Changes to the Monk in Hyperborea

The new edition of Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea has been released to Kickstarter backers in PDF.  I will not be reviewing the complete document, but instead focus on how the changes affect the character I play in Kevin Madison’s Reavers of Thule campaign.  My character, Amar, is a 7^th level Monk with relevant statistics of Strength 13 and Dexterity 18.

This is the 3^rd edition of the game and is now called just Hyperborea.  I will refer to it as 3e and the previous edition as 2e.  From what I remember in the development of 3e, the Monk class underwent the most revision.  As we will see, there are big changes between the 2 editions for the class.

The following class abilities are gone in 3e:

1.     Accurate Strike – this granted a +1 to damage every 3 levels for all non-missile attacks in lieu of a Strength bonus.  This was a pretty good ability that increased with level; my 7th level Monk has a bonus +3 to all non-missile damage, which is equivalent to a 18 Strength damage bonus.

2.     Empty Hand – this granted a +1 to-hit bonus for unarmed attacks.  whenever fighting without weapons, your attacks were one Fighting Ability higher.  This was a decent ability as well; a 1st level Monk fought as a 2nd level Fighter when not using weapons. 

3.     The stunning blow ability of Empty Hand – this ability now only activates on a natural 20, versus the 2e version activating on a 19-20.  This is a loss, but the ability rarely came up in our game and with Roll20 indicating when you score a 20, it will be easier to use.  As far as I can tell, these are the only "losses" from the 2e Monk.

The following class abilities are new or improved in 3e:

1.     Defensive Ability – in 2e, this was an AC bonus that improved every odd level, but could not be combined with the AC bonus from Dexterity.  That restriction is gone in 3e, which is a welcome change.  Neither version of the Monk can wear any type of armor and therefore will almost never (barring magic) have any DR.  This changes Amar’s base AC at 7^th level from 5 to 3.

2.     Extraordinary bonuses – previously, the Monk gained a bonus +8% to Extraordinary Feats of Dexterity.  In 3e, the class also gains a bonus +8% to Extraordinary Feats of Strength.  I would call this a minor change; Amar now has an equivalent 15 Strength as it pertains to this.

3.     The quivering palm ability of Empty Hand – previously this only worked on Small or Medium sized creatures.  Now, there are no size restrictions.  While I like it, I would have liked the no size restriction applied to stunning blow as well.

4.     Empty Hand as magical weapon – at 5th level in 2e, Empty Hand counted as a magical weapon for the purpose of harming creatures that were only vulnerable to magic weapons.  In 3e, it also grants a +1 to-hit.  The importance of this will be illustrated later.

5.     Empty Hand as weapon-like damage – in 2e, this was a 1dx increasing every 4 levels plus either Strength bonus or Accurate Strike bonus.  Amar was 1d4+1 at 1^st level, 1d6+2 at 5^th level, and 1d6+3 at 7^th level.  In 3e, this is a xd4 increasing every 3 levels.  Since Accurate Strike is gone, only Amar’s Strength bonus would apply, so it would be 1d4+1 at 1^st level, 2d4+1 at 4^th level, and 3d4+1 at 7^th level.  This is a big improvement I will illustrate below.

6.     Fighting Ability – in 2e, the Monk improved like the Cleric, starting out with Fighting Ability 1 at 1^st level, improving to 2 at 3^rd level, 3 at 4^th level, 4 at 6^th level, and 5 at 7^th level.  In 3e, you start at 1^st level with a 0 Fighting Ability, but then undergo a mostly linear progression.  For the 1^st through 4^th level Monk, this is actually a downgrade.  At 5^th level, the 3e progression is better than the 2e one.  I have created the following table to illustrate some of the previous points.

