question about fighter/monk

d12 · Oct 25, 2002

I'm sorry if this has already been asked and answered.

Let's day you have a 6th level fighter. His base attack bonus is +6/+1. When he goes to 7th level he takes a level of monk. What is his unarmed attack bonus and how many unarmed attacks does he get?

Thanks in advance

hong · Oct 25, 2002

d12 said:
I'm sorry if this has already been asked and answered.

Let's day you have a 6th level fighter. His base attack bonus is +6/+1. When he goes to 7th level he takes a level of monk. What is his unarmed attack bonus and how many unarmed attacks does he get?

AAAAaaaaaa!!!!!

Ahem. Sorry.

Anyway, the answer to this frequently asked question is that your base unarmed attack bonus is +6 (add monk and fighter levels together). Your _iterative_ unarmed attacks are calculated using either 1) only your monk attack bonus at a cumulative -3; or 2) your total BAB, at a cumulative -5. Take whichever is better. In your case, you would get +6/+1 unarmed.

Corwin · Oct 25, 2002

I now direct you all to read Sean. K. Reynolds' recently written article regarding his dissenting opinion on this topic:

http://www.seankreynolds.com/rpgfiles/misc/whymonkBABshouldstack.html

I think he may have changed my mind.

Baron Von StarBlade · Oct 25, 2002

If you have Oriental Adventures it describes at the beginning of Chapter 3 how your UBAB increases when you take classes with out a an UBAB. Table 3-1 shows the progression and there is an example using a Samurai with Monk levels.

hong · Oct 25, 2002

Baron Von StarBlade said:
If you have Oriental Adventures it describes at the beginning of Chapter 3 how your UBAB increases when you take classes with out a an UBAB. Table 3-1 shows the progression and there is an example using a Samurai with Monk levels.

It's also in the PHB section on multiclassing (p.55) but let's not mention that.

Baron Von StarBlade · Oct 25, 2002

hong said:
It's also in the PHB section on multiclassing (p.55) but let's not mention that.

Actually its a different Rule in OA. It states you take your Combined BAB for the Highest Iteration, then you take the BAB gained from your monk levels and get the Extra Attacks.

For Example:

a Monk 6 / Ftr 5 Would have a Combined BAB of 9. However his Monk BAB would only be 4. Therefore his UBAB attacks would be 9/4/1. His attacks with a non monk weapon would be 9/4. See page 33/34 of OA. It becomes really useful when you have a non Monk class and a Prestige class that uses the Monk UBAB progession.

Christian · Oct 26, 2002

Baron von S, IMO (and that of some but not all others), the OA rule is simply a clarification of the PH rule, which is (IMO and that of virtually everybody else) very poorly written and unclear. In any case, the OA rule is exactly what I was using based on the PH text, even before OA came out ...

Corwin, an interesting HR I've seen suggested to avoid shafting the multiclassed monk is to change the improved unarmed attack progression to a special ability tied to the monk class levels. Eg. a character with 6 monk levels has the special ability that, when unarmored and using unarmed attacks or 'special monk weapons', he gets a second iterative attack at -3 instead of -5. Any additional attacks occur at the standard -5 progression. So, a Ftr8/Mnk6 (with a normal attack progression of +12/+7/+2) would have an unarmed attack progression of +12/+9/+4. (Vs. +12/+9/+6/+3 in SKR's system, or +12/+7/+2 under the standard rules.)

I haven't playtested that, but it looks pretty good to me ...

hong · Oct 26, 2002

Baron Von StarBlade said:
Actually its a different Rule in OA. It states you take your Combined BAB for the Highest Iteration, then you take the BAB gained from your monk levels and get the Extra Attacks.

For Example:

a Monk 6 / Ftr 5 Would have a Combined BAB of 9. However his Monk BAB would only be 4. Therefore his UBAB attacks would be 9/4/1. His attacks with a non monk weapon would be 9/4. See page 33/34 of OA. It becomes really useful when you have a non Monk class and a Prestige class that uses the Monk UBAB progession.

Er, no. OA is simply clarifies the rule in the PHB. A mnk6/ftr5 has a BAB of +9, of which the monk portion is +4. So his unarmed strikes are at either +9/+4 (using regular iterative progression) or +9/+1 (using monk progression based on monk levels), whichever is better.

Note that the example samurai in OA has BAB +11 (+3 from samurai, +8 from monk/tattooed monk levels). Her unarmed strikes are calculated as either +11/+6/+1 (using regular iterative progression) or +11/+5/+2 (using monk progression based on monk levels).