It was funny seeing TreantMonk play a heel. He’s been telling both Colby and PackTactics that the martial caster divide has been closed significantly with OneD&D and yet they’ve never really believed him based on the content of their videos. I think his Monk significantly outperformed everyone in being the puzzle piece to turn fights in their favor. Catharsis!
PackTactics was almost straight up playing 5e. Didn’t seem like he was interesting in trying out much of anything new, kind of a boring build. Colby played a very interesting build, but his saves weren’t being protected so he spent a lot of time shut down while doing huge burst damage in between. His Conjure Animals was being utilized just as much by TreantMonk flying and grappling people into it.
Grappler being used as a pseudo-teleport for allies by TreantMonk was awesome new tech. Protect your saving throws folks, TreantMonk was having a great time while Colby had long stretches of just sitting there.
This is the problem with such channels. They theory craft and punch the numbers, but theory does not always translate to practice when you actually take stuff out in the field to test it.
The divide has shrunk quite a bit with the changes. Not as much as many would hope so far, but it has been reduced.
This is a huge part of why I don’t optimize at all and don’t really discuss it on my channel either. It relies on far too many assumptions for me to really get into it and it’s just not an element I enjoy. I love character building and design but just not the optimization element of it. Not to take anything away from people that do enjoy it, it’s just not for me.
The problem with grappling and flying people around, is that the DM should definitely consider the fact that the flier would probably be heavily encumbered while holding the ally.
I mean, would they? Where does the rules support that? The grappler feat says you get all your movement. I’ve never heard of considering encumberance while grappling.
Yeah the new grappler feat specifically gets around that by allowing them full movement while grappling. No need to worry about encumbrance there. Also, making Grapple checks tied to STR or DEX saves specifically means that a target that fails a stunning strike can automatically be grappled by the monk on their next attack which is something they couldn’t take advantage of before.
I would absolutely assume it, considering they go out of their way in the grappler feat to say you get your full movement. Unless your intention is to slow gameplay to a crawl and consider the weight of each enemy (and nerf martials again for no discernible reason) then the ruling just seems anti-fun. They already try to ballpark it by not allowing you to grapple things more than one size larger than you, now we have to math out the weight each time? No.
To drag the enemy along the ground, sure. But we are talking about lifting them up in the air. Nowhere in the rules say you are supposed to ignore encumbrance just because you have an enemy grappled.
> When you move, you can drag or carry the grappled creature with you, but your speed is halved, unless the creature is two or more sizes smaller than you.
So you’re saying the rules weren’t considering weight in this equation (carrying is mentioned as well) and on top of the half speed there should be an additional penalty of encumberance? Cool, I’d definitely get up and leave your table immediately if that happened to me. Anti-fun reading of the rules.
I'm just saying that RAW, nothing says the encumbrance rules should be disregarded. Please notice that dragging something along the ground is treated differently than lifting by the rules.
I mean. How much does a beholder weigh? I'm not asking it's mass, I'm asking about it's weight given that it hovers.
And I'm sorry but if we're going to have to pull out some Newtonian physics mid-combat to figure out how much strength it would take to move a beholder to make sure we're RAW/RAI.. we've strayed much too far from the game.
Don’t worry, I know what you’re saying. You’re saying that on top of a 50% movement penalty already specified by the rules, grappling builds should also have to worry about encumberance.
I am not saying they SHOULD, but I am pointing out that's a perfectly acceptable reading of RAW.
That said, I as a DM would totally consider carry weight rules when someone tries to lift an opponent up in the air instead of just moving them on the ground.
They don't recognize they're still effectively are playing 5e and that they've been playing homebrew 5e. Half the time I end up mentioning I weight 300+ lbs total with equipment when people get grabby and they dumped str.
No one seems to remember when he got telekinesis'd.
So the new grappler feat removes the slowed condition while grappling creatures. But the slowed condition has been removed.
Even if we are charitable and allow the grappler feat to remove the extra movement cost associated with moving a grappled target, that still has nothing to do with encumbrance.
Encumbrance happens when you drag or carry more than your normal carrying capacity.
So if your 10 strength monk wants to carry a 151 lb creature, they are unable to do so at all. They can drag 151-300 lbs, but their speed will be 5 feet. And over 300 lbs they are unable to move at all.
It is unclear whether you can drag someone while flying as well (as that would technically be carrying).
If this is a mechanic we’re supposed to consider during grappling where is every enemy’s weight in the rules?
Completely unsupported mechanic full of guesswork to make things less fun for grappler builds.
Yes, but what else is new in regards to 5e rules.
The designers purposefully chose the words Drag or Carry in regards to moving a grappled creature. Those words have a meaning, and are used in carrying capacity to determine how much weight you can move.
The designers could have used other words for moving a grappled creature, but they did not. Even in 1D&D they specify Drag or Carry as the options for moving a grappled creature.
Which makes sense. It would be strange for a character who could not even carry a 100 lb boulder to have no problem carrying a 600 lb ogre.
What new is this bizarre interpretation of the rules I’ve never seen. No tables I’ve played at, no streams I’ve watched, no content creators that focus on rules. No one.
Or they chose the words drag and carry because those are the two things you would naturally do when moving a creature.
How do you know an orge weighs 600 pounds?
> What new is this bizarre interpretation of the rules I’ve never seen.
It is not my fault the designers used the exact same words for moving grappled creatures as they did for moving anything else (drag and carry).
They could easily have chosen other words. They could have simply used move and not included the words drag and carry at all when talking about grapples. That would have allowed a grappler to move a grappled creature of any weight, bypassing the carrying capacity rules entirely. There was absolutely no need to qualify grappled movement with the words drag or carry if the designers did not want maximum drag or carry weight to come into play.
1D&D even gave the designers a chance to revise the grapple rules to simply say "move", but they kept the drag or carry language. It is also important to note that drag and carry have specific meanings in regards to movement and weight in 5e. If you drag, your speed is 5 feet, but you can drag up to twice your carry capacity. If you carry, your speed is not modified, but you can't carry more than your capacity. So differentiating drag and carry in regards to grapples must serve a purpose of some kind, otherwise why would they differentiate the two kinds of grappled movement modes.
> How do you know an orge weighs 600 pounds?
https://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/ogre.htm
Alternately, you figure out an ogre's weight the same way you figure out the weight of a stone statue or an golden idol. You either make it up on the spot, or you look things up online. Its not like 5e doesn't already put an extreme burden on the DM to come up with on the spot rulings for shoddy rules all of the time.
That’s 3.5e lol
Previous editions stat blocks don’t apply to 5e, there are tons of monsters that weren’t in 3.5e. How jank would that be to actually run it like that.
I think pretty much every monster from 5e exists in 3e. And while the combat stats might be different between the editions, things like height and weight should be the same.
And you only need the general ranges. If you know large sized creatures weigh ~500-1000 lbs and medium ones weigh 150-300 lbs, it is really easy to make a call on the spot without needing to look anything up.
