Luck hates monks

[thud13x]

Uh, Burgar smash?

Heya, Nik.

Jonath

BERGAR SMASH! Quite the popular saying around the table. Not that we have good saying for your current character. That drunk jerk.



Good to be married, right Patrick?

 

[Christopher Lambert]

IME it's rogues who suffer from that kind of luck, from low-level to high.

 

[shilsen]

Maybe the monks in your game like to rack up bad karma.

Depending on the situation, bad kama is better than no kama

 

[Olaf the Stout]

The shortest-lived character I have ever seen is a monk (wasn't my character). Was mauled to death on the surprise round of his first combat by dire lions.

AR

Thanks Altamont Ravenard for making everyone around me at work look at me to see what it was that I found so funny!

I just got this image of this newbie monk, fresh out of the monastery, slightly nervous about putting his years of training into practice when he is pounced on and mauled before he can even move.

 

[Gez]

I don't know about luck overall, but I have constated that paladins have a very hard time rolling an Init above 5...

 

[Galethorn]

A strange thing, luck

In my experience, I've found the following flukes to hold true, generally speaking;

Rogues fail routine dexterity-based skill checks...

Monks are ineffectual in melee...

Paladins roll terrible initiative, but kill all the evil minions/undead anyway...

My warriors always seem to roll natural 20s on BBEGs, which led to the following;

-My ranger shot a goblin king between the eyes,

-My barbarian threw the grand-pasha of Calimport down a dimensional toilet into the abyss

-The same barbarian, way back at level 2, did ~80% of the damage to (and landed the killing blow on) a young black dragon in three hits. How? Flaming +1 greatsword, 18 base strength, the UA rage variant (whirling frenzy), and three attacks, each of which was a natural 20, followed by rolls of 8-12 on the 2d6. It attacked us because the rogue tripped on its head while it was asleep.

 

[SteelDraco]

I don't know about luck overall, but I have constated that paladins have a very hard time rolling an Init above 5...

My swashbuckling paladin has a +5 to his initiative roll, so that's not a problem for me. One build I was thinking about had something ungodly like +12, with Dex 20, Improved Initiative, and a Rokugan feat that lets you add your Intelligence modifier to your initative. Didn't end up taking that PrC, though, because I couldn't ever find the dojo. *sigh*

Monks, in my experience, don't have bad luck - people just think of them as front-line fighters, which they aren't. At least, not most of the time. I played a dwarf fighter/monk with a three-section staff that was really tough, with Power Attack and TWF. He was a front-line fighter. Most don't have the Strength or BAB to do that, though, and end up better as secondary fighters or mage-killers.

 

[reveal]

Monks, in my experience, don't have bad luck - people just think of them as front-line fighters, which they aren't. At least, not most of the time. I played a dwarf fighter/monk with a three-section staff that was really tough, with Power Attack and TWF. He was a front-line fighter. Most don't have the Strength or BAB to do that, though, and end up better as secondary fighters or mage-killers.

I think that all depends on what you want your monk and how much you metagame, honestly. We started an epic level campaign as 27th level characters so I picked a monk. After spending all the gold available (2.9 million) and choosing the Half-Ogre template, my monk has attacks of 35/35/30/25 for a full round, 35/35/35/35/30/25 on a Flurry of Blows, and does damage of 6d8+16(+4d6 if evil) on each hit. Oh and a crit range of 18-20 with Vorpal on a nat 20. Quiet lethal, trust me, and a fantastic front line fighter with an AC of 51.

Now if my dice would just cooperate...

 

[Victim]

I agree, especially with Spot checks. Another character in my group has the same spot modifier as my character. Between him and my monk, the rolls are average - however, I'd get like 5, and he'd get 15. Sure, it's a fluke. However, when it's happened on about 90% of the spot checks we make over the entire time when play, it gets really annoying.

 

[Goblyn]

Actually, IME monks have had the worst luck as well ... and managed to not die. The most painful encounters involved the monk either not managing to hit, managing critical misses and almost falling to his death because of it, being used as a weapon against the other PCs, or just plain scouting and falling five stories. At level 1. And not dieing.

Umm...[/rant]