0:00
D and D's unarmed fighting style is bad,
0:02
especially if you're a monk. Let me
0:03
explain why. The unarmed fighting style
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raises your unarmed strike damage to 1d6
0:08
or 1d8 if you're not holding anything in
0:11
your off hand, which means you're using
0:13
both of your hands to do as much damage
0:15
as a one-handed weapon, like a long
0:17
sword. So, right there, bad. The second
0:20
benefit of the fighting style is that
0:22
creatures that you have grappled take
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1d4 damage at the beginning of their
0:25
turns. That's neat, but it's it's 1d4
0:29
damage. A typical combat will last two
0:32
to four rounds, usually around three.
0:35
So, if you ran up and grappled a
0:37
creature at the beginning of combat and
0:39
they never escaped your grapple, you
0:41
could do maybe 3d4 damage to them over
0:44
the course of combat. Is that really
0:46
worth a fighting style compared to
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dueling, which is going to do plus two
0:50
damage per hit? And that will scale as
0:52
you get additional attacks. For monks
0:55
especially, the unarmed fighting style
0:56
is massively redundant. Even in the 2014
0:59
rules, the monk's martial arts die
1:01
starts out pretty small in the 2014
1:03
rules and then doesn't reach 1d8 until
1:06
level 10. So, I I can see the appeal
1:09
here. I can see why people look at this
1:10
and think like, yes, this is an
1:12
improvement over the damage I get. But,
1:15
you know what else? You can do 1d8
1:16
damage with a weapon. You can grab a
1:19
spear and use it two-handed for 1d8
1:21
damage. You can do the same with a
1:23
quarter staff. If you use the dedicated
1:25
weapon optional class feature, you can
1:27
use a long sword and get d10 damage.
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Sure, that's only with the attacks
1:31
during your attack action. But if you're
1:34
going to take a fighting style, are you
1:36
really going to take a fighting style
1:38
just to slightly improve the damage on
1:40
your bonus action attacks? It's it's not
1:43
worth the resource cost. Use that
1:46
resource for something more impactful.
