Pathfinder hates Monks and Guns! Or does it?

[SorO_Lost]

Well Veekie is still referring to the Monk as a 3/4 BAB Class, in PF so long as their Flurry they are full BABers. So it's sort of an interchangable debate. On the 3.5 side Shadow Blend & Blink go a log way in "fixing" the Monk, at higher levels the Monk are the best "mundane" meleer. So if you really wanted to prove PF hates Monks, show how they are out performed in a PF setting.

[marcielle]

@Raineh - For custom magic item creation, I believe they removed the rule where putting an enchantment on a wierd bodyslot costs extra so it costs the same to make a ring of dex, or a headband of str, etc. Don't have the book on me atm so I can't check though. And while they haven't had one big fix, comboing archetypes eases the load lots. Monks still need you to really know what they are doing but they are slowly getting better. Many Styles, Zen Archer and Quiggong Hungry Ghost are my personal favs. IMO(and I played monk tons over both 3.5 and PF)they have become less totally gimped(in comparison to other meelee, I have no idea what they were thinking about the casters) and more hardmode.

@ Soro -  I'm afraid that you only made your opponents point by the virtue that most of those tricks, ESPECIALLY the ability to feasibly increase unarmed damage beyond Large were explicitly removed/nerfed. Also, nearly all meelee classes are got inherent, stack with everything damage increases as well as increased ability to apply said damage, whereas certain changes and removals limited flurrying even further.  Doesn't help that some of them seem to have some pretty wierd preconceptions about monks and eastern things in general.

My conclusion (which probably isn't conclusive), is that SKR does indeed hate monks, but SOMEONE in there likes them.

Guns... yeah, they start out pretty bleh but at mid-high levels being able to consistently target touch AC ' trivializes some encounters', such as any large, non-Dexbased, non-incorporeal creature(there are quite a few of those). Heck it was the whole point of the flask sneak attack build mentioned earlier. Misfires were kinda a pretty important thing in the early days of guns and I can see why they wanted to put it in. It has the effect of making guns a 'gunslinger only' weapon, since they can consistently and (relatively)easily negate a misfire. I can't talk about ammo cost since most of my games have had non-magical ammo costs handwaved.

[Captnq]

Don't play pathfinder. Can't even say it's worth raiding for ideas. My Player Group's power gamer keeps muttering from time to time about how we should play the game and that she wants to play a wizard again.

That alone is enough to make me want to kill it with fire.

That said, I have read the rules and I have this to say about monks, having one min/maxed monk and one player playing a much more poorly designed monk trying to play catch up while avoiding "cheese".

Monks, straight up, suck.

If you allow a player to dig deep. Dredge up 3.0 stuff. Check out every obscure book possible. Custom build some magic items, they can be whirling dervishes of doom, even without TWF or THF or even Greater mighty wallop.

But from the point of view of watching the difference between a Min/Maxer/professional-accountant-who-stares-down-the ATF and a "normal" Player who wants to play a "normal" monk is startling.  I will use his PCs name, Kolos is actually less effective then the In-It-For-The-LOLZ Archer. The Archer at least gets to hit the BBEG from time to time. I've seen combats where Kolos won inititive to the bag guys, but lost to his own party, and NEVER GETS IN A SINGLE SHOT. More then once. One paper, he's an effective PC, but in the game, he can't beat out the comedian. You can blame it on a meandering PC concept and multiple rewrites, but the multiple rewrites are because he can't seem to get things to work, and is too damn prideful to let anyone "make his character for him". At times I wish he went back to playing a dwarven cleric. He was boring as fuck, but at least he didn't mope.

I see a great deal of theoretical work posted on this thread, which is well and good, but I actually see what happens in 3.5 to monks under the base system. You have to WORK to make monks awesome. If in 3.P, monks are nerfed, heaven help them, because the dice sure won't.

[SorO_Lost]

To be fair you have to work to make a lot of Classes work. As is a Barbarian likely dies upon the first Wolf he meets in the woods and it's the same with the Fighter and even the Rogue. Heck, Bards were considered a low man for the longest time because they wouldn't fair any better either.

But each Class has a method to fix it when you get into optimization. For Rogues, their Traps skills is extremely valuable and Sneak Attack is pretty straight forward. A Flanking buddy sets it up, and lots of Splat to bypass immunities. Barbarians have their mulch-combination of Complete Champion's Lion Totem, Unearthed Arcana's Whirling Frenzy, and Mind-Blank Wolf Totem trippage. Plus Frenzy Berserker is about as iconic as you can get and a pretty solid PrC. Monk's have their Unarmed & AFCs as outlined before. Fighter... Well Fighter is actually the hardest to optimize really. Not from a sheer number example, the large number of Feats lets him pick up Feat chains faster than the other Classes to outpace them early on, but those chains end pretty fast forcing the Fighter to focus on something else. Problem is, while he is starting anew in the new Feat chain everyone else continues to advance their already obtained abilities while they pick up new ones and the new Feats may not work well with his last (e.g. shock trooper & boomerang daze).

