Dev Update #32 - Monks: If you got a butt I'll kick it!

...The other issue is that monks are very very good at stun-locking bosses (and burning through Legendary Resistance)...

Are they? I always found Stunning Strike to be very unreliable, because it takes its DC from Wisdom, uses Dexterity for the attack roll and targets Constitution, which most boss type enemies tend to have pretty good scores in.

Honestly, from a risk/resource/reward standpoint, I think Stunning Strike is probably only on par with grappling/shoving. At least that is resource free and can build everything into one stat (strength (athletics)) as opposed to two (dexterity and wisdom), and typically targets something most monsters are fairly bad at (athletics and acrobatics). 

As Frostyfardragon said, it's very effective. I can only give you the example of my paper role-playing game table. A  level 6 monk managed to stunt an adolescent blue dragon on the first hit, with a barbarian and a paladin who reduced him to 10 PV right behind (yes , my players are nags without finesse).

I know stun is a good status effect. I am thinking more about the reliability. Spells tend to be reliable for effects like "restrain (save) + difficult terrain (no save)", so they aren't entirely wasted. I only found "Young Blue Dragon", so I am assuming that is what you meant (and not the wyrmling), who have +8 con saves.

A lvl 6 monk has +3 proficiency. Assuming a wisdom of 16, that is a DC check of 14 (8+3+3). That means a Young Blue has to roll a 6 or higher to succeed. That's 75% chance of wasting the ki, or on average 4 points of ki per stun on this creature. Even having a 20 wisdom score only improves it to 1/3 chance to stunning. And you only get to try to stun the creature if you land an attack, so there is RNG even on when you can try to crowd control.

So it seems you got very lucky (which happens), and there's nothing wrong with playing high risk characters, but Stunning Strikes doesn't seem very reliable to me. Which is a major design problem with 5e, because a lot of control spells are very reliable. 

The thing about monks is they get LOTS of attacks (at least 3). And each one has a chance of stun. That makes them very reliable - much more so than a save-or-suck wizard, who can only let off one spell per round.

Of the above subclasses, The Way of Freedom is the one to watch out for, since (if my maths is right) it gets 5 chances to stun (with advantage on attacks) per round from level 11.

Of course, this burns through ki very quickly, which is part of the problem - stunlock is so good that using ki for anything else is a waste.

The thing about monks is they get LOTS of attacks (at least 3). And each one has a chance of stun. That makes them very reliable - much more so than a save-or-suck wizard, who can only let off one spell per round.

Of the above subclasses, The Way of Freedom is the one to watch out for, since (if my maths is right) it gets 5 chances to stun (with advantage on attacks) per round from level 11.

Of course, this burns through ki very quickly, which is part of the problem - stunlock is so good that using ki for anything else is a waste.

My personal experience as player and DM completely validates your hypothesis :D

The thing about monks is they get LOTS of attacks (at least 3). And each one has a chance of stun. That makes them very reliable - much more so than a save-or-suck wizard, who can only let off one spell per round.

Of the above subclasses, The Way of Freedom is the one to watch out for, since (if my maths is right) it gets 5 chances to stun (with advantage on attacks) per round from level 11.

Of course, this burns through ki very quickly, which is part of the problem - stunlock is so good that using ki for anything else is a waste.

My personal experience as player and DM completely validates your hypothesis :D 

I'm talking from experience too.

The thing about monks is they get LOTS of attacks (at least 3). And each one has a chance of stun. That makes them very reliable - much more so than a save-or-suck wizard, who can only let off one spell per round.

Of the above subclasses, The Way of Freedom is the one to watch out for, since (if my maths is right) it gets 5 chances to stun (with advantage on attacks) per round from level 11.

Of course, this burns through ki very quickly, which is part of the problem - stunlock is so good that using ki for anything else is a waste.

That's not really how that works though. A lot of dangerous enemies have good con saves and con is rarely a dump stat for monster stat blocks, meaning that you're increasingly running into the problem that the enemies that you really need to stun will drain your resources to do so.

The system seem to be balanced around a ~65% hit rate, which means that 3 APR, on average, is only going to leave you with 2 chances to stun. Looking at the Young Blue someone mentioned before, that means that creature still has an average ~56% chance of not being stunned. You can get lucky, but you can also get unlucky and achieve nothing with your ki. And you're only going to struggle more and more the more difficult the enemy / encounter. And it is a complete waste in encounters with many, weaker enemies. 

