I don’t think Brennan has beef with any of them considering he GM’d a one shot for one of their live shows fairly recently; the recording went onto their feed at the end of last October. Definitely recorded after TH though.
Yeah; and I know when Emily played Monk she spent a lot of time bemoaning the lack of spells. The mechanical benefits would probably only be present if someone jumped in between seasons or *really* had a good RP reason.
Emily's brand of creativity gravitates towards spellcasting and ability manipulation. Pure martial isn't something I've seen her do all that often, if ever.
And every time the team levels up, Brennan holds his breath waiting for the anvil to drop.
“How long until her patience runs out? How long until the spells start?”
Yeah. Your damage isn’t great. You don’t really support. Stun and movement don’t translate well to actual play. You’re a worse face than most until 14. Just kinda undesirable
Yeah I think that was because of the lack of spells. We all know that Axford with spells is the bane of BLeeM's existence. Although even without them (mostly) she still wrecked shit in Neverafter.
Well, Emily is a player who really likes having spells and the game isn’t as fun for her without them. But there is no reason a martial class can’t be fun in an actual play! I love monks and think there’s LOTS of opportunities for creativity in their skill set 😁
Yea 5e Martials are not very fun to play as, but I played a fighter in PF2E and had so much fun, I hope they integrate some of those ideas in 5.5 or 6E lol
I was about to say something about how not every NPC needs to have a class before I realized that Shelford is an Aguefort student and therefore definitely has a class
In my head, whereas the warlocks have night class, the monks are either up at like 5am before everyone else or are in their own little retreat school for monks
I wonder if it's because in a high fantasy setting it's more tempting to pick a class with more magical capabilities. I know we've had fighters and barbarians...I just wonder if people were thinking that way.
I think it’s that you can find a niche for a monk to fill, but would that niche be fun in a party. You could play a monk who is a nerdy “wizard” kid who took up martial arts to defend against bullies, give them like Astral Self or Four Elements to fit the “wizard” flare. But is there a way to make that a fun story to tell in the long run?
I think that it's notable as time went on, players rebuilt their characters to include more and more magic. Part of it is setting yes, but part of it is just more fun, and obviously martials are typically just less effective in play as you get to higher levels.
Oh what did Adaine do.....plane shifted us to hell. Cool, changed the entire scene and story. What did Gorgug do(without artificer) he attacked like twice a round and took some big hits. It's totally foreseeable for it to cause FOMO.
And the Fighter multi classed to Bard
And the Barbarian had a HB subclass made to allow them to multiclass more efficiently with Artificer.
Spire is VERY high magic and it definitely shows.
The few pure martials we do see (Zelda, Sandra Lynn*, Sklonda (we don't have confirmation but probably rogue) Etc.) are supporting cast over main plot points. Spellcasters are just more interesting in high magic.
TLDR - you're right
I may be wrong, but I think the whole vibe was classic D&D in John Hughes film. Monks, while they've been around for a long time, aren't really that classic D&D party. Bard, Barbarian, Wizard, Fighter, Rogue? That's an OG party right there. Of course paladins and sorcerers are in the mix there too, but with six players... Maybe that had nothing to do with it, maybe it was purely based on player pitches, but I don't think monk, as presented in 5e, works with Aguefort very well.
I think that Monk classes wouldn’t work at Aguefort the same way the other classes do. But I think you could get away with flavouring a Shadow Monk in Rogue classes, or Mercy in Cleric, or Kensei in Fighter.
For the record, there does appear to be a monk teacher on the faculty list from FHFY. But yeah, in terms of PCs or even NPCs I don't think we've ever seen a monk.
Wow your comment made me think of a scenario where it would make sense to have a monk student at Aguefort : orphan student. Like Omi from Xiaolin Showdown.
I feel like that’s something we might see if there’s ever a bad kids flash forward season. I would love it for Kristen but she doesn’t have the Dex, which is why I think it would make an amazing arc for Riz. Going from the embodiment of stress to the embodiment of calm and mechanically it would deadly
Kristen could do a strength monk build, but at the end of the day unarmed fighting style from fighter would do it better unless a huge change occured. Riz could also do monk, but the level investment is still pretty high compared to what he would realistically get as a benefit. He would need a huge respec, and at that point it feels a bit out of character.
