Monk Variations

[malichai]

Player wants to play a monk variant where he gives up Flurry of Blows, Ki Strike, and Quivering palm for some fighter bonus feat progression. How many bonus feats would you allow? I'm thinking 3,6,9,12,15,18. Not enough? Too many?

 

[Angel Tarragon]

Player wants to play a monk variant where he gives up Flurry of Blows, Ki Strike, and Quivering palm for some fighter bonus feat progression. How many bonus feats would you allow? I'm thinking 3,6,9,12,15,18. Not enough? Too many?

Your progression of feats looks good. 6 feats seems reasonable.

 

[Spatzimaus]

The problem is, if he's giving up those three things, then his fist attacks will become completely ineffective at high levels; he'll have to use weapons to hit anything with DR. So, the nice fist damage will be useless as well, and he'll be attacking with a moderate BAB and slightly weak HP/AC (but good saves!). Unless he multiclasses, of course, which assumes a house rule to allow monk multiclassing.

I'm not saying it's unworkable. It's just that you'll end up with a character straight out of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; lots of acrobatics, but all to use a sword, and in a pure combat situation he might feel too overshadowed by the more brute-force types.

 

[Angel Tarragon]

The problem is, if he's giving up those three things, then his fist attacks will become completely ineffective at high levels; he'll have to use weapons to hit anything with DR. So, the nice fist damage will be useless as well, and he'll be attacking with a moderate BAB and slightly weak HP/AC (but good saves!). Unless he multiclasses, of course, which assumes a house rule to allow monk multiclassing.

To make up for this shortcoming, allow the character to choose 12 weapons that they are automatically proficient with, including any exotic weapons.

 

[ByteRynn]

Another option is to cut the number of feats you give him by half, but let him apply his increased unarmed damage with monk weapons...or if that's too over-powered, let him apply his monk damage reduced one step with a monk weapon, or full damage unarmed.

 

[Spatzimaus]

Thinking back on this, I think the real question is WHY he wants the extra Feats. If he really wants to be a weapon-oriented fighter (like the Crouching Monkey Rabid Wombat example I gave) then you might want to look up some more appropriate PrCs. But if he just wants to have a bit more flexibility, I'd say there are better ways to do so than to give Feats, especially if they result in a neutering of his unarmed attacks.

Not to make it sound like too much of a plug, but way back when IMC we changed the monk like this. That's the 3.0 version, of course, but not much changed.
The point was, by mixing different "paths" together, we got a Monk class that didn't really change in raw power, but gave the player enough choices that he didn't feel so railroaded into his class abilities. You could try something similar.