Monk tank.

[Zaruthustran]

One of the neat changes in 3.5 is that Monks lose very little when they wear armor:

When wearing armor, using a shield, or carrying a medium or heavy load, a monk loses her AC bonus, as well as her fast movement and flurry of blows abilities.

So, I was thinking of making a Half-orc Fighter 1/Monk X build. Start with Fighter for hit points, take Two Weapon Fighting as a fighter feat to duplicate the Flurry ability, wear spiked plate mail, and go to town. Carry a suit of light armor when you expect area affect attacks, so you can use Evasion. Use a spiked chain or other two-handed reach weapon and kick as your Two-weapon attack.

Stats: High Str, Dex, and Con

Feats:
Ftr1: Two Weapon Fighting (Fighter feat: Power Attack)
Monk1: Improved Unarmed Strike, Flurry (Monk feat: Improved Grapple)
Monk2: Exotic Weapon Prof: Spiked Chain, Evasion, (Monk feat: Combat Reflexes)
Monk3: Still mind
Monk4: Ki strike (magic), slow fall
Monk5: Purity of body, Cleave
Monk6: Improved Trip

Sound cool?

-z

 

[jgsugden]

Your main benefit here is getting armor. Unfortunately, this benefit is a losing proposition.

A monk with a 14 wisdom and 16 dex has a 15 AC. The same character in full plate would have a 19 AC. The armor sounds good, right? Wrong.

Full plate costs 1500 gold. A wand of mage armor costs 750 gold. The monk can't use it, but if he buys it, the party sorcerer/wizard can zap it at him every hour. His AC jumps up to 19 as well. That wand of 50 charges can last a *long time*. When it runs out, the party wizard/sorcerer may be able to provide you with a longer lasting mage armor spell until you can get superior bracers.

What about magic armor? It is cheaper to get magic armor than to improve the monk AC via ability enhancement and bracers of AC, but in the long run, the monk AC outclasses the fighter AC from armor and dex. Armor plus dex, under the core rules, is maxed out at +13 armor (+5 full plate) and +3 dex (if the full plate is mithril). A total of +16. A monk, on the other hand, can pretty easily get an armor bonus of +8 from bracers, a dex of 24 (+7 to AC), a wisdom of 20 (+5 to AC) and a monk class bonus to AC of +4. A total of 24, or eight higher than the same character in full plate. Your exact numbers may be tweaked a bit, but a well equipped monk should develope a better AC than an armor wearing monk/fighter.

The monk is best without the armor. Sure, he has problems when flat footed, but with proper skill selections, the chances of being flat-footed are very low.

 

[youspoonybard]

I think that instead of ftr1/mnkx, I'd go Mnk2/FighterX.

2 levels of monk gives you +3 to all saves, 3 bonus feats and evasion. These work in light armor, at the cost of -1 BAB and -2 HP. Sounds like a fair tradeoff to me. Plus, Stunning Fist DC is based off of class level and getting a few of those is good, IUS is one of the better Fighter feats IMO (and it opens up the goodness that is Improved Grapple, or just take that instead of Stunning Fist), and Combat Reflexes is a must have Fighter Feat in 3.5 IMO.

 

[Xarls Taunzund]

I think that instead of ftr1/mnkx, I'd go Mnk2/FighterX.

2 levels of monk gives you +3 to all saves, 3 bonus feats and evasion. These work in light armor, at the cost of -1 BAB and -2 HP. Sounds like a fair tradeoff to me. Plus, Stunning Fist DC is based off of class level and getting a few of those is good, IUS is one of the better Fighter feats IMO (and it opens up the goodness that is Improved Grapple, or just take that instead of Stunning Fist), and Combat Reflexes is a must have Fighter Feat in 3.5 IMO.

I"d take Stunning Fist as your monk bonus feat and maybe take Improved Grapple as your regular feat at level 1. The reason for this is that if you still want Stunning Fist you won't get another chance to take it until 7th level since it has a +8 bab requirement.

 

[Zaruthustran]

Your main benefit here is getting armor. Unfortunately, this benefit is a losing proposition.

A monk with a 14 wisdom and 16 dex has a 15 AC. The same character in full plate would have a 19 AC. The armor sounds good, right? Wrong.

Actually, the main benefit is that you don't have to put precious stat points into Wis and Dex.

I should have specified that I game in a 28 point-buy campaign. A 14 Wis and a 16 Dex would take 16 of those 28 points, leaving less than half for Str and Con.

-z

 

[Darklone]

Saw a similar monk built... a monk2/ftr as youspoonybard said.

High dex, went archer feat route. DM allowed to use Deflect Arrows while wielding a bow.