The Gaming Den

Hi. I'm throwing a Tome Monk together for the first time in years and I'm trying to recall something. I think it was brought up ages ago, how there are numerous ways the 5d6 Sonic damage bonus under the Master Fighting Styles could be abused (depending on your definition of abuse). At its worst, it's a bag of rats-style whirlwind attack that deals 5d6*rats damage to everything within 30 feet, but even in more innocent incarnations one could simply TWF with the bonus applied to all weapon attacks to deal 25d6 sonic damage (5d6 each on two attacks from full attacking, two from TWF and one from a secondary slam) to everything within 30 feet just using the terrain as a gamelan ensemble, with no roll or save - perhaps not completely game-breaking, but still questionable balance-wise.

I'm wondering if anyone has any quick fixes on how to regulate this so as to avoid some of the more ridiculous arbitrary-damage-with-no-save sort of nonsense this affords at the very least, if not fully addressing how absurd doing almost Harm-level damage in a radius with no roll or save and few resistances can be.

Thanks!

(Originally posted this in IMOI before noticing it probably didn't belong there - deleted, moved over)

The most obvious way is to trigger the ability at most once per round and increase the damage to compensate. Add in a save if you're concerned about the lack of counters for sonic. Something like:

• While active, your Master Fighting Style deals level*d6 sonic damage (Ref save half) to all creatures within 30 ft of you the first time you hit with your slam attack each round. You are immune to sonic damage while your Master Fighting Style is active.

Which is basically a point-blank sonic fireball once per round. At level 9 that might be underwhelming though.

Pixels wrote:The most obvious way is to trigger the ability at most once per round and increase the damage to compensate. Add in a save if you're concerned about the lack of counters for sonic. Something like:

• While active, your Master Fighting Style deals level*d6 sonic damage (Ref save half) to all creatures within 30 ft of you the first time you hit with your slam attack each round. You are immune to sonic damage while your Master Fighting Style is active.

Which is basically a point-blank sonic fireball once per round. At level 9 that might be underwhelming though.

Yeah, I thought about something like that, but I felt like it gimped the entire schtick too much. Hum.

As for saves, there's some merit to something like that, given the save comes after the damage is already tallied. Which would imply kind of different verbiage than "5d6 sonic damage, reflex half", and might be a mechanically-awkward pain to adjudicate in any case.

Sunwitch wrote:At its worst, it's a bag of rats-style whirlwind attack that deals 5d6*rats damage to everything within 30 feet

It's not. The rats will die to the first hit, so you don't get to continue attacking their dead corpses and stacking the 5d6.

I think the best you can do is the bit with the TWF and slam, but note that it requires you to actually hit (you have to deal damage with the slam/weapon in order to get the 5d6 pulse). It doesn't have a save because it's a damage-dealing ability that already requires a successful attack roll.

Surgo wrote:

Sunwitch wrote:At its worst, it's a bag of rats-style whirlwind attack that deals 5d6*rats damage to everything within 30 feet

It's not. The rats will die to the first hit, so you don't get to continue attacking their dead corpses and stacking the 5d6.

I think the best you can do is the bit with the TWF and slam, but note that it requires you to actually hit (you have to deal damage with the slam/weapon in order to get the 5d6 pulse). It doesn't have a save because it's a damage-dealing ability that already requires a successful attack roll.

Regarding the rats, that makes sense. For the second part, not if it's interpreted to allow you to attack the terrain (hence "using the terrain as a gamelan ensemble"). So I guess what you're recommending is, in essence, to change the text from "when you inflict damage with your slam attack against any target" to "when you inflict damage with your slam attack against any creature", which is certainly a sensible fix. While it means you can't just stomp the ground or use some nearby columns as bongos, I guess that works (alternatively, maybe using terrain would add a reflex save or something). There's maybe some weirdness in that it makes enemy minions into liabilities in some niche cases, but that's probably not the end of the world. Thanks.

I think attacking the terrain is fine because to get the proc you have to deal damage. That means you need to get through the hardness of whatever you're attacking (so the ground is a no-go, but a tree you'd stand a chance).

Surgo wrote:I think attacking the terrain is fine because to get the proc you have to deal damage. That means you need to get through the hardness of whatever you're attacking (so the ground is a no-go, but a tree you'd stand a chance).

I mean, I can't imagine it's that difficult to reliably deal 9 damage with your slams and quarterstaff (or whatever) at level 9, attacking a stone floor with hardness 8 for instance.

I think my houserule when my whirlwinding sonic monk was "just once for the area" but sure Surgo, I just let them do infinity d6 sonic damage no save with whirlwind by punching the ground.

Things seem to have less hardness than I thought >_> I'd at least call shenanigans on counting objects as opponents for the purposes of whirlwind, which specifies opponents.

Everyone here is right though, it's probably simplest and best to just not allow it to proc on objects.

I haven't had anyone use this feature, but my instinct is to say it only applies based on subsequent attacks granted by BAB. So on your first attack it always applies, but TWF / Whirlwind bonus attacks won't get the benefit.

Sunwitch wrote: "using the terrain as a gamelan ensemble"

I'm not saying Using the Terrain as a Gamelan Ensemble is going to be the title of my next album, but

wait, that's exactly what it's going be