Making Monk Suck Less

[suddenperihelion]

Dec 27, 2014 14:17:03 GMT -5 psappho said:

Dec 27, 2014 14:04:06 GMT -5  @belladonna said:

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.

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!

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.

[Edge]

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.

[Calabask]

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

[Edge]

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

[NorthWolf: Doge Edition]

Mar 13, 2015 8:39:40 GMT -5 Calabask said:

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

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.

Mar 13, 2015 10:06:09 GMT -5 Edge said:

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

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.

[Voice of Kerensky]

Mar 12, 2015 19:19:37 GMT -5 suddenperihelion said:

Dec 27, 2014 14:17:03 GMT -5 psappho said:

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!

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.

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.

[suddenperihelion]

Jan 23, 2015 23:47:05 GMT -5 ThayanKnight said:

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.

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.

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 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.

At 4th level, a monk gains a pool of ki points, supernatural energy he can use to accomplish amazing feats. The number of points in a monk's ki pool is equal to 1/2 his monk level + his Wisdom modifier.

By spending 1 point from his ki pool, a monk can do one of the following:

   -Gain a single bonus attack per round at full BAB, for one round. If he already has another effect that gives a bonus attack per round (such as haste), this ability gives a bonus attack at a -5 penalty instead of a bonus attack at full BAB. Or,
   -Increase his speed by +50% for one round, or
   -Give himself a +4 dodge bonus to AC for 1 round.

Each of these powers is activated as a free action. This ability does not stack with itself, so subsequent uses will replace the previous effect granted by this ability.

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

[suddenperihelion]

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

[Vincent07]

May 25, 2015 4:21:52 GMT -5 suddenperihelion said:

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.