Monk Overhaul Feedback

[riffraff]

Upfront disclaimer: I am terrible at builds, so this is more emotional feedback than useful numbers feedback.

I adore the theme and concept of the Spiritual discipline stuff, playing as a character who wasn't just taking a monk dip, but was ICly always part monk, part cleric. To be honest, just having the ability to pray anywhere as an RP tool is great as I was doing this ICly anyway when prepping spells.

In practice I've had a hard time picking the feats I needed and wanted - that is, good feats to make me even remotely close to what I have going currently plus some of the more flavourful feats. Even happily cutting out a lot of the Monk stuff I don't care about, I still had to sacrifice a lot of fighting feats I figure I probaby need to be competitive (but please see the disclaimer). I had to pump a lot of feats in to make up for losing the innate unarmed stuff. Then I have less ability to pick the fun flavour feats like more of the new Spirit ones or Ki Speed.

I haven't really played with a Fighter, so I don't know, but are there a lot of Fighter-only feats that can only be taken on a Fighter feat gain and not a general feat gain (excluding Weapon spec)? Part of my problem was having so few feats I could pick up when I gained a general feat. I ended up getting stuff I don't really care about because everything I need was gated behind Monk feat levels. Even Brawler and Pugilist iirc could only be taken on a Monk feat level.

Being able to mix and match is cool - I want to be decent at fighting but also decently spiritual, mostly for character flavour, so being able to put feats in to increase Martial disicipline as well as Spiritual is nice.

Side note: the Spiritual feat progression was broken when I was testing this last night - the feats listed for that disicipline were giving me Mind progression instead.

[Goldeen]

Last thing I want to add here. There’s a whole lot of new bells and whistles in this rework. The document alone is difficult to navigate and understand as I find myself discovering something new every single time I read over it. Just want to point out that we are majorly changing a class for a very vague reason? I haven’t seen an official reasoning to why these changes are coming about, but current monk works more or less so I don’t see why we need to rework the whole class instead of improving what already exists.

This entire server is built upon the countless hours of volunteering from devs, but changes need to have accurate reasoning otherwise you shut out the community that is affected by said changes. Bringing it to PGCC first is a wonderful step in this direction, but still doesn’t answer the question for why this needs to happen.

[Kenji]

First of all, thank you all for participating in this feedback process.

I also want to give thanks to Zaphiel, Mythic/Merry, Kroatius, and the rest of the team for being an integral part of making the Monk Rework happen.

My part in all this is just design.

Zaphiel took on most of the heavy lifting and did thousands of lines of scripting all by himself, impressive and talented to say the least. Massive kudos to him.

Mythic/Merry wrote the majority of the flavor text which will eventually be included in the texts when I have the time to put them in.

Kroatius has designed us very cool new icons for the newest monk feats and I can't wait for everyone to enjoy these.

The rest of the Team, after months of discussions and sleepless nights, helped shape the monk rework into what it is now.

A loss in flavor and identity, however, is appearant.

I've read through the breakdown as to why your character can't be the same functionally as before. Does this mean the flavor and identity of your character are based on what it can mechanically do and present instead of the concept or roleplay it offers? Please elaborate further on this particular sentence, this is important in ensuring monk rework will hit the right spot when released for everyone involved, both existing and future new players.

I understand monk was in a comfortable place before that might've warranted scrapping a number of its features. But the revision gives me the impression of the class being reduced padding for other classes. The 4 Discipline Trees are certainly a unique spin on character progression. But under this direction the Monk is simply not a class anymore. Rather a modular prestige class that you slap onto Fighters, Casters or Charisma Classes to get more bang out of their feats.

The definition of a prestige class is that it is unavailable at level 1 for a character, whereas a base class is the opposite. Therefore, this statement is false. Monk is a base class, not a prestige class. Its newest design being modular is intended to fit various concepts and that is up to personal interpretation. One can argue Warpriest, Seeker, Shaman, and whatnot, having synergies with other classes, are also prestige classes by that logic which is then, by definition, also false.

However, I can see the rationale behind the notion as Warpriest was inspired by the sourcebook's Prestige Class (only in name) before being appended onto the Cleric's base class as a path.

I would suggest introducing some manner of synergy between the 4 disciplines, for characters that invest deeper into the Monk class. Or a lowering of the requirements in the Discipline List to attain mastery, the further you progress into the class itself. That'd make the most sense to me if we're to go forward with this model.

We have decided to put about 1/4 of the original development content on hold, and synergy between the 4 disciplines was one of them. It's another section called Balance: Maintain Equilibrium, where if one would carefully balance their selection on discipline investments, they'd receive adequate bonuses for making such choices.

Of course, given that this initial public release has already plenty of details to sift through, I decided it'd be best to introduce that much later when things are more stable and balanced.

Another suggestion I would make is to evaluate weapon-based buffs for Gauntlets. Because now that the field is opening up for Charisma-Based Monks and we are putting 2 to 3 feats into just being able to fight unarmed properly. It'd be great if Bless or Corrupt weapon would work on our gauntlets.

I believe the sentiment from the team and myself on this were "no" a while back because it'd further enable "fighting these dragons and demonic beings with just your fist!" which is counter to the immersion. While one already can do so, fist fighting is not something that should be on par with weapon fighting. And players who want to make fistfighting a focus on their characters should recognize that it is, while viable, a suboptimal option by choice. At least that is the intention behind the design.

