Post/Author/DateTime	Post
grelna 01-12-06, 11:13 PM	I'm not looking to make an optimized character - just need advice on whether this build is legal. Paladin lvls 1-4 Monk lvls 5-6 Kensai lvls 7-10 Paladin lvls 11-20 I'd give the character the feat Ascetic Knight at 6th lvl so his paladin levels would stack with the monk lvls for purposes of unarmed damage and smite evil, use Kensai to give his natural attacks +1 enhancement bonus, Ghost Touch, and Holy. So far, all superlegal and squeaky clean. However, the character I'm thinking of doing this with has stats that would get him killed if he went unarmored (only a 14 Dex and 13 Wis). As I was thinking about this, it occurred to me that I didn't have to remove his armor. I knew that he'd lose the monk's flurry attack if he kept the armor, but if I gave him Two Weapon Fighting (after raising his Dex to 15 for the prerequisite), that would be the next best thing. That way, he could use a great sword AND get a free enhanced, Ghost Touch, Holy, monk's kick attack. Butt-kicking paladin, literally. Now, it LOOKS to me as if this would be legal, but I want to get the opinion of others. The text I'm using as justification runs as follows: Description of Unarmed Strike, monk class ability "A monk's attacks may be with either fist interchangeably or even from elbows, knees, and feet. This means that a monk may even make unarmed strikes with her hands full. There is no such thing as an off-hand attack for a monk striking unarmed." Player's Handbook p.41 Two Weapon Fighting Feat "Benefit: Your penalties on attack rolls for fighting with two weapons are reduced. The penalty for your primary hand lessens by 2 and the one for your off hand lessens by six." Player's Handbook p.102 Comments?
Tuah 01-12-06, 11:25 PM	It's a great build but just a suggestion; you may want to consider a couple of levels in Fighter to expand your repitoir (however its spelt). You don't nessicarily have to, but having only 7 feats can be a problem. If you try to use Two-Weapon Fighting to its max, then you'll use them all up in just that. I always try to get as many feats as possible. A good thing to do is to have Dexterity be his highest score, because if you choose to get better TWF feats, you'll need 19, and to get a really good score and AC bonus from it, 20. Also, a more important note: Get a Mithril Chain Shirt. Light Mithril Armor is considered to be no armor for the purpouses of special abilities, such as a monk's AC bonus, or a barbarian's fast movement. Also, a Monk's Belt is a fantastic item.
OmniPaul 01-13-06, 12:36 AM	Also, a more important note: Get a Mithril Chain Shirt. Light Mithril Armor is considered to be no armor for the purpouses of special abilities, such as a monk's AC bonus, or a barbarian's fast movement. Perhaps I'm missing something, but from what I can gather, this is not true. Most mithral armors are one category lighter than normal for purposes of movement and other limitations. Heavy armors are treated as medium, and medium armors are treated as light, but light armors are still treated as light. This extremely light chain shirt is made of very fine mithral links. Speed while wearing a mithral shirt is 30 feet for Medium creatures, or 20 feet for Small. The armor has an arcane spell failure chance of 10%, a maximum Dexterity bonus of +6, and no armor check penalty. It is considered light armor and weighs 10 pounds.
grelna 01-13-06, 01:01 AM	It's a great build but just a suggestion; you may want to consider a couple of levels in Fighter to expand your repitoir (however its spelt). You don't nessicarily have to, but having only 7 feats can be a problem. If you try to use Two-Weapon Fighting to its max, then you'll use them all up in just that. I always try to get as many feats as possible. Thanks for the suggestion; I thought about giving him levels in Fighter, but as I said at the beginning, am not looking to optimize, and think it would ruin the flavor. A good thing to do is to have Dexterity be his highest score, because if you choose to get better TWF feats, you'll need 19, and to get a really good score and AC bonus from it, 20. If I were building the character from scratch, then I would put his best stats into Dexterity and Wisdom, natch, but already have a second level aasimar paladin (3rd actually, with the +1 LA) I was thinking about trying this with. I thought it might be fun to play a paladin with a little twist (the ability to kick demon butt) without changing the class overmuch or making the build so strong the GM would feel forced to shut it down. I actually wasn't planning on going any further down the TWF feat path, unless the character just happened to come across a stat enhancing item or event that made him eligible, something I don't anticipate. Also, a more important note: Get a Mithril Chain Shirt. Light Mithril Armor is considered to be no armor for the purpouses of special abilities, such as a monk's AC bonus, or a barbarian's fast movement. Hmm...I think you may be in error on this. On p.284 of the DMG, it says: "Most mithral armors are one category lighter than normal for purposes of movement and other limitations (for example, whether a barbarian can use her fast movement ability while wearing the armor or not). Heavy armors are treated as medium, and medium armors are treated as light, but light armors are still treated as light. That seems pretty authoritative. [EDIT: Whoops - missed previous post.] Also, a Monk's Belt is a fantastic item. Absolutely, and I totally intend to get one for the character as soon as possible. The reason for the post is that I foresee possible trouble convincing my GM that the rules work the way I think they do vis-a-vis armored monks and the Two Weapon Fighting proficiency, and wanted to get others' opinions on how legal they think it is. Not that anyone else's opinion would mean squat to my GM, but it might change my mind, and I'd like to have another career path ready for the character in that event.
