Fighters vs. Monks, a Choose Your Own Adventure.
N.B. While I would love if this thread gives support to throwing monks a little love via
craftable items, I am not intending this as a whine that I chose to play a monk, nor attempting to start a balance argument; my remarks are supposed to poke gentle fun at various things, and should not be taken too seriously. I'm a geek, and like to do this kind of thing for fun. I do, however, wish to put some numbers out there to point to when discussions come up. Further, this analysis is very number/level specific - at other levels, or among characters with different equipment, there might be very different results. The monk numbers are pretty close to Drexia's stats; I've never played a fighter, so don't really know if what I've chosen is reasonable. Finally this obviously only looks at damage output and no other measures of a character's usefulness.
If you just want my bottom line conclusions, scroll to the bottom.
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A level 25 Wizard and Cleric are bored, and want to do something. They want to find a third member to journey with, but don't want the party to become too big, so only want one more. They happen upon a monk and fighter sitting on the Hlint benches, who have just returned from fighting rust monsters. The monk smiles, knowing that his equipment was unharmed; the fighter is very sad, as she was left only with a skinning knife to fight with. They both look like they have pretty comprable equipment. The cleric and the wizard confer, and decide to travel with (You decide!!!)
A. The monk
B. The fighter
A.
The Wizard points at the monk and says "I choose you!" The monk hops off the bench, and shows the pair his character sheet. It shows that he is 20th level, and has an base attack bonus of 15/12/9/6/3. As they walk along, he tells a little bit of his history. He started as a young monk, with a dex bonus of 16, and has been putting points into it ever since. He trained from a child to
focus on unarmed combat, and how he was so proud when he got his pair of dire bear leather gloves - the finest a tailor can make. He speaks fondly of his first trip into the deep, where he got an emerald, which he now wears in an amulet around his neck, and hopes to get some more... but for now, his diamond ring and ioun stone will have to do (his other ring is a diamond str, which brings him up to 14 for carrying CNR). Once the wizard casts cat's grace, and bull's strength, (sadly, at 2 points) each he has a dex of 21+9=30, a strength of 16, and with his other bonuses gets an attack bonus of 29/26/23/20/17
After getting a look at the monk's character sheet, the elder pair decide the group should go to (You decide!!!).
C. Generic Dregar location
D. Generic Belinara location
E. To the glittering isles.
BThe Cleric points at the fighter and says "I choose you!" The fighrter hops off the bench, and shows the pair her character sheet. It shows that he is 20th level, and has an base attack bonus of 20/15/10/5 . As they walk along, she tells about how sad she is that she has such a paltry weapon, but with her strength, (which was 16, when she rolled her stats when she came of age so she could adventure within the server rules, and has been putting points into it ever since) they should be fine. She speaks fondly of her first trip into the deep, where she got an emerald, which she now wears in an amulet around his neck, and hopes to get some more... but for now, her diamond ring and ioun stone will have to do (her other ring is a diamond con, which helps her HP total in a pinch). Since she doesn't need fighting style gloves, she picked up a pair of exceptional fury gloves from a poor tailor who was foolish enough to not put a minimum bid on the auction. Once the wizard casts bull's strength, (sadly, at 2 points) and greater magic weapon on the skinning knife, she has a str of 21+11=32, and with her weapon now enchanted gets an attack bonus of 36/31/26/19
After getting a look at the fighter's character sheet, the elder pair decide the group should go to (You decide!!!).
E. To the Glittering isles.
F. Generic Dregar location
G. Generic Belinara location
CAfter portaling into Prantz, the group wonders why on Layonara a city where magic is all but outlawed allows anyone to portal into their city for free. Ignoring such things when they can smell xp, the group hurries to over-farmed place #3. The creatures there have a AC of 31 (yes, this number is pulled out of thin air with no basis for choosing it). Since it's so low, the monk decides to throw caution to the winds, and strike in a flurry of blows. Since any given attack has a chance of hitting equal to (21-AC+AB)/20, or 5% per number on the d20 that you can roll and still hit, the monk scribbles on the back of his sheet to figure out how many times he'll hit in a round on average. He comes up with (17+17+14+12+9+6)/20=3.75 hits per round. The monk, (You Choose!!!)
H. Is encouraged by the numbers and heads onward.
I. Is saddened because he won't hit 4 times on average every round, and so runs away into a cave.
D.After taking a dozen ships, the party thanks the gods for time compression. The Black Wizards have turned everything around the area into undead, so the monk slips on his gloves with both a silver and elemental enhancement. Sitting down to calculate how he'll do in the upcoming fight, he looks at his log from the last time he was here, and notes that things seem to have an AC of around 45 - high enough that some of his attacks will only hit on natural 20s, so he has to substitute that into the formula for figuring out how often he'll hit. Noting that using flurry will not help him, he figures that he will have an average of (5+2+1+1+1)/20=.5 times per round. The Monk (You choose!!!)
K. Knows that the spellcasters will be spamming thunderclap and and storm of vengance, so he'll just be attacking stunned creatures anyway, and goes on.
C. Begs the others to go to a less scary places, and drags the party off to Dregar.
ETheir stats are irrelevant, and they get snacked on for lunch by some dragon-like things.
Although it's over for our heroes, you can continue! just go back to where you came from, and choose a new option!
