quarter staff is a Monk wep, right? If so this is a 2 handed weapon with reach potential and as a 2 hander it gives +4 to trip and disarm right?
Being two-handed only means +4 disarm, and possibly only for the purposes of defending against disarm, I forget. It does nothing at all to help with tripping, and unless the weapon lets you trip with it, you can't even use it for that. Also note that when flurrying at least, monk adds 1x str mod to all damage, regardless of whether it's a light weapon or being used in both hands, though he could 2H the staff for more str damage when not flurrying. Finally, a quarterstaff by RAW has no "reach potential."
Well, if he had agreed with the other designers, he wouldn't have written the feat, he'd have changed the language in the "nat/manu" section to be more explicit...unless he had the additional motive of making it available to all classes.
I know. If the designers of 3E actually knew a damn thing about how to make the monk decent and playable...we wouldn't b having this thread. So it's not really surprising that he stuck to his guns. I was just hoping for some sort of miraculous redemption or change of heart. "Looking back, I can see now that I was wrong" type of deal. *Sigh* Oh well.
This is how i think I'm going to take my monk, I was stuck on the spiked chain because I was envisioning a real life monk with the chain whip
But since i can just take a long spear for tripping purposes only and not need to be able to attack with it its perfect.
Thanks for all the comments guys, i appreciate the attention, very helpful.
It seems that sad truth is that there really is no actual monk class, its just there to help the other classes learn a little kung fu.
Again, you need a tripping weapon to trip with. I think the MIC Tripping enhancement, which is pricy at +2, gives a weapon the ability to trip if it couldn't already, along with the +2 trip bonus.
And there is a monk class, and in an ideal world it wouldn't suck and would be THE method to easily make your character a kung fu god. It's 3E, so there'd still be other ways, probably including spellcasting, since they can outshine anyone at anything, but monk would be by far the simplest and most direct and set the benchmark for what a martial artist can do (instead of the Swordsage being that benchmark).
Is that a meteor hammer? I like those things. Probably impractical in real life usage for fighting, but D&D's a fantasy game, so having a crazy exotic weapon modelled after that except one that DOES work fine in combat should be doable. Closest thing to it is the spiked chain right now, I suppose.
Mind you, they're fun in Gestalt, with high point buy, for crazy OTT wire-fu/supers/other shenanigans.
Caster for the match, naturally.
If it's a divine caster. Or you can take a feat to make monk stuff int or cha-based. Otherwise, you're now elevating one of the monk's only two actual dump stats to become the most important stat, and making the MAD reach nuclear heights of destruction. And cool as monk//caster is, I think people overestimate the value of monk's unarmored AC vs. cheap mithral, twilight enhancement, and good ol' (greater) mage armor (last one does stack w/ monk AC, to be fair). And I think they overvalue the idea of punching full AC to do damage and deliver touch spells, in a game where pretty much everyone's got a step higher BAB than normal (ie, the monster AC will be adjusted to compensate). Spells make much of the monk's mobility unnecessary, though since mon speed stacks on anything it is good for super fly speeds. But the combo isn't that amazing, IMHO.