Compare that to the other classes you typically look to for control, wizard and druid, and it really isn't even comparable. Control spells are simply better because 1) you're not dependent on landing an attack to decide when to try to control, 2) control spells often have secondary effects with no saves, 3) control spells are usually persistent, 4) control casters can often tailor their spells to the enemy's weaker saving throws, and 5) control casters usually have good options outside of control they can use.

On the other hand, to get Monk stunlocking, you have to have a Monk in your party. They are too frail to fill the role of "frontliner" since their hp and AC scale so slowly, so the party can't really skip on those if the campaign has any degree of mechanical difficulty, and it is too limited to fill the role of caster. Their damage is passable at best and they only get worse if there are decent magical weapons available in a campaign.

At a table with a fairly easy campaign, you might have a decent time as a Monk, but I really don't see how this class scales with the difficulty of the content, which is really what we need to look at to get a feel for what classes do and don't work. Solasta is also a perfect storm of everything going wrong for the Monk, because:

1) Encounter size. Usually a fair number of enemies in harder encounters, meaning the impact of any one stun is lessened.
2) Itemization. Crafting makes really powerful weapons available, which will benefit everyone else more. High enchant value armor is also fairly common, making this even worse.
3) Encounter length. Because of (1), Solasta seems to have a significantly longer avg combat than the 2-4 rounds expected in 5e, meaning persistent effects are much more efficient than single round ones.
4) Martial enemies. Lots of martial enemies means the Monks' lowish AC can often become a problem. 20 AC with maxed out dex and wis is really, really bad, and that d8 hit die makes it worse.
5) Limited party slots. 4 party slots means that each character has to pull more weight.

I plan on taking a party with a Warlock, Bard and Monk through Solasta or Lost Valley once the DLC drops, but the 4th party member is going to be expected to carry a lot of the slack from the Monk on the martial side. 

The thing about monks is they get LOTS of attacks (at least 3). And each one has a chance of stun. That makes them very reliable - much more so than a save-or-suck wizard, who can only let off one spell per round.

Of the above subclasses, The Way of Freedom is the one to watch out for, since (if my maths is right) it gets 5 chances to stun (with advantage on attacks) per round from level 11.

Of course, this burns through ki very quickly, which is part of the problem - stunlock is so good that using ki for anything else is a waste.

That's not really how that works though. 

Yes it is. I KNOW for a fact that is how it works, because I have seen monks in play. No about of white-room theorising beets actual play experience.

A lot of dangerous enemies have good con saves and con is rarely a dump stat for monster stat blocks, meaning that you're increasingly running into the problem that the enemies that you really need to stun will drain your resources to do so.

Sure it drains resources. That's why monks don't use any of their other abilities that cost ki. They save it to stunlock the boss in the important fights, then take a short rest immediately after.

The system seem to be balanced around a ~65% hit rate,

This is one reason white-rooming fails. It doesn't take into account that D&D is a team game, and there are all sorts of actions party members can take to increase a character's chance of success.

Plus, you know, all those magic items that characters generally have equipped?

 which means that 3 APR, on average, is only going to leave you with 2 chances to stun. Looking at the Young Blue someone mentioned before, that means that creature still has an average ~56% chance of not being stunned. You can get lucky, but you can also get unlucky and achieve nothing with your ki.

True, but they can always flurry for another go. And there is still nothing more effective a monk can contribute to a fight. Their actual damage is meh.

 And you're only going to struggle more and more the more difficult the enemy / encounter. And it is a complete waste in encounters with many, weaker enemies. 

It is. Monks are BAD in encounters against many weak enemies. Parties take them along purely as boss-disablers.

True, but they can always flurry for another go. And there is still nothing more effective a monk can contribute to a fight. Their actual damage is meh.

"You don't trust the math. I don't trust your anecdotes without the math."
- Someone I don't remember

But if simply doing the math isn't good enough for you, run a monk and keep a tally of how many Stunning Strikes you've tries compared to how many have succeeded.

Of course, you're absolutely right that Monks only have Stunning Strike as something worth using in a fight. It's just that Stunning Strike is unreliable. 

True, but they can always flurry for another go. And there is still nothing more effective a monk can contribute to a fight. Their actual damage is meh.