[Kenji]

That being said, there are plenty of areas in which it falls a bit flat. As an example, Scholar-monks have by-and-large been achieving their aesthetic by dipping into Loremaster. Now the new Monk 4.0 is offering its own "Mind Discipline" to give options to that style of roleplay - except, well, it kinda does something else entirely. The tools it gives to its own "scholarly" monks are INT-based psionic abilities, arcane CL, and crafting points - none of which is particularly good unless you invest 12 feats into its mastery, and very few of those feats are even possible to take for monks. In fact, a good portion of them belong to Loremaster, so the Mind Discipline doesn't even really seem like it's supposed to be a monk thing and already sort of expects you to take Loremaster levels to supplement this discipline that has little-to-no thematic or mechanical compatibility with the concept of a monk who studies practical theory, like internal alchemy or eastern medicinal practice or hermetic cosmology. The Mind Discipline isn't made for monks; it's made for Wizards.

In summary: Love the fact that the update opens up so much multiclassing potential, but I don't love the Mind Discipline pretty much top to bottom (CL aside), and I really think the list of compatible feats for the disciplines needs to be revisited (or maybe lower the number of feats required to achieve each tier).

Monk rework went through about 3 different iterations of rework documents before becoming what it is now. Mind was added on as the last discipline and, I will admit, by then my creative juices had run relatively dry.

The initial approach is to make the Mind discipline similar to European monastic monks who excelled academically in terms of scribing and crafting. I went to Costco and saw this which inspired the discipline all on its own:

Now, the Mind discipline consists of Crafting feats, Psionic feats, Loremaster feats, and Magic feats. In a sense, it was a category that took in the remainder/left-over feats that weren't assigned anywhere else. It may eventually include some Rogue bonus feats, too, such as Opportunist and Skill Mastery.

Another idea is to have feats to provide a bonus to using the Printing Press. But to what extent, not sure.

To speak further on the Mind Discipline, I actually agree with the designer that psionic abilities fit really well within the monk's conceptual space, but I feel like its implementation here is a serious case of wasted potential. I would LOVE to see these concepts explored more robustly in a Psion prestige class. As-is, its incorporation into base Monk feels like a poor fit compared to the rest of the class abilities. Psychic abilities seem like the sort of thing you ought to invest a lot of time and effort and energy to achieve, so the fact that you can just sorta take a psionic ability through a feat and then not invest at all into those abilities seems a bit strange to me. Moreover, since the Mind Discipline is the "arcanist multiclass" branch of the tree, it's worth pointing out that psionic abilities are very different from traditional arcane practice, so the fact that this class now appears to conflate these abilities doesn't feel like it's a good contribution to the server narrative.

There were 4 psionic abilities I wanted to introduce at first for Mind Discipline but decided to only do 2 after noting that on Arelith, the player's access to psionic abilities is pretty much non-existent. The closest one to it would be enchantment school spells.

The intention for these newly introduced psionic abilities isn't to conflate psionic powers with arcane magic, though I can certainly see why it would appear to be so given that they are now both binned under the Mind Discipline.

Suffice it to say, the Mind Discipline is a broader categorization that doesn't necessarily say psionic abilities and arcane magic are one and the same, but the documentation and the design should clarify that. Thank you for pointing that out.

EDIT to add: At the bare minimum, Skill Focus should be added to the compatible Mind Discipline feats, so at least the prerequisite feat you HAVE to take to get Loremaster still counts for mastery too.

Skill Focus feats were tricky and I believe the discussion I had with Zaphiel was that the Skill Foci may cater to multiple disciplines or no disciplines at all. As we couldn't decide at the time, the skill foci were left out for the time being.

Skill Focus: Craft Mastery, Set Trap, Disarm Trap, Open Lock, Spellcraft are all great candidates for Mind Discipline.

What about Perform, Bluff, Intimidate, and Leadership? Feels like they can be Mind, Body, or even Spiritual.

What about the most literal one of them all: Discipline
Maybe (E)SF: Discipline should count as 1 for all 4, now that's an idea.

[Mattamue]

Mental Turmoil doesn't appear to have any effect. Passed save or failed. No DPS started on the target, which I assume is a DOT?

[Kenji]

Last thing I want to add here. There’s a whole lot of new bells and whistles in this rework. The document alone is difficult to navigate and understand as I find myself discovering something new every single time I read over it. Just want to point out that we are majorly changing a class for a very vague reason? I haven’t seen an official reasoning to why these changes are coming about, but current monk works more or less so I don’t see why we need to rework the whole class instead of improving what already exists.

This entire server is built upon the countless hours of volunteering from devs, but changes need to have accurate reasoning otherwise you shut out the community that is affected by said changes. Bringing it to PGCC first is a wonderful step in this direction, but still doesn’t answer the question for why this needs to happen.

There are many answers to this particular heavily loaded question that is:

"Why [does] this [need] to happen?"

As answered by Irongron somewhere, Arelith's popularity and its survival over the past two decades were thanks to both the passionate community as well as the countless admins, DMs, devs, and volunteers that have contributed to this particular small corner of the internet.