LEVEL	2e FA	3e FA	2e EH FA	3e EH FA	2e EH DAM	3e EH DAM	2e DAM RNG	3e DAM RNG	2e DAM AVG	2e % DAM AVG	3e % DAM AVG
1	1	0	2	0	1d4+1	1d4	2-5	1-4	3+	75.0%	50.0%
2	1	1	2	1	1d4+1	1d4	2-5	1-4	3+	75.0%	50.0%
3	2	2	3	2	1d4+1	1d4	2-5	1-4	3+	75.0%	50.0%
4	3	3	4	3	1d4+2	2d4	3-6	2-8	4+	75.0%	81.3%
5	3	4	4	5	1d6+2	2d4	3-6	2-8	5+	66.7%	62.5%
6	4	5	5	6	1d6+2	2d4	3-6	2-8	5+	66.7%	62.5%
7	5	6	6	7	1d6+3	3d4	4-9	3-12	6+	66.7%	84.4%
8	5	7	6	8	1d6+3	3d4	4-9	3-12	6+	66.7%	84.4%
9	6	8	7	9	1d8+3	3d4	4-9	3-12	7+	62.5%	68.7%
10	7	9	8	10	1d8+4	4d4	5-12	4-16	8+	62.5%	86.3%
11	7	10	8	11	1d8+4	4d4	5-12	4-16	8+	62.5%	86.3%
12	8	11	9	12	1d8+4	4d4	5-12	4-16	8+	62.5%	86.3%

Legend:  FA = Fighting Ability; EH = Empty Hand; DAM = damage; RNG = range; AVG = average; % DAM AVG = the percent chance your damage die roll is equal to or greater than damage average.

For unarmed combat purposes, the 2e Monk will hit more often and more like a Fighter for the first 4 levels.  However, the damage output is slightly better for minimum damage.  At 5^th level, the 3e Monk adds the +1 to-hit bonus from the new Empty Hand and fights as a Fighter of equivalent level, outpacing the 2e version by 1 for 5^th through 7^th, by 2 for 8^th through 10^th, and by a whopping 3 for 11^th and 12^th.

For damage purposes, the 3e version becomes better that the 2e class at 4^th level.  The Monk now does one less minimum and 2 more maximum damage, which I view as better.  At 7^th level, the damage is 1 less than the 2e but is now 3 more maximum, and that changes to 4 more at 10^th level.  Another thing to keep in mind is you go from a die with equivalent probability for any number result to a bell curve number result that is less “swingy”.

The last 3 columns provide the best illustration I could devise.  Since the 2e version uses only 1 (even) die, the 2e DAM AVG column shows what would be the minimum average damage.  On a 1d4, the average is 2.5, but you can’t roll that, so I consider it a 2 and then add the Accurate Strike bonus for a 3 or greater on average roll.  The next column, 2e % DAM AVG shows the odds of rolling the 2e DAM AVG or greater and the last column shows the same for 3e.

Again, the 4^th to 5^th level area is where things turn better for the 3e Monk.  The 4^th level version in 3e is not hitting as often as the 2e one, but he does better damage on average.  At 5^th level, the 3e version is now hitting more on average with only a slight reduction in average damage chances.  At 7^th level, the 3e version is now superior in both to-hit and average damage compared to the 2e one. 

As for Amar, he now adds a +1 Strength bonus to his 3e EH DAM column, so his would look like this:

LEVEL	2e FA	3e FA	2e EH FA	3e EH FA	2e EH DAM	3e EH DAM	2e DAM RNG	3e DAM RNG	2e DAM AVG	2e % DAM AVG	3e % DAM AVG
1	1	0	2	0	1d4+1	1d4+1	2-5	2-5	3+	75.0%	75.0%
2	1	1	2	1	1d4+1	1d4+1	2-5	2-5	3+	75.0%	75.0%
3	2	2	3	2	1d4+1	1d4+1	2-5	2-5	3+	75.0%	75.0%
4	3	3	4	3	1d4+2	2d4+1	3-6	3-9	4+	75.0%	93.8%
5	3	4	4	5	1d6+2	2d4+1	3-8	3-9	5+	66.7%	81.3%
6	4	5	5	6	1d6+2	2d4+1	3-8	3-9	5+	66.7%	81.3%
7	5	6	6	7	1d6+3	3d4+1	4-9	4-13	6+	66.7%	93.8%
8	5	7	6	8	1d6+3	3d4+1	4-9	4-13	6+	66.7%	93.8%
9	6	8	7	9	1d8+3	3d4+1	4-11	4-13	7+	62.5%	84.4%
10	7	9	8	10	1d8+4	4d4+1	5-12	5-17	8+	62.5%	94.1%
11	7	10	8	11	1d8+4	4d4+1	5-12	5-17	8+	62.5%	94.1%
12	8	11	9	12	1d8+4	4d4+1	5-12	5-17	8+	62.5%	94.1%