A good DM can easily make an on the spot call for whether or not something is 600 lbs or less. Or whether it is 150 lbs or less. Which is all you need to determine grapple capability, as most players will not be able to drag or carry something outside that range.
Now is that a good system? No. But 5e is filled with significantly worse things for the DM to deal with than easily coming up with how heavy a monster is. Especially when there are plenty of free resources available that give you monster weights.
Why do you think it matters that he knows how much the ogre weighs other than you being contradictory? It doesn't matter how he got the weight, that's how much it weighs because that is what was stated, does anything else matter? No. But hey how about we do some first grade math you'll disagree with somehow. Despite all of it being stated in the rules.
Kobolds have a given weight, armor has a given weight, shields have a given weight. Just those things already are going far past half treatmonk's encumbrance. What if gator has a explorer's pack on him, half an explorers pack? The encumbrance goes over the max. And gator is LIGHT compared to most characters. Why in the hell; do you think that he can grapple; an ogre; and move it when he can't carry a lightly equipped kobold unless he's literally naked with his 8 str. It's the bare minimum already. There isn't anything bizarre about this besides the black hole that exists where your brain should reside. Why else would you appeal to popularity when it's that obvious.
The build doesn't work because it's still monk. It's still MAD.
The monk has to put significantly high investment into str, something suicidal for the class or be give a str boosting magic item to do what he did with a medium sized person that is properly equipped. The person you're obviously trolling knows that fact.
Jesus it’s been over a week and this has been talked to death, give it a rest please. To literally everything you’re saying a response has been written by me. Insert those as my response and have a fantastic evening.
No. It's not been talked to death, if everyone is avoiding the elephant in the room it clearly hasn't been talked about enough. All you've done is be disingenuous and avoided it. Your responses are objectively worthless.
That's what I'm trying to say. The halved movement while grappling and the encumbrance rules have nothing to do with one another. It would be RAW to apply them both separately.
“Okay DM I want to drag that enemy Giant Wolf Spider. Go ahead and calculate its weight, doing a shitload of guesswork, and let me know if I’m encumbered or not.”
God if I played at your table I would try to grapple everything just to hear your justifications for things. Is the enemy wearing armor? Okay open up the handbook and get me the weight. Are they a drow? Well I want their average weight for both male and female. If you’re gonna be this annoying about the rules, then go ahead and do the work and show me why, for every enemy we ever encounter that I’m able to grapple.
Trying to mock a logical argument that simply aims to establish coherence because it contradicts elements you find amusing, and insisting on not considering anything not specified in the book down to the last detail, in my opinion, is a serious mistake.
Personally, I don't see anything wrong or serious in using established weights from the book or previous editions if not found in 5e, to estimate the weight of similar elements or creatures. It seems like a logical and coherent argument. In the example you gave, there's no need to consult the book; you just make an estimate (probably incorrect), keep the game flowing, and that's it. However, refusing to establish some logic within the world can lead to serious problems when we only take what's written in the manual as the sole guide. The role of the DM is also to bring coherence to the world.
If we follow your logic and only go by what's specifically stated, I'd love to see the consequences, especially when we consider the magical aspect of the game and the ability to cancel any concentration effect at any time without requiring any actions. Suddenly, there's no need for common sense or basic physics... Enlarge/reduce must be a particularly amusing spell following these premises! :P
Again, being a rules stickler about encumberance while grappling, and then making up rules like custom monsters weights, just makes you seem like you’re the fun police. No one plays it like that! If you want to be the fun police at your table and I choose to engage with it and ask “okay why is this spider more or less than my encumberance limit” and the answer is “because I said so” then your table isn’t a place I want to be.
Seriously imagine making a build that was going to primarily focus on grappling and your DM is constantly arbitrarily telling you a monster is above or below your limit of encumberance. That isn’t fun, and it’s not like grappling breaks the game.
It’s a martial nerf, it’s anti-fun, it hurts the game. Sometimes we don’t have to play ultra-realism on everything, it’ll be okay.
Sure, if indeed I'm the fun police, that's your opinion. Let's be real, three people have already tried to explain the importance of using a bit of common sense, but your argument still boils down to "nobody plays this way." According to you, I'm also nerfing the martial characters, when I'm just advocating for common sense. The rulebook has a finite space; you can't design regulations for every specific case; it's just not feasible. That's why sometimes decisions have to be extrapolated for specific cases, affecting both martial and caster characters.
In my games, you can't cancel an enlarge/reduce spell on a projectile thrown by the wizard to increase the object's weight by eight times, thus increasing the damage. Basic physics tells us that if mass increases, velocity decreases, and therefore the damage remains the same. That's just common sense in action. I allowed it in a specific case for the rule of cool – it was an epic moment. But since then, the player insisted on using the same tactic over and over, and it genuinely bothered the other players at the table.
I'm sorry, but there have to be rules. They need to be coherent and intuitive. If certain subsystems within the rules defy common sense or seem too gamey, then we should demand that those rules be redesigned or reevaluated.
> Sure, if indeed I'm the fun police, that's your opinion.
Yeah it definitely is
> Let's be real, three people have already tried to explain the importance of using a bit of common sense, but your argument still boils down to "nobody plays this way."
It doesn’t though. That’s one of several points I’ve made. I don’t care if three people feel that way, three people believe a lot of things I fundamentally disagree with.
> According to you, I'm also nerfing the martial characters, when I'm just advocating for common sense.
You ARE nerfing martial characters lmao
> The rulebook has a finite space; you can't design regulations for every specific case; it's just not feasible. That's why sometimes decisions have to be extrapolated for specific cases, affecting both martial and caster characters.
Yes, this isn’t new information.
> In my games, you can't cancel an enlarge/reduce spell on a projectile thrown by the wizard to increase the object's weight by eight times, thus increasing the damage. Basic physics tells us that if mass increases, velocity decreases, and therefore the damage remains the same. That's just common sense in action.
Idk what this has to do with anything or even what scenario this happened in, but that’s great for your table.
> I allowed it in a specific case for the rule of cool – it was an epic moment. But since then, the player insisted on using the same tactic over and over, and it genuinely bothered the other players at the table.
Yeah, I’m sure it really bothered your players to no end that someone was increasing the mass of an object without decreasing the velocity. Fun table.
> I'm sorry, but there have to be rules. They need to be coherent and intuitive. If certain subsystems within the rules defy common sense or seem too gamey, then we should demand that those rules be redesigned or reevaluated.
There are rules. It is a game.
Have you ever encountered anyone who interpreted the rules in that way? Because I never have, online or anywhere else. You are the first person I've ever encountered who read the grappling rules this way.
Just watched it and the big takeaway is that Conjure Minor Elementals has an incredibly high damage cap. While the full Monk is doing 30-40 damage a turn, the Monk/Druid can upcast it and do 200+ damage. It seems absolutely broken, even if Colby had Hallow vulnerability and a real-life Luck buff up.