To answer the question, we need to focus on the renovation and innovation part of the server. And for many players, it'd be hard to imagine that any of us would truly enjoy Arelith for what it is with only Vanilla mechanics (barb/ranger are bad, monks are OP, and cleric 17 WM 7 ftr 6 everywhere). Vice versa, without the hard take on everyone being in-character only and a strong emphasis on this server, being a roleplaying server, most players are likely not interested in a PvP arena server. Otherwise, PGCC would have been filled to the brim.

Arelith strikes a great balance between both the roleplay and the mechanics, perhaps more than I can put into words. So why does Monk Rework need to happen?

Here's my take.

Monk is a base class. The word itself invokes all kinds of imagery, much like "Rogue", "Cleric", "Fighter", or "Wizard". Monk as a word has deep cultural connotations in both the real world and the fantasy world that is Forgotten Realms.

Before the current monk rework, there are pretty much a handful of "viable" monk builds, and they are all fist-related.

This is due to years of adjustments and nerfing from the vanilla monk that is simply considered "Overpowered". Many classes were either monk dips or shotgun builds because of UBAB. So we took that away. Monks then became either dips or fist-based pure monks.

In terms of building, monk as a base class is very lacking in diversity. This, in turn, did not inspire many monk-related roleplay and concepts. Now, with this newest iteration of monk rework, my hope is to make any variation of monk, be it 3-level monk dip, 6-level monk dip, 11-level monk investment, or even 17-level monk dedication to be both viable and catering to all kinds of "monk" concepts. They can be a Shaolin Warrior Monk that trains in martial arts and weapons or a European monk with tonsure that studies scriptures, brews wine and vinegar, and scribes all day.

Does it need to happen? No.

Why does it need to happen? No one can truly answer a why question other than a subjective desire to make something better than it was, at least that is, again, my take.

Let's not get stuck on the why. We all have our reasons as to why we're here, what will be more productive is the how on this monk rework will/should happen.

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

Snip. You can read it right above.

Good response Kenji. While one can disagree with the conclusions reached, they can't deny the logic behind it, or that heavy conversations went into the decision to do this. That new kid of yours has done wonders for your patience. Well, it's either that or Sincra has taken to logging in under your account and responding for you.

[magistrasa]

Thanks for the insight into the thought process behind some of these design decisions, Kenji. Unfortunately for both of us, you've opened the door to a conversation that excites my most insufferable sensibilities. Please forgive me for the crimes I am about to commit against this thread.

The initial approach is to make the Mind discipline similar to European monastic monks who excelled academically in terms of printing and crafting.

This particular point of inspiration stands out to me because, from what I know and have read about European monastic monks and the Catholic doctrines that have historically informed their practice, their mastery of craftsmanship and printworks is inexorably tied to their spirituality. The great works of art they are known for were committed as acts of faith and dedicated to the God they worship. The invention of chartreuse* and the illustration of the Book of Kells and the construction of the Sistine Chapel all required incredible skill and training, yes, but the skill and training were never the point - devotion is what drove these acts of creation, and I think that comes through when you look at the Mind Discipline and see it's a bit disjointed. The real-world inspiration behind this aspect of its design is really better suited to the Spiritual Discipline.

Obviously, any "monk" you pick up for inspiration from the real world is going to come with some kind of heavy religious overtone, so I don't wanna rag on the idea too much because there's no way around the fact that WotC made Shaolin warriors a big deal and now it's gotta be everyone's problem. Worse still, I feel like the best real-world religious orders that could serve as alternative inspiration for this branch of the class tree (Sufism in Islam and Kabbalistic Judaism, two very academically-oriented practices within their respective faiths) never get called "monks" in the real world so it's a hard sell to suggest them as inspiration for any D&D monk design. I'm struggling not to launch into what will inevitably be an unhelpful tirade about academia amongst the theologians. There's simply no way to win in that arena. God bless you for trying.

So, I'll set aside real-world inspiration to instead draw attention to the "tagline," so to speak, for the Mind Discipline: Attain Enlightenment. We should probably define what "enlightenment" precisely means if we want to build a branch of the class that urges its pursuit. I obviously don't know when to shut up, so I'll give it my best shot!

Enlightenment is an achievement marked by revelation, self-discovery, and a transcendence that rises beyond the trappings of social conditioning. It is the coming of awareness to some deeper truth that is otherwise hidden behind a curtain of noise. In Eastern philosophy, enlightenment is attained through mindful meditation, rejection of the distractions of materialism, and the quiet lifestyle of a reclusive ascetic. In the Western perspective, enlightenment is associated with keen insight, mastery of many fields of study, and the pursuit of transcendental experiences. Broadly speaking, Eastern enlightenment is considered more internalized and revelatory, while Western enlightenment is considered more active and experiential. All this established, I do have some vague and probably unhelpful ideas for ways to incorporate these principles into the class design:

Towards the Eastern practice:

• Some manner of activated self-cast remove fear/clarity/mind blank effect, to emulate the stillness of mind granted by meditation (ideally able to be used even if under the effects of some CC)
• To play off the anti-materialism idea, some kind of buff or boon granted by traveling light and not having a lot of carry weight or occupied inventory slots (admittedly probably not a good idea if Gravity Orbs don't get changed, if it's even possible to begin with)
• Reintroduce the Tongue of Sun & Moon, but better and cooler and maybe with actual language proficiency. Like, maybe you're able to learn languages quickly and without phrasebooks or something. This idea is inspired by some of the folklore I've heard where mystical hermit-monks are able to understand the heart of the people they speak to despite the barriers of language.