"You don't trust the math. I don't trust your anecdotes without the math."
- Someone I don't remember

The person you don't remember clearly wasn't a scientist. I am a professional scientist. I KNOW not to trust the math when experiment tells you otherwise.

But if simply doing the math isn't good enough for you, run a monk and keep a tally of how many Stunning Strikes you've tries compared to how many have succeeded.

It doesn't matter how many fail, so long as the boss is stunned. Certainly, there are more failed stuns than successful ones, but that's irrelevant when you can just keep on trying.

True, but they can always flurry for another go. And there is still nothing more effective a monk can contribute to a fight. Their actual damage is meh.

"You don't trust the math. I don't trust your anecdotes without the math."
- Someone I don't remember

The person you don't remember clearly wasn't a scientist. I am a professional scientist. I KNOW not to trust the math when experiment tells you otherwise.

Everyone can claim being an expert on the internet. But if you really do work in research, you should know that you need to collect data and not anecdotes.

But if simply doing the math isn't good enough for you, run a monk and keep a tally of how many Stunning Strikes you've tries compared to how many have succeeded.

It doesn't matter how many fail, so long as the boss is stunned. Certainly, there are more failed stuns than successful ones, but that's irrelevant when you can just keep on trying.

You can't though, since you have limited uses. And you're frail, so sticking around in melee is dangerous. Of course, this is admitting my point; Stunning Strikes is unreliable. People only hold it up as something worthwhile because Monks don't have anything else, so they might as well just try to get this one ability to work.

Why, from an optimizing standpoint, would I ever pick a Monk over a Wizard or Druid if I want someone with control? Or compared to any of the 4 traditional martial classes if I want a martial class? Or compared to a Ranger if I want a martial with some control, which they can get from their spell list? Even Spellblade Fighters, who are a poor man's Eldritch Knight, arguably do the martial+control thing better than Monks.

True, but they can always flurry for another go. And there is still nothing more effective a monk can contribute to a fight. Their actual damage is meh.

"You don't trust the math. I don't trust your anecdotes without the math."
- Someone I don't remember

The person you don't remember clearly wasn't a scientist. I am a professional scientist. I KNOW not to trust the math when experiment tells you otherwise.

Everyone can claim being an expert on the internet. But if you really do work in research, you should know that you need to collect data and not anecdotes.

But if simply doing the math isn't good enough for you, run a monk and keep a tally of how many Stunning Strikes you've tries compared to how many have succeeded.

It doesn't matter how many fail, so long as the boss is stunned. Certainly, there are more failed stuns than successful ones, but that's irrelevant when you can just keep on trying.

You can't though, since you have limited uses. And you're frail, so sticking around in melee is dangerous. Of course, this is admitting my point; Stunning Strikes is unreliable. People only hold it up as something worthwhile because Monks don't have anything else, so they might as well just try to get this one ability to work.

Why, from an optimizing standpoint, would I ever pick a Monk over a Wizard or Druid if I want someone with control? Or compared to any of the 4 traditional martial classes if I want a martial class? Or compared to a Ranger if I want a martial with some control, which they can get from their spell list? Even Spellblade Fighters, who are a poor man's Eldritch Knight, arguably do the martial+control thing better than Monks.

You always talk about the monk and his qualities/defects? Let's keep calm in an hour the DLC will be released, and we will have arguments to discuss the version of the monk in Solasta. 

You always talk about the monk and his qualities/defects? Let's keep calm in an hour the DLC will be released, and we will have arguments to discuss the version of the monk in Solasta. 

Who's not calm? I just find that talking about what doesn't work in 5e is more interesting than what does. Lots of fuel for that fire in 5e, including but not limited to: Monks, Rogues, multiclass imbalance, racial options, and the fact that you're virtually always better off picking up spellcasting than not. Solasta adds its own set of imbalanced, like everything they've given to Fighters is lacking compared to other martial class options, or humans not getting an alternate statline because standard human is pretty awful. 

True, but they can always flurry for another go. And there is still nothing more effective a monk can contribute to a fight. Their actual damage is meh.

"You don't trust the math. I don't trust your anecdotes without the math."
- Someone I don't remember

The person you don't remember clearly wasn't a scientist. I am a professional scientist. I KNOW not to trust the math when experiment tells you otherwise.

