Aw, thank you for the kind words Owls. I usually upload when I have spare time so that's probably why, since RU-vid prefers longer more consistent uploads (at least from what I know). But honestly, the fact that I already have so much support from the people that do get recommended my videos is genuinely an incredible feeling. College is taking a toll on me right now, so I probably won't be able to upload for a while, but I do enjoy making videos so I definitely will return in the future!
Good explanations of the abilities with insight on each one, all in a short video. Such a nice change of pace. While looking for advice on this subclass I found too many videos that were twice as long and essentially just someone reading the SCAG entries for the audience. I've inherited a goblin NPC for my next character and I decided he'll be a long death monk. All of his tribe members were killed by the party and during the encounter he rolled 3 nat 1s so the DM decided he shot off one of his toes each time. He'll be a monk because punching things is simpler than trying to use a bow. He'll be a long death monk specifically because after watching everyone he knew die then having a minotaur war cleric and the druid's moonbeam swinging his direction the little goblin decided to accept the party's offers of mercy (we'd all started to feel bad for him because of his terrible rolls), so long death will be an expression of PTSD as well as how death can bring about change. I'm really excited to play him and think the level 6 fear bomb will work wonders with Nimble Escape & Unarmoured Movement. Disengage, run into a crowd and hopefully more than 30' away from your nearest ally thanks to the extra speed, then terrify everything around you.
If you are a Dragonborn of any kind, ask your DM, if dragon fear can be used wisdom based instead of what the original text is because there’s so much fun And there’s two paths you can go gem unique breath a flight or metallic three different ways to use your breath Push incapacitate or fear
Well it would delay your spell progression by a lot since Monks are Martial classes that rely on WIS to land their Stunning Strikes. You would also have to make a choice between upping your Dexterity to get better at using your fists or your INT to get better at spell slinging. Also you would run into issues with the amount of Ki you have since that depends on your Monk level. That being said giving a caster Unarmoured Defense from the Monk abilities would be an interesting thing to see. I think it's cool of you to experiment Marcus. Thank you for your comments!
Well when deciding on things like subclass, its more important to think about what want from your build and how that fits the character's theme, so if you want to go all in as a death/undead themed monk that is really hard to kill and enjoys being tanky then yes, Long Death would be pretty good.
How I interpreted is not the study of death it is how people bury their dead and honor they’re dead through that knowledge learn ways how to end someone’s life if need be, because how can you really live without knowing death
Okay, so I think we need to think this through a little. Because you make this sound like a strong option, and it is not. I understand you want to be excited about the class/subclass you are presenting, but monks have a lot of problems that you don't touch on here. Monk is the weakest class in the game, and if a new player saw this video they might think they are a strong option, only to be disappointed. I'm not saying don't play a monk, I'm saying know what you are getting into when you do. Obviously this criticism only applies if the monk is indeed weak. So let us look a bit at why the monk is so weak. A major part of it is ki, you simply don't have enough, and much of what you have to spend ki to do, other classes just do for free (looking at you step of the wind). Defense: The monk has a poor defense, let us say you optimize your race pick, and start with dex and wis at 16, you have an AC of 16, fine for a starting character. But you are a frontliner, with only d8 hit dice, that is not good, you need some extra defense. You might think you can use your step of the wind to get hit less, but that costs ki, and your bonus action that you normally want to use for extra attacks. At higher levels you get proficiency in all saves, but for the majority of your career, you don't have an edge there either. Another problem is, that for your AC to keep up, you need to pick Dex and Wis increases with your Ability score increase, instead of feats. Way of the long death helps a bit here, by letting you get temporary HP when you take down an enemy. But as we shall see, your damage is not very good, so don't expect to get this often. You do get to survive a ton, of attacks with mastery of death, just remember, every ki point you spend on defense, is a point not spend on offense, and a monk that doesn't spend points of offense, doesn't really do much, other than stand there. So out of all the classes expected to do melee, you have the worst defense. Offense: So a mistake a lot of people make when evaluating monk, is to think you can flurry of blows all the time. No you don't have the ki for that, especially if you want to stunning strike. So really you get to attack 3 times on most of your turns, 2 attacks from your action, 1 attack from your bonus action, note that the bonus action attack is unarmed, so it doesn't benefit from any magic weapon you are holding. On some turns you might flurry of blows to add 1 extra attack into the mix, at low levels that might be 1d4+3, but even at level 20, that extra attack only does 1d10+5 damage, remember, no magic weapon or anything like that. Remember, you spend ki for that bonus damage. Compare that to a fighter, who is also doing 2 attacks with their action, and then an extra attack with their bonus