[PowerGamer]Werebear/Monk help

[Leopold]

I'm playing in a campaign where I have a werebear leveling ala Savage Species who at 10th level (natural werebear) shift to monk.

As such I would like to know if there is any other class that would benefit my natural abilities as a monk would. I know when I transform into hybrid form I am:

A. Large: Attack dice go up
B. STR/CON go up
C. Get Bite/Claw/Claw instead of Fist/Fist


I know at higher levels of monk I'll give up the claw/claw routine to hit more with the multiple attacks, but isn't that calculated into the monk attack pattern when I get more than +5 BAB?

Any advice in making this character a destructive demon of death I'm all for it. The cleric already casts Girillion's Arms on me and that gives me another 1d6*2 with rend potential.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

There's a few options, I suppose.

Barbarian: Always helpful for melee monsters, especially if your DM allows the pounce ability from lion totem (C.Champion).

Druid: Your spellcasting is a lost cause, but a few levels of it can be helpful. The main reason would be to take the PH2 shapeshifter variant. Assuming you can combine that WITH your hybrid form... Otherwise, Wildshape takes too long to be worth taking a class for.

Warshaper: Prestige class from C.Warrior, gives crazy benefits to you while in a different form (bear or hybrid).

Monk: Flurry is independent of BAB in 3.5, you simply get one or more attacks on a full attack with your unarmed strike or special monk weapons, with a -2 penalty (eventually goes away) on all attack rolls that round. As a monk, you'd do a flurry with unarmed strikes, and then use all your natural weapons as secondary attacks (-5 to hit, -2 if you can get Multiattack, and half str to damage). A pretty good class, overall. Be sure to have the druid cast greater magic fang on you, for the version that gives +1 to all your natural weapons (including unarmed since you're a monk), if you have one in the party.

Tome of Battle classes: Arguably (I think it's fine at least when it's PCs paying dearly for the ECL, and not 30 HD dragons that are CR 12 or whatever) racial HD should count like non-adept class levels, so you could count half those bear HD towards your initiator level, and be decent at martial maneuvers.

 

[udalrich]

Monk: Flurry is independent of BAB in 3.5, you simply get one or more attacks on a full attack with your unarmed strike or special monk weapons, with a -2 penalty (eventually goes away) on all attack rolls that round. As a monk, you'd do a flurry with unarmed strikes, and then use all your natural weapons as secondary attacks (-5 to hit, -2 if you can get Multiattack, and half str to damage). A pretty good class, overall. Be sure to have the druid cast greater magic fang on you, for the version that gives +1 to all your natural weapons (including unarmed since you're a monk), if you have one in the party.

I thought that when doing a flurry, you could only use unarmed strikes or monk weapons. On the other hand, with a level of monk, I think you could do all of your iterative attacks as unarmed strikes (just not flurrying) and then make all of your natural attacks as secondary attacks. So if you have a BAB of +6, a full attack would be: unarmed +6/+1, bite +1, claw +1/+1. The unarmed strikes would be with your feet (or similar), so that you could use your hands for the natural weapons.

If you go that way, you'd definitely want mutliattack (all of the natural attacks would be at +4 instead of +1).

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

Hmm, that might be right. I'd allow the secondary natural attacks as long as they suffered the -2 penalty from choosing to flurry, but might not be RAW. You can use secondary natural attacks after two-weapon fighting, I'm pretty sure... In any case, if the DM would allow that I don't see why he should be ruling against it in the case of flurry of blows.

 

[Leopold]

Where do you find this rule for multiattack?

If this is the case I can use the following attack pattern:

Monk fist/fist and claw/claw and bite

also 1/2 damage on natural attacks instead of full? Even with Monk levels? Once I hit +6 BAB it rolls over to 2 attacks with my fists correct? I'd have to use the monk damage for them to get those 2 attacks but right now I have 3 attacks claw/claw/bite and was hoping to throw on the other 2 attacks. I know I can't get claw/claw/bite with flurry of blows.

 

[Matrixryu]

Where do you find this rule for multiattack?

If this is the case I can use the following attack pattern:

Monk fist/fist and claw/claw and bite

also 1/2 damage on natural attacks instead of full? Even with Monk levels? Once I hit +6 BAB it rolls over to 2 attacks with my fists correct? I'd have to use the monk damage for them to get those 2 attacks but right now I have 3 attacks claw/claw/bite and was hoping to throw on the other 2 attacks. I know I can't get claw/claw/bite with flurry of blows.