Towards the Western practice:

• Bonuses to the investigative skills, or better chances of breaking disguises, as a way to embody the wisdom and insight afforded by a disciplined mind
• Loremaster secrets! Maybe you don't have to delete that horrible terrible class, and we can just open the door up to Mind monks getting some of their goodies since there's plenty of room to share the conceptual space.
• Astral Projection? Something akin to the idea of a "transcendental experience," that perhaps interacts with the fugue or with scrying mechanics in some weird and unique way.

I feel like a great associated school of magic for this branch of monastic disciplines would be Divination. It's literally all about opening up your mind and your senses to witness the hidden truths of the cosmos. What could be more on-brand for a monk than that!

Anyways, you're probably (rightfully) going to say "dude we worked on this for 7 months already there's no way you think we're going to take this class design in a completely different direction at the last minute also I'm so tired of how much work we've put in please don't make me think more I just want to lay this beast to rest" and that is a completely fair and understandable reaction to this seven-paragraph work of fanfiction. I just think the Mind Discipline is cool conceptually and there's a lot of untapped potential in the idea. You mentioned you kinda ran out of creative juices and I guess I'm just sharing this on the off chance that maybe one of these nonsensical ideas is something you like, and also happens to be something that's easy to implement, and might make the class a little better as a result of my sharing it. Only one way to find out!

* - Okay, well, full disclosure, the story behind chartreuse isn't really all that devotional, it was actually invented because King Henry IV of France wanted to live forever and commissioned the monks to brew up an alchemical recipe that he thought was the Elixir of Youth. Instead, it turned out to be the Elixir of Getting Absolutely Blitzed and the monks made a million billion dollars. Just as God intended, of course. To this day the recipe is still kept secret and the Carthusian monks are the only ones who craft all the chartreuse in the entire world.

[Flower Power]

The initial approach is to make the Mind discipline similar to European monastic monks who excelled academically in terms of printing and crafting.

This particular point of inspiration stands out to me because, from what I know and have read about European monastic monks and the Catholic doctrines that have historically informed their practice, their mastery of craftsmanship and printworks is inexorably tied to their spirituality. The great works of art they are known for were committed as acts of faith and dedicated to the God they worship. The invention of chartreuse* and the illustration of the Book of Kells and the construction of the Sistine Chapel all required incredible skill and training, yes, but the skill and training were never the point - devotion is what drove these acts of creation, and I think that comes through when you look at the Mind Discipline and see it's a bit disjointed. The real-world inspiration behind this aspect of its design is really better suited to the Spiritual Discipline.

Yeah, that about hits the nail on the head, thematically. Labor in the monastic life is never actually about labor, it's about service and is a form of prayer unto itself. The work was never about the actual work, nor about self improvement or self mastery through work, but about finding grace in selfless labor.

"Let those friars, to whom the Lord gives the grace to work, work faithfully and devotedly, in such a way that, having excluded idleness, the enemy of the soul, they do not extinguish the spirit of holy prayer and devotion, to which all other temporal things should be subordinated."

• Chp. 5, Solet Annuere (popularly, the Rule of Saint Francis)

[Kenji]

To be extra clear: pointing out that it is like a prestige class isn't describing it as a prestige class, it's prescribing that it doesn't fit the normative standards of a base class.

Please elaborate on what the normative standard of a base class is.

[PaaranDisen]

I've already laid that out in some detail in my prior two posts in this thread. And others have expressed what they believe constitutes (and doesn't constitute) a good fit for a base class. I'm not sure what else I can say without a more specific query.

[xanrael]

I'm not sure a longer semantic discussion on whether monk is or isn't PrC-like is going to be beneficial for balancing.

I do think most would agree it is very modular. That will mean more decisions and customization in building it. For me, I'm thrilled about that, others may not be. I do hope that as things develop that a single set of feats doesn't become the de-facto winners while the rest are trap choices. I expect there to be some "required" feats when optimizing but as long as there are a couple of spots where you can pick and choose to taste without sacrificing power it will be good.

I dunno how much control custom classes have on the "recommend" options for bonus feats. If there is a good bit, and it's easy to change, maybe when the class is about to go live the developers can pick a good set of feats to be selected for recommended so players that are having choice paralysis and don't hang out on discord/comb the wiki can still have a solid character.

[Goldeen]

Bringing it to PGCC first is a wonderful step in this direction, but still doesn’t answer the question for why this needs to happen.

There are many answers to this particular heavily loaded question that is:

Let's not get stuck on the why. We all have our reasons as to why we're here, what will be more productive is the how on this monk rework will/should happen.

I appreciate your well-thought answer to my question, I find myself agreeing with you on what would be more productive.

As long as this isn’t prematurely released to live and the steps taken to change the rework are done on PGCC until a general likability is reached, then I believe you may end up with a good rework on your hands.

Will note that I believe reflavoring the names of the psionic related features in Mind discipline to something akin to Chi would solve some of the awkwardness in allowing monks to be some sort of psion. Even if psions aren’t your intention, the features will be taken literal and translated to RP as thus.

