Yet ANOTHER Alt.Monk

[Spatzimaus]

Yup, you're awfully close to what I had in mind, although my concept of the Epic progression would be to add levels 6 and 7 to each path (requiring a corresponding stat of 21 and 23, respectively).

I was thinking of adding two Feats: one that reduces the stat needed for each step by 1 across the board, and one that reduces by 3 for one path only. Right now it's 11/13/15/17/19 for each step.
That's as far as I'd be willing to go in "using Feats to advance", because the balance factor of this design is that EVERY level gives you a Feat-or-better ability. The downside, of course, is the very limited selection.
Although, I might make a Ki Mode feat... that's a possibility.

Prestige Classes that add new "paths" would be okay, except that right now there's one path for each stat. The way I see it, though, the six paths are already sort of like 5-level PrCs with easy entrance requirements.
So, I've made a few PrCs already that tend to be more specialized; no progressive stat requirements, for example, but each PrC depends on having advanced to level 3 in two specific paths (which means class level 11 in Monk at least). Each is a 5-level PrC; I think of them as "advanced paths", but they're almost separate classes; different skill lists, for example.

For example, I made the Storm Fist PrC for those people who took Hand/Body; among other things, it lets them replace their base fist damage with elemental damage. A d12 fist attack may be scary, but being able to turn that into d12 fire damage at will is a LOT scarier.
Then there's the Mindknight PrC, off the WotC website; it was the basis of the Mind path, so I changed the PrC's abilities a bit to make it a Mind/Soul PrC.
A Ninja might be a Foot/Eye PrC that gets Poison Use, a couple spell-like abilities (See Invis?), some weapon proficiencies, and a Rogue-like skill list.

Those 3 right there cover all 6 stats, although I'm working on a few more still. Each of these PrCs would still usually (unless said otherwise) advance the unarmed damage, unarmed BAB, movement rate, AC bonus, etc. of the Monk class, and not count against multiclassing. Actually, I got the idea from the d20 Modern PrCs.

 

[the Jester]

Bump, so I can peruse at will later.

 

[Spatzimaus]

It's been over two years since this was first posted, but since this was bumped I've updated it with the changes made since then. Abilities in the first five levels were rearranged a bit, Body 5 and Soul 5 were switched, Critical Fists was broken into two incremental abilities (it used to just be x4 at step 5), Eye 3 was changed from Vigilance to See Invis, and Soul 3 added Quick Ki.

As I've noted before, this class is a bit more powerful than it should be, because it was designed for a game where physical armor and weapons are more powerful than the core rules allow. To fix this the damage of the class should be toned down a bit; one simple fix we've discussed is having normal Monks use the Small Monk damage progression; with the extra damage of the Ki Modes you're still coming out ahead.

 

[Ferret]

Wow looks very cool. Only qualm is that it's been called a magic item in the catogories selection...

 

[Stalker0]

I like it overall.

One question: from 6th level on, do you get a new circle ability every level?

You mentioned at 3rd level and on, the monk is an inhererently psionic creature and can use psionic feats and all. A cleaner way of doing this would be to give the monk the wild talent feat from the improved psih at level 3.

You might want to consider making the monk take more time before he can switch weapon abilities on his strikes (ki mode). I'm using the soulknife as a basis, and having played a soulknife, I find the mode switching ability very very useful. I could see this as a meditation power, where teh monk has to concentrate for an hour or so to change it up.

Then have quick ki, make it 1 min or a standard action.

 

[Spatzimaus]

One question: from 6th level on, do you get a new circle ability every level?

Yes. At every level, you pick the next tier in one of the six paths, stat permitting. So, a level 20 Monk will have the 5 "common" levels for 1-5, and 15 of the remaining 30 at 6-20. It's actually more limited than it looks; very few players will have more than one stat at 17+, so the tier 4 and 5 abilities will be rare; the PHB Monk has several of these. A character made with 28-point buy will run out of things to take at level 14-17 unless he takes one of the two Path-assisting feats: Path Generalist, which reduces the stat limits of all paths by 1 (to 10/12/14/16/18), or Path Specialist, which reduces a single path by 3 (to 8/10/12/14/16).

You mentioned at 3rd level and on, the monk is an inhererently psionic creature and can use psionic feats and all. A cleaner way of doing this would be to give the monk the wild talent feat from the improved psih at level 3.

This was written before the PsiHB was overhauled. Effectively, it was supposed to be a semi-drawback; yes, you can use Psionic Feats, but you don't get any powers, and you're now very vulnerable to psionic attack modes (and you detect as inherently psionic, and so on). So you could toss this whole Psionic thing out entirely if it doesn't fit with your flavor.

You might want to consider making the monk take more time before he can switch weapon abilities on his strikes (ki mode).

In my experience this isn't needed. MAYBE bump the switch time to a full-round action, but not more than that. The reason is, the first Ki Mode is a simple +1, and there are only four Ki Power increments (Hand 2, Hand 4, Body 4, Foot 5), so it's practically impossible to ever get them up to a +4, and only a Hand can really get them to a +3. Likewise, there are only 4 extra Ki Modes available, two of which are Hand. So, unless you keep STR really high, you'll only ever have at most 3 modes equivalent to +3 weapons, one of which will be a pure Enhancement bonus.
The Mode concept was to simulate the "Golf Bag o' Weapons" that the Fighter types get to use, so it's important to have things like Flaming or Lawful available as needed when you suddenly confront a Troll or something. If a player can switch weapons quickly in these situations, why not the Monk? Since it's practically impossible to make these modes equivalent to strongly-enchanted weapons, it's not really unbalanced.
And remember, Quick Ki can only be used a few times a day (CHA mod), so it's not really broken. It's not nearly as good as Quick Draw for that.

