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other than changing to ki focuses, i didn't detect much in the way of change. the beefier flurry is nice though. disappointed that it didn't have more feats or ki focus items. 

on the ki focus front, i'm not happy that they made it a physical item, but i understand the rationale, and i do like that they finally explained it a bit better. hopefully this will resolve some of the questions that were raised by the less clearly written assassin article.

i think its interesting that ALL of the monk powers are implement powers. i'm sure theres some cheese there waiting to be exploited.

my biggest concern i think is that now the monk and the assassin, flavor aside, are a little more similar than i'd have thought they'd end up. they both use ki focus to apply their benefit to whatever weapon they are wielding, and get an extra damage boost. not exact, but the ki focus seems to force them into more similar molds than i expected.  

We have a name for the Strength build - or at least it's class feature:

Stone Fist Monk / Stone Fist Flurry of Blows

Mentioned in the Debut column on Flurry of Blows

In addition, the Flurry of Blows got a significant upgrade, and all powers went implement dice instead of Weapon damage, and recieved power ups.  Cool.

They didn't lose Dancing Cobra; all weapon attacks became implement attacks, but you can still use weapons as implements.

Nov 17, 2009 -- 4:15PM, Eric888 wrote:

Nov 17, 2009 -- 4:03PM, Marandahir wrote:

They didn't lose Dancing Cobra; all weapon attacks became implement attacks, but you can still use weapons as implements.

I fail to see the difference. Dancing Cobra was the monk's piercing strike. It was a weapon attack so it got the proficiency bonus. That was what made it such a good power. Removing that leaves very little remaining.

i'm not sure i follow what your issue is. its still there, it still targets reflex, and you can still get prof bonuses with implements...

Nov 17, 2009 -- 4:25PM, acantha wrote:

Nov 17, 2009 -- 4:15PM, Eric888 wrote:

Nov 17, 2009 -- 4:03PM, Marandahir wrote:

They didn't lose Dancing Cobra; all weapon attacks became implement attacks, but you can still use weapons as implements.

I fail to see the difference. Dancing Cobra was the monk's piercing strike. It was a weapon attack so it got the proficiency bonus. That was what made it such a good power. Removing that leaves very little remaining.

i'm not sure i follow what your issue is. its still there, it still targets reflex, and you can still get prof bonuses with implements...

Actually, you don't get weapon proficiency bonuses on attacks with implements.  Which is the whole point.

"You can also use a weapon with which you’re proficient as an implement. When wielding the weapon as an implement, the weapon’s characteristics—proficiency bonus, damage die, and weapon properties like defensive or high crit—are irrelevant to your implement powers."

Page 3 of the Monk debut .pdf.

Which honestly makes me wonder why they even bother giving monks weapon proficiencies in the first place.

One thing that annoyed me slightly in the article was the lack of ways to increase your range- with all your attacks consisting of melee touch, the only way you can increase your reach is by spamming Masterful Spiral. While it is salvable, I don't think it was necessarily intended to be the only option for that path. The sole feat in the article does help alleviate this problem slightly, allowing you to slide nearby enemies towards you, but I feel that the monk needs more support in this vein.

Otherwise, I was rather satisfied with the article, as they addressed the single largest problem the initial playtest version had- that the monk is a striker, and apparently nobody noticed. They actually commented that 'the monk is a striker after all' in the article, as relevant to them replacing all the weapon damage with 1d10 per W, and otherwise buffing. A lot of the buffs are subtle, but they're there, and it feels much more complete then it did before. You can actually feel effective now, I think, rather then just being some highly mobile pansy boy who can't actually affect enemies in any significant way enough to really take advnatage of the mobility, so I'm glad for the change.


Ki focuses I liked- particularly the bits about what a Ki Focus is, at least to a monk. To an assassin, it's an internal resevoir of energy, but to a monk it's an item. One thing I'll probably do for my games is give the assassin the ability to use the transfer enchantment ritual, by default, on Ki foci, allowing him to move the foci-as-item  to his internal resevoir, which I feel is rather thematic.

Using any weapon you're proficient with as an implement was a small change, but in the long run a significant one, I think, as it opens up every weapon enchantment ever to the monk's use. Hoping that sometime in the future we get the third monk build, and it's Dex/Con, and we can break out the dwarf monks with hammers and axes and the related feats (and not have to skimp on our riders).


All in all, it was a good article, and the class looks like it'll be a lot of fun. They realized that the CenMonk's a striker FIRST and a controller SECOND, and the powers changed to reflect that, which I think is the most welcome change of all.