[kinginyellow]

Making a new character and engaging with these was a choice. Now whoever was playing a monk before is going to be greeted with needing to cite an out of game spreadsheet to even build your class properly because of an overly convoluted feat pre requisite system for your class abilities to even work... On what was previously a pretty straightforward class!

I have to agree with this.

One of my friends who was playing monk is going to have to fully rebuild his character to try to keep with the themes of what he used to do in a mechanical sense. This means his character who previously had 16 Wisdom is now going to have 8 Wisdom and 16 Charisma because of the mechanical changes to monk and the spirit path so obviously synergizing with div dipping for feat progress to Mastery.

This means the character in question is going to need to ask for a complete stat redistribution because character deletion simply isn't an option because of guildhouse ownership.

And again, I don't really personally mind the direction monk is taking when it comes to the concept of Build-A-Monk from earlier in the thread. But it is true that this is a far departure from the class. Most monk paths don't need wisdom, its used by like 3 abilities. Every previous monk had at least 14 wisdom, and those points are an actual waste since its now a dump stat depending on wether or not your build uses the body discipline and Ki Barrier.

[Hignus Greenleaf]

There are some things like "Defensive roll" that needs to be removed from these new monk changes... People are making Fighter/WM/Monk with Epic Dodge... High AB... High dmg.... High AC.... High saves.... etc etc

And even if you did remove it, you can still make the Monk/WM/SD version wich is still very strong.

Other changes arent too bad i guess. But the defensive roll in general... No thank you.

MOD EDIT: Control yourself if want to post feedback and leave the tinfoil hat at home

[Huelander]

As per Kenji's request I will elaborate on what I see as a loss of flovor and identity:

Most monk abilities in the original D&D monk can find their origins in the alleged effects of chinese medicine and wushu; Inner Alchemy based on the Three Treasures of Tao. Translated into D&D as the Primordial Trifecta of Mind, Body and Soul.

In world history and mythology, it shares a congruent albeit disjointed body of work with dharmic chakras, buddhist canon and Christian/middle-eastern esotericisms. Such as the Jewish Tree of Life in Kaballah, and the Duality in Gnosticism. This body of work is very heavily translated into the Wheel of Planes and governs how Ki works in the D&D cosmlogy. It has an connection to things that are considered Fundamental in the D&D cosmology, simply put. And the Monk has a very definitive place as the de facto class contending with this slice of D&D.

So, my character wrote a 20 page book on Inner Alchemy, describing what Ki is supposed to be in context to the cosmology's most consistent elements. The later half of the book then formats all the current monk abilities in a hypothetical framework of how the Ki would be moving through the mind/body/soul for each ability. Similar to the monograms of spells.

Most of these abilities will not longer be accessible to the in-game author, should he be sporting the new class. And that's a problem for scholar-monks that are actually studying Ki techniques. Because unlike wizards you can't just learn your techniques from a manuscript; you're limited to your feat amount. So how are you supposed to write about them like a master of the arts when any single individual can never actually collect all of the techniques?

No monk in the new system wil ever take- say, Purity of Body. Because while it's a nice little gimmick, it's now competing with other feats that have a much more significant impact. This is a loss of flavor, and an invariable consequence of turning class features into selectable feats that compete with other feats.

The Perfect Self feat and its PnP descriptions in particular have been integral to my character's presentation and philosphy. Centered around a theme of ascension and becoming more than human. The Monk's plethora of features were excellent highlights of this. The bits and bops of immunities and self healing. The combat techniques and superhuman ki control, etc. This was the class that seeks to pursue sublime control over oneself and become something of an Outsider-like Immortal with energy-charged fists.

So, if I may put a it in a crass manner: We are now co-opting that class with the likes of fat catholic fryars that brew beer.
And that, is not congruent.

I find that it drains the class of its identity and place within the greater context of its environment. We already have the Cloistered Cleric. The reason Faerun's monastic orders have such an eastern vibe is simply because unlike in history; inner alchemy actually works. And Faerun's history is quite simply not our history.

BE THAT AS IT MAY, the new design of class does invite new kinds of characters. It's a choice to make as server to go in a direction like this. It just happens to screw with what I've got going on, and I'm not sure what to do with that when it goes live.

[Kenji]

This particular point of inspiration stands out to me because, from what I know and have read about European monastic monks and the Catholic doctrines that have historically informed their practice, their mastery of craftsmanship and printworks is inexorably tied to their spirituality. The great works of art they are known for were committed as acts of faith and dedicated to the God they worship. The invention of chartreuse* and the illustration of the Book of Kells and the construction of the Sistine Chapel all required incredible skill and training, yes, but the skill and training were never the point - devotion is what drove these acts of creation, and I think that comes through when you look at the Mind Discipline and see it's a bit disjointed. The real-world inspiration behind this aspect of its design is really better suited to the Spiritual Discipline.

Obviously, any "monk" you pick up for inspiration from the real world is going to come with some kind of heavy religious overtone, so I don't wanna rag on the idea too much because there's no way around the fact that WotC made Shaolin warriors a big deal and now it's gotta be everyone's problem. Worse still, I feel like the best real-world religious orders that could serve as alternative inspiration for this branch of the class tree (Sufism in Islam and Kabbalistic Judaism, two very academically-oriented practices within their respective faiths) never get called "monks" in the real world so it's a hard sell to suggest them as inspiration for any D&D monk design.

