The Gaming Den

No, I think axebird is right, based on this excerpt. It's implied that "melee weapon attack" is the name of a rules construct which may or may not involve an actual "weapon." You can use a weapon to make a weapon attack, but you can also make a weapon attack without using a weapon because it's really just "foo attack" and the word weapon does no work.

I haven't read the books, so I don't know if it's true that other effects talk about "melee weapon attacks" or not.

RelentlessImp wrote:It's "instead of using a weapon to make a melee weapon attack" - the subject here is "melee weapon attack", and then it outlines unarmed strikes as a melee weapon attack. It's basic context.

No. It gives you the option to use Unarmed strikes, even though unarmed strike is not actually a weapon. Having a specific rule that allows you to use a non-weapon for a melee weapon attack, does not mean that unarmed strikes are a weapon attack.


- Edit: but the real issue is that unarmed strikes are not considered weapons anymore and therefore they need to errata the MM (specifically the resistance to bludgeoning from non-magical weapons).

NB.

errata webpage wrote:If you’re familiar with past errata documents for D&D, this one is a bit different. Rather than detail every word that’s changed, the document tells you how a particular rule is supposed to work. This approach is meant to make the document easy to use in play.

He's not writing rule changes for you, it's not even Errata, it's a FAQ about the things they corrected in the errata they're not showing you, in the new printing, which takes precedence if you have both but doesn't over-rule the book you already own. Like 2e.

He's really, honestly, just telling that guy who asked if you could actually punch things with your Monk character, considering it says "weapon", that yes, you can punch things with a Monk character, even though it says "weapon". That is all.

tussock wrote:He's not writing rule changes for you, it's not even Errata, it's a FAQ about the things they corrected in the errata they're not showing you, in the new printing, which takes precedence if you have both but doesn't over-rule the book you already own. Like 2e.

He's really, honestly, just telling that guy who asked if you could actually punch things with your Monk character, considering it says "weapon", that yes, you can punch things with a Monk character, even though it says "weapon". That is all.

I have to wonder, do you derive some kind satisfaction from being wrong all the time? Being so wrong, so often, seems unnatural.

To quote from Jeremy Crawford's twitter account:

Jeremy Crawford wrote:

Jeremy Crawford wrote: Unarmed strikes never should have appeared as weapons, hence the correction. The monk is barely affected.

Does this mean unarmed strikes bypass resistance to bludgeoning damage from nonmagical weapons?

The intent is resistance to nonmagical bludgeoning damage, regardless of source (MM errata preview).

"barely affected". What are the people at WotC smoking and where can I get some?

RelentlessImp wrote:"barely affected". What are the people at WotC smoking and where can I get some?

It's quite simple really. When the books went to print, they decided to model unarmed strikes as weapon attacks and refer to all physical attacks as weapon attacks in all abilities. Then, someone got a bug up their ass about how unarmed strikes weren't "really weapons" and decided to errata out that description. And then errata all the references to weapon attacks everywhere in the rest of the game to say something that would be properly inclusive of hitting someone with a rock or a fist.

And because the document they released isn't the actual errata but the directives to write the errata, there's no real way to tell whether the new wording actually works. It's a completely pointless change which will only have any effect on the actual game by accident.

Which brings us to the Hiding rules. People pointed out to them that you were supposed to be able to hid ewith partial concealment, but you couldn't actually do that because partial concealment very specifically doesn't make people unable to see you. So they changed hiding so that instead of unambiguously saying something that was definitely wrong, it doesn't say anything at all.

The Hiding Rules were never complete, or really even rules. It was just a set of expected outputs, a natural language description of what the hiding rules should do once they got around to writing them. Post errata, they have given up ever completing them, and have just said that your DM decides whether you can hide or not and what any successful or unsuccessful hiding roll means.

The errata is super vague on that point, and the way it's written it looks like it's saying that hiding successfully doesn't mean that your enemies can't see you. Which to be fair, is not that different from what it actually says. But the the specific thing being errataed to "seen clearly" is apparently the prohibition on hiding while being observed, not the effects of hiding. The effects of hiding are still undefined. And now so is the description of when you can and cannot hide in the first place.

-Username17

That's helpful, Frank, but it doesn't answer the question of where I can get my hands on whatever they're rolling or putting in their pipes or in their vapes. I want to experience true, willful ignorance and stupidity for a little while. I hear it's very fulfilling.

FrankTrollman wrote:

RelentlessImp wrote:"barely affected". What are the people at WotC smoking and where can I get some?

It's quite simple really. When the books went to print, they decided to model unarmed strikes as weapon attacks and refer to all physical attacks as weapon attacks in all abilities. Then, someone got a bug up their ass about how unarmed strikes weren't "really weapons" and decided to errata out that description. And then errata all the references to weapon attacks everywhere in the rest of the game to say something that would be properly inclusive of hitting someone with a rock or a fist.

And because the document they released isn't the actual errata but the directives to write the errata, there's no real way to tell whether the new wording actually works. It's a completely pointless change which will only have any effect on the actual game by accident.