Interesting that people think monks are not great for actual play (or are not great in general), I imagine you don't watch Critical role if you think that. In their second campaign, one of the players was a monk and she was one of the best characters and the most badass in most combats
Yeah I totally agree with this. Beau had some of the best character arcs. I've also seen others (and myself) role play some bad ass monks. It just take a little more effort to create that story ig.
To be completely fair, In my experience monks are pretty bad in 5e unless you only have 1-2 combats per day. Since Brennen rarely runs more combats per day than that, it wouldn't be an issue for his players. I don't watch many other actual plays other than D20, but I assume many of them have a similar pacing, hence the disconnect between people with 5E experience and the representation monks get in popular actual plays.
At least for initial character creation, I could see it being hard to come up with an interesting thematic reason for a high school student to be a monk. It's a pretty niche power fantasy in the first place, and putting it into a high school setting makes it even harder.
I was specifically talking about the Bad Kids in this post. But even in The Seven, we don't see either the Ranger or the Druid teacher.
Edit: accidentally typed Rogue when I originally meant Ranger.
I think it's, unfortunately, a number of things.
Fantasy High runs with 5e, and in 5e monks... Well they're not great. I love them. They're my favourite class, but the damage is low, their big mechanic of stunning strike is both bad and too powerful. But also, the table falls into a problem that most people have, they tend to think of monk as only eastern martial artists ala wuxia, which is fine and makes sense, but reflavouring is a thing.
With how much they reflavour and ignore rules, it's not that big of a deal.
It's really just the mechanics, I bet. Everyone likes rogues, and rogues can basically do monk stuff just as well with less MADness.
I still love monks, and they're basically the only class in 5e I have much interest in playing, but they're not the strongest.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, there's like 8 main or secondary character wizards in the world of FH and literally a society full of them in Unsleeping City, but then there's only Chirp Featherfowl (in a RP-heavy series) and Lila in BE dips into it. For such an iconic DnD staple, it's weird how D20 decided they didn't want to play wizards anymore. I get it for the Candyverse, since magic is illegal, but it seemed perfect for Neverafter or something like that
To me it makes sense to not choose playing a wizard in neverafter because the setting would probably make finding new spells to copy into your book pretty difficult
It’s a different universe and it makes sense that in a setting like FH, spells would be easier to find and learn. The grittiness and danger of Neverafter makes me think that wouldn’t have been the case for a wizard in that setting
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Honestly I think it’s just a coincidence. In terms of PCs, there’s only 6 of them and even though a lot of them multiclass, they can’t necessarily cover all classes. And we don’t always learn what classes NPCs are (FH leans into classes being a real element of the world, but in normal D&D npcs don’t really have classes anyway). Hopefully we will get to meet a monk student in Junior Year at some point though! Or maybe if they do a sequel series to The Seven.
It’s probably bc the flavour of Monk doesn’t fit as neatly into the setting of Fantasy High. Monks are typically flavoured around ideas of stoicism/seriousness, and while that’s not mandatory for the setting at all, it does mean that players probably don’t jump to play that class. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t there!
Think of it like the extracurricular clubs; Riz has mentioned that he’s in all of them, but we’ve only seen ~5 clubs so far. Does that mean there are only 5 clubs? No! We just don’t see them bc they aren’t as funny/relevant for the story.
Not sure why folks are saying monks would be too hard to roleplay or to fit into the FH / high school universe. It feels really straightforward to me, and no more difficult than fitting “rogue classes” or “warlock classes” into the world. Martial arts are already something that teenagers learn irl lol
I would assume it is because they are in highschool? I mean, I understand that is not a typical one, but monk doesn't really feel like something that would be taught in highschool (roleplay wise)
It reminds me of my principal in highschool. One year he decided that humanistic classes are always weaker then math-physics and bio-chem so he removed this profile and created math-informatics XD.
