Cormyr and the Dalelands

Generally, Monk is recognized as one of the weaker 3e base classes. It's also pretty unspectacular in NWN, outside of a couple level dips for various gimmicks. Pure monk is generally avoided for good reason.

Pros:

High saves for every category.

Some unique and useful feats later on in levels, such as improved evasion, mind spell immunity and innate SR.

Lots of attacks with fists/kamas.

Two stats that boost AC.

Pretty solid base melee damage if pure classing, if patient.

Dem wheels.

Cons:

MASSIVE stat spread. Want more melee damage? Need str. Want more melee accuracy? Need str or dex. Want more AC? Need dex or wis. Want your abilities to be potentially useful? Need wis. Want hp since you're generally frontline? Need con. Want more skills? Need int. Typically speaking, monk has to make too many choices on ability scores, particularly since on a medium magic server like CD you can only reliably and significantly boost one or two of your scores any significant amount via gear.

Quivering palm is a single use ability that can typically be easily saved by an equal level opponent once it is gained, unless the monk significantly pumps wisdom, which is generally a subpar stat as it does not boost the monk's striking abilities (save for zen archery).

Wholeness of body scales insanely poorly.

Stunning fist can be very useful if you pump wisdom, but typically speaking enemies worth using such an ability on tend to be either highly resistant or outright immune to the ability. This once again makes a wisdom pump build rather dubious.

Medium BAB. This makes any sort of ranged or alternate monk weapon type build rather sub optimal, and also makes hitting things in general harder for monks than other "front line" type melee classes.

Ki Strike does not appropriately keep up with the enhancement scaling on the majority of servers.

Empty body does not appropriately scale with typical access to displacement on the majority of servers.

Questionably slow melee damage progression that leaves the monk rather weak at low to mid levels.


Proposed solutions!

BAB: Boost to full. Yea, they pick up an extra attack/round out of this as well, but many monk builds tend to integrate a full BAB class for this anyhow. Considering monk restrictions on multiclassing, I don't really see 3/4 BAB as necessary to impose upon them.

Empty Body: Boost duration to turn/level. 50% conceal at turn/class level 2x day not accessible until level 18 is well in line with server accessibiliyy to concealment. For that matter, I wouldn't mind making this ability turn up a bit earlier than level 18, even with that buff. Maybe 1x/day at level 11 or 12 and 2x/day at level 16 or 17.

Quivering Palm: Would suggest boosting to perhaps 3x/day usage (or 1x usage per day every 5 levels after 15; e.g. 15 = 1, 20 = 2, 25 = 3, 30 = 4).

Wholeness of Body: Simply needs either a massive boost in healing done or a massive boost in daily uses, as at 2x class level a healing kit or a potion is typically a better use of time, and it's only one use a day at that. If possible, I'd change the value to something like 10x class level (this would range from 70 hp healed on acquisition at level 7 to 200 hp healed at level 20 -- generally speaking, this is close to a full heal at most class levels if the monk pure classes, which is acceptable for a 1 shot).

Ki Strike: As GMW and enhancements are typically readily available, I would suggest boosting this to the following scale (that is roughly in line with what can be easily acquired at the given levels):

Level 20: Ki Strike +5
Level 16: Ki Strike +4
Level 12: Ki Strike +3
Level 8: Ki Strike +2
Level 4: Ki strike +1

While the AB on gloves provides the same effect, this at least gives monks a little more flexibility on glove choice if they're pure classing.

I would likewise scale the damage to the following.:

            Medium    Small

Level 01    1d8        1d6
Level 06    1d10      1d8
Level 11    1d12      1d10
Level 16    1d20      2d8

Admittedly, I do not recall how viable or hard-coded this is, unfortunately. One can always compensate with stats on gloves if necessary. This also notably de-shafts halfling/gnome monks a little compared to the base values.


The monk will still suffer from possibly greater stat spread issues than any other class, but the above changes will at least give them a bit more innate prowess (if pure classing) and much better ability scaling.

The reason monks suck here is its much more beneficial in almost every way to go invisible blade, duelist, or blade singer. These classes stack int for ac similarly to the way a monk stacks wis. Except they are all full bab and generally more useful.

