Talk:Zen Monk (3.5e Class)

Ratings

	Kostababic favors this article and rated it 4 of 4!
	Awesome but his AC bonus is a little too high

	Idlem is neutral on this article and rated it 2 of 4.
	There are too many attacks. Two more than a monk which already has plenty. And you gain the most powerful class feature ever seen 8 levels earlier. The only class feature that would allow you to beat Pun-Pun if he was mindless. Edit : Changed it for the reasons below.

The Most Powerful Feature

Not sure which class feature you're referring to. -- Eiji-kun 19:49, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

Tongue of the Sun and Moon. The only thing that allows you to use Diplomacy (the ultimate skill) on anything living. This effectively mean a 9th level diplomancer Zen Monk can beat Pun-Pun, not least. The diplomat monk was already an issue, but not too far before taking the Polyglot feat.--Idlem 02:47, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Pfft.... r-really? R....really? I.... Uh....

Tongues is now able to beat Pun-Pun. Do you see why I see why that particular comment is fantastically comical to me? -- Eiji-kun 02:58, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

"Diplomacy is a broken skill. Every class can use it. Therefore, every class is broken." <-- That is the potential logic that means we generally do not consider the Diplomacy skill in considering a class's balance. It's really not fair to say the class is broken on the basis of having access to that skill. Besides, Pun-Pun already speaks every language, so it's not like he was immune to Diplomacy before this ability. --DanielDraco 03:19, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Expounding a bit on the rest, namely the number of attacks. I took a cue from the Pathfinder monk, giving it attacks suitable to a full BAB, though not a carbon copy and arguably worse since the BAB is kept the same, I just give the extra attacks (PF monks actually are hitting at +20 at 20th in flurries). The end result is your usual 15/10/5, and then four more attacks at your highest BAB. Since monks hitting often was never a big concern, giving them more chances to hit seems like a good move to me. They don't call it "flurry of misses" for nothing. -- Eiji-kun 04:06, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

In my incredibly humble opinion, the SRD Monk was supposed to be (partially) about whizzing around, pummeling people repeatedly, and generally being fast. The thing that prevents the SRD Monk from actually doing this is more that they can only flurry on a full attack than that they don't get enough attacks. --Foxwarrior 17:38, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Changed the rating (I'm convinced by these comments). This class is not as good as it may be, however. Dragon Rage is weak, especially compared to Rabbit Sprint (which gives you a feat for a round). Go look at the Strike of Perfect Clarity maneuver ; actually, you have a chance to deal a little more damage if you expend all your ki points and have a high wisdom... once a day, which is far less than the warblade.

You may consider a modification of Combat Mastery, more multiclassing friendly (bonuses that would offset the lower BAB). You removed multiclassing restrictions, after all! As a side note, All Sense may scale between the 10th and 20th level.--Idlem 03:53, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Does it need to be an armor type bonus?

I have only just discovered this class and I love the concept but I was wondering if there was a reason for the AC bonus being an armor type, this means that the zen monk can't make use of bracers of armor, or things like vow of poverty which may have been by design. Could making the bonus gained from the zen monk a shield bonus be an option to allow for increase AC stacking, it also has a bit of flavour in that the zen monk is using their internal strength to shield themselves from physical harm. Amdillae 00:46, 3 July 2015 (UTS)

The reasoning went something like "I'm increasing the AC by a bunch. Ghostwheel will complain about muh RNG with the AC, cause the monk can clearly afford bracers +8 among other things for mad AC, so now it doesn't stack." If you think it's not a problem though, do tell. I could see shield... -- Eiji-kun (talk) 06:44, 3 July 2015 (UTC)

Honestly I am still new around here but I would have thought that high balance should allow for stacking because AC progress falls behind attack bonus so much faster at the higher levels, but again that is just my 2 CP. Also what does RNG stand for, I haven't seen that acronym yet Eiji? Amdillae 00:22, 4 July 2015 (UTS)

Random Number Generation, it's a fancy term for the randomness that dice give us. When someone is "off the RNG" it means that the dice roll doesn't really matter anymore. If I have a +20 bonus to hit against your AC 20, I'm basically always going to hit (barring nat 1s) so the dice is irrelevant. It is actually important not to go too far off, you don't want things grossly overpowered after all, I'm just messing with Ghostwheel here since he is much more concerned about getting precisely 50/50 than I am. (Ghost, if you're reading this, don't take me too harshly. I'm messin' with ya man.)

I don't quite have time yet, but later tonight I'll run some numbers, see what kind of AC I can get with making it a shield bonus and see if it's too much or not. You are correct that AC suffers beyond attack bonuses, so I feel less bad about buffing AC over other things. I'll run some tests tonight. -- Eiji-kun (talk) 00:28, 4 July 2015 (UTC)

The thing is that you need attack rolls to outpage AC in order for iterative attacks to matter. In fact, iterative attacks make up the bulk of damage characters at high level do. I recently did hard caps for the various numbers, and let me give an example of how fragile the RNG is there:

At level 16, according to the Pathfinder Unchained table, monster (combatant) AC is 33, and our cap was set at +30. That means that you need a 3 to hit with your primary attack, an 8 to hit with your first iterative attack, a 13 to hit with your second iterative attack, and an 18 to hit with your last iterative attack.

What this means is that if the target's AC increases by even two, it cuts down the chance of hitting with your last iterative attack by 66%, and your third iterative attack's chance to hit drops by 25%, both of which have an incredibly significant effect on average DPR when factoring in AC.

On the other hand, if the attack roll increases by 2, then the first attack's virtually guaranteed to hit, meaning there's little point in even rolling the dice for that one.

If you want iterative attacks to have any real meaning, while still at the same time have meaning in the RNG itself, then you need to be incredibly careful when messing with the RNG, and this is especially the case at higher levels.

EDIT: That's mostly an explanation for Amdillae's sake :-) --Ghostwheel (talk) 07:33, 4 July 2015 (UTC)