Most monk abilities in the original D&D monk can find their origins in the alleged effects of chinese medicine and wushu; Inner Alchemy based on the Three Treasures of Tao. Translated into D&D as the Primordial Trifecta of Mind, Body and Soul.

In world history and mythology, it shares a congruent albeit disjointed body of work with dharmic chakras, buddhist canon and Christian/middle-eastern esotericisms. Such as the Jewish Tree of Life in Kaballah, and the Duality in Gnosticism. This body of work is very heavily translated into the Wheel of Planes and governs how Ki works in the D&D cosmlogy. It has an connection to things that are considered Fundamental in the D&D cosmology, simply put. And the Monk has a very definitive place as the de facto class contending with this slice of D&D.

So, my character wrote a 20 page book on Inner Alchemy, describing what Ki is supposed to be in context to the cosmology's most consistent elements. The later half of the book then formats all the current monk abilities in a hypothetical framework of how the Ki would be moving through the mind/body/soul for each ability. Similar to the monograms of spells.

These were fantastic reads and I may adjust the design based off of these types of feedback alone. I will respond in depth when I have the time, but I'd like to encourage everyone to provide feedback much like the above two:
Your thoughts on "Monk" as a word, how it inspires the concept that your character will have, and what you as a player would like to see from the rework. References to either the real-world history/religion or the Forgotten Realm setting monastic orders are also very welcome.

[Coolguy McMagic]

Two things I'd like to add:

a) Ki Barrier.
I haven't been paying close attention to the vigilante development, so I assume this has been discussed before and the ship has sailed already, but why has this been implemented this way? I'm not talking about the nerf to AC for dips, but just its usability.

It's an ability you need to activate with a short duration (2 minutes) and a 5 minute CD which translates to an 8 minute long non-stop duration. For PVP, this is enough for most (though certainly not all) encounters - meaning that it's hardly a nerf in power level for PVP as most fights won't last that long anyway. It's just an added annoyance you need to keep track of and sacrifice hotbar space for.
Given that, I assume it's mean to be a nerf for PVE. But for whom exactly? Was Monk really that strong in PVE, compared to the insane soloability that other classes already have? As far as I'm aware, the only other builds that Wis AC are Divine Casters. But for PVE, they just stand behind their summons anyway. If they do end up getting attacked, they can just pop Ki Barrier before getting to safety. So again, a nerf in usability but not power level.

Why not nerf Wis AC to 2/3 for anyone without the proper tier mastery? The idea of having to time a 2 turn CD in PVP sounds like a nightmare to me and an unnecessary PVE nerf to classes that are either already mediocre or don't rely on high AC to perform anyway.

b) Spiritual Discipline.
I don't know how much of this is intentional, but finding feats for spiritual discipline is close to impossible. Feats like Strong Will are redundant for Wis-based classes and the discipline gives you will saves anyway. Other than that it's exclusively some terrible background feats and feats you can only get with specific classes (and the new monk feats, of course).

For reference, my divine caster Shaman dipping Monk qualifies for Mind Mastery in terms of feats without even trying (12 feats without any rework-related changes to the build) while having exactly 0 feats that qualify for Spiritual Discipline. I assume this is because the spiritual abilities are more powerful? If so, I guess that's reasonable, but I'm really struggling thinking of a build that could reasonably hit those 12 feats. I don't think we want people to pick up Paladin levels just to make their Spiritual Discipline Monk work. That just seems bad for everyone.

[AnselHoenheim]

I'll talk about my experience with monk in the PGCC

I did grabbed one that I already had at level 30, gave him the relevel, and started to rebuild it

After half of the progress, and half an hour later (level 15) I literally closed the game and went to sleep because of how OVERWHELMING is to build now the monk with so many feats that you have to decide, and thinking at each level "Am I ruining the build after choosing this, or this? Am I forgetting also this this and this?", It's, sincerely, at least in my experience, too much for me.

I'd like to see building a monk a little easier, perhaps giving him packages (Or paths even) and reduce the amount of feats to choose, because, right now? I ain't touching it anymore even with a stick

[kinginyellow]

b) Spiritual Discipline.
I don't know how much of this is intentional, but finding feats for spiritual discipline is close to impossible. Feats like Strong Will are redundant for Wis-based classes and the discipline gives you will saves anyway. Other than that it's exclusively some terrible background feats and feats you can only get with specific classes (and the new monk feats, of course).

For reference, my divine caster Shaman dipping Monk qualifies for Mind Mastery in terms of feats without even trying (12 feats without any rework-related changes to the build) while having exactly 0 feats that qualify for Spiritual Discipline. I assume this is because the spiritual abilities are more powerful? If so, I guess that's reasonable, but I'm really struggling thinking of a build that could reasonably hit those 12 feats. I don't think we want people to pick up Paladin levels just to make their Spiritual Discipline Monk work. That just seems bad for everyone.

What I came up with for a friend was a monk that just dumped wisdom and went with charisma instead to use divine might, divine shield, and divine smite which all contribute towards spirit discipline. Monks saves also got nerfed across the board, and Divine Blessing helps you fix that by giving you across the board saves (It also counts towards spirit mastery.). You end up depending on divine shield for your defence instead of Ki Barrier, and focus on God Fist and the Martial Discipline feats for AB and damage, and get things like Pray feats (2 charges on pray on a shorter cooldown).