I'm against giving them full bab solely for the half dragon monks running around. Their ab isn't a problem as its high enough to hit trash and mid tier mage bosses, and end game bosses typically need a 20 roll of which monks are the best at gambling at.

Boosting their class abilities though is a good idea.

Monks suffer the most from stat spreads but also benefit the most from stacking buffs such as regular animals and mass.

I'm personally not that fond of basing decisions like BAB on things like "solely for the half dragon monks running around." -- that's honestly it's own problem. I tend to look more at what the average is capable of doing, and the average (human, halfling, etc) monks tend to suffer from AB problems at various levels. Nerf or control the special cases specially.

Those nerfs will never happen though, and half dragon monks are probably a majority of monks running around.

You can still get around 40-41 ab as a human monk at level 20, and that's enough to hit anything minus some dragons.

The problem is more along the lines of AB problems at various stages in leveling, if you're not carrying an OP template, and the fact that you can be stuck in the mid ranges on CD for quite some time. Quite frankly, half-dragons tend to crank up the power curve for most high AB classes. The monks wouldn't be doing anything particularly notable beyond any other half-dragon fueled melee power build.

We don't balance classes based on racial templates.

What Bella said.

I'm fully aware of that. That doesn't mean it shouldn't be considered with hypothetical class changes. Especially since the majority of ecl applications are build boons.

I've played maybe three to four monks to mid range and they perform "well enough" martially and they scale really well. The class lacks dynamics and draw in my opinion, and giving it full bab won't fix that or make it more attractive to other full bab counterparts.

That's the point I was (hopefully clearly) trying to make. If you were to balance BAB based around what a particularly melee strong template can do, you might as well nerf fighter down to 3/4 BAB, too. In my opinion, your average, typical character is going to struggle with monk's 3/4 BAB in a number of situations--clearly a very high stat template would be an exception to such, as it would with most other classes.

Actually that's exactly what I'm saying.

If we are going to take the time and effort to (have Vincent) script and code a revamp for a class, it will be done to balance the class with other classes at ECL 0 par, regardless of the boons or banes it would have for more advanced race concepts.

If we feel that a class is mechanically deficient to the point of needing adjustment, whether or not that adjustment makes an already-good build with that class even better will not factor into whether or not changes are made.

The fact that you continue to argue that classes SHOULD be balanced with ECL templates in mind, immediately after we explicitly stated we don't do so, suggests you don't grasp what we mean when we say We Don't Do That.

That's extremely poor balancing and going against current efforts to make challenging content and the most minor of points I've made.

And you're being a tad hostile considering how poorly I've tried "arguing" this point in this thread.

If I wanted to argue, I could point out a template that wants +18 to stats at start, which is more than a human can get at level thirty taking nothing but epic stat feats. That's an argument. Suggesting an alternative or highlighting a more interesting balancing path is a poor argument if you're looking for one prior.

Argue templates in another thread please.  Leave this to the merits/discussion of Monk changes based upon core races without templates, since that's how they are designed/created.

You haven't ever seen me hostile, RM. =) When I get hostile, you will know.

Anyway. You are allowed to have your opinion. This doesn't change the fact that we've never done so in the past and that is extremely unlikely to change.

Frankly, the fact is that we never have balanced classes AT ALL period. We merely updated the classes that we could, given the limitations of NWN, to 3.5's expanded array of class abilities. If we could add in Pathfinder's additions as well, I have no doubt FW would push for it; however most of those newer abilities are either not feasible in NWN or would require a great deal of painful coding to implement.

And to expand on that, it's actually rather impossible to balance classes without a major base game mechanics rewrite, which is impossible in NWN and in D&D/PF in general. It is a simple fact that at lower levels full-BAB classes (Fighter, Paladin, Barbarian) win the game and at higher levels full casters do so. This is the nature of the game and nothing we can do about it, save playing another game, or doing what we can - and to some extent have - done to force the server to encourage playing in balanced/semi-balanced party groups and dissuade soloing.

We are not an MMO, individual class balance is not something we strive to do. In many cases, thanks to the NWN Blackboxing, we CAN'T do so. I'm sure Vincent will be able to chime in with more detailed reasoning and explanations if he chooses to do so, but I believe many of these changes - such as changing Monk's BAB - are blackboxed and unchangeable.