[Endarire]

I can't say for certain whether Pathfinder or certain people hate or love Monks.  I have less experience with Pathfinder's guns.  However, I do have a question about optimization effort.

If you're a newbie to 3.x or Pathfinder, how much effort do you expect to need to put in to make your character work?  Probably little, considering how much video games have likely conditioned you to think, "This is your character.  Go!"  This is very counter-intuitive to the mantra of this board and similar optimization communities, which goes something like, "If you aren't a primary caster, and there are thousands of pages of source material for you to consider, what makes you think you picked something uber without doing the research?  If you are a primary caster, just read your spell list (minimum twice), boost your casting stat, and go to town."

I don't mean to make us sound elitist, but 3.x and Pathfinder seem predicated upon, "Greatest involvement wins," which in this case, is research (including talking with your GM).

[veekie]

For PF, most of what you need to handle a published monster you can do just by actually picking combat stuff coherent with a tactic. The minimal investment isn't that high.

[Squirel_Dude]

Paizo has a careful balancing act.  Part of their publicity was that it's 3.5, but improved.  Also, it's still close enough to the 3.5 we know and love to be reverse-compatible.

If Paizo changes too much, they'll turn people off.  Change too little, and people will fill like the RPG's a waste and the Open Playtest a failure.

It appears that Paizo's trying to go with the "stay close to classic 3.5" by reinforcing caster/noncaster imbalance.

I think that this is also because the narrative/worldbuilding aspects of D&D and Pathfinder haven't moved past the tropes of 2nd edition. Back when casters and fighters leveled up at different rates, it made sense for the wizard to be more powerful than the fighter if they were both at 20th level. The wizard would have accumulated far more experience, etc. etc.

It's not necessarily great game design (you have fun now, I'll have fun later), but it at least was more cohesive with the world building. Even now, 10 years after 3rd edition was released, and all classes began to level at the same rate, 20th level wizards are still narratively put on pedastols of near god hood (See: Tar Baphon, Geb & Nex, and Razmiran from Golarion), while fighters are simply really good at punching things.

[Endarire]

Trope-wise, heroic characters tend to be heroic because of their wits (meaning their mental abilities).  I don't know of anyone 'heroic' who was famous for violence and killing things without also being smart.

Being a physical damage-heavy guy in a party with casters feels like you're signing up to be a minion!

[Libertad]

Trope-wise, heroic characters tend to be heroic because of their wits (meaning their mental abilities).  I don't know of anyone 'heroic' who was famous for violence and killing things without also being smart.

This is part of why the Dumb Melee Fighter's mostly a D&D construct.

[Unbeliever]

Trope-wise, heroic characters tend to be heroic because of their wits (meaning their mental abilities).  I don't know of anyone 'heroic' who was famous for violence and killing things without also being smart.

Being a physical damage-heavy guy in a party with casters feels like you're signing up to be a minion!

I think "smart" wouldn't be the right term, but I readily accept your point.  Fafhrd, for instance, and Conan for that matter, probably weren't "smart" in the sense of having high Intelligence scores.  But, they were very much not dunces:  they were skilled, cunning, and creative.

Although, we shouldn't disregard grit, charisma, and other "non-mental" abilities.  Beowulf, for instance, is kind of a lout, but a charismatic and tough one.  Likewise, Hercules, Achilles, etc.  Not known for their brains at all. 

The D&D construct of "dumb fighter" tends to neglect those.  And, it tends not to give you a ton of options that a "mundane" type can deploy to emulate those things.  Things like a Trip or a Disarm at the right moment, for instance.  Or, such things are overshadowed by magical options, as noted in another thread. 

[ImperatorK]

I don't know of anyone 'heroic' who was famous for violence and killing things without also being smart.

Hulk.

[Demelain]

I don't know of anyone 'heroic' who was famous for violence and killing things without also being smart.

Hulk.

Bruce Banner was a scientist.

[Raineh Daze]

I don't know of anyone 'heroic' who was famous for violence and killing things without also being smart.

Hulk.

Bruce Banner was a scientist.

That's not generally the same personality as the violent, destructive one.

[Demelain]

I don't know of anyone 'heroic' who was famous for violence and killing things without also being smart.

Hulk.

Bruce Banner was a scientist.

That's not generally the same personality as the violent, destructive one.

Depends on which comic, but yeah. Just pointing it out

[ImperatorK]

Bruce Banner was a scientist.

