Advice needed on tactics

[Plane Sailing]

nb, my melee monk is proving fine as a melee machine alongside the other fighters, but it turns out that he is also great at the 'traditional' wizard slaying role - in the last two big fights he has detected the invisible wizard, run up and grappled him to death in short order. Good for melee damage means good for grapple damage too!

Cheers

 

[frankthedm]

I have seen Monks work fine, but they are fearlessly aggressive Flying Kick maniacs, have high Str, are loaded to the gills with offensive feats, and keep falling over unconscious from going negative HP.

Then they are lucky, most of the times i see the monk go unconscious right in the middle of the critter's full atack routine, causing

FINISH HIM!

to enter all the minds of those at the table.

 

[CatharticMoment]

Improved Initiative, Power Attack, Run, Weapon Finesse, Weapon Focus(Unarmed Strike)"

Am I missing something? Does Eberron give bonus feats?

Apart from bonus monk feats, shouldn't a 4th level character have only 3 feats (one at first level, one for being human and one at 3rd)

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

Am I missing something? Does Eberron give bonus feats?

Apart from bonus monk feats, shouldn't a 4th level character have only 3 feats (one at first level, one for being human and one at 3rd)

The Monk class gives a limited selection of bonus feats, also, although that does not quite answer your question either because I must be missing something, too.

 

[ajanders]

Tactical Responses

Thanks all, for your advice.
Some points I should clarify, as there are some Unearthed Arcana rules I talked my GM into using.

The character uses a variant Fighting Style from page 52 of the Unearthed Arcana book: Sleeping Tiger.
At 1st level the character recieves Weapon Finesse as a monk feat. At 2nd, Improved Initiative. At 6th, Improved Sunder. (This may make me very unpopular). At 6th level, the character gets a d6 sneak attack bonus if they use a light melee weapon, as long as he has the Power Attack Feat and 9 ranks of Hide.
Thus the focus on hiding
My list of feats counts the style feats as regular feats: it's an artifact of my character generator.
Skills
Good point on the diminishing returns with Tumble...I'm a little less sure about the Hide and Move Silently: I wanted to keep the ninja aspect of disappearing in a puff of smoke, so the -10 penalty to Hide with a distraction is going to be a good friend of mine.
I also wanted to be able to move not just quietly, but quickly, and there's a -5 penalty there as well. Though as a monk, half my base movement can be surprisingly quick.
Abilities
With the style, and my party function of scouting, I elected to keep the dex high, but still have enough strength to get Power Attack. Thus the arrangement of Strength and Dex.
Feats
Well, this was challenging and where I'm particularly glad to have help. I like the sneak attack bonus ability of the style, and I think I'm going to stick with that. The Weapon Focus was an attempt to maximize my hitting potential, so I could turn it into power attack damage. Run was meant to increase my climbing and silent movement speed as well as my ground speed, but upon observation, it does something different than I thought it does. So I've been wondering what feat I could replace it with that is available to a first level monk.
Cleave is a darn good idea -- big thanks for the cinematic thought. Other thoughts include Lightning Reflexes, to get the most out of that evasion ability, Blooded (+2 Spot/+2 Initiative), to see better and control the flow of combat more effectively, Improved Overbear (on the theory that a prone opponent is very vulnerable to Power Attack stomping) and perhaps Blindfighting (combine with smokesticks to gain physical protection...but there may be some issues with that).
Any feedback appreciated, as always.

 

[Nail]

The key about a monk's AC is that it is very buffable. A friendly mage with a mage armor spell will boost the monk's AC to 18.

Right!

By level 12, the Monk's AC (after magic items and buffs) can be in the mid-thirties, at least. How about wands of Mage Armor & Shield?

 

[nak9788]

The "problem" may not be with your character or your party. If you are finding yourself almost useless most of the time because the rest of the party destroys every bad guy (or almost everyone) before you get a chance to do anything, it may be because the bad guys the DM is throwing at you are too weak.

We have had a couple of occasions where this has happened, where someone basically does nothing and the battle is over. On average, EVERYONE should be actively engaged for awhile before the battle is over. In that case, you have the opportunity to find out exactly what your character is capable of, what he is good for, and how to make him better.

Of course, not every encounter needs to be a huge battle, but the main ones should have enough guys (or more powerful monsters) so that everyone in the party is needed to prevent someone from getting hacked to pieces. This way, you have the opportunit to find your own niche in the party.

Just ask you DM to include nastier badies, one's that should easily withstand the sorcerer's opening attack (as well as the follow-ups by the fighter, ranger, etc).

 

[moritheil]

And hp. You shouldn't be meleeing if you can't take the melee hits.

The main utility of the monk, it seems to me, is as a class for races that are going to get some other sort of benefit. For example, everyone knows how great ghosts and vampires with levels in monk are.

A monk can still jump into melee with proper party tactics, but it requires liberal use of area damage spells that the monk can save against/resist and the enemies presumably can't. Basically this use of the monk is as bait, and for certain area spells, a fire elemental will do just as well - but that takes valuable time. A monk standing somewhere whaling on an enemy encourages enemies to stick around and congregate near him rather than running past to take out your spellcasters, and your spellcasters can return the favor by dropping the health of all the enemies in the area, which might not work as well if, say, a fighter was filling this role.

Don't forget that monks have tumble and can be useful to shut down enemy spellcasters (provided they aren't ogre mages or the like,) as others have pointed out.

 

[S'mon]

I've seen monks be highly effective cogs in the party meachine by playing to their strengths rather than their weaknesses. Some things I've seen them do:

1. Trip the enemy warriors fighting your warriors - easy to do, simple and very effective when your own melee brute can then take advantage of the downed foe.

2. Disarm the enemy warrior - with an unarmed disarm, you end up holding their weapon! This is a horribly effective (and embarrassing) tactic.

3. Dash into the middle of the enemy mooks - they focus attacks on you, which miss due to your good AC. Then your party Wiz/Sorc fireballs, centred on you. You take no damage due to Imp Evasion while all the mooks get crisped.

4. Tie up enemy spellcasters - great touch AC makes enemy Clerics' touch spells ineffective. Grappling enemy wizards is possible, but leaves you vulnerable so I generally don't recommend it.

What monks suck at is battling huge non-humanoid melee monsters, these should be avoided. Let the Fighters & fireballers deal with them.

 

[S'mon]

Monks, like Paladins, need good stats. With 25 PB I would probably not recommend playing a Monk. At 28 PB you can make an ok Monk - STR 14 DEX 14 WIS 14 is a good start, INT 10 CON 12 CHA 8 is only 24 PB but I'd recommend CON 14 for the hp and maybe INT 12 for the skills, which is 28 points. Monks don't really have a dump stat except CHA, and benefit far more from balanced stats (lots of 14s); whereas a Fighter might be best to have STR 18 and lots of 8s, this is a really really bad idea for a Monk.