
Originally Posted by
Junts
Dear Eladrin et al.
For months now I am sure you have heard the howling about the monk wis bonus to armor class, monk splashes and its incredible synergy with two character types: the rogue (epitomized by the 15 rog/1 monk dex build, which tends to attain the highest available ac in the game), and the ranger (epitomized by the 14 ran/1 rog/1 monk, dps god twf build with 70 ac).
Monk splashes are good but not absurd in many other cases (like the 14 cle/2 monk, or 14 pally/2 monk, etc) because the monk splash is most rewarding on characters capable of tanking a couple stats; rangers are by far most guilty of this (not forced to spend 2-3 bp a pop on dexterity, or to carry any charisma), and rogues are in a similar vein; this makes it easy for them to get a 20-24 wisdom and get an extra 5-7 ac for their troubles. Other splashes are sacrificing a lot more for their ac bonuses (wisdom is oddly a dump stat for many paladin builds, as its tough to keep it high, and unnecessary with shroud sp items, and any battle/casting type splashing it is giving up casting levels, spell slots etc)
Those other builds that are getting a lot out of the monk splash tend to be working with wisdom as a central facet of their build; it is not something they just throw in incidently because the payoff from ac is better than spending 6 build points for another 1 hit/damage going from 16 to 18 strength, for example.
The paladin capstone did an excellent job of addressing the tradeoff for paladins; the benefits of /2monk, /2rogue, /2fighter and straight 20 paladin are all relatively similar and differ primarily in 'what you want to do with your character', with all being rewarding and good.
The rogue capstone fails in this because it does not outweigh the benefit of t he monk splash and feat, or other splashes.
The ranger capstone is yet to come, but imo will be most challenging because rangers threaten constantly to be -the- dominant melee class due to their excessive free (without stat requirement) feats - rangers not only get massive fe bonuses, but are able to evade the dex investments made by every other twf character to pump strength and wisdom.
The intention of this thread is to offer you a simple way of addressing the monk bonus in a way that does not disincentiveize splashing monk, but rather disincentivizes doing so with a relatively minimal wisdom and relying on +2 tome, +6 item to give you 4 free armor class.
This is simple and while it would impact all characters using the monk wisdom bonus, it would make that bonus far more rewarding for highly-invested characters:
Give the wisdom bonus to ac the 'insight' type; not only is this rp appropriate, but by removing the stacking with heightened awareness 4, the tradeoffs change:
it may not be worth 1 level to get the same ac you get from a shroud weapon
it may be worth that level to not have to put insight on your shroud weapon, or maintain your ac while using other weapons (like vorpals, wounding, etc)
if you have a massive wisdom, while you are effectively losing your shroud ac, you are still maintaining a +9-12 insight bonus, and free to prop up that bonus in other ways (exceptional wisdom, for example).
18-20 wis (post-mod) monk splashes would howl about this til the day they die, and many monk splashed melees fall into this category; however, this means to an easy armor class could use a little abridging, and if you do not intend to move or modify the icy rainment, this is a very good method of doing so.
I will now pause as this thread is extensively flamed.