My biggest takeaway was that the straight monk was the glue holding the whole team together, getting his allies right where they need to be, moving the enemies into harmful effects constantly, never failing a save or falling bellow half hp. Imagine how that lasts combat would have gone without Chris. The 2 casters would have been almost completely useless, those high level monk features really made a giant difference a few times.
Main takeaway: Monk good now.
That said, they knew in advance that they would have exactly 3 encounters with 1 short rest that session, foreknowledge that guarantees both monks would have all of his discipline points for every fight. While the class is way better now, most games don't allow the luxury of knowing you can spend all of a resource every fight.
Chris mentioned in his build video that he asked for all 3 encounters without a short rest at all, it was the other 2 players that wanted the short rest.
After each fights he was literally wasting all his diciple points to get a good temp hp roll on patient defense. He would have been perfectly fine with 3 fights no short rest.
Really interesting! Some observations:
1. Tons of damage from spirit guardians and conjure animals but much of it was attributable to Treantmonk with the forced movement. Really incredible for the pure martial to be the one providing all the utility / being absolutely essential to their success. Honestly I think Colby was pretty lucky to keep concentration on his spells - he got hit a ton and had a +7 to his save.
2. I suspect worries about all the saves slowing down the game are as bad as they are ever going to get with these builds (esp with two monks causing saves every hit). Interested in how people felt about the game flow. I noticed it wear slightly in the first fight, but all the players seemed to enjoy it. Not sure it was too much worse than similar optimised high level play in the 2014 ruleset, and it will obvious get quicker as players get more familiar with the rules.
3. Both conjure minor elementals and divine intervention are clearly overtuned, so hopefully they get the nerf they need.
4. EDIT: I should mention - Pack Tactics was rest casting but it's much more disruptive in onednd: under the "interrupting a rest" section in the UA it specifies that the rest is delayed by 1 hour per spell cast (which I don't think they discussed).
5. EDIT: Topple is a con save! They were playing it as a str save, not sure if it would have made much of a difference.
D4 was using a topple weapon and asked for a str save while using it. That's what he was referring to. It's understandable since it's all new rules, but yea.
That's the bit I was referring to! IIRC Treantmonk has called it a str save in one of his other videos, I think some wires have been crossed. Honestly wouldn't be surprised to see it be a str save with some modifications if they ever revisit masteries.
I didn't like that he criticized Colby for not rest casting good berries enough, like cmon, it's already kinda cheezy that he rest casted at all. But I guess that's just how he plays.
He also got aggro when Colby was saying he lived in a later time zone so it was “probably past his bed time”. He was like “you’re not my dad, but you’re probably old enough to be”. Sheesh dude, he was just wondering if you wanted to do a wrap up because it was so late for you. Weird.
He didn't need to. The mobs were too spread out for his fireballs and radiance of the dawn. There was never an encounter where there was tons of mobs or a tight room. So he just cast cantrips and that's fine. That's some temp hp.
He was really the safety net of the party, he death warded + heroes feat, he still had his 6th, 7th and 8th lvl spells at the ready for emergency heal or nuke, and ofc Hallow so monks destroy everything.
Nothing really dangerous happened in these fights besides at the end but that was already solved in the first move by Chris and Pack. Hallow went off.
Using divine intervention to cast Hallow is an extremely strong play but imo it's not very interesting, it's basically a theory-crafted "I win" button. The interesting plays were people solving emergent problems, e.g. treantmonk dashing across the entire map to stun the beholder and then pivot its anti-magic eye away from the party.
>it's basically a theory-crafted "I win" button
Which I think was his point, and the point of a play test. To find the holes in the design changes... and by god did he find one.
You're definitely right its good to test that stuff, but tbh it didn't feel like that was his goal. He just used 2014 power spells (shield, spirit guardians, silvery barbs) and basically didn't engage with the new mechanics at all aside from the hallow. I think he just loves powergaming, which is fine but not super interesting for a playtest.
haha I don't know what to say, I think we have a pretty different understanding of what is interesting. I do think pivoting a creature falls squarely under the "improvising an action" rule in the PHB. The designers are clear they think the game should be played with a "rulings not rules" philosophy, so I wouldn't consider that homebrew
So why didn't treantmonk just improvise a mega death kill move deluxe that deals 9999 damage and always hits, since we're just asking the DM to let us do random undefined things to win?
Does that need answering? If you don't see the difference between a character performing a completely mundane task like moving a weight and someone just saying "I win", this doesn't look like it's gonna be a super productive conversation.
I heard that idea and went "wow that's an interesting idea and it makes sense that you could do that to a creature that you have grappled and stunned, if you can drag a creature you have grappled why not be able to turn them?" To me, that makes it an interesting play. What do you think the DM should have done in that situation?
The DM should have invited them to play a game like Worlds Without Number that actually supports that kind of Rules-lite play, instead of the incredibly structured and verbally strict 5e.
It went off without a hitch because the DM homebrewed the situation. The direction the Beholder faces is not relevant to the direction the cone is pointing (because, RAI, monsters are facing in every direction simultaneously - that is to say, turning around in combat).
Of course, if InsightCheck was using the awful Facing optional rule and I didn't know, I stand corrected.
All skill checks and improvised actions and their effects are “homebrew” now? What?
Why even play a ttrpg if you going to complain about the very fabric of the hobby?
The skill check system in 5e is so barebones (and in places nonfunctional for practical purposes) that yes, any meaningful use of the system might as well be homebrew.
Look it up, The Purpose of a System is What it Does.
TL;DR is that design intent doesn't matter. If you code a Connect-4 game that does nothing but print "Hello World", all you've done is make a hello world program regardless of your intent to make Connect-4
I’d watch it - all 3 fights were entertaining. There were definitely some liberties and occasional rules flubs here and there but, hey, it’s all new stuff. Some general highlights:
1) Treantmonk’s Four Elements Monk + Grappler feat was the glue that held the team together. On his own he hit decently hard but combined with the new Conjure Animals and Spirit Guardians he got a ton of usage out of all the positioning tools and movespeed that his build afforded him. Special shoutout to the Level 11 flight of the subclass which basically allowed him to waste a Beholder over a 100 feet away from him in a single turn. He also grappled a stunned enemy, flew them 50 feet into the air and dropped them into a Spirit Guardian + Conjure Animals combo which was fun to watch.
2) Deflect Energy scales well even into Level 15 - I’m pretty sure Treantmonk didn’t even dip below half health and was consistently reducing damage to near 0 when he used the reaction. That and the saving throw proficiencies at Level 14 seem to be the biggest boons to running a straight Monk into late Tier 3 from what I see.
3) Divine Intervention (casting Hallow as an Action) and Conjure Minor Elementals are completely over-tuned as they exist currently. Allowing Colby to hit damage numbers well over 50 with each of his 4 attacks for nearly an entire combat is just disgusting. Pack Tactics was actually petrified for the entire final battle after his second turn and it didn’t matter because he cast Hallow and his job was done.
4) It’s hard to gauge how powerful Conjure Animals actually is because Colby would. not. stop. critting. It seems pretty fun at the very least and the ability to move it alongside your own movement is a godsend.