-Username17

Considering that Pathfinder and 3.X also lost their shit over monks and unarmed attacks can somebody please explain the me what the big freaking deal is? d20ish monks get a couple of extra attacks and deal borderline level appropriate damage with their unarmed attacks.

Why is that combination of abilities so overpowering that they need to be handycapped with crazy stupid and incredibily awkward errata that does things like the above or any of the stupid stuff done to pathfinder monks for years?

Is it seriously that people in 2015 are still pissed off that there is a martial artist in their LOTR simulator? Are there still designers that are pissed off that the monk is now basically solidified as a "core" D&D class? Why so much heartburn over the monk?

It is 100% semantic quibbling. Because your hands aren't weapons, therefore unarmed strikes can't be weapons. This is what happens when you get people who have no idea how to properly use words to actually convey meaning to design your game: They don't use words to convey meaning, they use whatever meaning they believe (for whatever dumb reason) must be attached to a word in every context ever. So they think of a weapon as being a tool specifically for harming other people, probably because they think of "weapons" as a subset of "gear" and the idea of gear that is actually part of a character's body is weird to them outside of some kind of fleshcrafting fantasy cyborg context, so unarmed strikes aren't weapons, they're just a thing that everyone has. And then they patch in rules so that unarmed strikes are treated as weapons in all contexts rather than just call them weapons. Except when unarmed strikes have a property that they decide completely arbitrarily should only apply to crafted or improvised tools rather than to fists. It's a mess.

I thought they just had the idea that monks are OP and always decide to fuck them whenever possible.

I had a dm 3 weeks ago explain how monks were super op. When i explained that was moronic, he went on to elaborate that they do great at what they are for. To act as mage killers.

Somehow these ideas are still floating around, even today.

Yep, Dummy Wizard. Imagine a foe's entire existence being a hyper-intelligent magic user never using any magic and letting itself get punched in the face. The Monk stands a chance!

They're totally mage-killers. Remember that "mage" means "blasting-focused Sor/Wiz using PHB feats".

They can kill Druids too ... if those Druids ignore Wild Shape, have a non-combat animal companion, and instead try to fight in melee with a scimitar and minimal buffs. Incompetent playtest characters have a lot to answer for.

Ice9 wrote:Incompetent playtest characters have a lot to answer for.

It is curious how the Monk made it through playtesting. I wonder if it was a late addition.

I recall as a noob to 3e being enamored with the fast movement and the potential if you had huge stats, like 4x 18's to start, or just a high wisdom and willingness to abuse polymorph. Our party monk was made awesome via polymorph abuse only (if I recall, we got up to solar form before errata was published and that just pushed it back to stone giant form which was still outrageous).

But if you just play using elite stats it's like, okay, you hit less often and deal less damage per hit than any fighting class including rogues; you get hit more often and can take less damage than any fighting class, arguably including rogues.

Any martial buffed to the gills from a caster can get it on, but it's a fraud.
The Angel Summoner making Angels lift the BMX bandit, you know?

It's all fun and games until you realize, "Man, this class is mechanically inferior to the magic user by a long shot. I could never do any of this without a buffed character."

still a fun way to play, I love buffing and debuffing, but it's a sham.

Insomniac wrote:Any martial buffed to the gills from a caster can get it on, but it's a fraud.
The Angel Summoner making Angels lift the BMX bandit, you know?

It's all fun and games until you realize, "Man, this class is mechanically inferior to the magic user by a long shot. I could never do any of this without a buffed character."

still a fun way to play, I love buffing and debuffing, but it's a sham.

Buffing/Debuffing is not a sham, but they are a point of the game where the reality simply will never be able to match up to the expectation. We all know that the caster who buffs themselves becomes superior to the martial type unbuffed and can then eat their lunch. However, if you layer all the stuff the buffer does to outshine the martial on said martial that character looks really good (at least at removing things by reducing their hit points).

However, who in the world would play the character whose job it is to buff other people at the table? This style of play wouldn't even let you be the boy wonder, instead you would end up feeling like Jimmy Olsen.

By contrast, when you play a video game where you contol the whole party of adventurers and you know you get a better return out of having Bob the butt-kicker get magically enchanted than for larry the enchanter to enchant himself you just do that. If you control both bob and larry then this just feels like a performance boost, and you just enjoy the fact that bob is now even better at turning your foes into chunky salsa. if you were only allowed to play bob or larry there would be clear resentiment because somebody is either being humored or forced into the role of a side-kick.

souran wrote:

Insomniac wrote:Any martial buffed to the gills from a caster can get it on, but it's a fraud.
The Angel Summoner making Angels lift the BMX bandit, you know?

It's all fun and games until you realize, "Man, this class is mechanically inferior to the magic user by a long shot. I could never do any of this without a buffed character."

still a fun way to play, I love buffing and debuffing, but it's a sham.