You're just simply wrong. Classes have been balanced a lot. Spells get changed. Durations get buffed, feats get changed. These are class and build fixes.

And I'm not the one who derailed the thread. I'll wait until either of you have something on topic and constructive to say regarding actual balancing and not defending yourselves whenever ecls get brought up. We already know each others opinions.

In regards to the technical concerns, changing the BAB of a class is an easier thing to do, if that is something you would want to do.

And yes, 3/3.5e and by extension NWN are horribly balanced (or rather, balance wasn't really a priority in the design. Clearly.) What I personally tend to aim for when working on a class is "Does this class have a role or theme that they fill?" and "Can they do so reasonably well and do they scale well?" -- Monk very much has a theme (armorless and often weaponless melee fighter), to a lesser extent has a role (caster killer), but it only fills the theme and role marginally well, and scales very poorly--by and large, the scaling is the biggest problem. Even in pen and paper, the monk is getting a wholly unspectacular +3 to enhancement when casters are starting to throw around wishes and miracles.

Yeah, Monks are pretty wretchedly designed in PnP, and all derivatives thereof.

I was under the impression BAB and other core factors of base classes were blackboxed, and that complex NWNX scripting and/or other lag-inducing workarounds that the admins have said on multiple occasions said they were not interested in exploring due to the combination of the problems they've caused on other servers (lag being the least of such) and lacking someone who was experienced in working with that particular field of code. Vincent of course can chime in if I'm incorrect, though; I'll admit my memory's far from the best.

I hate to do this on my first day back as an Admin, but I'm cutting this off and backing up Bella here. Take the ECL discussion to another thread if you must discuss it. This is not the thread for your hateon. Further posts on the subject will be deleted.

Naturally.

Hopefully getting things back onto a more productive line for the moment -- One thing I would suggest is that if Monk is boosted up to Full BAB progression, that Flurry be totally and utterly removed. The funny part is that the Monk's unarmed attack progression in NWN already follows the PnP monk with greater flurry active (which is where the 2 extra attacks come from), but whoever was in charge of implementing the mechanics somehow didn't see that and added in regular Flurry on top of the "already built in" greater flurry.

I think getting rid of Flurry (since again, Greater Flurry is already built into the monk's unarmed attack progression) would make upgrading it to Full BAB all right--it's only getting 1 extra attack, and only when either unarmed or using a kama. It's also one less dumb thing you need to toggle.

Regarding the technical feasibility, it may be that I'm so used to working with various NWN hackjobs that I'm forgetting something regarding the base classes and BAB. Certain aspects of the base classes are indeed very, very hardcoded and a pain to work with. For some reason I was thinking BAB may be a 2da change, but that could be incorrect.

As another possibility (particularly if there is a technical limitation), if we were to implement the new "Ki Strike Progression" that I proposed in the original post, we could also throw in a +1 attack bonus per level of Ki Strike (for +5 in total at level 20). This would have the monk gain attack bonus for unarmed strikes ONLY at the same rate at which they would gain AB from full BAB (coincidentally a decent counterbalance to potential dual kama cheese). This also prevents them from picking up a 6th attack per round they shouldn't technically have (because I'm pretty sure UBAB is hardcoded as hell), so that's a consideration to take in mind there. I would still remove flurry if we're generally improving the monk class, because the inclusion of flurry as a toggle feat when it was already hardcoded included into the UBAB was stupid.

With that proposal, monk AB would look something like this:

Unarmed:

20/20/20/15/10

Dual Kama:

15/15/15/15/10/10/5 (not including the -2 primary/offhand malus)

Other:

15/10/5

That lets the dual kama setup still keep up roughly the same role as "Master Shredder", while giving unarmed a very distinct advantage over it.

But Flurry of Blows is one of THE core monk abilities.  If you're taking that away, giving full BAB... You've just got a trumped up fighter without the fighter feats.

Personally, monks should stay at their current BAB.

Getting rid of flurry for higher ab when a character largely doesn't require it will hurt in boss fights where rolling 20s to pressure damage is important.