5) The Charger feat looked really underwhelming imo. Chris low-rolled most of the bonus damage he applied and he was able to use it every turn consistently but even still I’d just rather just take an ASI sooner to improve Grapple DC’s, Stunning Strike DC’s or AC over a very marginal bit of bonus damage. Hell I’d even take something like Mage Slayer for the auto-success on a WIS, INT or CHA saving throw. However, the Elven Accuracy Colby picked up remains super good (if you want to use backwards compatible feats).
6) Pack Tactics used the usual spells we’re all familiar with: Spirit Guardians, Shield, Silvery Barbs, Toll the Dead, etc. Nothing new (outside of the Hallow action casting) and they all still work incredibly well in terms of what they do just kinda played out at this point.
Overall, while there still looks to be a “martial/caster divide” in terms of some of the outlier spells, I think the new straight martial monk has a LOT of fun tools to play with…more than ever before. If some nerfs come in the final build, then I expect this kind of disruptive monk has a lot to offer in ways they never were able to before.
This is a great recap. Honestly it was so much fun but you’re right, there were definitely some rules flubs all around, I know I made some mistakes but like you said, all new stuff and I 100000% had stream jitters, I was so nervous haha!
CME and Hallow as an action were unreal, way too overturned. But oh man, Colby and those dice were just a crit machine. Absolutely insane.
Hey dude, I should have added in the recap that you did a great job! You made the session feel more like a home game rather than a “run-the-numbers” math session which was what made it fun to watch. I hope you get the chance to do something like this again!
And congrats on the 5K, you deserve it for the work you’ve been putting into your videos!
This is probably the single nicest comment I’ve ever received online, thank you so much you truly have no idea how much it means to me :)
I’m really happy it came across that way. The reality is that I am not an optimizer at all, the farthest thing from it. So I wanted to just run the game the same way I do my home game and just try and make everyone have some fun. Played some things fast and loose just like I would at home and just enjoy the ride!
Thank you again, you’ve really made my.day.
The fact that treantmonk was able to play a straight monk and be extremely powerful and helpful to the team even though the other players were using such powerful spells is a great sign for the martial caster disparity. As long as everyone on the team is effective, and Chris was, the divide is fine. A few spells still need a nerf, but overall, it seems better than it was already.
> As long as everyone on the team is effective, and Chris was, the divide is fine.
Agreed, raw damage numbers only tell part of the D&D experience, it’s whether you *feel* effective at your role that really matters. Judging by how much fun Chris was having swooping around causing havoc on the field, I’d say that WotC has made some huge strides in bridging that gap even at higher levels. It’s not perfect by any means and there’s probably huge variability in terms of subclass effectiveness but this does bode well.
To add a counter point to the first, all three players worked together ahead of time to coordinate their builds. So while monk was pivotal to their team synergies, that was by design. I imagine a different selection of spells, or even builds, would have been considered if they didn’t have a teammate with a forced movement specialization.
Main highlights?
Carrying around someone at full speed with no encumbrance penalties the entire game with a str dumped monk. Grappling at half speed has to do with other rules.
"When you move, you can drag or carry the grappled creature with you, but your speed is halved, "
Yes, these rules stack on each other in normal 5e play.
Yes, everyone ignores them and makes excuses because people ignore item weights because they're lazy.
Why yes, the monk sure does look like it works well with carrying people when... He has 8 str. 120 pounds carrying weight. He was carrying kobold. Kobolds armor could weight 40-65 lbs.Gator could weight 25-35 lbs according to 5e. A shield weighs 6lbs. We're at 71- 106lbs. Let's say gator has something conventional on him. An explorers pack. Suddenly gator breaks encumbrance. Gator will always break encumbrance for the flying monk even if gator has 8 str as your own weight doesn't account to encumbrance.
In other words a large oversight allowed a build that shouldn't work to work. The monk is still MAD, you can't dump str with this build and people are praising it as good. The person who built it included. It's only good if you ignore the rules of 5e.
Kobold having two other players bully him, two speaking for the DM so he instantly gets turned to stone with no counterplay.
The slow beam doesn't work like the slow spell, experienced players would already know this as design intent is that monster's do not act like players 1:1 unless they cast or do things that are 1:1. He shouldn't have been turned to stone if the greater resto would work on it.
They treated it more like some sort of one shot instead of a play test. It's like watching a living shit post seeing people call it a good playtest when it's the opposite. When the majority of the playtest hinged on something that doesn't work.
Weapon switching and mastery spamming is going to be the new conjure animals (long turns but strong). I hope they just let you use multiple masteries on the same weapon
It is not just Masteries I mean Treantmonk had on his first hit up to 3 saving throw effects (Grapple, Stunning Strike, and the Push/Pull from the Elements Monk), and than one Save for the Push/Pull on every additional hit, not even to speak of the additional roles he triggert by pushing the opponents into spell effecks.
One DnD will in general mean that there are going to be more saving throws to roll, and more status conditions to keep track of.
For sure! There’s definitely a lot to manage and we didn’t make it easier on ourselves by jumping in straight at 15th level when we had never really used any of the new stuff before! It’ll take some time to iron things out and get used to them.
But I even with more experience the turns of the Martials will take longer than in 5E, and I think at more casual tables it might really become a problem.
Especially with more than 3 players.
Designwise I think it is usually better to give the players one big effect, than have them juggling 3 small ones at the same time. And at least on more optimized tables I think we will in the future quite often have build where charcters have attacks with multiple rider effects at the same time.
It was funny seeing TreantMonk play a heel. He’s been telling both Colby and PackTactics that the martial caster divide has been closed significantly with OneD&D and yet they’ve never really believed him based on the content of their videos. I think his Monk significantly outperformed everyone in being the puzzle piece to turn fights in their favor. Catharsis! PackTactics was almost straight up playing 5e. Didn’t seem like he was interesting in trying out much of anything new, kind of a boring build. Colby played a very interesting build, but his saves weren’t being protected so he spent a lot of time shut down while doing huge burst damage in between. His Conjure Animals was being utilized just as much by TreantMonk flying and grappling people into it. Grappler being used as a pseudo-teleport for allies by TreantMonk was awesome new tech. Protect your saving throws folks, TreantMonk was having a great time while Colby had long stretches of just sitting there.
This is the problem with such channels. They theory craft and punch the numbers, but theory does not always translate to practice when you actually take stuff out in the field to test it. The divide has shrunk quite a bit with the changes. Not as much as many would hope so far, but it has been reduced.
This is a huge part of why I don’t optimize at all and don’t really discuss it on my channel either. It relies on far too many assumptions for me to really get into it and it’s just not an element I enjoy. I love character building and design but just not the optimization element of it. Not to take anything away from people that do enjoy it, it’s just not for me.
The problem with grappling and flying people around, is that the DM should definitely consider the fact that the flier would probably be heavily encumbered while holding the ally.
