Monk/Psywar - or fist of Zuoken?

[Plane Sailing]

OK, I've got a Monk who is currently 4th level. I want to take him into psionics routes and my DM is happy with Monks freely multiclassing.

The big choice I've got is whether to dip in and out of Psywar, or wait a while longer and try and go for Fist of Zuoken prestige class.

The big downside of the prestige class route is that you need to have the Wild Talent feat which I can't take until 6th level, making 7th level the earliest I could get into the prestige class. The Prestige class has the advantage of full monk speed increases and unarmed damage progression (and faster power acquisition with more pp gained too). It has the disadvantage of not getting any psionic feats (like the unarmed version of psionic weapon or unavoidable touch) until 9th level at least.

On the other hand, taking a level of PsyWar at 5th opens up the possibility of gaining a psionic feat at 5th and another two psionic feats at 6th (one of which could be the wild talent feat needed to continue to enter the prestige class at 7th if I wished but that effectively costs another BAB point). The overall plan on the PsyWar route would be to take no more than 4 levels of Psywar, switching back to monk once Hustle was available.

So, ENworld - what do you think? What would be the best option to go for?

n.b. I'm thinking that a jolly good first power to take (whichever route) would be Expansion - the reach, grapple bonus and big damage boost seems like a real winner. Other strong candidates are Inertial Armour (good AC boost for a long while) or one of the precognition/prescience powers which affect hit/damage/AC. Any thoughts on that matter?

Cheers

 

[Urbanmech]

I would skip Expansion as your first power. With the erratta it would only last 1 round. It might be a good power to take at 4+ level when you can extend the duration to 10 min/level. Inertial Armor or Force Screen are probably good 1st level powers to take right off the bat.

I'm not sure which route to go as far as the psychic warrior vs fist goes. The extra feats granted by psychic warrior look pretty tempting, but extra speed and unarmed damage stacking is also nothing to sneeze at. I guess it comes down to how much you want the feats vs the monk abilities.

 

[Scion]

The fist all the way

You lose out on a pretty good amount of stuff, but it should be easy enough to make up for a good portion of it through psionic abilities.

I would suggest seeking out someone for a psychic reformation for a couple of levels back to change out whatever feat you have, maybe even all of them (picking up a bunch of psychic feats). Seems like a great reason to suddenly have a reason to pick up the class, and a great bit of roleplaying to get it working properly.

A few points though, while some good stuff is gained there is also a lot of good stuff missing.

d6 hd vs d8 hd. Lack of many good monk abilities (such as SR). Loss of a good fort save.

In exchange for a total manifestor level of 10 for 10 powers

Might need to get the dm to transfer over the spellcasting feat to give you extra manifestor levels to make the powers last long enough to matter (hard to say if it will matter).

 

[Spatula]

I've been thinking of a similar character myself recently. There are a lot of downsides to taking levels in psychic warrior: slow progression of PP and new power level access, lack of advancement of monk abilities, lack of skill points and good class skills.

Fist of Zuoken fixes those problems but adds some of its own: low HD, low Fort save, fewer bonus feats, have to wait before you can take levels in it. But you get PP at a much faster rate, you get access to new power levels every two class levels, and some of your monk abilities advance.

I would chose the PrC.

The big downside of the prestige class route is that you need to have the Wild Talent feat which I can't take until 6th level, making 7th level the earliest I could get into the prestige class.

7th level would be your first Fist level, but that's the minimum anyway (as you need 9 ranks in a skill in order to qualify).

 

[Plane Sailing]

Thanks for your advice.

I'd not noticed that there was errata about Expansion. Major pain (although Expansion as written probably did come into the "too good to be true" bracket). Just have to purchase an Enlarge Person wand for the resident sorcerer

The only benefit I can see to PsyWar is getting earlier access to psionic fist and thus access to Greater Psionic Fist at 9th level (with fist of zuoken they would have to be 9th and 12th respectively), so FoZ seems a better bet.

Still, he's got to survive that far first! Getting critically hit by a gargantuan centipede nearly put an early end to his career last Sunday.

Cheers