Yet ANOTHER Alt.Monk

I know, there's been way too many of these lately, it's almost as bad as the whole Alt.Ranger thing. But, I wanted to get some feedback while people were still thinking about it.

Anyway, I don't like classes where the player has no choice in the development. A Monk 15 has the same abilities as every other Monk 15 in the game; only the allocation of skill points and the base stats differ. You can't even customize your armor/weapons like most other classes can. So, for my campaign (actually for the NEXT one) I rebuilt the Monk, Barbarian, Paladin, and Ranger to be a bit more flexible.

The new Monk follows the PHB except as explained below.

> Saves, speed, HP, BAB, AC bonus (both inherent and WIS), and unarmed damage are unchanged, except that at level 16-20 the monk's fists only do 2d8 damage (2d6 small) instead of 1d20

> A Monk may multiclass to and from his racial Favored Class without halting his Monk advancement, as long as Monk remains his highest class. If his Favored Class is "Any", then only one class may be treated this way, even if that class does not remain the highest non-Monk class.

> Remove everything in the "Special" column.

At levels 1-5, all Monks gain the following special abilities:
1> Improved Unarmed Strike
2> Lethal Unarmed Strike, Evasion
3> Stunning Fist, Empty Mind (psychic defense mode, at will)
4> Wholeness of Body, Slow Fall 20'
5> Ki Strike +1, Flurry of Blows
Beginning at level 6, the Monk gains levels along six paths, each tied to a different base attribute. Each path contains five levels, or 'circles', which must be taken sequentially; you cannot take Hand 3 unless you already know Hand 2 and 1, although you don't have to take them consecutively. Each level requires a base attribute of 9 + 2 per circle in the attribute corresponding to that path, so Hand 1 requires a STR of 11, Hand 2 a STR of 13, and so on up to Hand 5 at 19. Foot has the same progression but uses DEX instead of STR, and so on.
Any spell-like ability the Monk gains has caster level equal to half the Monk's class level and can only affect the Monk himself.

Hand (STR)
1 Deflect Arrows (as Feat)
2 Ki Power
3 Ki Mode, Critical Fists (x3)
4 Quivering Palm (see PHB, usable 1/week), Ki Power
5 Ki Mode, Critical Fists (x4)
Foot (DEX)
1 Improved Trip (as Feat)
2 Leap of the Clouds (jumping distance not limited by height), Safe Fall 40'
3 Improved Evasion
4 Perfect Fall (feather fall, at will), Ki Power
5 Abundant Step (dimension door 3/day)
Body (CON)
1 Purity of Body (immune to nonmagical diseases)
2 Diamond Body (immune to all poisons)
3 Sustenance, Ki Mode
4 Timeless Body (do not age), Ki Power
5 Empty Body (etherealness 1/day)
Mind (INT)
1 Still Mind (+2 saves vs. Enchantment or Telepathy)
2 Hardness
3 Quiet Mind (nondetection, continuous)
4 Manifester
5 Solid Mind
Eye (WIS)
1 Blind-Fight (as Feat)
2 Insight (combat prescience 2/day)
3 Eyes of the Bat (see invisibility 2/day)
4 Diamond Eye (aura sight 2/day)
5 Meditation (precognition 1/day)
Soul (CHA)
1 Psychoanalyst (as Feat)
2 Tongue of the Sun and Moon (speak with any living creature)
3 Quick Ki, Ki Mode
4 Diamond Soul (Spell Resistance 5+CHA mod+level)
5 Perfect Self (Native Outsider, Damage Reduction 20/magic)