In case you are in a dungeon and you run out of turn undead charges, you also have the feat that lets you rest anywhere and ignore rest requirements once per server tick.

Having WIS on monk in the current state of monk is not necessary, although people might argue that Ki Barrier is worth having or not in most builds. Its just that there's only a handful of abilities now that use it, some of which are DC abilities which by default I ignore because people's saves are so high. Ki Barrier is still a pretty good ability, but you can live without it to enable different builds.

[Coolguy McMagic]

What I came up with for a friend was a monk that just dumped wisdom and went with charisma instead to use divine might, divine shield, and divine smite which all contribute towards spirit discipline. Monks saves also got nerfed across the board, and Divine Blessing helps you fix that by giving you across the board saves (It also counts towards spirit mastery.). You end up depending on divine shield for your defence instead of Ki Barrier, and focus on God Fist and the Martial Discipline feats for AB and damage, and get things like Pray feats (2 charges on pray on a shorter cooldown).

That makes sense, and I could see how that might work. Maybe it's just me, but I really do not like the concept of a Paladin/Monk. Personally I believe Paladin is the last class someone should dip for power level reasons, as it has some hefty RP restrictions.

[Dreams]

Your thoughts on "Monk" as a word, how it inspires the concept that your character will have, and what you as a player would like to see from the rework. References to either the real-world history/religion or the Forgotten Realm setting monastic orders are also very welcome.

I'm someone who has lived with and studied amongst Shaolin monks, who in modern times are really not what you see in fantasy games, movies, or even documentaries that are heavily state influenced/funded. That said, I wanted to address specifically what you've asked for.

A "monk" is someone that is choosing to live a different life from the norm of society, and though usually this is some kind of form of asceticism, it may not be religious at all. I've played a number of different monks on Arelith and it's always worked out best when straying AWAY from real-life influence and instead leaning more heavily on Forgotten Realms monk orders or content. The reason for that is that the reality of what a monk is just isn't that fun to play out in character.

It might be better to think about aligning whatever abilities along with the setting itself and how monks are portrayed through the Forgotten Realms specific to some of the orders. Enlightenment for different monk orders means different things. A few examples and why I think they're great:

Long Death - Usually evil. Focuses on studying the boundary between the living and the dead, death itself. It leads to brutal training, a lot of killing, a lot of much more brutal and physical techniques and slowly developing apathy to the suffering of beings around you. There are so many ways to hurt people, break bones, damage organs, cause pain, and the great thing about this order is that there's a lot of variability in how your character might take this on. They might study these techniques to apply them in war, or to become the greatest fighter, or to seek the Long Death enlightenment.

Old Order - Usually neutral. These monks are known for being able to take an incredible beating, defensive combat, their introspection and philosophies. Probably the most balanced sense of 'monk' in the Forgotten Realms. Because they're sort of a mysterious order, players could take this in any direction they like.

Hin Fist (Halflings only!) - Usually good. Their order is about mastering the self, to then be able to master the world around them. This is done through self-reliance and solitude. This is a great one for the journey of individual strength of a character, particularly for new monks that are exploring Arelith.

You can apply a great deal from the monk orders of the Forgotten Realms, since they are the famous and well known ones across the realms. It makes sense, therefore, for characters to have learned from them. It also makes sense for characters to learn within an order and then choose to leave it in order to find their own path.

When I read the names of what the new monk abilities do and compare them to where the influences have come from, some of them seem misplaced or trying to cover as many of the influences as possible without understanding them. Other ones like Flesh of Steel and most of the Spiritual Discipline hit the mark or don't misname. A few examples of these are:

• The splitting of Mind/Body/Spirit and Martial as disciplines? It is strange to consider these things separate because they're all the same goal. Martial is tacked on at the end, but really it is more the method of achieving the others when considering martial monks.

• "The Art of War" is not a physical discipline, it's a discipline of the mind. Particularly strategy and understanding.

• "Reach Nirvana" and "Attain Enlightenment" set as goals of disciplines is a really strange way to label these. I appreciate that they're thematic, but they're describing almost the same thing described by different cultures.

• Quivering Palm is based on a legendary ability called "Dim Mak" or the death touch. It's from stories and a fair amount of media now. This might better be considered as striking a precise point for internal bleeding, so that someone dies later. It could be thought about as a bleeding damage-over-time rather than the save or death. However! This ability might also be split up into other variants instead of just being focused on death. Similar to Dirty Fighting/Called Shot, if different places are struck it might hamper the opponent's ability to fight. You could consider stun, paralysis, daze, AB penalties, AC penalties, slow, all kinds of disabilities. Could also be described as a Long Death technique.

• Dragon Sundering Eighteenth Palm represents the unarmed. It's great, but way too specific on hunting magical beasts. Whereas the Nine Sword of the Recluse is the only one of these techniques that will affect other player characters, so I hate to say it but this is the only thing people are going to build into. It's also focused specifically on Kozakuran weapons. It'll appeal to the weebs in the audience and miss most other weapon-wielding monks. The longsword (jian) / broadsword (dao - probably best represented by scimitar) fit this category as well but are notably absent. To fit the theme of unarmed monk, it might be better to swap these enemy categories between the two. Swords for hunting mythical beasts, unarmed for dealing with humanoid opponents (which is what all of the unarmed training focuses on!)