They already get three apr on par with full bab, so that isn't relevant for mid tier. Their weakest attack per round is already in scale with full bab since it goes in threes instead of fives.

I like all of your other ideas, though. I just think full bab is the least effective and appealing bandaid for the class. If anything, give them something similar to invisible blade's feint ability but have it scale on another skill like sense motive or something, and have it gain insight into an enemy's weaknesses to give a small ab boon temporarily. That's somewhat dynamic and appealing in comparison even if it's unimaginative.

I'm sorry if I didn't explain it more clearly, so I'm going to try to be less wordy (I am rather bad about that <.<).

Monk already has flurry of blows built into the class's special unarmed base attack bonus! Adding flurry of blows as a feat was a technical design mistake.

That's why monk in NWN has 5 base attacks when unarmed. In pen and paper, monk normally only has 3 attacks per round at level 20 even when unarmed. You activate flurry to add an extra attack at full attack bonus. At (I think) 11th level, you gain greater flurry, which adds the 2nd extra attack (the penalty to flurry of blows also disappears as monk levels... I believe it drops to -1 at level 5 and 0 penalty at level 9). NWN already has those 2 extra attacks from flurry of blows + greater flurry and the BAB progression hardcoded in without the flurry of blows feat!

I've played alot of versions if monks, and I'll admit my guilty pleasure of loving the class. Stand alone its tough being a monk for some of those reasons mentioned, but monk,like a good gin, goes great with a lot of other mixers.

if you go 15 monk /5 fighter you'll find that you have 6 attacks a round before flurry, with haste and Kamas you can get 11 attacks a round.

want to spice it up more?  Go 8 monk 7 weapons master 5 fighter, and become the quisinart.

monk cleric is another deadly combo, the boosts off play monk weaknesses and cleric weaknesses rather well.

monk rogue shadow dancer is another silly combo making more use of stealth and scroll tricks to make a monk nasty.

of course I always go 20 monk cause I love glowy eyes

But does it make julienne fries?

Sorry, I made a slight mathematical mistake in my previous post edited.

The 2nd combination isn't possible with the current monk multiclass rules. Also, the best monk/cleric combo you can see under the current rules at level 20 is 10 monk, 10 cleric. Not exactly a powerhouse.

This is a PnP monk at level 20 with the Greater Flurry of Blows feat active, unarmed.

+15/+15/+15/+10/+5

This is an NWN monk at level 20 without the (redundant) Flurry of Blows feat active, unarmed.

+15/+12/+9/+6/+3

Notice something?

Sorry, wrong numbers! NWN is such a hack job at times.

Does that progression you quote at level 20 NWN still hold true when using kamas?

Sorry, bad copy paste on my job -- but yes, my corrected progression >.> is the same when using kamas.

if you take profession cook, as for the multi class ruling I had thought that monk bad to be the highest class in the mix . If so most of the builds are.still viable *nod nod*

I think it's supposed to be monk levels are higher than the sum of the other levels (the majority of the levels taken).  Not sure.

Bella is correct. Total monk level must be greater than or equal to all other class levels combined.

So Monk 10/Fighter 5/WM 5 is legal, but Monk 7/Fighter 7/WM 6 is not because that's a total of 7 Monk levels to 13 other levels.

Using these numbers, if you were to provide monk with a +5 attack bonus over the course of level (Not necessarily base attack, as then NWN's hardcoded UBAB bonuses would want to give them an unwarranted 6th attack), you would end up with:

PnP:

15/15/15/10/5

NWN:

20/17/14/11/8

It'd be a little more frontloaded than PnP monk (which is weak anyhow), and a little higher average, but in my opinion not out of hand.

Kama would use the same values, unless you did not give it the cumulative attack bonus (it would still have 5 attacks; 15/12/9/6/3 in that case). Which I would personally suggest due to possible multi classing and TWF shenanigans.

My main gripe with monks is that they dont get their improved attack numbers with a quarterstaff. What else is a more quintessential monk weapon than a staff?