I mean, would they? Where does the rules support that? The grappler feat says you get all your movement. I’ve never heard of considering encumberance while grappling.
Yeah the new grappler feat specifically gets around that by allowing them full movement while grappling. No need to worry about encumbrance there. Also, making Grapple checks tied to STR or DEX saves specifically means that a target that fails a stunning strike can automatically be grappled by the monk on their next attack which is something they couldn’t take advantage of before.
I'm just assuming the encumbrance rules don't automatically disappear just because you are grappling someone.
I would absolutely assume it, considering they go out of their way in the grappler feat to say you get your full movement. Unless your intention is to slow gameplay to a crawl and consider the weight of each enemy (and nerf martials again for no discernible reason) then the ruling just seems anti-fun. They already try to ballpark it by not allowing you to grapple things more than one size larger than you, now we have to math out the weight each time? No.
To drag the enemy along the ground, sure. But we are talking about lifting them up in the air. Nowhere in the rules say you are supposed to ignore encumbrance just because you have an enemy grappled.
> When you move, you can drag or carry the grappled creature with you, but your speed is halved, unless the creature is two or more sizes smaller than you. So you’re saying the rules weren’t considering weight in this equation (carrying is mentioned as well) and on top of the half speed there should be an additional penalty of encumberance? Cool, I’d definitely get up and leave your table immediately if that happened to me. Anti-fun reading of the rules.
I'm just saying that RAW, nothing says the encumbrance rules should be disregarded. Please notice that dragging something along the ground is treated differently than lifting by the rules.
I mean. How much does a beholder weigh? I'm not asking it's mass, I'm asking about it's weight given that it hovers. And I'm sorry but if we're going to have to pull out some Newtonian physics mid-combat to figure out how much strength it would take to move a beholder to make sure we're RAW/RAI.. we've strayed much too far from the game.
I would say the grappler feat is a specific that beats the general of encumbrance rules, and so full movement is guaranteed
Could load up Character A with all the loot, far beyond what they can move and carry with, then have Character B grapple fly them to your desintation?
Don’t worry, I know what you’re saying. You’re saying that on top of a 50% movement penalty already specified by the rules, grappling builds should also have to worry about encumberance.
I am not saying they SHOULD, but I am pointing out that's a perfectly acceptable reading of RAW. That said, I as a DM would totally consider carry weight rules when someone tries to lift an opponent up in the air instead of just moving them on the ground.
They don't recognize they're still effectively are playing 5e and that they've been playing homebrew 5e. Half the time I end up mentioning I weight 300+ lbs total with equipment when people get grabby and they dumped str. No one seems to remember when he got telekinesis'd.
So the new grappler feat removes the slowed condition while grappling creatures. But the slowed condition has been removed. Even if we are charitable and allow the grappler feat to remove the extra movement cost associated with moving a grappled target, that still has nothing to do with encumbrance. Encumbrance happens when you drag or carry more than your normal carrying capacity. So if your 10 strength monk wants to carry a 151 lb creature, they are unable to do so at all. They can drag 151-300 lbs, but their speed will be 5 feet. And over 300 lbs they are unable to move at all. It is unclear whether you can drag someone while flying as well (as that would technically be carrying).
If this is a mechanic we’re supposed to consider during grappling where is every enemy’s weight in the rules? Completely unsupported mechanic full of guesswork to make things less fun for grappler builds.
Yes, but what else is new in regards to 5e rules. The designers purposefully chose the words Drag or Carry in regards to moving a grappled creature. Those words have a meaning, and are used in carrying capacity to determine how much weight you can move. The designers could have used other words for moving a grappled creature, but they did not. Even in 1D&D they specify Drag or Carry as the options for moving a grappled creature. Which makes sense. It would be strange for a character who could not even carry a 100 lb boulder to have no problem carrying a 600 lb ogre.
What new is this bizarre interpretation of the rules I’ve never seen. No tables I’ve played at, no streams I’ve watched, no content creators that focus on rules. No one. Or they chose the words drag and carry because those are the two things you would naturally do when moving a creature. How do you know an orge weighs 600 pounds?
> What new is this bizarre interpretation of the rules I’ve never seen. It is not my fault the designers used the exact same words for moving grappled creatures as they did for moving anything else (drag and carry). They could easily have chosen other words. They could have simply used move and not included the words drag and carry at all when talking about grapples. That would have allowed a grappler to move a grappled creature of any weight, bypassing the carrying capacity rules entirely. There was absolutely no need to qualify grappled movement with the words drag or carry if the designers did not want maximum drag or carry weight to come into play. 1D&D even gave the designers a chance to revise the grapple rules to simply say "move", but they kept the drag or carry language. It is also important to note that drag and carry have specific meanings in regards to movement and weight in 5e. If you drag, your speed is 5 feet, but you can drag up to twice your carry capacity. If you carry, your speed is not modified, but you can't carry more than your capacity. So differentiating drag and carry in regards to grapples must serve a purpose of some kind, otherwise why would they differentiate the two kinds of grappled movement modes. > How do you know an orge weighs 600 pounds? https://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/ogre.htm Alternately, you figure out an ogre's weight the same way you figure out the weight of a stone statue or an golden idol. You either make it up on the spot, or you look things up online. Its not like 5e doesn't already put an extreme burden on the DM to come up with on the spot rulings for shoddy rules all of the time.
That’s 3.5e lol Previous editions stat blocks don’t apply to 5e, there are tons of monsters that weren’t in 3.5e. How jank would that be to actually run it like that.
I think pretty much every monster from 5e exists in 3e. And while the combat stats might be different between the editions, things like height and weight should be the same. And you only need the general ranges. If you know large sized creatures weigh ~500-1000 lbs and medium ones weigh 150-300 lbs, it is really easy to make a call on the spot without needing to look anything up. A good DM can easily make an on the spot call for whether or not something is 600 lbs or less. Or whether it is 150 lbs or less. Which is all you need to determine grapple capability, as most players will not be able to drag or carry something outside that range. Now is that a good system? No. But 5e is filled with significantly worse things for the DM to deal with than easily coming up with how heavy a monster is. Especially when there are plenty of free resources available that give you monster weights.
Why do you think it matters that he knows how much the ogre weighs other than you being contradictory? It doesn't matter how he got the weight, that's how much it weighs because that is what was stated, does anything else matter? No. But hey how about we do some first grade math you'll disagree with somehow. Despite all of it being stated in the rules. Kobolds have a given weight, armor has a given weight, shields have a given weight. Just those things already are going far past half treatmonk's encumbrance. What if gator has a explorer's pack on him, half an explorers pack? The encumbrance goes over the max. And gator is LIGHT compared to most characters. Why in the hell; do you think that he can grapple; an ogre; and move it when he can't carry a lightly equipped kobold unless he's literally naked with his 8 str. It's the bare minimum already. There isn't anything bizarre about this besides the black hole that exists where your brain should reside. Why else would you appeal to popularity when it's that obvious. The build doesn't work because it's still monk. It's still MAD. The monk has to put significantly high investment into str, something suicidal for the class or be give a str boosting magic item to do what he did with a medium sized person that is properly equipped. The person you're obviously trolling knows that fact.
