What DO you DO for... Monks?

Due to popular thread-jacking in my "What DO you DO for... Fighters?" thread, I've decided to skip ahead quickly and create a new thread for Monks

So, what's in your house rule book? Do you change around everything, or leave it as-is? Do you have a varient posted up here on EN World, or another site which you could share with us - or just type them up in a post of it's own?

So... What DO you DO for monks?



[sblock=Other What DO you DO Threads]
What DO you DO for Bards and Barbarians were lost in the Crash and will be restarted after we get through to the Wizard class. Thanks for your patience.

What DO you DO for... Clerics?
Part 3 of my House Ruled Classes Series

What DO you DO for... Druids?
Part 4 of my House Ruled Classes Series

What DO you DO for... Fighters?
Part 5 of my House Ruled Classes Series

What Do you Do for... Monks?
Part 6 of my House Ruled Classes Series
[/sblock]

I've made a few feats, and I allow some monk-flavored feats from non-Core sources, AND I've done some PrCs for various Monk-hybrids, but otherwise, they're fine right out of the book. Monks, Bards and Rangers are my favorite 3.5e-izeations.

-- N

Hey Nifft, how come you haven't made any Vile Monk PrCs?

As for Monks, I haven't done anything to them [and in fact rarely see them in play in my group except for the one person who LOVES the Sacred Fist PrC], but I've been thinking about creating different styles for them. Removing the mystical/oriental flavor and adding more fantastical styles/flavor [like Dragon Style, Demon Style, Angel Style, etc; choosing interesting races which might have cool abilities like those above].

A few new feats, allow for those feats to be taken as substitutes for monk bonus feats. Have toyed around with the idea of allowing Full BAB in place of Flurry of Blows ability chain.

Example Feat:
Enchated Ki Strike, prereq's Ki Strike(magic) & stunning fist.
Special = you expend a use of stunning fist attempts for the day and gain a enchantment bonus to hit and damage for the round on all your natural attacks equal to your HD divided by 4.

One new idea I've been toying around with is giving monks a skirmish ability similar to the scout. The problem with monks have always been their mobility (from speed) clashes with their offense (need to make full round attacks with lots of attacks) with their defense (low AC, can't stay in combat).

With skirmish, they can use their speed to their advantage, moving in and getting one big attack in, but not forced to stay in combat to deal good damage.

Stalker0 said:

One new idea I've been toying around with is giving monks a skirmish ability similar to the scout. The problem with monks have always been their mobility (from speed) clashes with their offense (need to make full round attacks with lots of attacks) with their defense (low AC, can't stay in combat).

With skirmish, they can use their speed to their advantage, moving in and getting one big attack in, but not forced to stay in combat to deal good damage.

Click to expand...

This is such an awesome idea.

I think we'd need to remove the Monk's normal AC bonus progression and simply use the Skirmish AC bonus progression instead.

But wow. Great idea.

-- N

Stalker0 said:

With skirmish, they can use their speed to their advantage, moving in and getting one big attack in, but not forced to stay in combat to deal good damage.

Click to expand...

Should be called something like Flying Kick or whatnot, though

Me, I just allow the fighting styles from OA, UA or whatever other sources include them. No one's ever actually played a monk in my campaign, though, so I don't know if any other changes should be made.

Nifft said:

This is such an awesome idea.

I think we'd need to remove the Monk's normal AC bonus progression and simply use the Skirmish AC bonus progression instead.

But wow. Great idea.

Click to expand...

I'm in agreeance with Nifft here - that idea definitly deserves it's own thread to fully flesh out that class.

In other news, I'm surprized and happy to see so much discussion minutes after posting this thread. Also, some may have noticed I'm now inter-linking all the "What DO you DO" threads in a space-saving sblock area at the bottom of the OP.

As for myself, I'm trying to make a acultural 'Pugilist' class - that is, one who fights with his fists. See here for more details, and please comment!

Remove flurry, use the unarmed combat speed from 3e. Other than that, it's an okay class I think.

Monks in my campaign get a good base attack bonus (like the fighter), but consequently flurry of blows keeps the -2 penalty throughout. This is a net gain of +3 to attack and an extra attack for a flurrying 20th level monk however so I think it balances out. I also stagger their bonus feats more evenly and let them choose from a list rather than having to pick X or Y for each bonus feat. Monk bonus feats include: improved grapple, combat reflexes, stunning fist, improved trip, improved disarm, deflect arrows, snatch arrows, acrobatic, alertness, agile, athletic, blind-fight, negotiator, run, stealthy, toughness, and several feats from complete warrior that involve ki energy. Monks get their first bonus feat at 2nd level and get an additional bonus feat every 3 levels after that (5th, 8th, and so on). It might seem like monks become uber powerful with these changes, so to balance that, I lower their unarmed damage a bit (they can power attack easier with high bab after all) and lower their speed a bit.