Beefing up a monk

[Lord Pendragon]

In my experience it is quite opposite. His defensive capabilities may become better. But his offensive power does not shine at higher levels due to low BAB and relatively low damage outputs (1d20 fist is no better than a +5 Holy Keen Wounding Greatsword made of Starmetal).

Sure, except that the monk now has the money that the fighter spent on his +5 Holy Keen Wounding Starmetal Greatsword to purchase a few items to improve his own abilities. Perhaps an item that allows him to Polymorph into a Fire Giant, for instance.

I think that it's important to note, when considering the monk's effectiveness in combat, that there are more ways to be effective than dealing raw damage. One player in my current game plays a were-rat. He's got a mediocre strength at best, and simply does not deal a lot of damage. Instead, he's built his character to provide one of his party-mates (who does have a good strength,) with extra opportunities to attack. Improved Trip allows him to both deny an opponent a full attack, and provide nearby allies with an AoO when the foe tries to stand up. And of course the PC himself gets an AoO as well. The PC does very well in combat. He's not the greatest damage dealer personally, but he enables a lot more damage to be done.

The monk can be thought of similarly. He can trip and disarm and grapple the heck out of his foes. His speed makes the Spring Attack chain quite effective. Spring in, disarm weapon, carry weapon with you as you spring far away. etc. etc.

Also, note that light weapons can be used in a grapple. It's a wise monk that keeps a few special monk weapons made of silver, cold iron, and adamantine tucked away in his gi. A d4+strength without worrying about damage reduction is far preferable to a d8+strength against DR 10/silver. Or even 2d8. At higher levels, when the monk encounters a DR-laden foe, he can get the cleric to zap the effective monk weapon with Greater Magic Weapon to boost its effectiveness even further.

 

[daBooj]

The monki I play doesn't do well against DR. He doesn't do that great as a front line fighter, but doesn't have to be. He does ok, but mostly supports the front line fighter.

But he's a drunken master, now. And when that's combined with his speed, he gets to do things like charging around obstacles to hit the sorc who is pummeling the group. He has run and hid while the party was captured, and then freed them later (everyone else was suprised, monk actually made a h/ms check because of where he was). He runs circles around the group to come in for the flanking position or to take out ranged attackers. He's saved the party a few times, and the party has saved him once or twice as well.

we're also playing in an area with lots of antimagic fields, that's more ok to him than the others.

But really, he's been fun to play. Started out being classic monk who didn't care for money, had a strange worldview and cared for none of the creature comforts the others in the group wanted. Then he started to become a hedonist, found alcohol and gambling. Discovered fine dinning and good wine. Started spending more time in bars. All this to lead up to him taking levels in drunken master (decided I wanted to go for it, but needed a couple of levels before I could meet the pre reqs. Didn't tell anyone in the campaign why the change was going on.)

I play these chars for the fun of playing them, and try to use them as best I can. All told, my monk can be a lot of fun to play. (but I'm enjoying the evil campaign with my drow/nightmare taurian cleric far more right now)

 

[Doctor Shaft]

You should definitely look at the monk as the "jack-of-all-trades" class in D&D. They can do, in one form or another, nearly all the things that the other classes can do, wrapped in a neat little package. About the only thing a monk can't do in some form is control animals. Otherwise, they can imitate some small aspect of every other class. You should build your monk with versatility in mind.

If you don't start out with really awesome stats or an abundance of magical items, then you shouldn't play a monk if the DM just sets up a vanilla, raw damage campaign. There's no such thing as a pure monk, or monk with mostly monk levels, that excels at damage output and being a straight combat master. Their role is to be able to do a variety of things that either A) makes them hard to kill or B) allows them to control the map with their movement and skills.

I even play a monk using the point buy system. He has the following stats.

14, 14, 14, 13, 14, 10

Not the most efficient build out there, but he's extremely versatile, I think. He can't serve as a tank, and he'll get hit more often than not because he's not exactly a "dex" build, but he's very well rounded. There's almost never been a time where I've found my monk unable to participate in a task. If he wants to hide and move silently, he can do it reasonably well. If he wants to fight, he can do it reasonably well. Dump stat is not going to be str, and in retrospect i wish i'd just dumped more power into his str, but so be it.

