Dark Moon Monk Chill Touch

Fardragon

Current Behaviour: DMM Chill Touch does normal fist damage (1-2) +1-8 cold (save applies)

Expected Behavior: DMM Chill Touch does monk fist damage +1-8 cold (save applies)

(I've mentioned this before, but haven't seen a thread on it)

Reasoning: Whilst Chill Touch shouldn't be very powerful, given the DMM's other benefits, activating this ability actually LOWERS avarage damage for a monk over 6th level.

Medillen

This isn't a bug though, but a rebalancing feature request

Fardragon

No, I don't think it's WAI. Why go to the trouble of giving the class an ability that makes them worse than when they don't use it?

If it was intended to weaken the class, it would be on all the time, surely? A nerf isn't a nerf if you can avoid it by not pressing the button.

Medillen

Giving this ability doesn't weaken the class, since you are free to use it (or not). Furthermore, dealing frost damage might come in handy in some situation. Not every class ability is useful. The best exemple would be... well... Chilling hand from mage

(Having said that, I do agree that the damage should scale in some way. But that's rebalancing issue).

Madhax

Intentional or not, it should be changed. If it was simply a matter of giving the class a better low-level punch, that would be fine. But since it's clearly intended as a replacement for Stunning Blow and the monk continually receives more uses of it as the monk levels up, there should be some amount of scaling.

Given that a monk able to use Chill Touch is, I believe, the first ever instance of a character with better-than-usual punching strength using the spell, it might not be possible to allow the monk to use their improved melee power for the attack. If that's the case, can we get the cold damage to scale with level, similarly to how the Sun Soul Monk's Soulray scales with level? An extra 1d8 per 4-6 levels might be sufficient, capping at ~4d8 or so.

Fardragon

Simply setting the Monk version of Chill Touch to 1d6 + 1d8 cold would mean it wouldn't avarage lower than a standard punch, or not having a saving throw for the cold damage, would solve the problem.

It's a bit tricky where saving throws are involved, and they tend to be worse at high level, but if you assume that enemies save around 50% of the time, Chill Touch avarages around 4 points of damage, wheras a standard 1d10 monk attack averages 5.5 points.

Schneidend

Assuming this hasn't been fixed by now, the spell description does say it deals punch damage. Punch damage for the Monk is better, so the spell should do the proper punch damage in the Monk's hands. Pun intended.

Question, does the Monk get his extra unarmed attacks per round when using Chill Touch?

elminster

I support this

Dee

We'll be changing the Dark Moon Monk's Chill Touch ability to "Frozen Fist", which gives the monk's attacks +2 cold damage for one round per level. Since it's just a modification of the monk's existing attacks it will just modify the monk's already-scaling fist damage, and let the monk make its normal number of attacks per round (thus letting the ability scale naturally with level).

elminster

Dee said:

We'll be changing the Dark Moon Monk's Chill Touch ability to "Frozen Fist", which gives the monk's attacks +2 cold damage for one round per level. Since it's just a modification of the monk's existing attacks it will just modify the monk's already-scaling fist damage, and let the monk make its normal number of attacks per round (thus letting the ability scale naturally with level).

Neat