----
Anyway, example time. I've got a combat-heavy character, Kai Mhalloc-Tos, a Half-Elven Monk 16 (cohort to my main character, a Psion). She maxxed out the Hand path, and only took the first 3 ranks of the Body and Soul paths. So, she's got 5 Ki modes, all equivalent to +3 weapons: a +3, a +1 Flaming Spell-Storing, a Shocking Lawful, and two others that use custom enhancements. If she had taken any levels in other paths, she'd have fewer modes available. And while she has Quick Ki, it's only usable twice per day. She doesn't have any spell-like abilities, spell resistance, or Native Outsider status; to get these would cost most of the Ki abilities, and while this isn't a terrible thing it doesn't fit with the character concept.

 

[Sadrik]

Hey this is pretty cool.

A house rule that I have. That I like is that monks get bonus damage like this:
1st They get Improved Unarmed Strike and do 1d3 lethal
4th they get +1d4 monk damage
8th thier monk damage improves to +1d6
12th thier monk damage improves to +1d8
16th thier monk damage improves to +1d10
20th thier monk damage improves to +1d12

This rule replaces the monks improving damage chart.

So these bonus damages are added to the monks unarmed and martial arts weapon damages. For instance a 12th level monk using a +2 kama would do 1d6 + 2 + 1d8

It also makes it easy for creatures with different natural attacks to gain a benefit from monk levels.

Can this be added into your system, somehow? Any suggestions?

Sadrik

 

[Spatzimaus]

Any suggestions?

Well, for one thing, you'll have a problem with Small/Large Monks. You'd have to come up with some sort of progression for them.

And frankly, adding a Monk damage bonus to the "monk weapons" really defeats the purpose of the whole Ki Mode logic. If you can pull out a weapon and have it get the same sort of damage boost your fists would, there's not nearly as much advantage to building up a good attack mode.
But if you didn't mind that, I'd say that you'd just replace the Ki Power boosts with the damage die increases you mentioned. That is, at level 5 you'd get +1d4 Monk damage, and at Hand 2, Hand 4, Body 4, and Foot 4 you'd bump up one step (1d6, 1d8, 1d10, 1d12). Of course, then the question would be what the point of the Ki Modes themselves are; you'd have to make them simpler, like "pick a single +1-cost enhancement to add to your unarmed attacks; only one can be active at a time".


When I get home from work (it's Labor Day, so I'm busy laboring) I'll update the original post with the final version we made. It IS a 4-year-old post, after all.

 

[Sadrik]

Well, I think the point would be these "modes". Sure they can apply their monk damage bonus to their weapons but when they have "modes" that give them magic weapon properties on their fists, their fist are very viable.

Oh, small monks do 1d2 and large monk do 1d4 just like they normally do with unarmed damage. The monk damage bonus id not subjest to the size of the monk. Similar to a small sized shock weapon still does 1d6 as well as a large shock weapon.

Sadrik

 

[Spatzimaus]

The unarmed damage difference between a level 20 PHB Small Monk and a level 20 Large Monk is a lot more than 1 point, but if you go with a flat bonus, they'll never differ by any more than that. Maybe they shouldn't differ by quite so much, but it's not a minor change.

But what I was saying about the modes is this:

Take my existing system. Let's say a high-level Monk has three +3-equivalent Ki Modes. One's a simple +3, one's a +2 Flaming, and one's a Shocking Lawful. This goes on top of the 2d8 base damage his fists deal.
Now, he carries in his pack a +3 Keen Frost kama. It deals 1d6 base damage (assuming a Medium wielder), so even considering the fact that it's +5-equivalent in cost, it's somewhat weaker than his fists due to the base damage difference (2d8 vs 1d6). It's still sometimes useful, if only for all the weapon specials you can't easily put on fists.

Now, if you go with the simple version of what you suggested, the fists would deal only 1d4 base damage, with a +1d12 Monk Damage bonus (no real change), while the kama would now deal 1d6+1d12 (huge increase). The Kama is now CLEARLY better than any Ki Mode; first, because the base damage is higher; second, because the Ki Modes don't scale up in power as fast as weapon enchantments do; and third, because you'll only have a couple Ki Modes, but you can carry the full golfbag of weapons around if you wanted.
The only way a Monk would even remotely keep up is if he were a Hand specialist. Without it, no Ki Mode will be higher than +3 and his hands will only crit 20/x2, but a Hand 5 (STR 19) might have up to +5 with a 20/x4. As a rule of thumb, I had the Ki Modes scaling up about half as fast as weapon enchantments would, with the increased fist damage making up the other half.

I'm not saying you can't boost monk weapons at all. IMC, we use an "exotic materials" system that makes weapons stronger in general, but it doesn't scale up nearly as quickly as the monk fists do, to compensate for the more powerful enchantments. Maybe half as fast.