FAfter portaling into Prantz, the group wonders why on Layonara some competing city on Dregar hasn't invested in a portal. Ignoring such things when they can smell xp, the group hurries to over-farmed place #3. The creatures there have a AC of 31 (yes, this number is pulled out of thin air with no basis for choosing it). Since the fighter had int a dump stat, she asks the wizard to help her figure out how often she'll hit. The wizard knows that any given attack usually has a chance of hitting equal to (21-AC+AB)/20, or 5% per number on the d20 that one can roll and still hit, when one twill only miss on critical misses, just plug in .95, or 95%. The wizard shows the fighter that she'll hit (19+19+16+11)/20=3.25 times per round. The fighter, (You Choose!!!)
J. Is encouraged by the numbers and heads onward.
I. Is saddened because she won't hit 4 times on average every round, and so runs away into a cave.
GAfter taking a dozen ships, the party thanks the gods for time compression. The Black Wizards have turned everything around the area into undead, so the fighter is on the same int level as the foe. Begging the party to help her calculate how she'll do in the upcoming fight, the wizard tells her to look at her log from the last time she was here. It shows that things seem to have an AC of around 45 - high enough that one of her attacks will only hit on natural 20s, so she has to substitute that into the formula for figuring out how often she'll hit. With aid from the wizard, she figures that she will have an average of (13+8+3+1)/20=1.25 times per round. The Fighter (You choose!!!)
L. Knows that he's only being brought along as a tank anyway, and heads on.
F. Looks down at her skinning knife, and begs to come back when she has a weapon that her feats actually mean something for, and drags the party to Dregar.
HLuckily for the monk, a necromancer must have passed by and transformed everything into undead, so the silver IV enchanment on his gloves applies (and he doesn't have to add critical hits to the damage calculation which are a pain and don't change damage that much anyway). Thus, every time one of his attacks hits, he does 1d20 + 3 str + 1d8 elemental+ 1d8 silver, which averages to 22.5 points of damage per successful hit. Since he did hid math well, and figured out that he will hit an average of 3.75 times per round, he'll do 84.375 points of damage per round; more than enough to take down the enemy. With the foe now slain, the monk gloats about being able to do an a whole 3 more points per round than the fighter would have done. Yay!
Adventure over, the party goes home, fast friends after their travels.
IA grue eats him/her.
Although it's over for our heroes, you can continue! just go back to where you came from, and choose a new option!
JLuckily for the Fighter, a necromancer must have passed by, so her negative int score brain doesn't have to do additional rolls to confirm critical damage. Although she only wields a paltry skinning knife, with Greater Magic Weapon and flame weapon or darkfire, she does 1d4+11 Strength +5 weapon enhancement +1d4+4 fire, which averages to 25 points of damage per successful hit. The wizard, tired of performing lesser being's damage calculations, sends her to the cleric, who helpfully multiplies 3.25 by 25, to get 81.25 points of damage per round on average; more than enough to take down the enemy. With the foe now slain the fighter gloats about being able to do only 3 points less damage than the monk, even though she's only using a skinning knife. Yay!
Adventure over, the party goes home, fast friends after their travels..
K.The Monk, having a high wisdom score, sneaks a peek over at H to find damage calculations, since they are the same. He then multiplies his average damage of 23.5 by .5, to find that he will do an average of 11.75 points per round. He thanks the gods that the creatures don't have x/+4 or more damage reduction. Although he is cautious, he failed to take into account DM spawns which spoil careful calculations and sometimes have resistances to the spells he was counting on. He appears at his bindstone, cursing those DMs who make things more fun for the party and ruin playing by the numbers.
If you're unsatisfied with this ending, go back to A and make different choices, because you can choose your OWN adventure!!!
L.The Fighter, who is getting annoyed by having to rely on people with higher intelligence that she has, sneaks a peek over at J to find that her skinning knife will do an average of 25 points of damage. Since she has a chaotic alignment, she thinks nothing of pulling an anachronistic calculator out of her pocket. She uses it to multiply her average damage of 25 by 1.25 to find that he will do an average of 31.25 points per round. She notes that she is doing almost three times as much damage per round as the monk would have done, and only wishes that the monsters had damage reduction x/+5, so she could do even more relative to the monk. Yelling a fearsome war cry, she charges into battle. However, she accidentally drops her skinning knife due to poor inventory management, and is completely ineffectual the rest of the trip. She comes back from a successful trip wishing she were a monk so she wouldn't have to rely on weapons.
If you're unsatisfied with this ending, go back to A and make different choices, because you can choose your OWN adventure!!!
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Bottom line without the story and detailed math:
Fighting monsters with an AC close to their highest attack bonus, what I consider an average built, average equipped level 20 monk can deal around 80 points of damage. When that AC increases to about 15 points greater than their highest attack bonus, their damage potential drops drastically, to around 10 points per round - that d20 damage and 5-6 attacks per round is not as helpful as it might seem at high levels.
Monks do very well against lower AC creatures, but have a harder time dealing with high AC and damage reduction. They do not benefit nearly as much as fighters from buffing spells, because their weaknesses don't have corresponding spells. They have to be more careful about item selection, because they have fewer slots they can put stuff in.
Fighting monsters with an AC about 5 points below their highest AC bonus, what I consider an average built, average equipped level 20 fighter can do around 80 points of damage, even without having a decent weapon or feats to help them. When that AC increases by about 15 points, fighters can still do around 30 points of damage a round, and because they will probably invest in strength, there isn't much of a ceiling on how much damage they can do.
Fighters are much less dependent on having equipment to add damage. They are still effective with things that have high AC (until it gets so high that even they are only hitting on criticals), and buffing helps them tremendously, because there are many spells that affect fighters' weaknesses.
