongly advise against a straight monk of less than 7th level and I would probably not ever play one below that level again. After that it becomes tolerable and at high levels it can actually be fun. It is the worst designed class in 5e, bar none.


But that's the unpopular opinion on the playground.

[JAL_1138]

So Rogues, Barbarians, Fighters and Sorcerers are the heavy hitters of the game? Any others I missed/got wrong?

As mentioned, Paladins can do reqlly good damage through Divine Smite, but it costs them spell slots.

At any rate, don't worry too much about doing Das Überdamage. There's more to the game than who hits hardest.

What are you looking for in a class? What seems fun to you? If you do want your weapon attacks to hit like a freight train, Monk might not be your jam. But for what they are, they're quite good, and usually a very welcome addition to a party.

[Foxhound438]

So Rogues, Barbarians, Fighters and Sorcerers are the heavy hitters of the game? Any others I missed/got wrong?

the highest DPR you're going to see is from barbarians, fighters, rangers, and paladins, as those are the classes with the most support for GWM and SS. Sorcerer maybe can be left off of there, it does only marginally more damage than any other caster throwing the same spells.

[GlenSmash!]

What are you looking for in a class? What seems fun to you? If you do want your weapon attacks to hit like a freight train, Monk might not be your jam. But for what they are, they're quite good, and usually a very welcome addition to a party.

These are good questions.

To me it's it's less about who hits the hardest, and more about "what way to hit seems most fun to me"

My favorite way is with Reckless Attack and GWM. I love to just get in there and draw a bunch of attention to myself while simultaneously hoping to hit for big damage and hopefully a crit too.

It's just so much fun to come out of a fight simultaneously torn to shreds and gloriously victorious.

[samcifer]

As mentioned, Paladins can do reqlly good damage through Divine Smite, but it costs them spell slots.

At any rate, don't worry too much about doing Das Überdamage. There's more to the game than who hits hardest.

What are you looking for in a class? What seems fun to you? If you do want your weapon attacks to hit like a freight train, Monk might not be your jam. But for what they are, they're quite good, and usually a very welcome addition to a party.

Mostly just wanting to understand the appeal. Monks and Bards are the least appealing classes to me, monks for how they work (although I'm not hating them now like I was before I asked this thread) and Bards for the terrible spell list. They have such a strange and random selection of spells, imo.

[Easy_Lee]

Monks do a little less damage than other martials at early levels, and about half as much damage at high levels. However, they have the potential to contribute a lot more damage via their mobility, saves, and stunning strike. Monks do well in these situations:

• You're fighting spellcasters or archers.
• Getting to the opponents to hit them is an issue.
• There are lots of saving throws flying around, especially if they're dexterity saves.
• The rest of the party is charmed but you can snap out of it because you're a monk.
• You're fighting anything that has a low constitution save.

Monks are the only class that can run across a moat, up a wall, punch a dragon in the face, then fully avoid his breath weapon on the next turn without any magical assistance.

[Throne12]

I got to say monks are one of my favorite class. One time we were trying to get into a castle there were bullywrog throwing spears down at us from atop of the battlements i would use my deflecte missiles ability to catch them and throw them back. Because of that and the ranger we were able to kill them. Then there was another time were a wizard casted mislead to get away we saw right throw it after see he wasn't taking damage. So me being a shadow monk booked it to go after the wizard with his movement higher than anyone the dashing (action) then bonus action shadow stepping. I was able to get to the room the wizard was in just be he jumped off the flying castle. I shadow step to him throw him into a grapple then throw both me and him into then room. He spent his action trying to break the grapple then my turn I head butt (unarmed strike) him then spend the ki to stunding strike him he fails. He stunned for his turn my turn again I continue to head butt him and stunning strike He fail again. Now the party has caught up. I would stunning strike while keeping him in a grapple while the party just beat the live H out of him. He kept fail to stunning strikes.

Then there was a time (different character) I was again playing a shadow monk but this time a koblod. I was dropped into a Beholder lair by myself (thank guys ) thanks to being skilled stealth and having pass with out trace I was able to get throught the lair and out with out being seen.

Damage is not the best but I never felt underwhelming. The mobility is really fun to play with on top making 4 attacks after 5th level (making a lot of attack rolls feels better then making just one attack that why I have a hard tgime playing rogues and spell caster sometimes) stunning strike is so fun when you get it off. Deflect missiles is fun ad well also I'm AFB but deflect missiles work on ranged spell attacks two I think. You just can't send them back. He's is a nice spell to pick up when you can be it throught feat or MC.

Shadow monk is my favorite. But open hand is cool. My next favorite is long death, then kensi and sun soul. Sun soul get put down but is fun getting a range option (even if with short range) a fireball effect burning hands effect. The sun soul should be the party's friend he can switch back and fourth dealing with groups of mooks or locking down the Boss. Open hand can do some nice single target control. A death can take a few more hit.

Monks are a class that you have fun playing.

[Ketiara]

Mostly just wanting to understand the appeal. Monks and Bards are the least appealing classes to me, monks for how they work (although I'm not hating them now like I was before I asked this thread) and Bards for the terrible spell list. They have such a strange and random selection of spells, imo.