Something to consider, and fixing it requires no changes to classes or the haks, is that unarmed monks lose out on an item slot when compared to all other classes. In order to get an ab bonus to their unarmed attacks a monk must use monk gloves, but using them comes at the cost of not equipping bracers that have other beneficial stats. Fixing this just means adding monk gloves to the loot table that have more beneficial stats on them. For instance rather than just being +2 ab and 1d6 damage, they would now be something like +2, 1d6, +2 dex (and/or whatever). This doesn't effect monks that use weapons because then the ab and the damage on the gloves aren't used.

tldr;
make monk gloves that are like current bracers with weapon bonus stats added to them. Additionally make all spells that currently enchant weapons, work on unarmed (If they don't already?)

Fists of Siguard (Something) might fix this Aazonis, however.   str/dex with 2+ attack.  

Still, that's a teir 3 item.

Yeah but it has no damage bonus or anything, so its still not comparable to an actual weapon

They do. You can put GMW/Elemental Weapon on gloves.

That's true Aazonis.  

Just making a small point here, max possible attack in NWN is 10 APR.

6 from a full BAB monk (16 before 20, though you can take 1 monk at -any- point in the build and get this, it doesn't have to be before 20)
2 from offhand and Improved Two Weapon Fighting
1 from Haste
1 from Flurry of Blows

(I don't count Circle Kick because that fucks everything up. or Cleave/great cleave.)

My personal feelings about the class are that it's very min-max. You can either be a frontliner with a kama dex/wis mix monk that tries to max AC, a shredder with STR, a fast, sneaky archer with WIS, or you can try to juggle versatility. The class can go quite a few different ways, which is what makes it interesting to me.

A lot of the abilities it gets are pretty crappy, though. I agree that Wholeness of Body is pretty darn useless. It's a full round use, but pretty much a free cure critical potion. This could and probably should be increased. Perhaps not to the level of fully healing the monk, but perhaps since they have d8 as HP, you can change it to d6*(Class level).

Maybe the concealment could be 5 rounds per class level? So then you don't have a massively long buff, but decently standing compared to a Displacement or Improved Invisibility spell. Maybe 3 per level, if that's too long. 50% concealment is a lot.

Quivering Palm - Perhaps, if it's not hard, once per day(Maybe twice) with the DC being changed to (10+ 3/4class level + WIS mod)? Then if you have a level 30 monk, your quivering palm is DC 25+WIS, which might one shot a lower level character, but level 30 is pretty godlike. Level 15 would get a 20+wis mod, which is a high roll for rogues/mages/other low Fort monsters/characters, but not too difficult for fighters or other beefy things.

I don't agree with the BAB change. Sorry Saph, but monks aren't specialists in combat. They're specialists in training their bodies, trying to find enlightenment, not in beating face in. Maybe if you could code a soft bonus for a pure class or something, but otherwise I can't see much reason for it beyond making a much better reason for multiclasses to take it for Tumble instead of Rogue.

And that's coming from a powerbuilder who's written stuff for the old ECBG when it was still active.

~BR

I do see a few problems with these arguments...


Monks aren't specialists in combat in fluff, but in crunch that's pretty much all they exist for.  The only thing they're good at that isn't fighting is getting into weird places (usually only needed to, well, kill things in weird places) and your rogue is probably better at that anyway since rogues have the skillpoints to use on stuff like Balance, Climb, and Jump, not to mention being better able to actually do things when they get there.  Compare to bards with their social skills, clerics with their healing abilities, druids with their tending to plants and gathering herbs and stuff, and rogues and wizards being pretty much able to do anything.  Monks just don't do much else other than fight because they don't have the stats, skills, feats, abilities, or mechanics for it.  So odds are if you have a monk they're gonna be focused on beating face in, regardless of the pseudo-Eastern philosophical bent to it, because that's all they can do outside of dispensing ice-cream koans.


I'm not convinced that would make Quivering Palm all that much more useful.  It would make the level 15 Quivering Palm into a one-off Finger of Death from a same-level mage with a Greater Necromancy focus, and most people will tell you that even maxing out the caster stat FoD isn't really useful at that level due to widespread immunity (undead and golems) that leads into stuff just having very high Fort saves across the board (epic dungeons).  And that's assuming you max Wisdom, which most non-Zen Archery, non-AC built monks don't, which means the two types of monks who get the best use out of it are the two least likely to use it anyway because one fights at range and the other can't land it due to a bad attack bonus.