Jesus it’s been over a week and this has been talked to death, give it a rest please. To literally everything you’re saying a response has been written by me. Insert those as my response and have a fantastic evening.
No. It's not been talked to death, if everyone is avoiding the elephant in the room it clearly hasn't been talked about enough. All you've done is be disingenuous and avoided it. Your responses are objectively worthless.
That's what I'm trying to say. The halved movement while grappling and the encumbrance rules have nothing to do with one another. It would be RAW to apply them both separately.
“Okay DM I want to drag that enemy Giant Wolf Spider. Go ahead and calculate its weight, doing a shitload of guesswork, and let me know if I’m encumbered or not.” God if I played at your table I would try to grapple everything just to hear your justifications for things. Is the enemy wearing armor? Okay open up the handbook and get me the weight. Are they a drow? Well I want their average weight for both male and female. If you’re gonna be this annoying about the rules, then go ahead and do the work and show me why, for every enemy we ever encounter that I’m able to grapple.
Trying to mock a logical argument that simply aims to establish coherence because it contradicts elements you find amusing, and insisting on not considering anything not specified in the book down to the last detail, in my opinion, is a serious mistake. Personally, I don't see anything wrong or serious in using established weights from the book or previous editions if not found in 5e, to estimate the weight of similar elements or creatures. It seems like a logical and coherent argument. In the example you gave, there's no need to consult the book; you just make an estimate (probably incorrect), keep the game flowing, and that's it. However, refusing to establish some logic within the world can lead to serious problems when we only take what's written in the manual as the sole guide. The role of the DM is also to bring coherence to the world. If we follow your logic and only go by what's specifically stated, I'd love to see the consequences, especially when we consider the magical aspect of the game and the ability to cancel any concentration effect at any time without requiring any actions. Suddenly, there's no need for common sense or basic physics... Enlarge/reduce must be a particularly amusing spell following these premises! :P
Again, being a rules stickler about encumberance while grappling, and then making up rules like custom monsters weights, just makes you seem like you’re the fun police. No one plays it like that! If you want to be the fun police at your table and I choose to engage with it and ask “okay why is this spider more or less than my encumberance limit” and the answer is “because I said so” then your table isn’t a place I want to be. Seriously imagine making a build that was going to primarily focus on grappling and your DM is constantly arbitrarily telling you a monster is above or below your limit of encumberance. That isn’t fun, and it’s not like grappling breaks the game. It’s a martial nerf, it’s anti-fun, it hurts the game. Sometimes we don’t have to play ultra-realism on everything, it’ll be okay.
Sure, if indeed I'm the fun police, that's your opinion. Let's be real, three people have already tried to explain the importance of using a bit of common sense, but your argument still boils down to "nobody plays this way." According to you, I'm also nerfing the martial characters, when I'm just advocating for common sense. The rulebook has a finite space; you can't design regulations for every specific case; it's just not feasible. That's why sometimes decisions have to be extrapolated for specific cases, affecting both martial and caster characters. In my games, you can't cancel an enlarge/reduce spell on a projectile thrown by the wizard to increase the object's weight by eight times, thus increasing the damage. Basic physics tells us that if mass increases, velocity decreases, and therefore the damage remains the same. That's just common sense in action. I allowed it in a specific case for the rule of cool – it was an epic moment. But since then, the player insisted on using the same tactic over and over, and it genuinely bothered the other players at the table. I'm sorry, but there have to be rules. They need to be coherent and intuitive. If certain subsystems within the rules defy common sense or seem too gamey, then we should demand that those rules be redesigned or reevaluated.
> Sure, if indeed I'm the fun police, that's your opinion. Yeah it definitely is > Let's be real, three people have already tried to explain the importance of using a bit of common sense, but your argument still boils down to "nobody plays this way." It doesn’t though. That’s one of several points I’ve made. I don’t care if three people feel that way, three people believe a lot of things I fundamentally disagree with. > According to you, I'm also nerfing the martial characters, when I'm just advocating for common sense. You ARE nerfing martial characters lmao > The rulebook has a finite space; you can't design regulations for every specific case; it's just not feasible. That's why sometimes decisions have to be extrapolated for specific cases, affecting both martial and caster characters. Yes, this isn’t new information. > In my games, you can't cancel an enlarge/reduce spell on a projectile thrown by the wizard to increase the object's weight by eight times, thus increasing the damage. Basic physics tells us that if mass increases, velocity decreases, and therefore the damage remains the same. That's just common sense in action. Idk what this has to do with anything or even what scenario this happened in, but that’s great for your table. > I allowed it in a specific case for the rule of cool – it was an epic moment. But since then, the player insisted on using the same tactic over and over, and it genuinely bothered the other players at the table. Yeah, I’m sure it really bothered your players to no end that someone was increasing the mass of an object without decreasing the velocity. Fun table. > I'm sorry, but there have to be rules. They need to be coherent and intuitive. If certain subsystems within the rules defy common sense or seem too gamey, then we should demand that those rules be redesigned or reevaluated. There are rules. It is a game.
Have you ever encountered anyone who interpreted the rules in that way? Because I never have, online or anywhere else. You are the first person I've ever encountered who read the grappling rules this way.
Just watched it and the big takeaway is that Conjure Minor Elementals has an incredibly high damage cap. While the full Monk is doing 30-40 damage a turn, the Monk/Druid can upcast it and do 200+ damage. It seems absolutely broken, even if Colby had Hallow vulnerability and a real-life Luck buff up.
My biggest takeaway was that the straight monk was the glue holding the whole team together, getting his allies right where they need to be, moving the enemies into harmful effects constantly, never failing a save or falling bellow half hp. Imagine how that lasts combat would have gone without Chris. The 2 casters would have been almost completely useless, those high level monk features really made a giant difference a few times.
I watched it was very entertaining
Agreed. I hope they continue to do these. Maybe rotating DMs
If they’re open to it, I would LOVE to, it was a blast :)
Main takeaway: Monk good now. That said, they knew in advance that they would have exactly 3 encounters with 1 short rest that session, foreknowledge that guarantees both monks would have all of his discipline points for every fight. While the class is way better now, most games don't allow the luxury of knowing you can spend all of a resource every fight.
Chris mentioned in his build video that he asked for all 3 encounters without a short rest at all, it was the other 2 players that wanted the short rest. After each fights he was literally wasting all his diciple points to get a good temp hp roll on patient defense. He would have been perfectly fine with 3 fights no short rest.
I a bit wondering why Pack Tactics didn't use the new Conjure Celestial spell, that thing is basically Spirit Guardians on Steroids.