action from polearm master (or doing something else cool with their feats). But they also get bonus damage from their fighting style, and they have a better defense, and at level 11 they get an extra attack to just outscale you completely. So what about stunning strike? Stunning strike is good-ish, not great but okay. The issue is that it is the only good thing the monk really gets. So let us investigate it a little deeper. First, we note, that it spends ki, so to do our one good move we need to spend ki, but also to just stay alive we need to spend ki. But stun is a very powerful condition to inflict, there is just a few problems, that keep this ability from being great. First, did you raise your wisdom? If you preferred to raise your dex to hit more often, your save DC is kinda low, on the other hand, if you preferred your wisdom, your damage will fall even more behind. Okay, but having a kinda low save DC might be overcome, the problem just is, a lot of monsters in the monters manual have good constitution saves, on average it is about 1.5 points above the other saves. This means, your stunning strike won't go through nearly as often as you would think at first glance. Additionally, the tough guy you really want to stun, he probably is the guy with the really high constitution save. Mobility: Monks are mobile when they spend ki to use step of the wind, the problem is, with their low damage, they can't really take out the squishy targets if they get to them, especially not on a turn, where they just spend their bonus action to dash or disengage. You could do stunning fist to keep the squishy targets out of the fight, but now you are spending 2-3 ki on this one turn, to stun 1 enemy for 1 turn. Feats: This is a big one, most tables I have heard of plays with feats. But monks need to improve both wisdom and dex to keep their AC, to hit bonus, and save DC comparable to what other characters are doing. Most other characters need only increase 1 stat, meaning they get 2 more feats to play with compared to the monk, and feats can be pretty strong. Magic items: I touched on it briefly before, but since the monk is using unarmed attack, in combination with weapons. Usually those unarmed attacks fall way behind, because they don't get enhanced by magic. But not just that, there is no magic clothing that gives bonus AC to the monk, they have to use atunement slots on stuff like bracers of defense to increase their AC, where others can just put on a magic armor, that doesn't require atunement. Monk is sadly underpowered, if you like the idea of playing a monk, and you don't mind your numbers not being as big as the rest of the parties, go for it. But know that you are signing up for your numbers to not be as big. As a final note, I will say, this problem becomes a lot more pronounced if the other players know how to build strong characters. The benefit other characters get from making smart choices in character creation is just a lot bigger than what you can squeeze out of monk. While still weaker than other characters, it is not as bad if people pick feats based more on what they feel like, than what is strong.
Hey, Peter thank you for the in-depth comment and I agree with a lot of what you are saying! My videos are generally about subclasses that I find interesting and I usually highlight the strong points of a class and give broad opinions rather than focusing on the negatives. It's impossible for me to know exactly how a DM or a group will run the game, but from my personal experience, I think it's important to note that Dungeons and Dragons is not a static formula and that a DM's adjudication is very important on how a player will experience the game. If a new player watches my video and tries out the Monk class, I would like to assume that the DM will adjust how the game is set up to accommodate a newer player's experience with the Monk class. Similarily things like Magic Items can be easily fixed if the player truly feels underpowered in their setting and the DM obliges. Depending on the setting other PCs might also not have their pick of the litter in terms of magic items that are strong for them. In terms of the lack of Ki, it depends on how many encounters there are per Short Rests, depending on the setting, casters might also be extremely limited if there are little to no Long Rest spots. And I assume that you probably will not need to burn Ki for every enemy you fight, just for the big fights. I understand CON saves are not ideal but the Stunned condition is extremely powerful, being able to get 1 Stun off on an enemy can completely shift the flow of the fight. Monks are generally considered to be a Utility-based class and I think when working together as a party a Monk definitely has its spot, even if raw numbers do not work out in its favour. Things like Feats vs Raw ability score upgrades are, in my opinion, very close to being equivalent, I don't think that having fewer Feats and more Ability Score Improvements is that negative, especially if you account for times when Skill checks and saving throws become important, Wisdom and Dexterity are great Ability Score types to max. Builds that rely on feats to make them strong usually are really good at one particular task, and Dungeons and Dragons can be a lot more than battle encounters. I think overall it is very dependant on what the DM has in store but I also believe that 5E does a good job of balancing classes in a way that makes them rely on each other and make the party more than the sum of its parts. I agree that on a purely mathematical basis Monks probably do not hold up that well, but I believe D&D is more than an individual's power levels, and again if a player is feeling let down, the DM can change certain aspects to give them a greater experience. But thank you for the comment, I enjoy hearing other people's feedback on the video!
