![]() ![]() This way, the monk can stun one and still contribute and you have plenty of pieces to still terrorize the party with. The simplest solution to make sure your boss fight doesn’t rely on the creature passing multiple Constitution saving throws is to simply add more creatures. If Stunning Strike essentially removes one enemy creature from play and there is only one enemy creature on the board then you’re going to have a bad time. However, if you’re someone that likes to throw a single, powerful, boss monster at the party then you’re going to find yourself frequently frustrated with Stunning Strike. What I mean is that, if your typical encounter has multiple enemies going toe-to-toe with the party then Stunning Strike will not prove to be an issue. The vast majority of your encounters should do just fine against a monk. What We Can Do to Keep Encounters Challenging Any melee weapon attack can proc Stunning Strike! Credit: WotC. I will say that you do need to make a few considerations to keep encounters challenging when the party has at least one monk with Stunning Strike. Let’s talk about those. Plus, it uses their class resource of Ki which could’ve instead been spent to use another one of their features, such as one that provides survivability. It is the monk’s bread-and-butter ability for providing utility and crowd control for the party. However, I don’t consider it to be overpowered. The real challenge that a monk presents to encounter design is that they can a) use this feature multiple times per short rest so it’s frequently available, and b) they don’t have to sacrifice their action economy to use it. It’s not the effect of Stunning Strike that makes it such a deadly move for a DM’s nefarious plans. Stunning Strike essentially gives the monk a free way to completely remove a creature and give the whole party better odds at dealing damage to this creature. This does present a bit of a problem for the DM when they’re designing an encounter. You can simply choose to use it as part of any melee weapon attack! The best part about this is that the monk doesn’t have to sacrifice their action economy to use Stunning Strike. How Does Stunning Strike Impact Encounter Design?Įssentially, if a target fails their Constitution save, they’re effectively taken out of the fight for an entire round of combat. Thankfully, ki points recharge on a short or long rest so it doesn’t take long to replenish your ki and get back to stunning creatures ad nauseam. The only limit that Stunning Strike has is your ki pool. Not to mention the fact that you take away that creature’s turn and give your allies advantage on their attacks on the target as well. Plus if you stun the creature on1st or 2nd hit you can get at least one or two additional attacks in at advantage during the initial turn. This is awesome because it allows you to take full advantage of your stun. It’s particularly great because if a creature fails the save and is stunned then they are stunned until the end of your next turn. It allows you to spend a ki point to potentially stun the target of one of your melee weapon attacks. Stunning Strike is, in my opinion, the monk’s signature ability in 5e. The target must succeed on a Constitution saving throw or be Stunned until the end of your next turn. When you hit another creature with a melee weapon Attack, you can spend 1 ki point to attempt a stunning strike. Starting at 5th Level, you can interfere with the flow of ki in an opponent’s body. If you can manage that then Stunning Strike will continue to be fun and effective for the monk to use, but not frustrating for you as the DM! What is Stunning Strike? You just need to keep a few things in mind when you design your encounters. However, it’s not impossible, or even difficult to keep it in check as a DM. I’ve learned how to ensure that Stunning Strike doesn’t completely counter my encounters. I swear I have had at least one in every 5e campaign I’ve run. Plus, Stunning Strike isn’t powerful enough to warrant that kind of treatment.ĭespite my lack of interest in playing a monk (save for becoming the Kung Fu Panda) all of my friends seem to be enamored with the class. Even if that feature effectively removes a creature from combat for a round. However, to counter a single class’ signature feature seems ridiculous to me. What surprised me was that there was an indication that many DMs fudge rolls to “counter” Stunning Strike. There was a lot of great discussion about the ability as well as how a DM can play around an ability that can straight-up take a creature out of the fight for an entire round. DMDavid started a discussion on Stunning Strike last week. ![]()
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