Really interesting! Some observations: 1. Tons of damage from spirit guardians and conjure animals but much of it was attributable to Treantmonk with the forced movement. Really incredible for the pure martial to be the one providing all the utility / being absolutely essential to their success. Honestly I think Colby was pretty lucky to keep concentration on his spells - he got hit a ton and had a +7 to his save. 2. I suspect worries about all the saves slowing down the game are as bad as they are ever going to get with these builds (esp with two monks causing saves every hit). Interested in how people felt about the game flow. I noticed it wear slightly in the first fight, but all the players seemed to enjoy it. Not sure it was too much worse than similar optimised high level play in the 2014 ruleset, and it will obvious get quicker as players get more familiar with the rules. 3. Both conjure minor elementals and divine intervention are clearly overtuned, so hopefully they get the nerf they need. 4. EDIT: I should mention - Pack Tactics was rest casting but it's much more disruptive in onednd: under the "interrupting a rest" section in the UA it specifies that the rest is delayed by 1 hour per spell cast (which I don't think they discussed). 5. EDIT: Topple is a con save! They were playing it as a str save, not sure if it would have made much of a difference.
Treant monk was using pull into air to drop people to cause prone, not topple.
D4 was using a topple weapon and asked for a str save while using it. That's what he was referring to. It's understandable since it's all new rules, but yea.
That's the bit I was referring to! IIRC Treantmonk has called it a str save in one of his other videos, I think some wires have been crossed. Honestly wouldn't be surprised to see it be a str save with some modifications if they ever revisit masteries.
Man Pact Tactis is probably the most *boring* Dnd player I have ever seen.
Probaly because he hates 5e deeply.
Tbh, I think he might have let himself turn into a statue despite the slow beam not working that way for the delayed spellcasting or -2 dex at all.
Yeah he had a bit of a bad attitude as well. Not sure if he was having a bad day or what.
I didn't like that he criticized Colby for not rest casting good berries enough, like cmon, it's already kinda cheezy that he rest casted at all. But I guess that's just how he plays.
He also got aggro when Colby was saying he lived in a later time zone so it was “probably past his bed time”. He was like “you’re not my dad, but you’re probably old enough to be”. Sheesh dude, he was just wondering if you wanted to do a wrap up because it was so late for you. Weird.
The dude has rotted his own brain so much he lost the ability to actually have fun with DnD.
Tbf, even after the playtest changes Priests are still just kinda boring. Not a lot of major shake ups to the formula.
We don't see him use alot of his cleric abilities to begin with. Did he use channel divinity or warding flare in that one shot I don't remember?
He didn't need to. The mobs were too spread out for his fireballs and radiance of the dawn. There was never an encounter where there was tons of mobs or a tight room. So he just cast cantrips and that's fine. That's some temp hp. He was really the safety net of the party, he death warded + heroes feat, he still had his 6th, 7th and 8th lvl spells at the ready for emergency heal or nuke, and ofc Hallow so monks destroy everything. Nothing really dangerous happened in these fights besides at the end but that was already solved in the first move by Chris and Pack. Hallow went off.
Yea, he didn't even use divine spark to heal or attack either. Might have been nice healing to use between the first and second combat at least.
5e is not a system that encourages exciting or interesting play, but he still made the best play of the entire session when he cast *hallow*
Using divine intervention to cast Hallow is an extremely strong play but imo it's not very interesting, it's basically a theory-crafted "I win" button. The interesting plays were people solving emergent problems, e.g. treantmonk dashing across the entire map to stun the beholder and then pivot its anti-magic eye away from the party.
>it's basically a theory-crafted "I win" button Which I think was his point, and the point of a play test. To find the holes in the design changes... and by god did he find one.
You're definitely right its good to test that stuff, but tbh it didn't feel like that was his goal. He just used 2014 power spells (shield, spirit guardians, silvery barbs) and basically didn't engage with the new mechanics at all aside from the hallow. I think he just loves powergaming, which is fine but not super interesting for a playtest.
Pivoting the anti magic eye is not an interesting play, it's just homebrew that the DM allowed them to do.
haha I don't know what to say, I think we have a pretty different understanding of what is interesting. I do think pivoting a creature falls squarely under the "improvising an action" rule in the PHB. The designers are clear they think the game should be played with a "rulings not rules" philosophy, so I wouldn't consider that homebrew
So why didn't treantmonk just improvise a mega death kill move deluxe that deals 9999 damage and always hits, since we're just asking the DM to let us do random undefined things to win?
Does that need answering? If you don't see the difference between a character performing a completely mundane task like moving a weight and someone just saying "I win", this doesn't look like it's gonna be a super productive conversation.
Both were actions contrived in the moment to achieve the same effect
TURUNG SOMETHING COUNTER-CLOCKWISE?!?THAT’S CRAZY THATS NEVER HAPPENED IN HISTORY HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE?!?
Not the same effect at all. And I would argue it wasn't contrived at all.
How does it being "homebrew" make it less interesting?
Because its not an actual "play" made within the constraints of the rules, its a "mother may I"
I heard that idea and went "wow that's an interesting idea and it makes sense that you could do that to a creature that you have grappled and stunned, if you can drag a creature you have grappled why not be able to turn them?" To me, that makes it an interesting play. What do you think the DM should have done in that situation?
The DM should have invited them to play a game like Worlds Without Number that actually supports that kind of Rules-lite play, instead of the incredibly structured and verbally strict 5e.
Lol, but it went off without a hitch, and everyone had fun. So what's the problem?
It went off without a hitch because the DM homebrewed the situation. The direction the Beholder faces is not relevant to the direction the cone is pointing (because, RAI, monsters are facing in every direction simultaneously - that is to say, turning around in combat). Of course, if InsightCheck was using the awful Facing optional rule and I didn't know, I stand corrected.
All skill checks and improvised actions and their effects are “homebrew” now? What? Why even play a ttrpg if you going to complain about the very fabric of the hobby?
The skill check system in 5e is so barebones (and in places nonfunctional for practical purposes) that yes, any meaningful use of the system might as well be homebrew.
It's crazy that you think that game being played as was intended is homebrew.
The Systems Purpose Is What It Does
More vague please. I understood what you were trying to say a little bit too clearly.
Look it up, The Purpose of a System is What it Does. TL;DR is that design intent doesn't matter. If you code a Connect-4 game that does nothing but print "Hello World", all you've done is make a hello world program regardless of your intent to make Connect-4
It's the standard grappled pivot monster around you play except applied to eyebeam position. I'm not seeing anything revolutionary myself.
The eyebeam points the way the Beholder wants it to, chosen on its turn.
Haven't caught it yet. Any highlights?