Everyone can claim being an expert on the internet. But if you really do work in research, you should know that you need to collect data and not anecdotes.

I've also been DMing for 40 years. And if that isn't enough data for you, you might try reading every other forum on 5e monks.

But if simply doing the math isn't good enough for you, run a monk and keep a tally of how many Stunning Strikes you've tries compared to how many have succeeded.

It doesn't matter how many fail, so long as the boss is stunned. Certainly, there are more failed stuns than successful ones, but that's irrelevant when you can just keep on trying.

You can't though, since you have limited uses.  And you're frail, so sticking around in melee is dangerous. Of course, this is admitting my point; Stunning Strikes is unreliable.

Anything with a saving throw is unreliable. But if the wizard fails, they don't get to try again until the next round. Which is too late to make any difference in a typical 5e fight. Which averages 3 rounds - plenty of data on that. And unlike a wizard the monk has no need to conserve resources for the next fight.

 People only hold it up as something worthwhile because Monks don't have anything else, so they might as well just try to get this one ability to work.

That doesn't mean it's not worthwhile.

Why, from an optimizing standpoint, would I ever pick a Monk over a Wizard or Druid if I want someone with control? Or compared to any of the 4 traditional martial classes if I want a martial class? Or compared to a Ranger if I want a martial with some control, which they can get from their spell list? Even Spellblade Fighters, who are a poor man's Eldritch Knight, arguably do the martial+control thing better than Monks.

I wouldn't play a monk either, one trick ponies are boring. But two of these Solasta subclasses are more powerful than anything in PnP.

Everyone can claim being an expert on the internet. But if you really do work in research, you should know that you need to collect data and not anecdotes.

I've also been DMing for 40 years. And if that isn't enough data for you, you might try reading every other forum on 5e monks.

Seeing as 5e came out ca 8 years ago, 32 of those are entirely irrelevant, even if true. And, hey, having done something for a long time doesn't give you any special authority. And, since you claim to work in research, you should know that human memory is hardly reliable as a basis for hard data. Confirmation bias ensures that people who dislike monks already will tend to remember the failures and forget the successes, and people who like the monk will tend to remember the successes and forget the failures.

Your experience is anecdotal, unless you can actually show you have some sort of raw data to work with and how it was gathered. Which you should know, if you really work in research. 

But if simply doing the math isn't good enough for you, run a monk and keep a tally of how many Stunning Strikes you've tries compared to how many have succeeded.

It doesn't matter how many fail, so long as the boss is stunned. Certainly, there are more failed stuns than successful ones, but that's irrelevant when you can just keep on trying.

You can't though, since you have limited uses.  And you're frail, so sticking around in melee is dangerous. Of course, this is admitting my point; Stunning Strikes is unreliable.

Anything with a saving throw is unreliable. But if the wizard fails, they don't get to try again until the next round. Which is too late to make any difference in a typical 5e fight. Which averages 3 rounds - plenty of data on that. And unlike a wizard the monk has no need to conserve resources for the next fight.

Wizards, and other control casters, usually have effects on their spells that are independent of the saving throw (like difficult terrain) and they can choose when to try to control at all instead of relying on whether or not their attacks hit. And they can often target different saving throws according to the situation. And can do other things than control, like buffing. Or summoning in the case of Druids. 

Other options include Sorcerer metamagic, which includes disadvantage on the saving throw or targetting additional creatures. Very strong with ongoing effects, like Hold Person/Monster or spell that completely takes someone out of the fight, like Banishment. 

 People only hold it up as something worthwhile because Monks don't have anything else, so they might as well just try to get this one ability to work.

That doesn't mean it's not worthwhile.

It does if we're competing for party slots. Which we are, since this is Solasta. And because this is Solasta, so many fights are against a multitude of enemies. And itemization for other classes is really strong, though they hopefully added some gloves to help with that. Of course, even then, they'd have to be fairly strong to compete. It really is a perfect storm of making life harder on monks.

If you're playing a monk, you're playing it because you want to, not because it was a good choice for the party slot. 

Why, from an optimizing standpoint, would I ever pick a Monk over a Wizard or Druid if I want someone with control? Or compared to any of the 4 traditional martial classes if I want a martial class? Or compared to a Ranger if I want a martial with some control, which they can get from their spell list? Even Spellblade Fighters, who are a poor man's Eldritch Knight, arguably do the martial+control thing better than Monks.

