Building a Monk

[Ceska]

What about Superior Unarmed Strike fom ToB? Sounds like a good feat choice to me...

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

Get a hold of Complete Champion and check out Fist of the Forest. Interesting take on a different sort of monk.

Just don't plan on wearing any magic items on your feet or hands.

Brad

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

A Half-giant has the unarmed strike damage of a Large monk, right? In that case, taking Improved Natural Attack would give you the damage of a Huge monk. That sounds nice.

No.

Half-giants and goliaths' Powerful Build ability lets them use Large weapons w/o penalty. That does NOT mean they count as Large for purposes of unarmed strike.

Now, a Goliath Barbarian-Chaos Monk who takes the 1st-level Brb sub ability from Races of Stone becomes Large when raging, and at that point would do damage as a Huge monk with Improved Natural Attack. But that's kind of a cheesy combo.

Anyone have any experience with this type of monk? Is the +1 LA with it?

I'm not particularly happy with Fist of Zuoken, it seems like you give up a lot for not terribly useful powers that suck up actions. The psionic feats are pretty good, potentially, but I've never used them.

A +1 LA is probably okay for a monk. Goliaths get +4 Str, -2 Dex, and +2 Con, which is very nice for hitting things. Half-giants are slightly weaker, but they get their fun Stomp ability, which about evens things out.

Brad

 

[Darklone]

Conversely, a monk of the same level will have a real hard time landing their stunning fist attempt every time they try it. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy playing monks and I try to use Stunning Fist, I just feel like I only land it once out of every ten tries (I'm sure I'm exaggerating and it's a little more frequent than that, but hey) and then I have to deal with their saving throw.

With 18 wis and ability focus, a level 10 monk has a DC of 23 and a level 10 fighter has a fort save of +10 (with 16 constitution). On a 13 of better (40% of the time), my stunning fist won't work. And that's still only if I land the attack.

I do know that my campaigns tend to be NPC heavy and monsters light. That may screw my outlook on this topic... still I remember many fights the monk won because of Stunning fist. Granted, it's pretty weak against monsters... but against anything that holds a weapon, it rocks even if you only score every third attempt. And it does not take extra actions to use.

 

[The Blow Leprechaun]

Oh, I have OA, as well. That might be useful.

It's been a long time since I played with the OA book, but don't monks in that get an extra attack or something ridiculous? I remember there being something really stupid about monks from OA. You could always see if your DM will let you have that.

I had a tattooed monk cohort out of the OA book, and even though she was 2 levels behind the rest of the party, she still was able to whoop up on everything we faced. By the time you're done with it, if you have the Crab tattoo that's DR 10/magic - that's pretty sweet. Combine the Butterfly and Dragonfly tattoos for a +7 to your AC when you want it. That's the Complete Warrior tattooed monk I'm looking at. I think the OA one is better.

 

[Quartz]

If you're starting at 5th level, you might consider Ftr 2 / Mk 3 for the feats.

And Stunning Fist is not for use on the BBEG but for second rank guys. Stun them and let the rogue Sneak Attack them.

 

[DreadArchon]

Doubling of damage is nice, but apart from DR, hitting twice is just as good. And when you add in things like haste, which won't work with decisive strike but will with flurry... well, I'm not sure why anyone would take decisive strike.

Cleave, Combat Reflexes, Robilar's Gambit, dips into Monk rather than full progression, and Sundermonkery come to mind immediately.

Note that Stunning Fist is also useful as a battery now, much like Bardic Music or Turn Undead. Fiery Fist, hadouken ki blast, etc. And a monk can fire it off all over the place due to many uses per day, unlike classes who have individually more useful abilities (like Smite Evil).

 

[Ruslanchik]

So when y'all have played monks before, have you focused on making you Stunning Fist stronger--Ability Focus, Rapid Stunning, Extra Stunning? Have you focused on defensive things like Combat expertise? Or things that will make your regular attacks better--power attack, then some of the OA/CW feats like Roundabout Kick?

I'm just trying to get an idea on what's the most fun and viable, having never done this before.

Thanks

 

[Cameron]

It's been a long time since I played with the OA book, but don't monks in that get an extra attack or something ridiculous? I remember there being something really stupid about monks from OA. You could always see if your DM will let you have that.

I had a tattooed monk cohort out of the OA book, and even though she was 2 levels behind the rest of the party, she still was able to whoop up on everything we faced. By the time you're done with it, if you have the Crab tattoo that's DR 10/magic - that's pretty sweet. Combine the Butterfly and Dragonfly tattoos for a +7 to your AC when you want it. That's the Complete Warrior tattooed monk I'm looking at. I think the OA one is better.

OA just allows you to multi-class as a Monk (it removed the multi-class restrictions), added Knowledge (Religion) as a class skill, and had a bunch of prestige classes that were Monk oriented. Other than that, the Monk is as written.

 

[Legildur]

Wis is better for a monk since you'd rather lose your dex bonus to AC than the Wis bonus... and Stunning fist is IMHO better than most people seem to think.

I've found it to be unreliable, but nice when it happens.

However, it is still a gimme for the bonus feat. I played a trip based monk where I took Weakening Touch (Complete Warrior) at 6th level (Improved Natural Attack wasn't available) and the ability to impose a -6 Strength penalty for 1 minute (for the use of a stunning fist attempt) was invaluable in reducing the opponent's attack bonus, damage, and ability to resist special combat maneuvers.