@@Greyscales Okay, you make quite a few points there. Let us start with the first one you make. "I usually highlight the strong points of a class and give broad opinions rather than focusing on the negatives" So I like this approach, I think it is great to look at the monk, look at the strengths, and talk about how to play to those strengths. However, if you talk about the monk as a strong class, I feel you might mislead some new players. I focused a lot on the negatives in my comment, that is not because I think that is all your video should be. I focused so much on the negatives, because that is what your video is missing (in my opinion at least). I would have like to see, recognizing that you won't be very powerful as a monk, but these are some of the things you can do to keep up just a bit. next point "I would like to assume that the DM will adjust how the game is set up to accommodate a newer player's experience with the Monk class" This is certainly what I think most experienced DMs would do, but not all DMs are experienced enough to understand how to accommodate the monk. Hell, I have like 8 years of DM experience, and I would find it easier to sit down with my player, and write a new monk class, that gives them the feel they want, than to try and change my game to fit in the monk as it is. About the magic items, yes, sure they can easily be fixed, but I have had DMs who tell great stories, and just dump in some magic items from the DMG. Myself, I would certainly make sure to give the monk something effective, but homebrewing is my jam, it is not for everyone. "In terms of the lack of Ki, it depends on how many encounters there are per Short Rests" well, it is not really about encounters per short rest, as ki never gives a benefit that last more than a round. It is about rounds per short rest. I would assume in most cases, if you have fewer fights per short rest, they last more rounds. "I assume that you probably will not need to burn Ki for every enemy you fight, just for the big fights", this is true, but not so much because you can handle smaller fights without using ki, more because your teamates can handle smaller fights without you doing much. The monk doesn't do much damage, especially not without spending ki, so the one relevant thing they can do, is stunning strike, but that doesn't help if you want to conserve resources. I must admit, I haven't seen a long death monk in actual play, perhaps hour of reaping could help this issue somewhat, but genreally speaking, the monk doesn't have a good use for their action, other than to deliver stunning strikes. Fighters, rogues etc. can genrally still deal good damage without spending some resource. "I Understand Con saves are not ideal but the Stunned condition is extremely powerful" It is very powerful, and hard to get consistently. At lower levels, you don't have much ki, at higher levels, the juicy targets have legendary resistances and good con saves. From critical role stats: Stunning Strike Attempts: 85 (27 successes, 2 successes negated by legendary resistances) This is pretty much in line with what I would expect, about 1/3 of your stunning strikes going through. And lots of effects in the game take enemies out for more than 1 turn, and take more than 1 enemy out. It is still an okay ability, but you at level 10, with 2 short rests, you have 30 ki, if all goes to stunning strike, you remove maybe 10 turns from the enemies. That might sound good, but then look at how many rounds you can take away from the enemy with 1 well placed hypnotic pattern, or fear spell. Just 1 probably averages 6 rounds or so, due to lasting several rounds and being AoE. Stunning strike is more precise, and you can put it on the target you want, by just burning all your ki on one target, so it does have that strength, which makes it an okay ability. The problem is, the monk doesn't have any other good abilities to take over in the cases where stunning strike isn't good. "Monks are generally considered to be a Utility-based" I think you will have to specify utility-based a little here, it can mean different things to different people. To me, a utility based means, you have a lot of tools, that are not about dealing damage, and are not the strongest, but because you have so many, you can pick the right one for the job. But I would say, the monk usually only has 2 tools, stunning strike, and 1 tool from its' subclass. Yes, having dex and wisdom as their main stats is nice, because it helps skills, but it they don't get the proficiencies to back it up. They don't get expertise or anything like that. So they might beat the fighter in skills, but they never really shine there. "Feats vs Raw ability score upgrades are, in my opinion, very close to being equivalent" Yes and no to this one. Usually there will be 1 or 2 feats that really gives you a good boost, and then you take ability scores, and then you take whatever is left of feats. Other classes get to take those good feats at level 4, and buy armor with their money. Monk has to take raw ability score increases to keep their AC up. So in a way the two choices are kinda even, in that you want some of both over the course of your career. But that doesn't mean it is not a major downside for the monk to only take one, because you want both. "Builds that rely on feats to make them strong usually are really good at one particular task, and Dungeons and Dragons can be a lot more than battle encounters." Increasing your stat, will just be a +1 to some of those other encounters, not a big deal in my opinion. If I thought it made a big difference I would agree with you, but even with their higher stats, the monk will still be outshined by rogues, and any spellcaster (which is like half the classes). "I think overall it is very dependent on what the DM has in store" Sadly, I think the monk is so weak, that it is not all that DM dependent, I would say it is probably more player dependent, if the player just love their character, and doesn't care about the mechanical flaws in the class, they can still have a great time playing monk. I don't see many types of campaign where a monk would shine naturally. Maybe if you house-ruled something where there were many short rests, and few long rests, and the DM really liked dangerous spellcasters that you can stun. Maybe in that campaign, but in the vast majority of campaigns. Not great mechanically. "but I also believe that 5E does a good job of balancing classes in a way that makes them rely on each other and make the party more than the sum of its parts." In general yes, 5e is a very good game, my favorite table top RPG, in large part due to everyone feeling relevant and important. But they did drop the ball in a few places, and the worst of all of those places, is the monk. "but I believe D&D is more than an individual's power levels" It certainly is, which is why I don't mind repeating, if anyone wants to play a monk, they absolutely should. As long as they are okay with the monk being inferior to other classes mechanically speaking. Monks as a class suck. Players who are excited about their character concept and want to play it despite it not being optimal, they Rock.