New abilities not listed in core books (all are Supernatural or Spell-Like unless specified otherwise):
Lethal Unarmed Strike(Monk 2): The monk may choose to deal lethal damage instead of subdual when using his fists. This also applies to damage done during a grapple.
Psionic(Monk 3): The Monk is treated as a psionic creature. He can select Psionic Feats, and can gain Psionic Focus as if he was a Psion.
Ki Strike (Monk 5): The monk's fists act as if they had a +1 enhancement bonus. Like weapon enhancements, this increases the monk's unarmed attack bonus, damage, and their ability to sunder or bypass damage reduction. This is a supernatural ability.
Activating or deactivating Ki is a Standard Action that does not draw an Attack of Opportunity. There is a noticeable magical aura around the Monk's hands when this ability is active, and it prevents him from holding items or weapons.
Ki Mode (Hand 3, Hand 5, Body 3, Soul 3): The monk has a new option for his Ki. He may create, using standard weapon enchantments, a new "mode" for his attacks; this new mode has the same total Market Price as the enhancement bonus of his original Ki Strike (which increases through the Ki Power ability, below). Unlike weapons, the Ki Mode does not have to include any enhancement bonus. The Monk may not choose any enchantment that conflicts with his alignment (Chaotic, or Holy/Unholy for Good/Evil Monks), that cannot be applied to a bludgeoning melee weapon, or that simply doesn't make sense (Dancing, Brilliant Energy, Throwing).
Only one Ki Mode may be active at any time. Switching Ki Modes is a Standard Action that does not provoke an Attack of Opportunity.
Ki Power (Hand 2, Hand 4, Foot 4, Body 4): The enhancement bonus of all existing Ki Modes increases by 1. You cannot choose to replace this increase with a different enchantment.
Example: a Monk 13 (Fist 5, Foot 3) has three options for his Ki attacks: a simple +3 attack (+1 for Ki Strike plus two Ki Power upgrades), and two other modes. In our example the first is a +2 Flaming (+1 Flaming when he chose it at Fist 3, then increased the next level), the second is Shocking Lawful. If he now adds another Foot level, he gains a Ki Power upgrade, increasing his modes to +4, +3 Flaming, and +1 Shocking Lawful. If he added a new Ki Mode (from Body 3 or Soul 3), he could pick any combination of abilities with a +4 price.
Critical Fists (Hand 3,5) (Ex): The critical multiplier on a Monk's unarmed attacks increases by one, to x3 at Hand 3 and x4 at Hand 5.
Sustenance (Body 3): The Monk no longer needs to eat or drink to survive.
Hardness (Mind 2): All ability damage dealt to the Monk by spells, spell-like abilities, or psionics is reduced by 1 point.
Manifester (Mind 4): Once per day, the Monk may use one of his spell-like abilities one extra time as a Free Action without counting against his totals for the day. This counts as a quickened spell-like ability.
Solid Mind(Mind 5): The Monk becomes entirely immune to all mind-affecting spells or effects, such as charm person or sleep.
Quick Ki(Soul 3): The Monk may switch to a new Ki Mode as a Free Action a number of times per day equal to his CHA modifier.

(The PHB Monk would be like taking Body, Foot, part of Soul, and the first level of Hand and Mind). You lose a slight bit of power at the top end (since you can't take more than 3 fifth-circle abilities, and that's only if you had 19 in three stats) but you gain in flexibility.

Feedback is appreciated. I'm still shuffling the abilities a bit, but the idea is the first circle are weaker Feats, the second are weak to normal Feats, the third are somewhat strong Feats, the fourth are powerful or very useful abilities, and the fifth are the sort of things you only get near level 20. Some paths go weaker at 2-3 to give better abilities at 4-5.

Quick glance, I do like it. Means I don't have to go out and buy OA to have monks in my campaign have different flavors... nice job.

The only problem that I see is that with Manifester, Quivering Palm could be usable 1/day, +1 time per week.

Aside from that, neeto!

I don't have the books in front of me, but as far as I know, Quivering Palm doesn't count as a Spell-Like Ability (just Supernatural), and therefore the Manifester ability wouldn't help it. It'd still be only 1/week.

The Manifester ability was intended to help with all those other fun toys that are limited to 1/day, like Dimension Door, Etherealness, or pretty much anything from the Eye domain. Getting an extra shot of one of those, AND it's a Free Action, is definitely the sort of power range I'd want in a 4th-circle ability. It's not unbalanced IMHO since it's located in a path that doesn't include any spell-like abilities.