Some people say a monk should be some kind of high AC monster. I disagree. I think a monk is all about being a low AC trickster. You don't wear armor for a reason. Don't try too hard making up for it. Sure, you can use feats like expertise in conjuntion with fighting defensively and skills like tumble to get out of harms way and cause havoc, and the spring attack chain is very effective as well, but trying to create a monk that is "naturally" hard to hit is an excercise in futility. Why waste the resources?

Monk's belt always works. Oriental Adventures has some of the coolest monk feats out there, and it again relies on a monk being a trickster rather than a full-out damage guy. If you have low AC and then use karmic strike, you can capitilize on the fact that you don't expect your opponent to really miss their attacks against you. So why waste all that time trying to dodge something you have no hopes of dodging? Might as well hit back with something vicious, I say.

 

[Zimbel]

The player in my game that runs a monk NEVER seems to shine in combat. Everyone is 7th lvl except for him which he'll hit 7th after our next session. The sorcerer is doing massive lightning bolt damage now, our half-giant fighter lays into guys with his +8 bonus to Str, and even the Cleric with his 20 Str always gets his good hits in without even buffing with spells. But the monk doesn't do squat.

Problem #1: Monk Str 13, Cleric 20, Fighter 26. At LV 7, a +4 - +7 relative mod to str is huge. I'd expect the Monk to do poorly. Even if he has a nice Dex, and is using Weapon Finesse, he simply can't deal out comperable damage without Str. Str is more important for a Monk than a standard 1 big weapon front-liner, not less. Frankly, my most recent Monk PC was dealing more damage/round than either of our front-line fighters- sometimes more than both combined (but our Str were essentially the same).

Frankly if I rolled very badly, I wouldn't play a Monk.

The player created him as a Dwarven "grappling" monk with a 13 Str. Every combat is the same, he gets in a grapple, does about 4 damage if he's lucky to even strike the guy, and he usually does 0 damage due to DR. The reason he grapples is because he does automatic damage the first round on a successful grapple. He also has some feats that supposedly allow him to be a better grappler. But I haven't seen how this helps him at all.

Problem #2: Grappling as a primary attack tends to be a tougher build. In summary, choose a large race, with a high Str, and a big reach. Unfortunately, he has none of this. A Perm. Enlarge should help a bit, though. Note that he should be piercing DR/ Magic with no problem.

The sorcerer used her LB spell for the first time and did 34 points of damage. The monk player makes a side comment about how when he's 20th level he'll be doing 2d10 damage or something. If a sorcerer at 7th lvl is already doing more damage than a 20th lvl monk, I must be overlooking the monks abilities. In what ways is the monk supposed to be affective?

2d10 is base, and that's per attack. Mind you, the Sorcerer will almost certaintely be doing more damage then, too (at least on the Sorcerer's better rounds), but a standard well-built monk should be able to tack at least +15 to each attack's damage at LV 20. Even with the current poor choices, he should be able to ek out around +11 at LV 20, which roughly doubles the damage. Multiply that by up to 5 hits, and you may find that around 105 points/damage/round (under optimal circumstances) is not unreasonable.

The Monk should be effective in primarily the following ways: defeating large numbers of low CR creatures, and having high mobility. They are also one of the better grapplers. A number of builds can give them very nice ACs at mid-high level.

I've never been a big fan of the monk so I'm not very inventive with monk creations. What can I do to help make the monk player shine in combat with more damaging attacks? Maybe I should be suggesting some feats or sticking some magic items in there for him. Any advice from the monk fans?

I'd suggest looking at the Oathsworn from Arcana Evolved/ AU (essentially a varient monk). The most useful ability they have is to slowly be able to ignore DR of any type. You could use this instead of the PH's DR (Magic/ Lawful/ Adamantite) treatment, if you felt inclined. It's over 3 abilities, but the following is the most important one for the largest number of levels levels:

Lesser Shattering Strike (Su): At 7th level and higher, all the Oathsworn’s unarmed attacks ignores 1 point of damage reduction or hardness per 2 class levels (so 3 points are ignored at LV 7). This extends to any makeshift weapons the Oathsworn makes out of handy objects.

 

[silvertable81]

Look into the Reaping Mauler PrC from Complete Warrior. If he maintains a grapple for a certain number of rounds (IIRC 5 rounds) enemy must SAVE OR DIE.

Also, take 13 ranks in Use Rope, then multi into the Exemplar from Complete Adventurer. If you can't pin 'em down, Tie 'em up.