Out-monking a Monk in 20 levels.
Philodendron
First Post
Sword sage with 3 good saves?
... Or add the maneuver (name escapes me) that lets you take a concentration check in place of a fortitude save. You can only use it once per encounter, but that's getting pretty close to 3 good saves without having to cross over into fighter levels.
blargney the second said:
... Or add the maneuver (name escapes me) that lets you take a concentration check in place of a fortitude save. You can only use it once per encounter, but that's getting pretty close to 3 good saves without having to cross over into fighter levels.
blargney the second
blargney the minute's son
True! The Moment of X series of counters are great for covering holes like that.
Well, my PsyWarrior/Slayer build probably can't outdo the monk in speed. But other than that ... let's see what I can pull off. Especially with Magic Item Compendium support.
Remember that PsyWarriors get more feats than any other class except Fighter.
Good Unarmed Damage: Level 1 feat: Improved Unarmed Strike
Level 5 bonus feat: Superior Unarmed Strike
Now you've got as good unarmed damage as a typical Monk -- and it will keep scaling with levels. If you want it better ... like a Monk with a Monk's Belt and Improved Natural Attack ... you can try the subpar Psionic Fist feat, which might actually be worth it if you go on to get Unavoidable Strike; or you can try using maneuvers (gained via items ... e.g., buy a Novice Stone Dragon Belt for 3k gp and deal Mountain Hammer bonus damage 1/encounter); or you can blow lots of power points on Dissipating Touch. None of these will get you consistent damage like a souped-up Monk, but hey, at least you have the "normal" Monk damage values.
Or you can start the adventuring day with a fully augmented Claws of the Beast and Metaphysical Claw, and take the Improved Natural Attack feat for your claws, and you'll be doing plenty of damage compared with a Monk, and you can just reflavor the claws as an unarmed attack.
Lots of Attacks: Take Snap Kick as your Level 8 bonus feat. All by itself, that's about as good as Flurry of Blows (because it works even on a standard action, not just on a full-round attack).
The power Prowess will get you an extra AoO anytime you need it badly. But you're probably not especially after AoO's. There is no power AFAIK with the amazingness of Haste (but at least your party Arcanist can still Haste you).
If you're still wanting more attacks, you can go a couple ways. If you want cheese, there's always the King of Smack concept of changing your Type (or being an Elan) and picking up (Improved) Rapidstrike. Woooo! And/or going more for AoO's after all with Combat Reflexes and Robilar's Gambit.
If that kind of cheese isn't what you're after, you can just use a combination of unarmed and claw attacks. Pick up Multiattack, and you can attack with a base bonus of +15/+10/+5/+15/+13/+13 (three normal unarmed iterative attacks, one Snap Kick, and two "secondary" claw attacks).
Good saves: Psychic Warrior has a good Fortitude save. CON isn't your top priority, but if your stats are good, you should have a decent Fort. Your Will save won't be as good as a Monk's, but with WIS as (probably) your highest-priority stat, it won't be awful. You can always improve it with Iron Will or the Empty Mind power, but I wouldn't bother, because your Will save will start improving rapidly when you hit Slayer levels. And at Level 15 or so, you gain permanent immunity to most things that require a Will save. Reflex is definitely the save to worry about, even though DEX is a higher-priority stat ... but that's why you pick up a Ring of the Diamond Mind, so you can replace Reflex saves with Concentration checks 1/encounter. You can also get the power Evade Burst if you're willing to spend a lot of PP to pretend you have Evasion.
Good AC: OK, first, for the record, Monks don't have good AC, unless they spend more money on it than other people.
But yeah. The Inertial Armor power singlehandedly makes up for the Monk's WIS-to-AC ability by itself. Of course the Monk can also get Bracers of Armor, but on the other hand, for the same price as Bracers of Armor +6, the PsyWarrior with Inertial Armor can get Padded Armor +1, Heavy Fortification!
But the PsyWarrior also has three more basic, fairly good Level 1 Powers to boost AC. Defensive Precognition is my favorite, even though it has a short duration and it eats a lot of standard actions and PP, because it helps out even more with the "good Saves" goal.
Decent Base Speed: At Level 1, you can easily use your bonus feat to pick up Speed of Thought. Congrats, you've already beat the Monk in speed at those levels, just by staying psionically focused.
Of course, the Monk will catch up and overtake you. You can try to keep up for a while by taking the Dash feat, and an item that gives you an Enhancement bonus to speed (there are lots of choices here), and adding the Quickness property to your Padded Armor (if the DM uses the XPH version of Quickness, which is untyped, instead of the MIC version, which is Enhancement).
But you also have a lot of options for boosting your speed in the particular rounds when you need it. Mostly items, plus the awesome power Hustle (which, besides letting you move twice and still attack in a round, can also let you do things like recover your Psionic Focus as a swift action, with the Psionic Meditation feat. It's flexible).
Yeah. Of course, without actually trying it out, you can't tell if you can actually fit all of this stuff onto one build. But you can -- and still have a lot of powers/feats left over for other tricks, too. (Though you may find yourself running out of PP frequently ... the bane of the Psychic Warrior.)
jasin
Explorer
A wizard shapechanged into a pit fiend.
One thing I keep noticing in all these attempts to "out monk a monk" is that the characters are dependent on magic items, powers with limited durations, and so on. One anti-magic field or dispel magic effect and you're screwed. While monks aren't common amongst my players, we've found that the monks are always pretty effective in a variety of situations. It's not always about dishing out damage as fast as possible. Monks can do other cool things too.
This is often overlooked by those who hate on monks...though, to be fair, several of the monk's higher powered abilities- like Ki Strike, Quivering Palm and the various "Body" abilities- are supernatural, and also wink out in an anti-magic field.
How do you poison a high-level monk? Anti-Magic him first...
A poncing form? I'm not sure that'd be appropriate.
It will mince you!
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