I changed the class slightly, making activating, deactivating, or switching Ki Modes a Standard Action (no AoO) instead of a Free Action.

It was turning out that being able to switch from a +4 weapon to a +1 with other abilities on the fly was awfully strong compared to Quick Drawing weapons.

Now, I might add a new Feat, Quick Ki, that drops it back to a Free Action again. But, it'd have to be limited to a certain number of uses per day (CHA mod?)

Really cool.

I am definitely going to use something like this for when I introduce the eastern monks into my campaign.

A few comments...

Hand & Foot: At first it seemed weird that the Hand was strength and the Foot was dex. They are reversed from traditional associations. But the abilities make sense... just something to consider.

Eye: I realize the early abilities are to balance the 5th circle power, but as they stand it seems a little low-powered up front. Balance the later power against other classes, not against the sum of the monk...

Insight grants a +1 bonus to AC. I consider that to be a slightly more supernatural version of the AC bonus for Wisdom he already gets. What the monk needs now is an insight into the opponents moves that will allow him to penetrate defenses. +1 to attacks?

Vigilance cancels out the benefit of Blind-Fight just a bit much. Maybe Blind Fight could optionally be Alertness or Skill Focus[Spot]?

To balance Precog, maybe play up on the mysticism aspect. Require a one hour 'casting time'. The monk must actually meditate!

Hmm. Guess that's all I have to say. Great idea.

The Hand/Foot thing: well, it was mainly based on the Psion disciplines. The "Foot" ones are Psychoportation-based (DEX) while the "Hand" ones are Psychometabolism (STR). Hand is for attack, Foot is for mobility.

As for the Eye abilities, I think you're underestimating the usefulness of these powers. Some paths have weak or redundant abilities at low levels to make up for the higher stuff (For example, Mind 1 is completely overwritten by Mind 5), but in this case it's more a question of similar abilities that work well together with a bit of overlap.

I've put together a few possible changes at the bottom, but I'll try to explain why I picked these abilities first. The Eye and Mind paths were pretty much built from scratch, so there's still plenty of room for change. I was looking for more non-combat abilities, since the older paths already had plenty of those.

Combat Precognition is +1 Insight AC for 1 hour/level. It stacks with all of their existing AC bonuses, and it's an AC type that isn't found in items. So, the Monk will almost always use it. Combat Precog is one of the few 1st-level powers I've seen Psions and Psychic Warriors keep on constantly. Underpowered? Probably, but very useful and it never gets subsumed by a higher ability.

Blind-Fight lets you reroll melee attacks that miss from concealment. Vigilance gives the equivalent of 30' Darkvision that works to 10' in magical darkness. The two go well together in my experience, especially since Vigilance lasts 1 hour/level. Most races have some sort of night vision anyway, so Blind-Fight's main use was against invisibility, and that doesn't change until you get to See Invis.

See Invis is tricky. Invisibility is such a huge part of 3E combat that most parties have to find ways to deal with it. Being able to cast See Invis when you need it can be huge. But, on the other hand, no one will have made it to level 10 or so without having a way to neutralize invisibility already.
So, with See Invis to handle invisibility and Vigilance to handle darkness, what's the point of Blind-Fight? Well, for one thing, it's always on. See Invis doesn't last long enough to really make you safe.

Precognition was an unusual choice, I know. It takes 10 minutes to cast, and gives you a "vision" full of information, superior to a normal divination. Sure, in a combat-heavy campaign no one's going to care about this one. In a plot-driven campaign, it's crucial to be able to find out exactly what's going on, and I was tired of having the Monk be left out of that. Besides, meditating for visions seemed very in-character.
I was originally going to put True Seeing at Eye 5 but there was too much overlap with the earlier stuff, and I wanted something really different.

If you think this path is underpowered, you could bump Vigilance to 2/day and See Invis to 3/day or something. As a general rule I was using 1 hr/level gives 1/day, something in minutes/level gives 2/day, and anything shorter would give 3/day.