geekling 01-13-06, 03:25 AM	I'm not looking to make an optimized character - just need advice on whether this build is legal. Paladin lvls 1-4 Monk lvls 5-6 Kensai lvls 7-10 Paladin lvls 11-20 PHB p. 45 "Like a member of any other class, a paladin may be a multiclass character, but multiclass paladins face a special restriction. A paladin who gains levels in any other class other than paladin may never again raise her paladin level, though she retains all her paladin abilities."
Raxmei 01-13-06, 03:43 AM	PHB p. 45 "Like a member of any other class, a paladin may be a multiclass character, but multiclass paladins face a special restriction. A paladin who gains levels in any other class other than paladin may never again raise her paladin level, though she retains all her paladin abilities."That's why he's taking the feat Ascetic Knight, which allows free multiclassing between monk and paladin. This restriction still does apply to Fighter, so it would be a bad idea to take Fighter levels just for the feats the way some people are recommending.
geekling 01-13-06, 03:50 AM	That's why he's taking the feat Ascetic Knight, which allows free multiclassing between monk and paladin. Totally missed that. Thanks.
9JACK9 01-13-06, 09:49 AM	Ok, in all reality, do you actually NEED the two levels of monk? You could have all the rank prerecs in two levels. Concentration 5, Diplomacy 5, Ride 5. The two feats? Combat Exper and Weapon Focus? Man, you could have that it first level, if you're a human... BAB +5? You could have a 5th level pali, 1st level Kensi by 6th, if you go all Paladin. Don't get me wrong, the idea of a Paladin-Monk is a cool one, but with such a low Wisdom score... dude, your AC's gonna be what, 13? Pretty much forever, because you'll be a second level monk, with no AC bonus. Your damage would be... 1d6+ Str + 1? At... 7th level? That you can't flurry of blows with? By 8th it could be Holy, right? 3d6+ Str against ONLY evil creatures? Face a giant CR 10, Neutral-Neutral dire-bug and do... 1d6 damage against him? With an AC of 13? Or, if you wanted to drop: Flurry of Blows Evasion (unless you had light armor) Fast Movement You could have a great AC, but you'd be doin' 1d6+ Kensi bonus (and you're lookin' at just four levels for your guy, right? Ghost touch and Holy) For the rest of your life because you are now commited to Unarmed Attack... Is this guy legal? Yep, sure is. You can do this, but if I where you, I'd take Ascetic Knight at 3rd, just to be able to hop back and forth from Paladin to Monk... maybe Paladin 2, turn third level, pick up Ascetic Knight, get Monk 1, MAYbe lose the armor, do 1d6 unarmed, and go from there... Think about picking up Kensi at like, 8th or 9th level, after becoming Pali4/Monk4 or something. Wow, that seems like a lot of trouble... still, if you had a 16-18 Wisdom, I'd say lose the chain shirt, and buy a potion of Mage Armor, cause' an AC of 15-17 isn't all that bad, and then go for it! Right. No "optimized character" advice, as per your first line... yes, this character is, in my opinion, totally legal. But boy, if you don't mind me saying so, I think you might be painting yourself into a corner...