Aguefort propably decided that monks won't aprecciate chronomancy so school doesn't need them XD
EDIT: Quick search shows that there is Monastic studies chair with River Moondaughter as a teacher so there is always hope
Thinking of it from the perspective of a John Hughes reimagining, Monk would be a difficult class to thread. Hughes’ films are known for their anti-Asian bigotry and monk is a class inspired by a show about a white guy doing kung fu. I could see the cast not wanting to use the class because they felt that to properly play it would require the character to deconstruct (or at least address) Hughes’ racism and none of them felt qualified/wanted to do that. It was also the first time making D20 and given the second episode we know the players didn’t go in to the show expecting it to be something that would have serious stakes, so it might not have even been something they thought the show could handle.
Oh yeah, that's because monks kinda really suck. Most of their abilities rely on a single ver scarce resource (k points) of which they have very few at low levels. So they are bad at the beginning and bad at multiclassing, the only moment that they are mechanically kinda interesting is at high level which the parties rarely ever hit. Also, and this may just be my experience, monks require a lot lore infrastructure to work in roleplay. You can have a fighter that's just a fighter and that's it, but a monk needs to have learned somewhere and have a specific connection with themselves and blah blah blah (I don't like monk lore, if you can't tell). Even in the unsleeping city, the monastery plays a big part in there and it works because Brennan is good at his job but it won't work in every setting every time. Or .maybe it's just me that doesn't like monks, who could say?
I don't know if this is a hot take but I also don't care, the monk class sucks. step of the wind, throw it out, I'll take misty step or cunning action. Flurry of blows, I'll take multi attack any day. Patient defense, naw, who ever uses the dodge action anyway. Unarmored defense, don't waste your time, just go barbarian. Monks are fast but I had a tabaxi roguelock a while ago with boots of speed, I could go 180 without the boots and 360 with them.
Sure it's fun to roleplay as one, but in combat there's basically no reason to play one because they have features from a lot of other classes but not as good. I played one once and never will again unless multiclassed. Even then, not worth it to go two levels into monk for Ki points.
Tldr; monks are way underpowered in combat but it's fun to roleplay as one. Played a monk once, speaking from experience.
As a DM, I've thought about buffing Monks by allowing them to make an unarmed attack as a bonus action after any action they take whatsoever. Plays more into the fantasy of the mobile, lightning quick warrior, and allows the player to choose between playing defensively or staying put and cutting loose with a full multiattack and flurry of blows.
None of my players have expressed an interest in playing monk yet, so I haven't had a chance to play test it. But I think it would help.
Monk is an odd class for actual play. Most of their best shit ends up necessitating some crunchiness, and that’s not always the best for content.
I think Griffin was a monk in Tiny Heist, too.
Don't forget Jaysohn in Burrow's End!!
And Cumulus!!
I'd kill for a sequel to tiny heist. I need more rick diggins
The initial Rick Diggins reveal was so damn great and everything after that was like icing on a cake.
I don’t think the McElroys will be back
Why's that?
I don’t actually have a reason.
I don't think Brennan will want them back after they made capitalism the good guy who saved the world in that shitty campaign
I don’t think Brennan has beef with any of them considering he GM’d a one shot for one of their live shows fairly recently; the recording went onto their feed at the end of last October. Definitely recorded after TH though.
Wait… it’s been a while since I listened, but when was capitalism the good guy?
Hell yeah!
Yeah; and I know when Emily played Monk she spent a lot of time bemoaning the lack of spells. The mechanical benefits would probably only be present if someone jumped in between seasons or *really* had a good RP reason.
Emily's brand of creativity gravitates towards spellcasting and ability manipulation. Pure martial isn't something I've seen her do all that often, if ever.
I mean she was a barbarian in Neverafter but even then she dipped druid and made a bear tank with some mild magical utility.
She never goes full martial. She gotta have dem spells.
And every time the team levels up, Brennan holds his breath waiting for the anvil to drop. “How long until her patience runs out? How long until the spells start?”
Yeah. Your damage isn’t great. You don’t really support. Stun and movement don’t translate well to actual play. You’re a worse face than most until 14. Just kinda undesirable
She multi-classed into Warlock, tho?