Bear in mind that a mage's 50% Concealment spell, Displacement, is one round per caster level, two if Extended.  5 rounds per class level, considering it has a minimum class level of 18 to even take it, would be massively long comparatively, clocking in at 540 seconds to a mage's 108 (216 if Extended) at the same level.  I'd rather keep it one round per level but give it more uses per day, say, five uses.  You generally don't need 50% Concealment all the time, only for the bosses or enormous hordes.


Yup, Wholeness is terrible and I don't think anyone outside of the lowest-magic servers will argue.  A monk is better off using that round for two healing kits.  This change would, on average, increase the heal from 2 HP per class level to 3.5 HP per class level...  which unfortunately still puts it in the realm of 'heal kits are better' but at least makes it better than it was.  I'd propose making it work like a self-targeted Lay on Hands, healing HP equal to class level times Wisdom modifier.

In pen and paper that duration on Displacement is true but on C/D the spell lasts far longer. It is about 1 turn/level now, so 60 seconds per caster level. That level 18 mage would have 1080 seconds (2160 if extended) while the Monk got just a fraction of that. A larger duration buff is in order on that one point.

If that's true, then I agree.  I don't actually know how long Displacement lasts since some spell durations no longer match what they say, and some aren't consistent (I've been told Mind Blank was never nerfed but it doesn't seem to last nearly as long as it should).

The stat requirement for Monks makes them very MAD (Multiple Attribute Dependant) and the other big blow is their equipment hinders them quite a bit.

I think it is important to note two things -


Due to the high level of magic items you can cover a lot of the Monk stats to make them respectable enough and Kama based Monks are preferable to unarmed Monk which I will discuss in a minute. 

The first thing to get out of the way though is the Wisdom - AC. Now a lot of people see this as a boon to the Monk when realistically it isn't one. The issue is that classes like Duellist adds Intelligence but again it loses armour. So they are the same right? Well no.


Lets look at the comparison -

Monks have no synergy for their high Wisdom while Duellists get a lot more synergy with their intelligence for example more skill points and this enables them to be a better skill monkey while at the same time gaining greater AC it also gets an additional AC boost at the later stages and receives importantly a damage boost in the form of precise strike. 

Now none of those things set the world on fire but we will also note it is a full BAB class and gets a whopping 1d10 hit points a level.  It also uses a weapon which is very important but I will get onto that later. 

So it lets just do a quick comparison - It can achieve roughly the same AC so we will call that a draw, the duellist will have lower saves, however will have more hit dice and have greater BAB and due to having good Int synergy will be better skill monkey and just as good at stealth (if built for it). 

Lets also expand on why weapons are good. This is due to the item slot economy and the concept of Opportunity Cost. The true cost of an item is the item you don't wear and its benefits. So to illustrate the point if I wear my Ogre Gauntlets of +5 Strength I cannot wear my Gloves of Super Attack +5 which added smashing action. 


The more slots the fewer choices you have to make and the stronger your character is the problem with unarmed Monks they need all the slots they can get because they need to expand - Strength, Dexterity, Wisdom and Con. You can also argue you need a small investment in Int if you are going to actually use the class skills you have been given.

But the unarmed Monk also has mostly two fewer slots than most classes the weapon and the shield. Ignoring the Shield slot for now because it isn't that important in the analysis the loss of the weapon slot is a big blow because the Monk needs strength/dex boosting items due to its inferior BAB. 

While the Duellist can have his rapier of +5 Awesomesauce and still wear the Ogre Gauntlets of +5 strength which is an additional +2 to hit and damage and the Duellist already has the advantage in that department.

The best work around for this is fairly labour intensive but it is to add +AB boosts to gauntlets and gloves in the module with other enchantments I.e Dexterity Gauntlets/ Strength Gauntlets. This allows the Monk to be able to go unarmed without being disadvantaged and it is of no use to anyone else that doesn't use fists as there primary means of attack. 

