Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Lago AM3P 10-22-03, 10:44 PM	Okay, I've been hating hard on the monk and his schtick in the past few weeks. So sue me. But, for you people, like myself, who want to kick ass in unarmed combat and get huge defense bonuses against magic and lots of mobility, here's the build for you: Books Used: OA Adventures, DotF, Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting Paladin 4 / Templar 1 / Knight of the Middle Circle 1 / Monk 1 / Sohei 1 / Sacred Fist 8 / Singh Rager 4 1 Feats for this level: Power Attack. Monk 1 -- Use OA rules. Swap out 'Stunning Fist' for 'Iron Will'. Pick up Improved Unarmed Strike as a class ability, plus great saves and wisdom bonus to AC. Woot. 2 Paladin 1 / Monk 1 3 Paladin 2 / Monk 1 -- Pick up the feat 'Combat Reflexes'. Depending on how good your stats at character creation were, expect a huge boost to your saves. 4 5 Paladin 4 / Monk 1: Be SURE to pick up that ioun stone that grants the 'alertness' feat this level. It'll save you a feat, which is the lifeblood of your character. You can cure your own wounds this level with a wand of cure light wounds, but this spellcasting will become small and weak soon. 6 Paladin 4 / Monk 1 / Sacred Fist 1: YES! You've made it! Since flurry attack is different from flurry of blows, you can make a bevvy of attacks at a 'not going to hit' +1/+1/+1. If you've been using weapons this level, get rid of them. But also say hello to a boost in your armor class, as you are finally getting the totally pimp 'mage armor' from the 'spell' domain. Pick up the feat 'Divine Might' this level, and you'll do some nice, level-appropriate damage. 7 Paladin 4 / Monk 1 / Sacred Fist 2: 8 Paladin 4 / Monk 1 / Sacred Fist 2 / Knight of the Middle Circle 1: Get an arbitrary +2 bonus to your AC and attacks. A smaller benefit is also picking up the 'read magic' spell, which will come in handy soon. 9 Paladin 4 / Monk 1 / Sacred Fist 2 / Knight of the Middle Circle 1 / Sohei 1: Pick up the feat endurance. Gain ANOTHER arbitrary attack, which you really don't need, as your attacks will be made at 1/1/1/1/-4, minus bonuses. You'll get a LOT of attacks but the quality of your attacks? Forget it. For now. 10 Paladin 4 / Monk 1 / Sacred Fist 2 / Knight of the Middle Circle 1 / Sohei 1 / Templar 1: Whoa. This is getting long. Pick up a +2 to your damage, and get a huge bonus against magic and supernatural effects. THIS is a sweet level. 11 12: Pick up the feat Iron Will. 13 14 15: 16 P4 / M1 / S1 / T1 / K1 /F8: Mighty Fine Level, this. 17 18: Pick up the feat Flying Kick. It'll come in real handy soon. 19 20 Now take the rest of your levels in Singh Rager. It's been a long road, hasn't it? But, here's how your attack should minally be: Your caster level is 12. Get a rod of lesser quickening, and, if you have a spare round, quicken a divine favor. Your first action should be to quicken a divine power, however, with another rod. I need to hammer out the numbers some more, but your basic tactics are to use 'Rary's Mneunomic Enhancer' from the 'Spell' domain to load up on great PHB spells like: Heroism Arcane Sight Chill Touch Fireball Lightning Bolt Vampiric Touch Alter Self Spider Climb Mirror Image Shatter Invisibility Displacement Rage True Strike Shield Mage Armor Enlarge Person Expeditious Retreat Air Walk False Life Darkvision Phantom Steed I haven't worked through the numbers yet, but, obviously, this class requires good stats in STRENGTH, DEXTERITY, CHARISMA, WISDOM, AND CONSTITUTION (and you can't have a shoddy intelligence, either!). If your party is tolerant towards polymorphing, then this build becomes much more viable for such wimpy stat allocations such as the 32-point buy. The human race was chosen to scare up some skill points and the extra feat, as this build is pretty strapped. Your attack bonus should be something like 54 after moderate buffing.
Lago AM3P 10-25-03, 05:51 PM	Ka-Bump.
