D&D 3E/3.5 Will Monks become new 3.5 Fighter class?

[Starbuck_II]

In 3.5, people usually considered Fighter a dip class for feats.

Now, Monks might be becoming one. Style feasts in Ultimate Combat have requirements to take them take bar you till 5th level or higher unless you are a Master of Many Styles Monk (except Snapping Turtle but the benefits aren't much so that makes sense).
Then you can take them at 1st as a bonus feat (or 2nd, etc).

Also anyone notice ToB maneuvers regained in Ultimate Combat?
Shocktrooper from 3.5 as a Stance (Tiger Style+ Tiger Pounce).

Dragon lets you ignore difficult terrain.

Crane: Grants deflect arrows for melee attacks (mechanically) while fighting defensively or total defense. Other feats of chain reduce Figthting defensively penalty.

Janni: Lowers penalty for being Flanked or when you Charging by 1 (enemies get +1 hit when flanking you and -1 AC penalty when charging).

Kirin Style + Spirit: Achivist Dark knowkledge ability (DC 15 + CR to identify though) + 2 x Int bonuds damage vs target identified (swift action, minimum damage bonus +2).

Snake Style: When hit, as immediate action, can use Sense Motive check as a AC if higher.

Snapping Turtle Style: When one hand is free, gain Shield bonus to AC (only +1 but another feat makes it +2 and -4 hit when enemy attempts to confirm crits). A third feat apples Shield bonus to CMD and Touch AC.

So Stance do exist and a few maneuvers have been kind of created.

Snake Style is a renaming of the manuever: Baffling Defense from ToB.

A Duelist would love to get Int bonus to damage (so a 2 level dip in Monk helps a lot)

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

I think Fighters are still the premier dip class, though Monk and others can certainly join their ranks. Really, with d10 HD, full BAB, great proficiencies, 6 + int skills with a good list, two good saves, and some EARLY entry feat options, Ranger may actually be the best dip, IMO. Mounted Ranger 2, for example, gets Trick Riding something like 6 levels early, so a mounted character can negate two hits per round on his steed.


The Style feats are mostly unimpressive to me and a lot outright weak. Crane Wing stands out as a solid, and very monk-themed pick. The higher level Crane Riposte isn't bad, either.

Snake Style itself I think looks better than it is; I'm skeptical a skill check can reliably top AC. It's be great for boosting touch AC, but that's the one thing monk's already awesome at. What makes Snake awesome is the 3rd feat (which makes it kinda costly to obtain), Snakebite. Getting two attacks as an immediate action is very good. That said, snake style's feats all seem to use immediate actions for something, making them hard to synergize with each other.

I'd like Dragon Style and Dragon Ferocity more if they made it explict that by doing 1.5x Str damage with unarmed, you get the 3-for-1 Power Attack deal. I THINK that's what should happen, but they kinda left that up in the air. It's also kinda lame that you can only ignore difficult terrain on charge/run/withdraw. Step of the Wind was a 1st level stance... The free shaken on all stunning fist attacks is nice. Dragon Roar, on the other hand, is hella awful, I'd never take it.
Boar Style may be a misprint, but if not...2d6 bleed is yummy. Boar Ferocity is similar to Enforcer and Cornugon Smash, but pretty much always works. It's a shame Intimidate isn't a class skill and cha is a dump stat for a monk, there'd be nice synergy there. Boar Shred seems lagely unnecessary to me. Both the bleed and the move action Intimidate.

None of the other styles stood out to me.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

Actually...your premise is completely and utterly wrong.

Unarmed Fighter if anything will be the new dip due to style feats. Why?

1. No BAB loss

2. Gives Imp Unarmed Strike, like Monk does

3. Retains light armor proficiency; useful to certain classes

4. Replacs his 1st level bonus feat with a Style feat and does not need to meet the pre-requisites.

Yeah, that's way better than monk for style feat dipping.

 

[Starbuck_II]

Actually...your premise is completely and utterly wrong.

Unarmed Fighter if anything will be the new dip due to style feats. Why?

1. No BAB loss

2. Gives Imp Unarmed Strike, like Monk does

3. Retains light armor proficiency; useful to certain classes

4. Replacs his 1st level bonus feat with a Style feat and does not need to meet the pre-requisites.

Yeah, that's way better than monk for style feat dipping.

But you are limited to one stance as a Unarmed Fighter.
Monk does not need to meet the pre-requisites for each Style feat he takes as a bonus feat.

That's 2 bonus feats by 2nd level Monk compared 1 Fighter gives (plus a normal Fighter feat).

You want Shocktrooper? Tiger + Tiger pounce: Use Ac for power Attack penalty.

Fighter can't get both because he can't qualify for more than 1 (the one he chose at 1st).

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

Fighter's only a 1 level dip, though. The monk still needs to actually have the style feat to get the other 2, and his only advantage in getting them (other than the feat at level 2 allowing early entry) is potentially ignoring a bad 2nd feat in a style tree and leap frogging to the third. But Snake's the only style I've noticed so far where the 3rd feat is actually better than the 2nd, IMO.

I suppose if you really like two styles, the monk allowing you to be in two stances at once makes it better, but I'd rather have full BAB and light armor.

 

[gamerprinter]

Perhaps anecdotal, but 2+ years since we started playing Pathfinder, only one player ever multi-classed, all others have stuck with a single class. Basically nobody has 'class-dipped' at all, since 3.5. I'm not saying it cannot work, but it seems for us anyway that Pathfinder inherently avoids the class dipping concept altogether, thus there is no primary dippable class that munchkins turn to.

For whatever reason, munchkinism has taken a serious downturn since the release of PF in our gaming group. Its not gone completely, but has been seriously removed from being the expected process in character building.

GP

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

Dipping in PF is stil possible and profitable. In fact, dipping a level for tons of new class skill bonuses on top of actual class features seems almost a no-brainer in some cases. What PF seems to have killed is genuine multiclassing. The kind where you split levels in two or three classes, or do a class or two into a prestige class. The things you lose for straying from one class for too long makes that sort of build really, really bad in PF.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

Dipping in PF is stil possible and profitable. In fact, dipping a level for tons of new class skill bonuses on top of actual class features seems almost a no-brainer in some cases. What PF seems to have killed is genuine multiclassing. The kind where you split levels in two or three classes, or do a class or two into a prestige class. The things you lose for straying from one class for too long makes that sort of build really, really bad in PF.

Excellent summation; it matches my (somewhat limited) experience as well.

 

[Voadam]

Our group was 50-50 when we converted to pathfinder from 4e around level 13. Half the party was straight classed to start (rogue and paladin), the other half was dual role multiclass to prestige class oriented (a mystic theurge and myself as an eldritch knight, plus the rogue did a rebuild to pick up a ton of assassin levels). We were pretty happy with our multilcasses when we finished up around level 16.