SRD:Natural Weapons - D&D Wiki

The way natural attacks work is you have to choose one of them as the "primary weapon". This one gets your full BAB and full strength to damage. All other natural attacks are considered "Secondary Attacks" and get a flat -5 to BAB and half strength to damage.

However, you can use a different weapon as your primary weapon, and then you can do your normal attack progression with that (say if your BAB was 16, and you used a longsword, you would get +16, +11, +6 with that, then +11 and half strength with each of your natural attacks).

The advantage that monks have is that their primary weapon (unarmed strikes) stacks with their natural attacks, while a longsword or simmilar weapon would take away one of your claw attacks (this is assuming you were a creature which could use both swords and natural attacks).

Yea, technically speaking you can't use flurry of blows with natural attacks, but you would still get your regular unarmed attacks. Some GMs would allow it anyway, but I think the fact that unarmed strikes can be used without any drawbacks when you add them to any creature which already has natural attacks might already be enough of an advantage. Sure, you could add the -2 to the natural attacks, but at higher levels monks don't get a penalty for flurry.

Yea....I wish the rules for natural attacks and unarmed attacks could be combined more effectively.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

Well, you could definitely legally do a full unarmed attack routine without flurry and then tack on all your natural attacks as secondary natural attacks.

As for eventually losing the -2 penalty...that's one of the reasons to keep advancing in monk, it's a benefit of the class that you can eventually flurry without penalty. He's already going to take a lot longer to reach there since he's a werebear, I don't really think it's overpowered at all.

 

[Leopold]

So just to make sure I got this clear in my head:

I designate either my Monk attack or Claws as Primary, they gain full BAB/STR bonus. The other+bite=2ndary attacks that get 1/2 STR and -5 BAB.

With the addtion of the feat: Multiattack that -5 becomes -2. This becomes my MUST HAVE feat.


Flurry of blows:
I can do this attack pattern AND claw/claw/bite in one round? 5 attacks?

BAB scaling:
BAB for final level in Werebear is +5, 2nd level of monk is +1 that gives me +6 or +6/+1 correct? This would allow me to do Fist/Fist/Claw/Claw/Bite without needing to do flurry of blows and take that negative penalty but the same effect. I still have to designate primary and 2ndary attacks as above.

 

[Matrixryu]

So just to make sure I got this clear in my head:

I designate either my Monk attack or Claws as Primary, they gain full BAB/STR bonus. The other+bite=2ndary attacks that get 1/2 STR and -5 BAB.

With the addtion of the feat: Multiattack that -5 becomes -2. This becomes my MUST HAVE feat.


Flurry of blows:
I can do this attack pattern AND claw/claw/bite in one round? 5 attacks?

BAB scaling:
BAB for final level in Werebear is +5, 2nd level of monk is +1 that gives me +6 or +6/+1 correct? This would allow me to do Fist/Fist/Claw/Claw/Bite without needing to do flurry of blows and take that negative penalty but the same effect. I still have to designate primary and 2ndary attacks as above.

Yep, that sounds right. I'm pretty sure that if you want to use unarmed strikes, they have to be the primary attack though. Not that you would have any reason to have anything other than your unarmed attacks be primary though, lol.

Multiattack = win because your secondary attacks get a -2 instead of -5. And yea, I think Stream is right about allowing Flurry of Blows.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

Using unarmed strike + natural attacks means you're using your unarmed strike as a manufactured weapon (like a longsword or staff), which is perfectly fine. The rules for natural attacks state you can take your full iterative attack routine with a manufactured weapon and then use your natural weapons as secondary natural attacks (at a -5 penalty, or -2 with multiattack feat). I don't think it states about a primary natural weapon used as a secondary natural weapon getting reduced to half str modifier to damage, but the intent seems pretty clear that this is the case.

For your monk as you posted, the flurry thing is debatable, so I won't take that into account. But you could take your 2 attacks at BAB +6 and BAB +1 with unarmed strikes. After those, you could use your claw/claw/bite at your highest BAB (as all natural attacks use), but with a -5 penalty to hit for secondary natural attacks.