 

As you can see, at 5^th level the 3e version of Amar is superior.

So, the 3e version of the Monk is better in general.  However, there is a change in the rules that is not specific to the Monk, but does “nerf” an ability my 2e version occasionally took advantage of:  two-weapon fighting.

In 2e, depending on the Weapon Class (WC, a measure of size/speed of a weapon) and the character’s Dexterity, two-weapon fighting suffered to-hit penalties ranging from minus 2/minus 4 to minus 1/minus 1.  For WC purposes in 2e, an unarmed attack for a Monk counted as WC 0, so no penalties were realized when fighting Empty Hand.  For Amar, when fighting two-handed with weapons with an 18 Dexterity, if they were both WC 1, he suffered a minus one to both, for WC 2/1 he had a minus 2/minus 1, and if both were WC 2, both were at minus 2.  This has recently become important for Amar.  As a 7^th level 2e Monk, his Empty Hand attacks were 2/1 at FA 6 (or FA 5 +1 to-hit) for 1d6+3 (4-9 range, average 6 or more) damage each.  He recently received two magic weapons, one WC 2 at 1d8 +3 hit/damage and one WC 1 at 1d6 +2 hit/damage.  Dual wielding them at FA 5, Amar was +1 to-hit for 1d8+6 damage (7-14 range, average 10 or more) and +1 to hit for 1d6+5 damage (6-11 range, average 8 or more).  Comparing to the table above, the to-hit bonuses balance out with the FA difference, i.e. a FA 6 with no to-hit bonus is equivalent to a FA 5 with a +1 to-hit bonus.  However, the damage output was significantly greater with the magic weapons, which is what Amar just started using.

In 3e, all of this changes.  Dexterity no longer plays a role in the WC penalty adjustment, although attack bonuses from higher Strength would.  The to-hit penalty to a WC 2/1 combination is now -3 to BOTH weapons.  Amar would now be at FA 6 with no to-hit bonus at 1d8+4 damage (5-12 range, average 7 or more) and -1 to-hit at 1d6+3 damage (4-9 range, average 6 or more).  Obviously, Amar is better off Empty Hand with FA 7 (or FA 6 +1 to-hit) for 3d4+1 damage (4-13 range, average 7 or more).

What does all this mean?  In my experience, Amar was usually ineffective against high AC foes with DR and/or high HP.  The 2e Monk played a bit more like the cinematic monk you see dropping “mooks” relatively easily.  The way to improve the 2e version versus higher AC/DR/HP enemies was through magical weapons, preferably dual wielded.  The 3e version retains most of the “mook” combat features, but now magical weapons have almost no use.  However, the 3e version of Empty Hand should now work much better against those higher AC/DR/HP enemies.

Overall, I like the improvements for the 3e Monk, but I still feel there should be a better balance between Empty Hand and magical weapons.  I don’t feel it should be an either/or.  For both editions, it appears you only need a base +1 to-hit magical weapon for certain powerful monsters; I could not locate a monster that listed a higher magical to-hit was required.  Many magical weapons also come with other benefits; in Amar’s example, it is a +3 rod of smiting.  If you have a high Strength, then dual wielding becomes better.  Although Strength is an attribute requisite for Monk in both editions, it’s only a 9 and is not a Prime Requisite.  I’ve always felt the class is best represented by the high Dexterity and that applied to both unarmed and armed melee attacks.  I’m sure there was some basis for the change in two-weapon fighting, but I’m not a fan.