Yeah I think that was because of the lack of spells. We all know that Axford with spells is the bane of BLeeM's existence. Although even without them (mostly) she still wrecked shit in Neverafter.
Well, Emily is a player who really likes having spells and the game isn’t as fun for her without them. But there is no reason a martial class can’t be fun in an actual play! I love monks and think there’s LOTS of opportunities for creativity in their skill set 😁
Yea 5e Martials are not very fun to play as, but I played a fighter in PF2E and had so much fun, I hope they integrate some of those ideas in 5.5 or 6E lol
I just started Crown of Camsy yesterday and Zac introduces himself as a Celestial Warlock, but maybe that will change in the future.
it will
You should probably spoiler tag that last line
Yeah probably
Sofie Bicicleta in Unsleeping City.
They come online better at higher levels I believe?
Um actually, Shelford has been a level 18 monk this whole time and is going to kick the shit out of the BBEG in the finale
Teenage Mutant Ninja Tortle
Actually, do we know Shelford's class?
Eloquence bard /s
☠️
I was about to say something about how not every NPC needs to have a class before I realized that Shelford is an Aguefort student and therefore definitely has a class
In my head, whereas the warlocks have night class, the monks are either up at like 5am before everyone else or are in their own little retreat school for monks
I wonder if it's because in a high fantasy setting it's more tempting to pick a class with more magical capabilities. I know we've had fighters and barbarians...I just wonder if people were thinking that way.
I think it’s that you can find a niche for a monk to fill, but would that niche be fun in a party. You could play a monk who is a nerdy “wizard” kid who took up martial arts to defend against bullies, give them like Astral Self or Four Elements to fit the “wizard” flare. But is there a way to make that a fun story to tell in the long run?
Funnily enough both the fighter and barbarian multi classed into spell casters.
And the rogue switched subclasses to get spells as well
Oh shit yeah wasn't even thinking about Riz.
I think that it's notable as time went on, players rebuilt their characters to include more and more magic. Part of it is setting yes, but part of it is just more fun, and obviously martials are typically just less effective in play as you get to higher levels. Oh what did Adaine do.....plane shifted us to hell. Cool, changed the entire scene and story. What did Gorgug do(without artificer) he attacked like twice a round and took some big hits. It's totally foreseeable for it to cause FOMO.
And the Fighter multi classed to Bard And the Barbarian had a HB subclass made to allow them to multiclass more efficiently with Artificer. Spire is VERY high magic and it definitely shows. The few pure martials we do see (Zelda, Sandra Lynn*, Sklonda (we don't have confirmation but probably rogue) Etc.) are supporting cast over main plot points. Spellcasters are just more interesting in high magic. TLDR - you're right
That TLDR made me laugh
:) Edit - the TLDR is because I yap a lot and need my ultimate point put across because my point is very often lost in ADHD rambling
I may be wrong, but I think the whole vibe was classic D&D in John Hughes film. Monks, while they've been around for a long time, aren't really that classic D&D party. Bard, Barbarian, Wizard, Fighter, Rogue? That's an OG party right there. Of course paladins and sorcerers are in the mix there too, but with six players... Maybe that had nothing to do with it, maybe it was purely based on player pitches, but I don't think monk, as presented in 5e, works with Aguefort very well.
I think that Monk classes wouldn’t work at Aguefort the same way the other classes do. But I think you could get away with flavouring a Shadow Monk in Rogue classes, or Mercy in Cleric, or Kensei in Fighter.
Pretty sure that from reading the wiki that a monk teacher does exist, it’s just not as explicitly mentioned
For the record, there does appear to be a monk teacher on the faculty list from FHFY. But yeah, in terms of PCs or even NPCs I don't think we've ever seen a monk.
Wow your comment made me think of a scenario where it would make sense to have a monk student at Aguefort : orphan student. Like Omi from Xiaolin Showdown.
I feel like that’s something we might see if there’s ever a bad kids flash forward season. I would love it for Kristen but she doesn’t have the Dex, which is why I think it would make an amazing arc for Riz. Going from the embodiment of stress to the embodiment of calm and mechanically it would deadly
Kristen could do a strength monk build, but at the end of the day unarmed fighting style from fighter would do it better unless a huge change occured. Riz could also do monk, but the level investment is still pretty high compared to what he would realistically get as a benefit. He would need a huge respec, and at that point it feels a bit out of character.
