Which prestige class enhances monk's combat capability best?

[Shin Okada]

WotC 3.5e books, no campaign specific one, no BoED, no Unearthed Arcana. Which prestige class makes a monk into better combatant? Monks always have trouble on hitting opponents due to their low BAB. Most prestige class will not solve this problem. Or make it worse, by reduced BAB due to multiclass, or the lack of Flurry of Blow penalty decrease. Are there any truly good prestige class for monks?

 

[Scharlata]

WotC 3.5e books, no campaign specific one, no BoED, no Unearthed Arcana. Which prestige class makes a monk into better combatant? Monks always have trouble on hitting opponents due to their low BAB. Most prestige class will not solve this problem. Or make it worse, by reduced BAB due to multiclass, or the lack of Flurry of Blow penalty decrease. Are there any truly good prestige class for monks?

Hi!

Even if they will surely not be the best PrCs, try the Enlightened Fist from Complete Arcana, or the Reaping Mauler from Complete Warrior, or the Sacred Fist from Complete Divine, or maybe the Topaz Guardian from Lords of Madness, or the Survivor from Savage Species, or the Thief-Acrobat from Complete Adventurer, or the Duelist from Dungeon Master's Guide.

Enjoy

 

[two]

Hi!

Even if they will surely not be the best PrCs, try the Enlightened Fist from Complete Arcana, or the Reaping Mauler from Complete Warrior, or the Sacred Fist from Complete Divine, or maybe the Topaz Guardian from Lords of Madness, or the Survivor from Savage Species, or the Thief-Acrobat from Complete Adventurer, or the Duelist from Dungeon Master's Guide.

Enjoy

I'm not sure "survivor" will help that low Monk BAB at all.

Granted, the Monk will be very, very, very hard to kill. But will be almost ignorable in combat (5 levels of survivor grants 0 BAB).

 

[Joker]

With the right powers, a tatoed monk (Complete Warrior) is good.

 

[MadMaxim]

Cloud Anchorite from Frostburn may not make you a better combatant, but you get a climb speed, ability to walk on surfaces where you would normally sink, resistance to cold and keep improving your unarmed damage and AC bonus.
Fist of Zuoken from Expanded Psionics Handbook gives you psychic warrior psionic powers while improving your unarmed damage and AC bonus.

 

[Storyteller01]

It's OGL, but try the Green steel monk from Arcana; Society of Magic (Green Ronin). Monks who seek enlightenment via the evil path (they seek to become evil outsiders; devild specifically). The BaB doesn't improve, but they gain minor spell casting abilities while maintaining a majority of the monk abilities. True strike is among those spells.

You also gain abilities realated to devils (See In Darkness, Natural Armor, Spell Resistance, etc).

 

[noeuphoria]

I actually thought Kensai from complete warrior complemented monks very nicely. Get +5 Holy Frost Shock Flaming fists, use a move action to add +8 to str.

 

[Shin Okada]

Thank you for suggestions,

Sacred Fist seems to be the most potential option as it give monk better BAB and still grants Unarmed damage progression (and spells).

Kensai could be another option but a Monk must be 7th-level to qualify Kensai, while warrior classes (or combination of them) can qualify at 5th-level. Kensai's biggest advantage is to get better magic weapon at lower then usual level. That 2 levels difference seems not that much attractive. +3 equivalent weapon at 10th-level is not that much a big boon.

While some tattoos of Tattooed Monk seem interesting, that kind of x/day abilities are not reliable as we tend to meet multiple encounters per day.