At this stage of third party Pathfinder product collection this pdf has a lot of competition. Early on I had the priority of bringing weaker classes up to snuff so I amassed a lot of products that support the Monk class, including new toys to play with and entire class rebuilds. The Monk Unfettered is another class rebuild with the goal of making the Monk easier to build and play and to make it worth playing.
Unfettered Monk looks a lot like it's original in basic form but of course it has some drastic differences. Since this is a class rebuild I'll go over it in order of new class features.
First of all not proficiency with all monk weapon group weapons so a boo there but not that big of a deal since that's the baseline I guess.
Instead of Flurry of Blows the UMonk gets 'Flurry'. This flurry is not tied to TWF in explaination. Instead it's a full attack that has one attack. As the UMonk levels they get more attacks scaling up to six attacks during a flurry, and since this isn't modeled after TWF all the attack bonuses are the same. Also they do not treat your level as your BAB so at lvl 20 you get six attacks at +15 BAB. In the end this makes flurrying less exciting early on but on most levels this equals more bonuses than negatives so as a whole it's more accurate even without counting your level as your BAB. In the end you're about as accurate as a Rogue but you have twice as many chances at the same attack bonus. That and it's a bit less complicated.
At the same rate as a fighter gets bonus feats the UMonk gets 'insights' which are essentially Monk talents. There's a bunch of them in the book that go all over the place. Some use Ki and some don't. If I go over them all I'd be here all day, so I'll just say that they range from okay to really really good. In general they're better than feats. They take the place of bonus feats meaning that some of them are the bonus feats normally granted but some do not specify whether or not you still need to meet the prerequisites so that's a bit of a bummer. Some insights grant two feats which makes me wonder about it's balancing point, especially when some are effectively three feats on a situational basis. Some Insights are 'deep insights' which means that you can only have one active at a time (scaling to up to three at a time) and you can change them up once a turn. Some of the deep insights are things that can be taken again to stack but would be scary if you just started stacking them too early or too often. I noticed areas where I don't know how they interact with some things making a few insights unusable but they're mostly all together.
And that's it for the brand new class features. From there it's feats and favored class bonuses. Nothing exciting and pretty standard. Then there are UMonk NPCs, which is handy, and new magic items. After that there are explanations and suggestions on how to fit the UMonk in your game including how to make it play with archetypes.
Finally there is an index for insights, something that I'm not sure isn't done in other products. Its basically a feat table for the insights.
Sorting out how I feel about the Unfettered Monk is kind of complicated. By the time I had it, I didn't need it anymore so I wind up having to compare it to other Monk replacements, including the Unchained Monk and it has a ton of things for and against it on that leg.
On the plus side, it takes archetypes in consideration to some extent meaning that it can play a bit nicer than other monk rebuilds. It also gives a lot of insights to choose from. The pdf is also beautiful with great art. Flurry is drastically easier to deal with than Flurry of Blows. Unlike the Unchained Monk it's 'talents' aren't tied to ki so you can avoid being ki starved and outright bad abilities.
On the down side, I think this is the worst monk at maneuvers I've seen. It has similar accuracy, AC and full attack dependency issues as the normal monk while at the same time some of it's insights are way more powerful than others making it difficult to pin down exactly how strong it can be. Soloing in a module it looks like it works out okay enough and can handle more situations than normal monks so it is an outright improvement. But I feel like I've seen better in terms of solving the Monk's problems. Also some abilities I stumble on because of a lack of rules language.
Looking at it as it's own thing its definitely a better monk. It takes a lot of what the Unchained Monk does wrong and does it better but it also doesn't fix thing that the Unchained Monk does. In the end I would feel like it's on par with the Unchained Monk but the Unfettered Monk is more diverse and the Unchained Monk is more devastating due to it's access to Flying Kick.(This does depend on how Flurry interacts with Pummeling Style. If Pummeling Style works with Flurry then the Unfettered Monk has a little bit of a leg up but the margin isn't that wide.) I really liked the Unchained Monk so I think I'm rating this at 4 out of 5 stars. Its pretty functional and is an improvement on the normal Monk but some moving sliding balance on some insights and some that are more difficult to use drags it down a mark.
You can find this over on Paizo.com here.
Thank you for your review! As you rightly point out, the sheer volume of insights of the unfettered monk can be quite overwhelming - so it can be easy to miss options and interactions (that is one of the reasons I've included an extensive insight reference at the end, so it is easier to see what insights are available, what is required for each insight, and what insights become potentially available by taking a particular insight.
ReplyDeleteHere I'd like to point to some things you may have missed:
"On the down side, I think this is the worst monk at maneuvers I've seen."
1. One of the insights, "maneuver training" allows the monk to take any Improved maneuver feat without meeting the prerequisites (and the monk can take this insight multiple times); so access to any maneuver is assured.
2. The insight "aspect of the monkey" allows the monk to use his monk level instead of his BAB for maneuvers; so when you perform a maneuver (including during flurries) you effectively do as a full-BAB class. That also means that at level 20 you can do a flurry with maneuvers using +20/+20/+20/+20/+20/+20 (before other considerations).
3. The deep insight "maneuver flurry" essentially duplicates the Maneuver Master archetype; and allows you to perform any maneuver in addition to a flurry (including things such as grapples and dirty tricks).
4. The deep insight "embrace the cycle" allows you to always be considered flurrying; together with "maneuver flurry" that means that you can always perform a maneuver in your round - even when you do something like drink a potion, use the withdraw action, cast a spell with a 10-round casting time, and so forth.
"But I feel like I've seen better in terms of solving the Monk's problems."
I'm not sure which problems you specifically refer to, but the monk mobility-vs-flurry issues is extensively addressed. The unfettered monk also has excellent damage potential if built that way, likewise he has great versatility.
"Also some abilities I stumble on because of a lack of rules language."
Unfortunately I do not know what rules language you're missing, please elaborate - I do update the PDF and such clarifications can and will benefit all.
(apparently there is a comment size limit - I'll post a second comment)
"the Unchained Monk is more devastating due to it's access to Flying Kick"
ReplyDeleteOn a mechanical level, you can consider the unchained monk's Style Strikes to be the equivalent of the unfettered monk's deep insights. Regarding Flying Kick - the deep insight "monkey foot" is better in all ways: more movement, you're not limited to where you move (no attack necessary), you're not limited to a "kick" attack, and the monk can take it earlier (though it isn't necessarily helpful until level 4, or when the monk has insights that grant him additional attacks such as "bane flurry" or "storm spirit"). This does not take into consideration other mobility-based solutions that the unfettered monk has access to.
"This does depend on how Flurry interacts with Pummeling Style. If Pummeling Style works with Flurry then the Unfettered Monk has a little bit of a leg up but the margin isn't that wide."
I think I'll make it explicit in the PDF, but "flurry" qualifies a monk for anything that requires "flurry of blows", so Pummeling Style naturally interacts with flurry.
"but some moving sliding balance on some insights"
I assume you're talking about insights that grant more than one feat (such as "bend in the wind") as well as insights that grant special effects including duplicating feats (such as "typhoon dance" and "one touch"). The former are part of the balance of the class where the unfettered monk class loses 14 class features and gains only 11 insights in return. As such the insights are sometimes a bit stronger than an average feat; both to compensate for the extra removed class features and also to actually power-up the class (since the core monk being too weak is why monk replacements are made in the first place). The later (typhoon dance and one touch) are part of the deep insights and (like Style Strikes) are quite powerful and balanced by having limited utility on them.