I wouldn't play a monk either, one trick ponies are boring. But two of these Solasta subclasses are more powerful than anything in PnP.

Not a very high bar, if true.

The thing about monks is they get LOTS of attacks (at least 3). And each one has a chance of stun. That makes them very reliable - much more so than a save-or-suck wizard, who can only let off one spell per round.

Of the above subclasses, The Way of Freedom is the one to watch out for, since (if my maths is right) it gets 5 chances to stun (with advantage on attacks) per round from level 11.

Of course, this burns through ki very quickly, which is part of the problem - stunlock is so good that using ki for anything else is a waste.

That's not really how that works though. A lot of dangerous enemies have good con saves and con is rarely a dump stat for monster stat blocks, meaning that you're increasingly running into the problem that the enemies that you really need to stun will drain your resources to do so.

The system seem to be balanced around a ~65% hit rate, which means that 3 APR, on average, is only going to leave you with 2 chances to stun. Looking at the Young Blue someone mentioned before, that means that creature still has an average ~56% chance of not being stunned. You can get lucky, but you can also get unlucky and achieve nothing with your ki. And you're only going to struggle more and more the more difficult the enemy / encounter. And it is a complete waste in encounters with many, weaker enemies. 

Compare that to the other classes you typically look to for control, wizard and druid, and it really isn't even comparable. Control spells are simply better because 1) you're not dependent on landing an attack to decide when to try to control, 2) control spells often have secondary effects with no saves, 3) control spells are usually persistent, 4) control casters can often tailor their spells to the enemy's weaker saving throws, and 5) control casters usually have good options outside of control they can use.

On the other hand, to get Monk stunlocking, you have to have a Monk in your party. They are too frail to fill the role of "frontliner" since their hp and AC scale so slowly, so the party can't really skip on those if the campaign has any degree of mechanical difficulty, and it is too limited to fill the role of caster. Their damage is passable at best and they only get worse if there are decent magical weapons available in a campaign.

At a table with a fairly easy campaign, you might have a decent time as a Monk, but I really don't see how this class scales with the difficulty of the content, which is really what we need to look at to get a feel for what classes do and don't work. Solasta is also a perfect storm of everything going wrong for the Monk, because:

1) Encounter size. Usually a fair number of enemies in harder encounters, meaning the impact of any one stun is lessened.
2) Itemization. Crafting makes really powerful weapons available, which will benefit everyone else more. High enchant value armor is also fairly common, making this even worse.
3) Encounter length. Because of (1), Solasta seems to have a significantly longer avg combat than the 2-4 rounds expected in 5e, meaning persistent effects are much more efficient than single round ones.
4) Martial enemies. Lots of martial enemies means the Monks' lowish AC can often become a problem. 20 AC with maxed out dex and wis is really, really bad, and that d8 hit die makes it worse.
5) Limited party slots. 4 party slots means that each character has to pull more weight.

I plan on taking a party with a Warlock, Bard and Monk through Solasta or Lost Valley once the DLC drops, but the 4th party member is going to be expected to carry a lot of the slack from the Monk on the martial side. 

Was looking for Devs posts about what comes next, read through this per curiosity, felt compelled to react to this.

Solasta is actually a perfect storm proving how great Monks are because.

1) Encounter size: having more enemies force player(s) to actually be smart and not rush to their death.

2) Encounter environment: Solasta does not put you in white-rooms, quite on the contrary: it provides covers, obstacles, walls and chasms that you can use to influence enemy's decision-making and channel the melee ones while protecting yourself a bit from ranged ones.

3) Enemy IA: enemies act fair: melee ones will Dash if they cannot reach and try to focus on either lower AC or lower HP, meaning taking Dodge into account too. They'll try to focus on a single guy as much as possible and even surround him (on that note @devs imo one should be able to jump over enemies provided character has enough "non-running start high jump score"). They also use Shove to set up advantage for themselves or push PC down walls and cliffs.

Archers are especially good at being smart too, often targeting casters, then ones with lowest HP/AC, then ones visible, only moving when they have nobody in range.

