Dungeons & Delvers Deep Dive Review: Monks

Whelp, Bruce seems to really like our take on the monk, but will the paladin measure up?

Some answers and commentary (you'll need to watch the review for full context): 

I never liked the 3rd Edition monk. The attack bonus was middle ground, like a cleric, so you hit less often than a fighter. Worse, if you used flurry of blows you'd get penalized until you reached 9th-level. Damage started at 1d6, which was on the lower end, but if you could hold out until 4th-level it would get bumped up to 1d8.

You eventually got magical-ish abilities, but it was just a few things like short-range teleporting and turning ethereal once per day. Not necessarily bad, but not particularly good, and that's before you consider that you're supposed to be a front-line warrior hindered with less accurate attacks and fewer hit points overall.

In addition to more flexibility, we gave our monk the fighter's attack bonus progression and effective damage increase with scaling unarmed strike damage (it goes up by one step instead of a passive modifier). To offset the reduced initial damage, you can flurry without penalties (so long as you aren't Dazed, at any rate).

Hit points are effectively unchanged, but stacking Wisdom to AC makes you harder to hit. Slightly more of a glass cannon, but if that's an issue you could always go into the Iron Body tree, and/or snag Wholeness of Body for some healing.

We also wanted the monk to be more fantastic and dynamic, capable of performing feats you see in films such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Kung Fu Hustle (see Far Hand Technique and Falling Star).

There's also an "anime-esque" flair in there. Blinding Speed was the flash step from, at the least, Bleach. The Ki Blast and Ki Volley let you do Dragon Ball style Kamehamea waves. Congregration of the Four Winds was inspired by All Might's ability to create a windstorm with a single punch, and Cascade of Stones was derived from the fight at the end of the first episode of One Punch Man.

End result is something far more interesting that you can take in a variety of directions: you can focus on offense with the Tiger Stance, Crashing Wave tree, and other Talents like Calm Before The Storm. You can be more defensive with the Crane Stance. You can dip into both Stances and trees, flipping back and forth as needed (or, with the right mastery, use both Stances at the same time).

You can also be more utilitarian, picking up healing abilities (which can also be used on allies), teleportation, and etherealness.

Something Bruce hasn't gotten to yet are monk implements. These are items that we created to give monks a reason to hoard treasure. They essentially grant access to one or more Talents for free (except for the slightly increased cost, that is), but if you already have the Talent it instead enhances it.

For example, the fire pearl gives you access to Dragon's Breath, though you have to spend one additional Ki to use it. But, if you already have Dragon's Breath then you just deal bonus damage at no increased cost.

The blame for us wanting to do a 2nd Edition of Dungeons & Delvers is entirely the fault of Cowboys & Cthulhu, another game we're working on.

When I got to the equipment section, I realized pretty quickly that light/medium/heavy armor categories wouldn't work as an Armor Class buff, because clothing especially isn't going to do anything to stop a bullet (metal armor might be able to impede it slightly but is also unlikely to completely stop it).

So I decided to give every class a scaling Defense bonus instead, and change armor to pure DR: guns tend to have a high enough Armor Penetration value that it will for the most part cancel it out, but it'll still work against ghouls, deep ones, and Blackhoof warriors.

The Defense bonus gave way to a scaling Attack Bonus on par with 3rd Edition (which was itself similar to THAC0 reduction in 2nd Edition). I also came up with a way to work Hit Dice back in without overcomplicating things. Then there were also other tweaks that I thought of, like dealing bonus damage when you exceed an enemy's Defense.

These things make way more sense than what we've been doing, so why not utilize them in Dungeons & Delvers?

We've even thought of new ways to handle skill checks, granting increased benefits when you exceed the DC (such as sneaking and picking a lock more quickly). I might even have a way to tweak spells so that failing a save by a sufficient amount causes it to be more effective (ie, failing a save against Burning Hands really badly causes the target to suffer more damage).

Once we get a low-level playtest packet done (a level 1-5 thing with some monsters), we'll show it off and see what people think (it'll be a free BGE product). Maybe we're entirely wrong about this and everyone will hate it, or will think it's neat but not as good. Or maybe like some of it, but it won't be enough to justify a new edition, anyway. If that's the case we'll just abandon it for now and proceed with other stuff using the 1st Edition rules.