**************
Other possibilities I was considering:
1> Move Blind-Fight down to Eye 1 and insert Combat Prescience at Eye 2. Prescience adds a +2 insight bonus to your attack roll instead of AC, but doesn't last very long (1 min/level).
2> Put Uncanny Dodge (surprise) in there, maybe replacing the See Invis.
3> Remove either See Invis or Vigilance, put the remaining one at 3, and at 4 put in Aura Sight (as the power). It's like a more powerful version of Detect Magic/monsters/objects.

So let's say the new version of Eye was:
1 Blind-Fight
2 Combat Prescience (2/day)
3 (Either Vigilance 1/day, See Invis 2/day, or Uncanny Dodge (surprise), I haven't decided)
4 Aura Sight (2/day)
5 Precognition (1/day)

Another possibility would be to move Precognition down to 4 and put Shield of Prudence (+6 Insight bonus to AC) at 5, but that seems a bit overpowered.

The easiest way I've found to make Monk customizable, as well as avoiding the higher-level "silly" Monk powers, is to multiclass them. Fighter and Psychic Warrior are the best classes to do this, depending on whether you want to focus on straight combat or on more supernatural abilities.

It keeps Monks more reasonable, without seriously impacting their power level-- they're just a lot better at using their less ridiculous abilities.

Wow, I'm surprised this thing got bumped, it's been a month. Anyhoo, it's a fair point. Monk multiclasses great with Psychic Warrior, except that under the core rules Monks don't multiclass well at all since you can't go back, but that's a commonly house-ruled thing.

In my experience, it ends up working the other way. If you want a Monk/PW cross, you're better off just taking PW all the way and taking Feats like Speed of Thought and Improved Unarmed Strike. The various Psychometabolism powers substitute nicely for the Monk abilities. This keeps Monks from being great multiclassers; you might see someone take 1 level of Monk, but you won't see many Monks take 1 level of something else.

That's the reason I did this in the first place. The core Monk is so limited that you're better off taking a more flexible class like Psychic Warrior and using the Feats/spells to gain those Monk abilities you really wanted, and uneven multiclassing isn't really an option for anyone other than Humans and Half-Elves. Even multiclassing isn't possible thanks to the Monk restriction.

I hate limited classes. IMC, we reworked the Monk, Barbarian, Paladin, and Ranger pretty heavily, under the design concept that every class should:
A> Give the CHARACTER options during combat, not just the same "I attack him with my weapon" over and over. Call it "tactical flexibility". To a lesser extent, this is also day-to-day flexibility; the ability to memorize different spells each day based on what you plan on fighting, for example.
B> Give the PLAYER choices as the character progresses. Call it "strategic flexibility". A Fighter picks new Feats, a Sorcerer picks new known spells, things like that.
Monks and Barbarians have very little strategic flexibility in the PHB. Rangers get to pick Favored Enemies, Rogues get high-level abilities, and Paladins get the limited choice of a Mount, or they'd be in the same category. If I'm a level 15 Monk, I'll be identical to every other level 15 Monk, except for the general Feats, my attributes, and how I distributed my skill points.

It's not that this lack of flexibility can't be worked around by multiclassing, it's that it shouldn't HAVE to be. Core classes should not be so limited; PrCs shouldn't be required just to keep the game interesting. That's why my alt.Monk is designed the way it is; the player has some choices as to what kind of Monk he wants to be, and there are more "active" abilities to choose from (the spell-like abilities, the new Ki modes, etc.) during combat.
Now, to make up for an increase in flexibility, you should reduce power a bit. While all the 5th-circle abilities I've given the Monk seem impressive, realize that he can't get more than 3, and even that would be difficult.

Then raise this monk up into the Epic levels. Level 5 in everything. Hahahahaha.

Another thing against psychic warriors. I'm not using psionics. Largely because 3rd edition psionics isn't psionics, IMO. So a monk with variable, cool abilities, and maybe the ability to make use of some modded psionic feats is what I'll be going for.

And speaking of feats... should there be a feat that lets you advance on one of those paths?

And yet another consideration. Prestige classes based on this monk could open up additional paths. For example, the Shadow Hand prestige class has a path that adds poison, death, and shadow stuff...