Buffing/Debuffing is not a sham, but they are a point of the game where the reality simply will never be able to match up to the expectation. We all know that the caster who buffs themselves becomes superior to the martial type unbuffed and can then eat their lunch. However, if you layer all the stuff the buffer does to outshine the martial on said martial that character looks really good (at least at removing things by reducing their hit points).

However, who in the world would play the character whose job it is to buff other people at the table? This style of play wouldn't even let you be the boy wonder, instead you would end up feeling like Jimmy Olsen.

By contrast, when you play a video game where you contol the whole party of adventurers and you know you get a better return out of having Bob the butt-kicker get magically enchanted than for larry the enchanter to enchant himself you just do that. If you control both bob and larry then this just feels like a performance boost, and you just enjoy the fact that bob is now even better at turning your foes into chunky salsa. if you were only allowed to play bob or larry there would be clear resentiment because somebody is either being humored or forced into the role of a side-kick.

Except wizards don't have to choose between buffing the fighter and laying down save-or-dies, he can easily do both. I've never felt like a chump when using my circlet of rapid casting to lay down a haste followed by glitterdust. And, of course, you can get scrolls or wands to buff outside of combat and use your actual spells to rip people in half while in combat.

Let's take Bards for instance, not optimal by a long shot, but fun. I like to give people Heroism and extend it, usually with a metamagic wand, Haste and twink my Inspire Courage as much as possible in Pathfinder and use material from 3.5 to squeak out a few more points of Inspire Courage. then, with a few archer feats, my Bard gets the benefits of some pretty sick buffs shared with the party. This is a pretty fearsome combo and can reduce a lot HP to "Dead really really quickly" in a round or two.

That's fun. I think it's a cool way to say, fight a dragon. But there are some spells that are the I Win button. Finding a way to say, drop a Maximized Shivering Touch would be the more likely way to win.

So it depends how far away from the Absolute Best Way to Win something is that makes it a "sham" I guess. If I were King and my kingdom was under threat of dragons, Bards buffing Fighters could be a way to go but the better way to go is probably Cleric and Wizard cheese related to the Shivering Touch spell.

souran wrote:However, who in the world would play the character whose job it is to buff other people at the table?

People willingly play heal/buff characters in MMORPGs. I don't see why tabletop has to be different.

MMO mechanics typically require healers to be as busy as anyone else. When they fail to do that it just results in someone parking an alt somewhere for periodic refreshes.

I really like playing a buffing character. It's probably the easiest way to feel like I'm useful without making other people feel like they're not (a thing I have to be careful in, with my group's level of expertise).

It also makes me feel a little bit vindicated when I get arbitrary nerfs, because if I go all out solo power and run into convoluted spot bans, maybe that's actually good for the game and I have to wonder if it's fair. But if I go all out group power and run into convoluted spot bans, I know I didn't do anything wrong and the MC's just bein a shitbag. But that's kind of a minor thing; the first one is better.

The group mechanics of TTRPGs and MMORPGs are different. For an MMORPG, you try to make yourself as popular or needed as possible so that you get invited into groups. This can involve you doing things that you normally wouldn't want to be doing such as grinding for status symbol gear or playing a class you don't want to. If your build or concept isn't attractive enough to other players you don't have a game.

For a TTRPG, you are already invited to a group. The group and subsequent adventure will still (usually) happen regardless of what you play at that point. What makes the dynamic complicated is that while the number of people who want make everyone else look awesome at the expense of personal actions is small, it's not zero. This creates certain problems like, say, No Self Buffs.

Insomniac wrote: So it depends how far away from the Absolute Best Way to Win something is that makes it a "sham" I guess. If I were King and my kingdom was under threat of dragons, Bards buffing Fighters could be a way to go but the better way to go is probably Cleric and Wizard cheese related to the Shivering Touch spell.

Shivering touch is not only a 3rd level spell (aka demanding at least 5th level characters, higher if you want metamagic), it's also touch range. And dragons, dunno if you heard it, fly. Pretty fast.

Meanwhile get five 1st level bards with draconic inspiration and they'll turn a bunch of low-level archer fighters into a murderizing machine, even if the dragon tries to do only flying sweeps. No need for metamagic shenigans or medium-high level casters.

That's the beauty of force multipliers. A buffer doesn't make just one other dude better. A buffer can make a lot of other dudes better and that stacks up really fast if you know what you're doing.

maglag wrote: Shivering touch is not only a 3rd level spell (aka demanding at least 5th level characters, higher if you want metamagic), it's also touch range. And dragons, dunno if you heard it, fly. Pretty fast.

Remember that Spectral Hand spell is a thing.

Meikle641 wrote:

maglag wrote: Shivering touch is not only a 3rd level spell (aka demanding at least 5th level characters, higher if you want metamagic), it's also touch range. And dragons, dunno if you heard it, fly. Pretty fast.

Remember that Spectral Hand spell is a thing.

Remember that Spectral Hand can be destroyed by the AoE of the Dragon's Breath Weapon that is aimed at you, and will 100% of the time. And that you have to cast Spectral Hand the round before you cast Shivering Touch, and then hope the Dragon is too stupid to know what it is, even though he isn't.