• Drunken Fist as a style is not about getting drunk and fighting. It's about appearing to be drunk, moving in a way that confuses your opponent, and is 100% about deception. To actually have a character needing to get drunk to be able to use the technique is entirely misunderstanding the point of this style. Note that I'm referring not just to a single technique, but an entire style of martial arts.

• T'ai Ji as a stance is not only simplifying another entire style of martial arts, but probably attributes the wrong mechanics to it. Taiji is about moving with the energy of the opponent, but you might consider Baji as a replacement. Baji is about the creation of short-range explosive power in strikes or in direct response to the opponents force, so absolutely could be described as the kind of stance a monk would adopt for this effect. It's a generalisation of another entire style of martial arts. Could just as easily be described as an Old Order technique.

TLDR: I love the variability, choice, and opportunity for different concepts of "monk" to shine through. I dislike where entire important martial arts styles are reduced to a single ability that doesn't represent the heart of the style. I dislike that everyone will go for specifically monk/fighter/wm Nodachi. Forgotten Realms has a number of great orders to draw on and abilities could easily have come from these orders.

[kinginyellow]

That makes sense, and I could see how that might work. Maybe it's just me, but I really do not like the concept of a Paladin/Monk. Personally I believe Paladin is the last class someone should dip for power level reasons, as it has some hefty RP restrictions.

Yeah, well, so does monk. They're both lawful classes, and if you're a Lawful Good Monk, there are monk orders that fit well with being a Paladin. Same with if you're a Lawful Evil Monk and do this with blackguard instead.

Edit: Which, after making this post, and reading the post previous to mine, why did we take no inspiration for the monk rework from any of the monk orders in DND?

Monk Orders are a pretty big deal when making a monk character. In the tabletop monk straight up can't multiclass to a class that isn't supported by the monk's monastic order. Something like a Long Death Monk gets enabled to multiclass assassin. Why didn't we get flavor that matched making the monk orders and monastic traditions more important? The monk orders could've been monk's warlock pacts.

[Llopast]

I like the update a lot RP-wise. I think, it is much better than going into paths as nearly any monastic way can be constructed via this new bonus feats system.

I personally expected something jedi/force-themed as the force dmg type was introduced earlier. Maybe some correlations with skills like persuade, parry, concentration. A feat which would allow usage of WIS instead of CHA when it comes to social skills bonuses like the SW has. Maybe next time?

Mechanically, I think unarmed monks should be more or less fine.
As an Armed monk I can say that even though there are some armed feats, it seems there won't be many options to go DEX armed monk while keeping fine DMG & AB. From the first glance I can imagine the armed builds like:
25 Monk| 5 WM (or Knight)
17 Monk| 5 WM (or Knight)| 8 Fighter (or DC)
17 Monk| 8 Fighter| 5 Knight
17 Monk| 7 Knight| 6 Fighter (or DC)
7 Monk| 23 Fighter
All will use Nodachi or Naginata (as dual-w AB is going to be too low).
Valiant Knight is on the list as the class provides all-round bonuses to every vital stat (AB| DMG| Saves). Also allows you to legitimately RP a Jade Eye Knight.
Fighter is simply for the epic feats and (E)WS. 23 Fighter is for +1 Sure Striking without going for the 4th Monk tier.
DC can be taken instead of F to sacrifice some dmg and AC over better Saves and SR.
WM is a tough choice now as it will eat many vital feat slots and tier possibilities. M| WM will not live too long in a mage fight, however will have a chance to beat a melee build.

Some more exotic options for inclusions like 6/9 Paladin, 3/5 Ranger, 7/10 Knight, 15/16 DC to be tested out of curiosity.

[tessimon]

As far as the class goes for 3.x:

Gygax credited the T.V. show Kung Fu and The Destroyer novel series for inspiring the monk class. Kung Fu was more mundane but The Destroyer series has the MC acting more of a comic book character than anything else. Feats like flipping over tanks, being un-see-able to the point of invisibility, dodging bullets, etc thanks to their martial art (Sinanju) transforming practitioners into superhumans.

A lot of the 3.x mechanics take more after the latter than the former as the levels advance. At higher levels it's not that Mo the Monk can break 4 bricks instead of 1 so can punch a death slaad to death. It's that Mo the Monk's training has reshaped his body to exhibit the same supernatural/magical abilities as a being shaped on a plane of law or a sword enchanted to do similar and so can ignore the death slaad's DR. Ki Strike is specifically stated as a supernatural (magical) ability instead of an extraordinary ability.

A paladin or druid can be shut off from the majority of their powers from doing something against their precepts. Even if a monk switches to a chaotic alignment they keep all their powers, they just can't advance further. Their body has been reshaped through their training and it's part of them.

No matter how strong a fighter becomes, they're still "mundane". That "mundane" nature is unrealistically powerful, but still there. A monk, quote, "becomes a magical creature" by level 20. In many way's they're closer to the supernatural foes the party faces than human.

You have some crazy feats in the D&D Faerun too, like Grandmaster Kane being able to project his consciousness to other locations/planes and then teleport/plane shift his body there from thought alone due to his training.

I'm not saying the new monk has to keep that design, but that's part of the implementation of it.