Tattooed Monk - Opinions?

[Klaus]

So, what are the opinions on the Tattooed Monk (Complete Warrior)? Is it good? Underpowered? If so, would it be better balanced if it had a full BAB?

 

[Legildur]

I can't comment on balance, but everytime I look at the tattoos and think 'cool!' and then look at what I would have to give up as a standard monk at the equivalent level.... and I can't stand the thought of giving that up. However, YMMV.

 

[the Jester]

There was a tatttooed monk imc... I thought the prc was fine. But like Legildur says, you give up a lot of cool stuff to get... different cool stuff! I guess the trade off boils down to customization.

 

[Klaus]

The build I'm thinking is a former drow slave (from Eberron), based off the character of Mani in Brotherhood of the Wolf (I'd use a variant LA+0 drow). The tattoos complete the build perfectly, and the first tattoo would be Spider (spend Stunning attempt to poison opponent), only it'd be renamed Scorpion.

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

Monk is one of those classes that just suffers terribly from multiclassing in losing level-based class abilities. TM could be useful with a few levels in a pretty specific build, but I wouldn't trade the full progression of it.

--fje

 

[pawsplay]

Tattooed monk is really cool if you can work it. For instance, white mask gives you a great feint, perfect for the rogue/tattooed monk. It's probably as good as a regular monk, but like the regular monk, can be fairly strong or fairly useless depending on what you do with it.

 

[Caliban]

You either have to totally commit to tattooed monk, or only take 1 level of it for a single tattoo ability.

I can see it being useful in a build that has already dipped into monk for a few levels. (I seriously considered it for my high AC dwarven tank build, just for the tattoo that let's you do Alter Self once a day, for the +6 natural armor in trog form.)

 

[isoChron]

I play a TM at the moment. Monk12/TM4 with Ocean and Monkey Tattoo. After all it's nice, but a bit underpowered. It's a bit boring that you get something special only every 2 levels.

There are few tattooes left that fit my character. I'm thinking of leaving TM behind after level 5. Not sure yet.

Alter self is great,
shadow walk once per week is a little underpowered for a high pace setting,
chrysanthemum can be very good if you are not adventuring the underdark (like my monk...)
tiger may be nice at higher class levels.

Many tattooes get a lot better the more class levels you have. So it may be wise to take all 10 levels (or at least 9) but you may miss some of your monk levels on the way.

Endurance as prerequisite hurts a lot. Since many cool spell caster prcs have much lower prereq. I felt a little shafted. Just my experience.

Happy gaming

 

[Rystil Arden]

Bellflower can be kind of wonky if you have enough Charisma, particularly if you're working on a build that can make good use of high Charisma (Nereid Battledancer/Paladin or such).

With 30 Charisma, one use of Bellflower to boost Charisma will give you +10 for a total of 40, then use it again to get 45 if you like and again to get 47 and even 48 if you have time and uses. At any point, you can apply the +10 - +18 bonus to other ability scores too. These don't stack with the typical enhancement bonus items, though, so you won't see 30 natural Charisma for a while without a race that raises Charisma. Even so, that just means it rises slightly more slowly (for instance, 22 Charisma leads to 28, 31, 32).

 

[Ogrork the Mighty]

As a DM, I'd be willing to let the PC create custom tattoos to make the TM more enjoyable to play and worth taking levels in.