NHdjinn 10-25-03, 06:24 PM	Lago, Not sure if you have noticed but I follow all of your threads on the monk, I generally agree with you on the monk. Not sure why this is pertinent but anywho. I have changed my view on the monk to some degree. I played in a pick up game of sorts this week with a couple of friends. We played some PC's from our other games. A little of this and a little of that as afar as PC classes went. My friend intentionally played his monk knowing my rather dubious opinion of them as core builds. I have to admit his PC did some outrageous things to opposing spellcasters, dished out tons of damage as a "tactical" melee maven, and gave some creatures a outright thrashing in toe to toe fights. The DM for the game plays alot of NPC's vs. a high creature count type of game. You'll run into a large amount of min/max Sorcs, Clerics, Fighters and such. He knows we can all min/max like crazy...and instead of "whining" about broken PC's, he simply up the ante form his end. This monk basically would hang back in the middle of the pack until a "target" presented itself. Targets for him are the type the rest of us all tried to sniper or outright hide from. The fireball nukers, buffing clerics etc. He simply strode up to them (at an insane rate of speed), shrugged off any spells they might have gotten off,grappled them, took them down and pummelled them for us. He let the fighters fight instead of covering, let the rogues SA till they couldnt lift their arms, kept our wizzie protected, and even helped the poor paladin(me) out a couple of times. Now one sessions isnt enough to completely change my mind, but it did go a long way to making me look much harder at their benefits. I can admit when I am wrong, and while I am not completely convinced this couldnt have been done by another class with better efficency...but all he used was the PHB to build this PC. As a straight core build I am VERY impressed...wether he will hold up further down the road I dont know. I am learning one thing about the class thats for sure, you cant just look at its "white paper" and judge it. I think you should try one next time you get a chance...I know I am building one as we speak. NHdjinn
Funny Slaughter 10-25-03, 06:49 PM	using paladin and OA together leaves a bad taste imo since its specifically mentioned that paladins do not exist there. human paladin4/SF8 is kind of the standard-build and improving it is hard. using all these buffs is quite nice and a rod of quicken is also cool, but there is not much reliance on the build. with the skip of sohei the possibilities get shorter anyhow i would think... btw, if you swap your monk-feat for iron will you dont have to take it at lvl 12. gs Funny
Lago AM3P 10-25-03, 07:16 PM	using paladin and OA together leaves a bad taste imo since its specifically mentioned that paladins do not exist there. I know. The only reason why paladin levels were thrown in there was for the 'divine grace' ability and to get easier access to divine might--though it certainly isn't necessary, as ranger levels could've been swapped in and I could've traded the level of Sohei for something crazy like 'contemplative', and then taken up the mysticism domain. *shrug* I think you should try one next time you get a chance...I know I am building one as we speak. For the last almost 2 years, I've played nothing but monks, in various forms. Believe it or not, I actually like the monk class. I have really high standards for what my monks should do. I can't tell you how ticked off I am in 3.5E how the game essentially ignored a lot of monk abilities by nerfing monk-favorable magic stuff and spreading out the monk goodies to other classes. Most of their nerfing was secondary, but the fact that they changed so much stuff about the game in the form of class abilities and magic items in a monk-unfavorable manner shows, to me, that they weren't thinking about this class.
NHdjinn 10-25-03, 09:15 PM	Lago Got to hand it to you for at least playing them. Up until now I have completely detested them. The bard had more uses in my mind. I dont even want to talk about that class though. Like I said a single session isnt a life changing event....but I will try one out next chance I get though. I will use a straight PHB build just to limilt myself. I really think that if a class is "good" or even useable it shoudl be so straight from the PHB. One shouldnt need SPlats, or OA, or anything else just to get a decent fun to play and usefull PC. Sure I use other stuff for my characters (splats etc.) but I dont need to. I almost always play a Paladin, or a Ranger. One could argue that you actually weaken the ranger by luticlassing, and same goes for the Paladin. My real questions about the monk will be how does the build (PHB only) look at the 6th level on up? What role will he have then? What kind of damage will he be able to dish out? My friends 4th level monk he played the other day didnt have a problem tearing 4th level Wizzies, Sorcs or Clerics to pieces. That doesnt mean that at level 10 or whatever he becomes a liability to the party though. I'll have to see something from them at those levels and beyond before I am sold.
Quijin 10-25-03, 10:00 PM	What i did, with the permision of my DM, was use a feat from a article in Dragon Magazine called "Paladins of Greyhawk" and some what base my character around that feat, the Feat: Serenity Your wisdom, inner calm, and sagacity, fuels your class abilities rather than your force of personality or will. Patron: Rao. Prereq: Divine Grace. Benefit: Use your wisdom bonus in place of your charisma bonus for purposes of divine grace, lay on hands, smite evil, and turn undead. and with the permision i created a feat that adds wisdom bonus to damage, but prereq Wisdom 18, lvl 8. Then I just found any feats that would add on to anything wisdom based. what it ended up looking like was, 3 paladin/6 monk Quijin --------------------------- "It is foulish and wrong to mourn the men who died, rather we should thank god that such men lived."- General George S. Patton "Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts."- Winston Churchill