Well, the final “production” version of the Monk has been put up now… not the full class, only one build, but with revision and tweaks wrought by playtesting and feedback.
As I hoped/predicted when the Assassin was unveiled, they have changed the Monk’s implements to work more like the Assassin’s, including the ability to use a ki focus. This replaces the enchantable unarmed strike.
At the same time, they have reworked ki focuses to be a literal object that is used to focus ki instead of something internal. This settles the question of how “unarmed enchanting” stacks up in the game’s magic item economy neatly and it also answers any confusion/arguments about whether enchanting an unarmed strike or an internal focus amounts to “enchanting nothing”… which kind of bugs me because I honestly think that argument is stupid, but I think it’s the better game design choice all the same.
Monks do no naturally retain the ability to use an unarmed strike as a weapon. This leaves me hopeful that the unarmed strike will be the focus (no pun intended) of the basic Monk multiclass feat, allowing an unarmed variant of any melee-based class with a single feat. If they don’t do that, they’ll have missed a major opportunity… though it would get stickier, I suppose, now that the “unarmed strike” is no longer the subject of enchantment. They’d need to include ki focus, or else using unarmed strikes for your Paladin or Ranger powers would stop being viable as soon as you got past the point where the rest of the party is using mundane weapons.
#1 written by Stormcaller December 2nd, 2009 at 05:45
I think the unarmed enchantment issue was more or less taken off the table with the DMG2, with the section on low magic or no magic campaigns. In the character designer this translates into a checkbox where you can declare you’re foregoing magical items, and instead the program applies modifiers to your stats that are more or less equivalent, yet inherent.
That sounds to me like the perfect way to handle this sort of thing: forego worrying about enchanted fists or interal foci and instead simply apply the modifiers to stats directly. The end result is largely the same, and while there’s a definite checks and balances element to it with the lack of triggerable special abilities, you’re still walking about with a character who’s able to keep pace with magic-using brethren.
#2 written by AE December 3rd, 2009 at 18:05
That’s where we differ, though. I don’t see it as an issue that needs to be taken off the table. Unarmed enchantment has always made perfect sense to me as it is.
The DMG2 section is the easy solution for making sure players aren’t punished if you decide to do a low-fantasy (or just low-gear) game, but in a game where people have flaming swords and hungry daggers and thundering shields and such, the person who forgoes gear is going to be giving up more than stats. Especially since nothing says “mystic martial artist” like flaming fists.