grelna 01-14-06, 12:41 AM	Ok, in all reality, do you actually NEED the two levels of monk? You could have all the rank prerecs in two levels. Concentration 5, Diplomacy 5, Ride 5. The two feats? Combat Exper and Weapon Focus? Man, you could have that it first level, if you're a human... BAB +5? You could have a 5th level pali, 1st level Kensi by 6th, if you go all Paladin. Don't get me wrong, the idea of a Paladin-Monk is a cool one, but with such a low Wisdom score... dude, your AC's gonna be what, 13? Pretty much forever, because you'll be a second level monk, with no AC bonus. Your damage would be... 1d6+ Str + 1? At... 7th level? That you can't flurry of blows with? By 8th it could be Holy, right? 3d6+ Str against ONLY evil creatures? Face a giant CR 10, Neutral-Neutral dire-bug and do... 1d6 damage against him? With an AC of 13? Or, if you wanted to drop: Flurry of Blows Evasion (unless you had light armor) Fast Movement You could have a great AC, but you'd be doin' 1d6+ Kensi bonus (and you're lookin' at just four levels for your guy, right? Ghost touch and Holy) For the rest of your life because you are now commited to Unarmed Attack... Is this guy legal? Yep, sure is. You can do this, but if I where you, I'd take Ascetic Knight at 3rd, just to be able to hop back and forth from Paladin to Monk... maybe Paladin 2, turn third level, pick up Ascetic Knight, get Monk 1, MAYbe lose the armor, do 1d6 unarmed, and go from there... Think about picking up Kensi at like, 8th or 9th level, after becoming Pali4/Monk4 or something. Wow, that seems like a lot of trouble... still, if you had a 16-18 Wisdom, I'd say lose the chain shirt, and buy a potion of Mage Armor, cause' an AC of 15-17 isn't all that bad, and then go for it! Right. No "optimized character" advice, as per your first line... yes, this character is, in my opinion, totally legal. But boy, if you don't mind me saying so, I think you might be painting yourself into a corner... I think you misunderstood the nature of my question about the character, probably because I didn't make it as clear as I should have. I know the class combination is legal. What I was wondering about was whether I could play him in armor, like a normal paladin. I am well aware that in doing so, he'd lose the flurry of blows, the unarmored bonus to armor class, and evasion abilities. However, if I gave him Two Weapon Fighting, something monks don't normally need, then he'd gain an extra attack in addition to his primary attack because, according to p.41 of the PHB, "a monk's attacks may be with either fist interchangeably or even from elbows, knees, and feet. This means that a monk may even make unarmed strikes with her hands full." This is not in the section on the Flurry of Blows ability, but in the separate section on monks' Unarmed Strike, which is an enhanced version of the feat Improved Unarmed Strike. On p.160 of the PHB, it says that unarmed strikes count as attacks made with light weapons. Monks do not lose Unarmed Strike if wearing armor, or, at least, I could find no language stating that they did. So the character could attack with his greatsword and gain an extra kick attack, which would not be limited to 1d6, as the feat Ascetic Knight allows levels of paladin and monk to stack for purposes of unarmed strike damage. Of course, all attacks made in a round in which he did this would be at -2 for the Two Weapon Fighting, but that would be acceptable, I think. My question was whether this is as legal as it looks to be. RAW, it sure looks legal to me, but there may be a FAQ or errata I've missed somewhere that addresses this question. That's what I'd like to know. Or, of course, someone might be able to point out an obvious flaw in my reasoning. I don't want to play an illegal character. I just want to play one that's a bit different.
Skadrian 01-14-06, 09:02 AM	That part is legal, so no problem
q'afuu 01-14-06, 10:14 AM	My question was whether this is as legal as it looks to be. It's legal. However, you don't need to be a monk to be able to do this. Any character is allowed to make off-hand attacks with unarmed strikes, monk or not.
Tuah 01-14-06, 06:06 PM	Perhaps I'm missing something, but from what I can gather, this is not true. Hmm... I just re-read it, and grammatically this would be true... In my game, I'm allowing it. Not allowing it is just kind of unrealistic.
m o n k 01-14-06, 06:27 PM	Can monks multiclass? Or is this a totally stupid question that has no bearing on the topic? :(
Tuah 01-14-06, 06:39 PM	Anyone can multiclass. If a monk does it, he can't multiclass back to a monk (for some stupid reason), unless he has multiclassed into something that has an astetic feat devoted to it.
Otto the Bugbear 01-15-06, 08:12 AM	First, this looks like a great character to play. Second, you're optimizing. Just like anyone else that doesn't 100% choose randomly for feat, class, skill, etc. decisions. Optimizing doesn't mean you're trying to deal 20d6 with your unarmed strikes. It means picking the best for your character. This could mean the best whatever (feat, skill, levels, etc.) for meeting the vision you have of the character. Now, as others have stated, that attack routine works. However, many DMs may have a hard time accepting it. In the FAQ, there was a question dealing with attacking with a two-handed weapon, then using armor spikes for "off-hand" attacks via two-weapon fighting. The Sage deemed it legal. If your DM has problems with it, use that as your arguement. However, I highly recommend that you don't push it. If he still says no after showing him that "ruling", then let it drop. Personally, I see no problem with it whatsoever. After all, in the larger scheme of things, you'll be doing a little extra damage. Which is nothing compared to what the full casters can do. Specifically the druid and cleric. Anyway, cool concept. I hope it all works in your favor and you enjoy it. Cheers Otto :)