Tattooed Monk PrC

[tennyson]

In Complete Warrior (p84), under the Tattooed Monk PrC, it states:

Multiclass Note: A monk who becomes a tattooed monk may continue advancing as a monk.

What exactly does this mean? Do the PrC abilities and Core Monk abilities stack, do you have the option of choosing the core save progression?

Thanks in advance for the help!

 

[Dandu]

It means you don't suffer this:
Like a member of any other class, a monk may be a multiclass character, but multiclass monks face a special restriction. A monk who gains a new class or (if already multiclass) raises another class by a level may never again raise her monk level, though she retains all her monk abilities.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

It means you can take levels in monk still, that is all. Per RAW, a monk, once he leaves the monk class, can never....ever return to it to gain further levels. Many DMs ignore that rule because it's incredibly punitive and foisted on the weakest core class in the game, so if yours does that might explain the confusion.

 

[tennyson]

Thanks for the replies! I've never been a big advocate of the multiclassing penalties, so it's a moot point, but this clarifies it!

 

[Ahnehnois]

It's worth noting that Tattooed Monk does stack with monk for several class features (unarmed damage, AC, and speed) as noted elsewhere in the prestige class description.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Per RAW, a monk, once he leaves the monk class, can never....ever return to it to gain further levels.

It should be noted that there are variants of the base class that are not so restrictive. FR, for one, features several variants of the Monk that have limited multiclassing, and OA's version of the Monk has both a larger weapons list and no multiclassing restrictions at all.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

It should be noted that there are variants of the base class that are not so restrictive. FR, for one, features several variants of the Monk that have limited multiclassing, and OA's version of the Monk has both a larger weapons list and no multiclassing restrictions at all.

Not to mention feats to pick a class and not have it "count" for the purpose of loss of monk advancement, monk multiclass feats that do the same thing with the partner class, other prestige classes that let the monk continue advancing (like Kensai, among others), and even races such as the Illumians which get to ignore the restriction entirely. I think as the edition rolled onwards, WotC began to realize how stupid it was to limit monk and paladin like that. But instead of just revising the core rules to fix the error (and basically admit they never should have done that), they just kept piling on more and more optional "patches" to fix the problem given conditions allowed for that specific fix.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

There's some truth there.

What really puzzled me about it, though, is that OA is a 3Ed book- not updated except in Dragon- and every last change to the monk OA made was ignored when 3.5 was released.