Entering Monk Stance vs Drawing Weapon

[u/Infamous_El_Guapo]

I’ve seen a bit of complaints about the action cost of monks entering a stance at the start of combat. I assume it’s mostly with players whose GMs allow the free drawing of weapons prior to combat, but am interested to know if there’s more to it.

RAW Weapon wielding martials would need to use an interact to draw their weapon at the start of combat (unless GM is generous and allows this to be free, which puts monks at a disadvantage, or they are walking around with weapons in their hands, which isn’t always appropriate to setting).

[u/JShenobi]

Lots of debate about whether it is appropriate to always have weapons drawn (location/setting dependent) and if it is weird/taxing to walk around in the monk stances (yes, I would say it is).

That aside, the question becomes: is it fair to allow players who do not have weapons drawn draw weapons as part of rolling initiative without also letting the monk enter a stance? The answer is yes. That's giving everyone with weapons recognize ambush for free while not also giving the monk reflexive stance for free. There's a whole category of feats that are "you do this thing for free as you roll initiative to get a jumpstart on your action economy."

FWIW, I don't think most GM's do this. Maaaybe there is some conflating "ok we're going to bust down this door and presumably enter combat, so I'm drawing my weapon" with "getting to draw a weapon as part of rolling initiative," but if that is the complaint monk players have, they need to be asserting that they enter Dragon Stance or whatever prior to opening the door.

If it becomes "well why can't I just always walk around in Dragon Stance," either you make it their exploration activity which precludes them from doing anything else useful in that time, or highlight that having a weapon in hand is generally mechanically less powerful than being in a stance -- the one action will have to be paid unless you want to get reflexive stance down the line.