Your point?

[Squirel_Dude]

I don't know of anyone 'heroic' who was famous for violence and killing things without also being smart.

Hulk.

Professor Hulk

[Nanshork]

I don't know of anyone 'heroic' who was famous for violence and killing things without also being smart.

Hulk.

Professor Hulk

(click to show/hide)

[SorO_Lost]

Who said Hulk was stupid?
Movie 1, Bruce's mental side supersedes while in Hulk form and let's the BBEG blow him self up.
Movie 2, Hulk uses shields to block sonic weapons, chains to overcome more powerful opponents, etc.
Movie 3, Hulk recognizes allies and is so genera savvy he interrupts the Villainous Monologue to freaking own him.
Hulk in space (no bruce at all) talks, plans, and generally does more than punch things despite everyone else wanting exactly that.
Hulk Comics? No idea, don't read them.

As I understand things, "Hulk" is nothing more than a psychological problem. The Hulk's personality varies on Bruce's alternate personality for the week and often has bouts where he accesses his mutant powers without triggering some kind of psycho episode. So really it's smart hero that can trade Intelligence for brute force and when things get dire he is a smart brute.

[Tonymitsu]

Who said Hulk was stupid?
Movie 1, Bruce's mental side supersedes while in Hulk form and let's the BBEG blow him self up.
Movie 2, Hulk uses shields to block sonic weapons, chains to overcome more powerful opponents, etc.
Movie 3, Hulk recognizes allies and is so genera savvy he interrupts the Villainous Monologue to freaking own him.
Hulk in space (no bruce at all) talks, plans, and generally does more than punch things despite everyone else wanting exactly that.
Hulk Comics? No idea, don't read them.

As I understand things, "Hulk" is nothing more than a psychological problem. The Hulk's personality varies on Bruce's alternate personality for the week and often has bouts where he accesses his mutant powers without triggering some kind of psycho episode. So really it's smart hero that can trade Intelligence for brute force and when things get dire he is a smart brute.

Like Superman's limits, the Hulk's mental faculties in any given setting and/or time vary greatly depending on the writer.  When Jack Kirby and Stan Lee first created him, they cited the obvious inspiration of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.  Nowadays, the most frequent interpretation in the comics is that the Hulk is a form of disassociated personality that actually hated Bruce Banner (there was a famous scene where he called Banner "that weakling in the picture").  Other writers have introduced explanations that say the different Hulk transformations are a result of different emotional triggers (fear, anger, love) linked to Banner's fractured psyche.  And even further writers have claimed the Hulk and Banner have existed for so long that they are actually two distinct people (a la Planet Hulk).
The only constant is that the Hulk is stupid in the sense that he lacks restraint, foresight, shows enormous immaturity concerning how to handle his emotions, and typically lacks strategy beyond, "Punch it until it stops getting up."

I don't know of anyone 'heroic' who was famous for violence and killing things without also being smart.

Achillies.  Though I guess the hero part is open to interpretation, but was a hero to the Greeks.
Also, Son Goku from Dragonball.  He's killed plenty of people.
And Guts, from Berserk.  Worf, from Star Trek TNG.
Porthos probably counts, depending on which version of The Three Musketeers you read.
Most anti-hero types probably also qualify.

EDIT:  oh, right.  Thread topic.
I'm pretty sure Sean has gone on record at some point saying he thinks that monks have no place in a Dungeons and Dragons fantasy setting, but I couldn't quote it to save my life.  The idea that there are people on the design team that hate monks and guns seems more likely than not.  But those people also being in decision-making positions regarding game mechanics strikes me as unlikely.  I mean look at the first play-test paladin.  Monk was NEVER that bad.

[oslecamo]

I don't know of anyone 'heroic' who was famous for violence and killing things without also being smart.

Achillies.  Though I guess the hero part is open to interpretation, but was a hero to the Greeks.
Also, Son Goku from Dragonball.  He's killed plenty of people.
And Guts, from Berserk.  Worf, from Star Trek TNG.
Porthos probably counts, depending on which version of The Three Musketeers you read.
Most anti-hero types probably also qualify.

-Achillies was actually quite smart, like knowing how to bait Hector out of Troy's walls. He just hapened to face evern smarter people.
-Son Goku may be quite naive and lacking common sense, but he's a genius when it comes to martial arts theory (and practice of course). There's also the part where he had one of the purest souls in his verse, so he clearly wasn't a bloodthirsty berseker.
-Guts has a great strategic mind. He sucessfully led troops in combat in numerous situations and at least half the battles he wins is because he knows how to outsmart the demon of the week. It's just when he's facing puny enemy masses that he resorts to "Greater Cleave bitches!"