This means that blindly rushing with your melee character will end nastily, even a raging Barbarian...
Only Monk actually can fare well thanks to the combination of having ranged attacks for free (shortbow proficiency), Dodge as bonus action + Deflect Arrow to cover open ground with minimum risk (in a game with friends the level 3 Monk ended the day with "effective total HP" not far from 90 because could use its reaction nearly one in three rounds to avoid arrows and the Dodge made 9 attacks of 20 miss, including two criticals). Your "20 AC is very very bad" is hilarious by the way. Beyond the fact that with any smart group melee martials wouldn't get many chances at hitting in the first place, it's a very good floor to hit for a majority of the game, only at level 9-10 can it start being a little insufficient, but by that time party should have sound tactics to channel and control how much melee threat they absorb. Now sure if you let yourself be targeted by more than 3-4 attacks in a single round, "just plain 20 AC" won't be enough for sure. But that's not e mechanic's problem, it's a player's problem.

And this is something I tell from experience, in Solasta or otherwise. Standing still in the middle of a field like you're a scarecrow has never been a smart choice for surviving. If you have someone nice enough to pick you up systematically with Healing Words, good. Once the player is fed up with wasting character potential to cover martial stupidity, problems arise. Even if your party tactics revolve around one character taking up more aggro than others does not mean you need to behave stupidly about it and make enemy's work cut out for them.

As for the "4 slots party each needs to pull weight" yeah and? If you really want a "tanky" Monk, devs designed an archetype just for that. Otherwise, just be smart. Would you consider a ranged Fighter or Ranger "not pull its weight"? Probably not right? Well then Monk can exactly be that, you'd just miss Archery which is definitely a good boost to accuracy but can also be very well lived without.

As for the "magic items" problem? Monks have many great ones they can use, besides magic weapons (still useful you don't always want to rely on unarmed), they have also a lot of great items to use, and since they are not interested in armors and shields (although they can still wear Cloak of Displacement and Cloak of Protection which are very good) they have much less competition and choice complexity over attuning to things like Amulet of Health, Bracers of Archery / Defense, Belt of Hill Giant Strength or items allowing to cast spells. So really you have largely enough possibilities in any game.

By the way the average combat has always been around 5 rounds, the "3 rounds average" spouted out by community has always been an illusion and misconception born from the misinterpretation of a few lines of DMG regarding custom monster creation. 

If combat had been expected to last no more than 3 rounds on average, offensive spells wouldn't have a 1mn duration, but a 30 sec duration. As simple as that.

@Llacote

I reread your post a couple of times and couldn't find an actual example outside of Deflect Arrows that seemed to favor the Monk, so I'll respond to what I think your points were. You'll have to be more precise if I misunderstood your points.

TL;DR : Other martial characters will do more for less investment at earlier levels than Monks. 

Solasta is actually a perfect storm proving how great Monks are because.

[... smart play...]

Any character will play better if played smart. I don't see how this helps the Monk in its comparison to other martial characters. 

Only Monk actually can fare well thanks to the combination of having ranged attacks for free (shortbow proficiency), Dodge as bonus action + Deflect Arrow to cover open ground with minimum risk (in a game with friends the level 3 Monk ended the day with "effective total HP" not far from 90 because could use its reaction nearly one in three rounds to avoid arrows and the Dodge made 9 attacks of 20 miss, including two criticals).

Dodge bonus action on a resource that is shared with everything else. On an AC value that is more often than not below where it needs to be. Deflect Missile is okay, but I suspect you'd need it less with a less awful class.

Your "20 AC is very very bad" is hilarious by the way.

20 AC at max Dexterity + Wisdom. Which usually doesn't happen. Even if you have 16 in both at lvl 1, you're lvl 16 before that happens. A Barbarian has access to 19 AC at lvl 1 with non-magical half-plate and shield, on top of a d12 hit dice and damage resistance on its own, separate resource. A Fighter or Paladin can have 21 with non-magical plate, shield and defense style.

 Beyond the fact that with any smart group melee martials wouldn't get many chances at hitting in the first place, it's a very good floor to hit for a majority of the game, only at level 9-10 can it start being a little insufficient, but by that time party should have sound tactics to channel and control how much melee threat they absorb. Now sure if you let yourself be targeted by more than 3-4 attacks in a single round, "just plain 20 AC" won't be enough for sure. But that's not e mechanic's problem, it's a player's problem.

If Monks could reliably get 20 AC at low levels, you might've had a point here. But they don't without magic items. Magic items that will work even better for other martials, on top of items like +1 armor / shields that Monks uaully don't have a comparable item to.