The other thing is when it comes to AC on CD - Heavy Armour has always been the superior option due to things like Adamantine Plate. It takes a lot of investment in Dexterity or Wisdom to match it and it is also an inferior investment. Stat points are precious and while your dexterity build is matching the AC eventually (epic levels) the Full Plate wearer simply throws it on and then proceeds to dump all his skill points into Strength which increases both AB and Damage or even Con to achieve a superior amount of hit points.  

As a result you have a class that cannot mix it up with the front liners on due to a combination of inferior BAB, inferior strength due to needing to invest it into other statistics i.e. Dex, Wis, Con etc and also inferior equipment as they have to sacrifice the glove slot for a weapon and lose the weapon slot. 

Which is fine. I mean you can argue the Monk isn't meant to be a front line fighter but the Bard for example is an amazing front line fighter and has 3/4 BAB because it can synergies Strength and Charisma with Dexterity not being so important due to the light armour advantage they have.

So then are they good Skill Monkeys? Well they're not bad. They have a decent selection of skills but to really take advantage of this you need higher intelligence because - Discipline is a mandatory skill tax to contemplate melee so that is one of our four gone. Then stealth is again a further skill tax because you have to invest it twice in MS & Hide to achieve stealth and then you have a single point left which needs to go to Tumble for the additional AC (which you need). If you're human then you get an additional point or if you have higher Int you can take more and the selection is really good  - Listen, Persuade and Heal all being strong candidates. 

You also have no way of opening locks or disarming traps so you're pigeon hold into stealth or potentially being good at listen or heal. All these skills are really aimed at making you good in combat so I am not sure skill monkey is the correct term. We have also established that Monks are not as good in combat as more suited front line fighters and these skills don't really boost that. If you choose to focus on skills you will take a further hit on being combat effective. 

A good comparison is the Ranger as it also gets access to pretty much the same skills as the Monk but gets further synergy for them. If the Ranger goes the stealth route it gains HiPS to assist it, spells that enhance it and Trackless Step which is a +4 boost. They are also less reliant on Dexterity so can boost Int if they want more skill points while taking less of a hit on their combat capability. 

We also as already discussed know that the Ranger is already a more powerful front line fighter and is also better at being stealthy.

The Monk doesn't really have much else going for them they are less capable in combat than - Bards, Paladins, Rangers, Fighters and on parwith Rogues and of course the full casters but lets not get into them. 

It is also a worse at stealth than - Rogue, Ranger and is about on par with Bard. 

They are decent enough with the saving throws and that is the classes shining point it will usually only be out classed by the Paladin and his Cha - Saves. That being said saving throws while very good to have they will always fail on a 1 and there a lot of cheap consumables that over-ride the need for good saves (not perfect I am aware) while high AC and decent AB are always useful if that makes sense? 

The class features are a little bit hit and miss Empty Body being the most powerful after Diamond Soul and Perfect Body other than those two nothing to really rave about and Still Mind actually becomes a redundant class feature when you get Perfect Body.



While ECL races such as the one I play do make the class much stronger this is simply because I have enough stat points to make sure I keep my vital stats at an average level. If I had chosen to simply go fighter or bard. I would have dumped it all in Strength/Cha and become an even stronger combat beast. 

ECL races simply have the greatest impact on the Monk because they to an extent cover up some of the weaknesses that a base race Monk would encounter. That is why they are often perceived as 'broken' when taking Monk because the difference in power between non ECL and ECL is much more pronounced. 

An ECL Wizard is still throwing the same 9th level spells around as a non ECL Wizard. 

As for changes the problem with giving Monks full BAB is that UBAB is already the best class feature of the Monk and this enhances it. 

I would suggest

• Making the change to Gloves so Unarmed Monks don't have to cry themselves to sleep every night. 
• Make Monks more proficient in a greater range of weapons - Quarterstaff being a good idea so Monks have access to a two handed weapon.
• Make their class features better - add things like Tongue of the Moon and Sun. Boost wholeness of body to a once/twice a day heal.
• Maybe have flurry also add damage instead of just an extra attack. 

 







 

I've always thought monks should use their Wisdom for attack rolls (ie Intuitive Attack)It would make the spread less daunting, but I'm assuming that, too, would be a time heavy option for implementing on NWN.