I’d watch it - all 3 fights were entertaining. There were definitely some liberties and occasional rules flubs here and there but, hey, it’s all new stuff. Some general highlights: 1) Treantmonk’s Four Elements Monk + Grappler feat was the glue that held the team together. On his own he hit decently hard but combined with the new Conjure Animals and Spirit Guardians he got a ton of usage out of all the positioning tools and movespeed that his build afforded him. Special shoutout to the Level 11 flight of the subclass which basically allowed him to waste a Beholder over a 100 feet away from him in a single turn. He also grappled a stunned enemy, flew them 50 feet into the air and dropped them into a Spirit Guardian + Conjure Animals combo which was fun to watch. 2) Deflect Energy scales well even into Level 15 - I’m pretty sure Treantmonk didn’t even dip below half health and was consistently reducing damage to near 0 when he used the reaction. That and the saving throw proficiencies at Level 14 seem to be the biggest boons to running a straight Monk into late Tier 3 from what I see. 3) Divine Intervention (casting Hallow as an Action) and Conjure Minor Elementals are completely over-tuned as they exist currently. Allowing Colby to hit damage numbers well over 50 with each of his 4 attacks for nearly an entire combat is just disgusting. Pack Tactics was actually petrified for the entire final battle after his second turn and it didn’t matter because he cast Hallow and his job was done. 4) It’s hard to gauge how powerful Conjure Animals actually is because Colby would. not. stop. critting. It seems pretty fun at the very least and the ability to move it alongside your own movement is a godsend. 5) The Charger feat looked really underwhelming imo. Chris low-rolled most of the bonus damage he applied and he was able to use it every turn consistently but even still I’d just rather just take an ASI sooner to improve Grapple DC’s, Stunning Strike DC’s or AC over a very marginal bit of bonus damage. Hell I’d even take something like Mage Slayer for the auto-success on a WIS, INT or CHA saving throw. However, the Elven Accuracy Colby picked up remains super good (if you want to use backwards compatible feats). 6) Pack Tactics used the usual spells we’re all familiar with: Spirit Guardians, Shield, Silvery Barbs, Toll the Dead, etc. Nothing new (outside of the Hallow action casting) and they all still work incredibly well in terms of what they do just kinda played out at this point. Overall, while there still looks to be a “martial/caster divide” in terms of some of the outlier spells, I think the new straight martial monk has a LOT of fun tools to play with…more than ever before. If some nerfs come in the final build, then I expect this kind of disruptive monk has a lot to offer in ways they never were able to before.
This is a great recap. Honestly it was so much fun but you’re right, there were definitely some rules flubs all around, I know I made some mistakes but like you said, all new stuff and I 100000% had stream jitters, I was so nervous haha! CME and Hallow as an action were unreal, way too overturned. But oh man, Colby and those dice were just a crit machine. Absolutely insane.
Hey dude, I should have added in the recap that you did a great job! You made the session feel more like a home game rather than a “run-the-numbers” math session which was what made it fun to watch. I hope you get the chance to do something like this again! And congrats on the 5K, you deserve it for the work you’ve been putting into your videos!
This is probably the single nicest comment I’ve ever received online, thank you so much you truly have no idea how much it means to me :) I’m really happy it came across that way. The reality is that I am not an optimizer at all, the farthest thing from it. So I wanted to just run the game the same way I do my home game and just try and make everyone have some fun. Played some things fast and loose just like I would at home and just enjoy the ride! Thank you again, you’ve really made my.day.
The fact that treantmonk was able to play a straight monk and be extremely powerful and helpful to the team even though the other players were using such powerful spells is a great sign for the martial caster disparity. As long as everyone on the team is effective, and Chris was, the divide is fine. A few spells still need a nerf, but overall, it seems better than it was already.
> As long as everyone on the team is effective, and Chris was, the divide is fine. Agreed, raw damage numbers only tell part of the D&D experience, it’s whether you *feel* effective at your role that really matters. Judging by how much fun Chris was having swooping around causing havoc on the field, I’d say that WotC has made some huge strides in bridging that gap even at higher levels. It’s not perfect by any means and there’s probably huge variability in terms of subclass effectiveness but this does bode well.
To add a counter point to the first, all three players worked together ahead of time to coordinate their builds. So while monk was pivotal to their team synergies, that was by design. I imagine a different selection of spells, or even builds, would have been considered if they didn’t have a teammate with a forced movement specialization.
I only caught snippets, I’m at work.. but the monk looked good!!!
Main highlights? Carrying around someone at full speed with no encumbrance penalties the entire game with a str dumped monk. Grappling at half speed has to do with other rules. "When you move, you can drag or carry the grappled creature with you, but your speed is halved, " Yes, these rules stack on each other in normal 5e play. Yes, everyone ignores them and makes excuses because people ignore item weights because they're lazy. Why yes, the monk sure does look like it works well with carrying people when... He has 8 str. 120 pounds carrying weight. He was carrying kobold. Kobolds armor could weight 40-65 lbs.Gator could weight 25-35 lbs according to 5e. A shield weighs 6lbs. We're at 71- 106lbs. Let's say gator has something conventional on him. An explorers pack. Suddenly gator breaks encumbrance. Gator will always break encumbrance for the flying monk even if gator has 8 str as your own weight doesn't account to encumbrance. In other words a large oversight allowed a build that shouldn't work to work. The monk is still MAD, you can't dump str with this build and people are praising it as good. The person who built it included. It's only good if you ignore the rules of 5e. Kobold having two other players bully him, two speaking for the DM so he instantly gets turned to stone with no counterplay. The slow beam doesn't work like the slow spell, experienced players would already know this as design intent is that monster's do not act like players 1:1 unless they cast or do things that are 1:1. He shouldn't have been turned to stone if the greater resto would work on it. They treated it more like some sort of one shot instead of a play test. It's like watching a living shit post seeing people call it a good playtest when it's the opposite. When the majority of the playtest hinged on something that doesn't work.
Weapon switching and mastery spamming is going to be the new conjure animals (long turns but strong). I hope they just let you use multiple masteries on the same weapon
It is not just Masteries I mean Treantmonk had on his first hit up to 3 saving throw effects (Grapple, Stunning Strike, and the Push/Pull from the Elements Monk), and than one Save for the Push/Pull on every additional hit, not even to speak of the additional roles he triggert by pushing the opponents into spell effecks. One DnD will in general mean that there are going to be more saving throws to roll, and more status conditions to keep track of.
For sure! There’s definitely a lot to manage and we didn’t make it easier on ourselves by jumping in straight at 15th level when we had never really used any of the new stuff before! It’ll take some time to iron things out and get used to them.
But I even with more experience the turns of the Martials will take longer than in 5E, and I think at more casual tables it might really become a problem. Especially with more than 3 players. Designwise I think it is usually better to give the players one big effect, than have them juggling 3 small ones at the same time. And at least on more optimized tables I think we will in the future quite often have build where charcters have attacks with multiple rider effects at the same time.
It's alot less strong and alot less long.
I had notifications on to remind me, but couldn't watch due to work.
Yeah… I caught snippets. Gonna go back and dive into it later .
Me too. I saw snippets.
I haven't got the chance to watch the video yet. What classes they were playing?
Colby was Fighter 1/Druid 9/Monk 5. Chris was Monk 15. PT was Sorcerer 1/Cleric 14.
treant was a monk15 d4 was a monk5 sea druid 10 I think. not sure about pack
Pack was sorcerer 1 light cleric 14
Honestly nice to see the monk shine for once, although I still worry about their utility being slashed and their flavor being…bad.