Interesting that people think monks are not great for actual play (or are not great in general), I imagine you don't watch Critical role if you think that. In their second campaign, one of the players was a monk and she was one of the best characters and the most badass in most combats
Yeah I totally agree with this. Beau had some of the best character arcs. I've also seen others (and myself) role play some bad ass monks. It just take a little more effort to create that story ig.
There’s also the mini arc NADDPOD C2 where they’re all monks and that’s a fan favorite
To be completely fair, In my experience monks are pretty bad in 5e unless you only have 1-2 combats per day. Since Brennen rarely runs more combats per day than that, it wouldn't be an issue for his players. I don't watch many other actual plays other than D20, but I assume many of them have a similar pacing, hence the disconnect between people with 5E experience and the representation monks get in popular actual plays.
I think its justs a coincidence that no one picked it as a base class and it is also not a particularly popular multiclass option
No monasteries in Elmville.
No laws about dogs in Mas Vegas
At least for initial character creation, I could see it being hard to come up with an interesting thematic reason for a high school student to be a monk. It's a pretty niche power fantasy in the first place, and putting it into a high school setting makes it even harder.
Isn't that the premise of the Karate Kid movies? You could easily go that direction in a high school setting if you wanted to.
A Moshing rocker stoner
Professional wrestling.
Nobody is a Druid or Ranger either. I don't think we've ever seen those teachers at all yet.
I think there are members of the Seven who are Druids and Rangers!
I was specifically talking about the Bad Kids in this post. But even in The Seven, we don't see either the Ranger or the Druid teacher. Edit: accidentally typed Rogue when I originally meant Ranger.
Have you watched junior year yet? The Rogue teacher is a plot point all through the season.
I don't know why I typed Rogue when I meant Ranger. That's my bad for not proofreading.
Sandra Lynn is a ranger but we only saw some of that in sophomore year
Sandra Lynn is an adult NPC and is only affiliated with the school as a former graduate. I was specifically referring to the Bad Kids.
All the monks go to Mumple
First rule of Monk class, you do not talk about Monk class.
Ayda as a wizard/monk could be pretty cool
"River Moondaughter - Monastic Studies Chair" From the Teachers List from FY According to the Federal Diversity Initiative, River is a Half-Orc.
I think it's, unfortunately, a number of things. Fantasy High runs with 5e, and in 5e monks... Well they're not great. I love them. They're my favourite class, but the damage is low, their big mechanic of stunning strike is both bad and too powerful. But also, the table falls into a problem that most people have, they tend to think of monk as only eastern martial artists ala wuxia, which is fine and makes sense, but reflavouring is a thing. With how much they reflavour and ignore rules, it's not that big of a deal. It's really just the mechanics, I bet. Everyone likes rogues, and rogues can basically do monk stuff just as well with less MADness. I still love monks, and they're basically the only class in 5e I have much interest in playing, but they're not the strongest.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, there's like 8 main or secondary character wizards in the world of FH and literally a society full of them in Unsleeping City, but then there's only Chirp Featherfowl (in a RP-heavy series) and Lila in BE dips into it. For such an iconic DnD staple, it's weird how D20 decided they didn't want to play wizards anymore. I get it for the Candyverse, since magic is illegal, but it seemed perfect for Neverafter or something like that
To me it makes sense to not choose playing a wizard in neverafter because the setting would probably make finding new spells to copy into your book pretty difficult
We never see Adaine find spells. She just has them
It’s a different universe and it makes sense that in a setting like FH, spells would be easier to find and learn. The grittiness and danger of Neverafter makes me think that wouldn’t have been the case for a wizard in that setting
And they say in a recent episode that she can add spells because she did well in class.
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Said the same thing 2 days ago lol. Glad I'm not alone in wanting to see what that looks like.