Just figured I'd chime in here, and mention that NWN was basing its monk of the 3.0E monk, not the 3.5 monk. That's why the monk's unarmed progression works the way it does - not a design mistake, just because that's how it works in 3e.

Regardless, it's something that's blackboxed in the NWN core engine and tied to the monk class level, so fiddling with it is likely beyond our abilities.

I think you might be able to get around that with NWNX, actually, but don't quote me on that.

It's irrelevant anyway, we don't use NWNX for various reasons. Vincent can give the full list if he desires.

NWNX Weapons allows you to basically define an arbitrary number of on-hand and off-hand attacks. That's for Windows hosts, though as far as I know the server runs on Windows. It'd be easy enough to keep it consistent so long as you had some include to calculate the appropriate attacks per round and update them for the event target in the module OnEquip and OnLevelUp. I think the other option under the local variable modifiers, "ubab", might be able to disable/enable the attack progression but I didn't dig around enough to confirm.

Not that I think that monks really need to be nerfed, honestly. Losing the BAB progression and attacks would hurt them pretty bad when they're already hurting.


I probably should read all of the new posts before making responses. Derp.

Even if the server doesn't need any NWScript functionality from NWNX it might be worth at least getting CD on the new NWNCX listings server so that people can see it when they're browsing servers. Increases the visibility, etc. but I have no idea if anyone uses those listings very much. I find it funny some places still fudge their player count.

I don't recall it having both the 5 unarmed attacks a round AND flurry of blows on top of that, but I could be mistaken. I haven't looked at 3.0 in ages.

Regardless, I think removing the flurry feat gives at least a little justification for giving monk some much needed love.

One thing that would also go a long way on this server: better monk gloves.

A big problem for an already stat-stretched class is that when you go unarmed, you're sacrificing THREE potential item slots compared to either dual wield or sword + board (not 2 hander, but they get 1.5x str bonus). You sacrifice a main hand weapon that can have bonuses in addition to weapon properties, an off hand item that can have bonuses in addition to weapon properties, AND bracers/gloves that would normally be used for, say, str or dex--both of which are or can be important to monk. Usually on CD, this is for an attack bonus (that doesn't add to damage, last time I checked, compared to a weapon doing so) and fairly paltry damage... 1d6, 1d8, 2d6 at the very top tiers just like any weapon. Also, unarmed attacks have both lame crits and a lame crit range.

This was fairly easy to do with nwnx, when I did it on another server. Other things I have done with monk:

-Made Nunchaku, Sai, and Wind Fire Wheel work with monk attack progression (and they also worked with other weapon feats)
-Made shuriken become a special monk weapon at class level 5 (and shuriken also got a buff in general)
-Made quarterstaves become a special monk weapon at class level 10 (and also, quarterstaves were made finessable)
-Made katanas become a special monk weapon at class level 15

While all of the above require NWNX work, what doesn't require NWNX work is giving boosts to the various under-appreciated monk abilities - wholeness of body, quivering palm, and empty body, by buffing them, making them free actions, giving them additional uses per day, or what-have-you. Those sorts of changes just require simple scripting.

I am a little perplexed by this statement, in light of precedent. There are many precedents of changes to class balance that admin has made over the years, including deviations from p&p mechanics. One trivial example of a deviation from p&p mechanics is the buffs to damage and curing spells. Another is the decision to let players take max hit points every levelup.

Edit: Though I do agree with you far enough to acknowledge that getting overly fixated on making everything exactly balanced is letting the perfect be the enemy of the good - it's much more important to worry about the broad strokes - making sure that there's some diversity of viable builds, and no class feels useless in a dungeon run.

That said, I do understand that some people prefer pathfinder-inspired changes over other types of custom changes. Some pathfinder changes aren't really necessary - especially for classes that already perform well in an environment like NWN. But the ones that do translate well tend to be crowd-pleasers. The following would be a slight modification of one of the pathfinder monk rules (modified because this way it's easier to script), that I feel would maintain the overall spirit of the pathfinder rules.


The above would be relatively simple to script, and I would be happy to do it if desired.

Oh. Also, abundant step might be workable. Dimension door seems to already be in the mod. Granted, that would mostly be an RP thing.

That's already in.