Monks for me have always been fun, but I usually re-flavour them into some kind of berserkerish or quick dagger fighter, because I never liked the kong-fu monk feel.


A bit of an off topic... how do you rule the stunned condition? is it incapacitated, paralysed, what?

[The_Jette]

Monks for me have always been fun, but I usually re-flavour them into some kind of berserkerish or quick dagger fighter, because I never liked the kong-fu monk feel.


A bit of an off topic... how do you rule the stunned condition? is it incapacitated, paralysed, what?

Stunned is its own condition. The creature/person is incapacitated, immediately fails Str/Dex saves, and attacks against them are made with advantage.

[Aett_Thorn]

Mostly just wanting to understand the appeal. Monks and Bards are the least appealing classes to me, monks for how they work (although I'm not hating them now like I was before I asked this thread) and Bards for the terrible spell list. They have such a strange and random selection of spells, imo.

It seems to me from this post and several others that I've seen from you, that you really don't see the benefit of control in a game like this. Which is fair. But I really think that you're doing yourself a disservice if you don't try it out. Control allows you to be a force multiplier for others on your team, and even if YOU'RE not doing a ton of damage, you can allow others to do a ton of damage more consistently.

[JAL_1138]

Mostly just wanting to understand the appeal. Monks and Bards are the least appealing classes to me, monks for how they work (although I'm not hating them now like I was before I asked this thread) and Bards for the terrible spell list. They have such a strange and random selection of spells, imo.

The Bard spell list is pretty stellar except in the damage department (Shatter is decent, Dissonant Whiapers is all right and can force an enemy to run, setting up opportunity attacks). Good healing, some fantastic control spells (Hypnotic Pattern for example can completely change a fight, from "near-suicide to attempt" to "total cakewalk," and later on Forcecage), some great buffs (Greater Invis., Polymorph, True Polymorph, etc.), great debuffs (Tasha's, Otto's, Heat Metal, Faerie Fire, Feeblemind, etc.), good utility (Leomund's, Suggestion, etc.). They do a little bit of everything (and as healing goes, are very nearly on par with non-Life Domain Clerics).

And by stealing spells from other class' lists with their Magical Secrets feature, they can pick up some crazy-good options. Aura of Vitality, Counterspell, etc. can make them even better at the support role. On a Bard subclass with Extra Attack, Elemental Weapon or Swift Quiver, and maybe Greenflame Blade or Booming Blade from SCAG, can make them pretty decent weapon-using combatants.

They're my go-to class because their list is so versatile. There are very few things a bard can't have an answer for in some way.

[samcifer]

It seems to me from this post and several others that I've seen from you, that you really don't see the benefit of control in a game like this. Which is fair. But I really think that you're doing yourself a disservice if you don't try it out. Control allows you to be a force multiplier for others on your team, and even if YOU'RE not doing a ton of damage, you can allow others to do a ton of damage more consistently.

True. The team has a totem path barbarian longtooth shifter who's strength-focused with axes, a human artificer (non-wizard version)with a blunderbuss that has long range and does ridiculous damage, a firbolg moon druid, a variant human GWF fighter and my Divine Soul/Hexblade Tiefling (Dispater variation). I'm trying to focus on damaging spells and have the armor and shield for defense and would like to be able to do melee as well once I go up a few more levels. I guess I'm going for damage first and control second. Also as I went 2 and 2 on class leveling, I'm only just about to gain access to lv. 2 spells, so I'm still fairly early on as a character and this is my first non-4e campaign. Since the campaign is homebrewed, it makes it hard to know what I should go for as we'll never know what will happen next.

Not counting the Fighter player, I'm the least experienced player in the group, and can only go off of what I read as my practical in-game experience is minimal as a player.

Guess I'm still trying to find my grove as a player using casters, but I like having AoE as well as single-target damaging spells. Spells that manipulate the mind don't appeal to me, so most Enchantment spells are out for me as a player.

[JackPhoenix]

So Rogues, Barbarians, Fighters and Sorcerers are the heavy hitters of the game? Any others I missed/got wrong?

Warlocks. Not for nova (at least not without multiclassing), but for consistent ranged magic damage they can keep up all day.

[JAL_1138]

Divine Soul is one of the new Sorcs, yes? I need to finally read through Xanathar's...

If so, don't discount a Sorcerer's ability to buff at somewhat higher levels. Twinning Haste, Greater Invisibility, or Polymorph with Metamagic can be incredible.

You honestly don't need extra damage spells in that party, except maybe to pick up some AoE for mook-clearing.

[Gtdead]

Mostly just wanting to understand the appeal. Monks and Bards are the least appealing classes to me, monks for how they work (although I'm not hating them now like I was before I asked this thread) and Bards for the terrible spell list. They have such a strange and random selection of spells, imo.

I find monk unappealing too. Don't get me wrong, I don't think he is weak. I do however think that mechanically he is bland, no matter how many and how detailed abilities he has. When all are said and done, monk still amounts to an average chassis with stunning strike that can run fast and do acrobatics. Eventually he will gain better saving throws which is nice I guess.