Of course, AC (and therefor the Dodge action) does have diminishing returns as the CR goes up. Which is even worse for Monks, since they have a d8 and bad saves (prior to lvl 14).  Solasta made some homebrew changes to make their lives better, but not enough.

And this is something I tell from experience, in Solasta or otherwise.

I'm inclined to distrust 'experience' when it isn't backed by any data. Confirmation bias is hard to overcome. 

 Standing still in the middle of a field like you're a scarecrow has never been a smart choice for surviving.

Indeed. But you're not going to get out of a scrap forever, so simply having more survivability for less effort is much, much better if that's what you're looking for in a party slot. Apply the same smart play to another class and not just the monk. 

As for the "4 slots party each needs to pull weight" yeah and? If you really want a "tanky" Monk, devs designed an archetype just for that.

It's about the only decent option for Monks we have and what is it? A less useful Barbarian and only manages to get that far after lvl 6. The Barb will do more for less at earlier levels and with better damage to boot. You want to tank? Path of the Stone gives absurd survivability. Had one face-tank a green dragon in the main story on Scavenger difficulty alone for fun. Didn't even need to play smart to win that one. Or Claw for a more balance offense / defense playstyle.

How is any Monk meant to compete with those? Assuming you're not intentionally playing the Barbarian poorly, of course, but even that's going to take a lot of effort to make it worse than Monk. 

 Otherwise, just be smart. Would you consider a ranged Fighter or Ranger "not pull its weight"? Probably not right? Well then Monk can exactly be that, you'd just miss Archery which is definitely a good boost to accuracy but can also be very well lived without.

You have to build a Fighter pretty well in Solasta for it to pull its weight, considering the alternatives we have. I legitimately don't see one doing it unless you take advantage of the mobility and control options the Spellblade has available. Generally going to do better than Monks though, as long as you're not playing Champion. Well, Champion will do better for a while too.

As for Rangers, it is dead easy to make a Ranger pull their weight. Even if we ignore the very powerful Swift Blade, the Hunter has a decent baseline upgrade to their damage dealing with Colossus Slayer and plenty of useful spells. Fog Cloud, Spike Growth, Silence and Conjure Animals being very strong options included in Solasta. Pass Without Trace got really good after the rebalanced the stealth too. Add in the homebrewed improvements to Favored Enemy (up to +4 dmg per hit) and you can easily justify bringing a Ranger. 

Rangers do benefit a lot from defensive feats and anything helping their concentration saves though. Despite being a half-caster, WotC didn't give it much casting support in its class features. 

As for the "magic items" problem? Monks have many great ones they can use, besides magic weapons (still useful you don't always want to rely on unarmed), they have also a lot of great items to use, and since they are not interested in armors and shields (although they can still wear Cloak of Displacement and Cloak of Protection which are very good) they have much less competition and choice complexity over attuning to things like Amulet of Health, Bracers of Archery / Defense, Belt of Hill Giant Strength or items allowing to cast spells. So really you have largely enough possibilities in any game.

Armor, shields and most weapons don't take attunement, so there is no competition. Just a straight up advantage to everyone who isn't a Monk. And seeing as +1 and +2 armor is craftable (some are even guaranteed loot drops, like a +1 half-plate), that is a hard hurdle for Monks to overcome.

Your Monk has an Amulet of Health. 

The Barbarian has an Amulet of Health and a shield +1. And a half-plate +1. And maybe Punisher, Black Widow or Dragonblade for +2d6 dmg on weapon attacks. Or if those weapons are too late-game, the Frostburn Longsword for +1d8 cold dmg, available around the same time as the guaranteed drop half-plate +1. 

Both characters are using only 1 attunement slot.

You could try to force the comparison back to the white room without all these awesome items Monks can't enjoy, but they are pretty common in Solasta's official campaigns. 

By the way the average combat has always been around 5 rounds, the "3 rounds average" spouted out by community has always been an illusion and misconception born from the misinterpretation of a few lines of DMG regarding custom monster creation.

If combat had been expected to last no more than 3 rounds on average, offensive spells wouldn't have a 1mn duration, but a 30 sec duration. As simple as that.

If you want to have Monks compete on a 5 round basis rather than a 3 round basis, you just made their lives a lot worse since they don't get any more ki to use.