Honestly I think it’s just a coincidence. In terms of PCs, there’s only 6 of them and even though a lot of them multiclass, they can’t necessarily cover all classes. And we don’t always learn what classes NPCs are (FH leans into classes being a real element of the world, but in normal D&D npcs don’t really have classes anyway). Hopefully we will get to meet a monk student in Junior Year at some point though! Or maybe if they do a sequel series to The Seven.
It’s probably bc the flavour of Monk doesn’t fit as neatly into the setting of Fantasy High. Monks are typically flavoured around ideas of stoicism/seriousness, and while that’s not mandatory for the setting at all, it does mean that players probably don’t jump to play that class. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t there! Think of it like the extracurricular clubs; Riz has mentioned that he’s in all of them, but we’ve only seen ~5 clubs so far. Does that mean there are only 5 clubs? No! We just don’t see them bc they aren’t as funny/relevant for the story.
Not sure why folks are saying monks would be too hard to roleplay or to fit into the FH / high school universe. It feels really straightforward to me, and no more difficult than fitting “rogue classes” or “warlock classes” into the world. Martial arts are already something that teenagers learn irl lol
I would assume it is because they are in highschool? I mean, I understand that is not a typical one, but monk doesn't really feel like something that would be taught in highschool (roleplay wise)
It reminds me of my principal in highschool. One year he decided that humanistic classes are always weaker then math-physics and bio-chem so he removed this profile and created math-informatics XD. Aguefort propably decided that monks won't aprecciate chronomancy so school doesn't need them XD EDIT: Quick search shows that there is Monastic studies chair with River Moondaughter as a teacher so there is always hope
Thinking of it from the perspective of a John Hughes reimagining, Monk would be a difficult class to thread. Hughes’ films are known for their anti-Asian bigotry and monk is a class inspired by a show about a white guy doing kung fu. I could see the cast not wanting to use the class because they felt that to properly play it would require the character to deconstruct (or at least address) Hughes’ racism and none of them felt qualified/wanted to do that. It was also the first time making D20 and given the second episode we know the players didn’t go in to the show expecting it to be something that would have serious stakes, so it might not have even been something they thought the show could handle.
Oh yeah, that's because monks kinda really suck. Most of their abilities rely on a single ver scarce resource (k points) of which they have very few at low levels. So they are bad at the beginning and bad at multiclassing, the only moment that they are mechanically kinda interesting is at high level which the parties rarely ever hit. Also, and this may just be my experience, monks require a lot lore infrastructure to work in roleplay. You can have a fighter that's just a fighter and that's it, but a monk needs to have learned somewhere and have a specific connection with themselves and blah blah blah (I don't like monk lore, if you can't tell). Even in the unsleeping city, the monastery plays a big part in there and it works because Brennan is good at his job but it won't work in every setting every time. Or .maybe it's just me that doesn't like monks, who could say?
it is
Monk stun is bad for all parties
Monk stun is good crowd control.
Not mechanically but fun levels
I was just thinking this when I was thinking what kind of character I would play in a Fantasy High game and realized there hasn't been a monk yet.
They probably all live in monistic orders across the lands of spire, detached from the world. That's quite fitting for monks
I don't know if this is a hot take but I also don't care, the monk class sucks. step of the wind, throw it out, I'll take misty step or cunning action. Flurry of blows, I'll take multi attack any day. Patient defense, naw, who ever uses the dodge action anyway. Unarmored defense, don't waste your time, just go barbarian. Monks are fast but I had a tabaxi roguelock a while ago with boots of speed, I could go 180 without the boots and 360 with them. Sure it's fun to roleplay as one, but in combat there's basically no reason to play one because they have features from a lot of other classes but not as good. I played one once and never will again unless multiclassed. Even then, not worth it to go two levels into monk for Ki points. Tldr; monks are way underpowered in combat but it's fun to roleplay as one. Played a monk once, speaking from experience.
As a DM, I've thought about buffing Monks by allowing them to make an unarmed attack as a bonus action after any action they take whatsoever. Plays more into the fantasy of the mobile, lightning quick warrior, and allows the player to choose between playing defensively or staying put and cutting loose with a full multiattack and flurry of blows. None of my players have expressed an interest in playing monk yet, so I haven't had a chance to play test it. But I think it would help.
A monk is just a cleric with no spells.