Before I begin, I should probably mention what arcane monks are _not_. The traditional role for an arcane caster in combat is the ranged attack mage. The most familiar version to most readers, I imagine, is the fireball mage, aka, the AoE attack spell mage. Other variants use ray damage spells (or magic missile), disabling spells like /ray of enfeeblement/ and /enervation/, attack spells that bypass hit points like /charm monster/ and /finger of death/, battlefield control spells like /wall of force/, and so forth. Many mages play several roles at once, with varying degrees of success.
Multiclassing into monk is typically a waste of time for such characters. While monk contains a few defensive abilities (better hit points, better unarmored AC, good saves, evasion, deflect arrows, spell resistance) useful for casters, these abilities are more easily obtained in other ways without hurting the arcane caster's caster progression, which is of paramount importance to true casters. In
general, monk has few abilities that help ranged casters of any form: even for something like an arcane thrower, a combination involving rogue and arcane trickster would work much better than monk and enlightened fist.
Monks focus on melee, and as a consequence, arcane monks focus on melee. Thus, the purpose of this post is to explore how to overcome some of the monk's deficiencies with arcane magic.
Hereafter, I'm going to assume that a character's combined level in monk and non-casting prestige classes is not more than 11. If the character has many more non-casting levels, they're no longer an arcane monk, but a monk splashing an arcane casting class; also, high-level magic is considerably more valuable than low-level magic, so such builds are probably suboptimal anyways compared to a pure noncaster. Most arcane monks will not meet the typical requirements
for gish set forth in other threads on this board (since the combination of monk classes and caster classes leads to low BABs), but I'd consider the ability to cast spells as a 12th-level caster as minimum for an arcane monk, barring some unusual prestige classes that grant spells, like Suel Arcanamach.
Monk Advantages:
Mobility: Monks get bonus speed, acceptable AC without wearing armor, and Tumble, making them the most mobile of the base classes.
Good saves: Monks get all favored saves and evasion at 2nd level (and improved evasion at 9th, which is probably not relevant to this discussion), making them more resistant to magic and various special attacks than most characters.
Attack rate: Monks get a higher base attack rate than most characters at low levels, but are generally no better than anyone else at high levels.
Unarmed fighting: Monks do more damage unarmed than any other class. Unfortunately, unarmed fighting has problems as a primary combat technique, as I will discuss more in the next section.
Decent skills: Monks get Tumble, which is one of the best combat skills, some other strong skills, and 4 + Int skills per level. A monk can serve as a decent scout or infiltrator, though usually the monk will have to sacrifice in other areas.
Stunning fist: Monks get a better version of this skill than any other class.
Random immunities: Monks gradually get immunity to disease, poisons, and aging, and spell resistance; unfortunately, most of these arrive too late to help multiclass monks.
Monk Problems (this is a very long list):
MAD (Multiple Ability Distribution): Your typical monk wants high Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, and Wisdom, with only Charisma as a true dump stat (though most monks can survive with average or below average Intelligence).
Low hit points: The monk only has a d8 hit die, a significant liability for a meleer, especially one with trouble putting a high score in Constitution.
Low BAB: Monks have trouble hitting. Monks who leave monk early for prestige classes have more problems hitting and often issues with attack rate as well.
Inability to bypass damage reduction: Only a concern for monks fighting unarmed. Damage reduction/lawful is rare (most chaotic creatures have damage reduction/cold iron instead), making ki strike (lawful) all but useless. Ki strike (adamantine) arrives far later than most characters can acquire adamantine weapons and is most useful for sundering, since damage reduction/adamantine is also not that common.
Unarmed fighting is hard to boost: Magic items to enhance unarmed fighting are more expensive and less effective than magic weapons.
Lack of feats: With only three feats from their class, monks are severely limited in their feat options. This limits both their combat flexibility and their power.
Lack of damage: The monk's most damaging attack form, unarmed fighting, has the problems noted above. Meanwhile, the monk lacks damage increasing abilities like the barbarian's rage, paladin's smite, rogue's sneak attack, or ranger's favored enemy. MAD enhances this problem.
So, does adding arcane magic help these problems? On the whole, I believe the answer is yes, but first let's cover how arcane magic interacts with the above problems and advantages.
Problems that arcane magic can help:
Lack of flexibility
Lack of damage
Inability to hit
Lack of boosts to unarmed fighting
Inability to bypass damage reduction
Low hit points
Problems that multiclassing for arcane magic increases:
Lack of feats
Low hit points
MAD
Enlightened Fist:
Ok, boring generalities done with, let's examine specifics.
The enlightened fist is going to be the core of any arcane monk build because it advances spellcasting 8 times in 10 levels and monk AC, movement, unarmed damage, and stunning, with requirements of Combat Casting, Improved Unarmed Strike, Stunning Fist, Concentration 8 ranks, Knowledge (arcana) 5 ranks, Spellcraft 5 ranks, and arcane caster level 3d. The two key offensive abilities are arcane fist, which allows the enlightened fist to burn a stunning attempt to cast
and deliver a touch spell as part of a full-round action, and hold ray, which allows the enlightened fist to turn a ray spell into a touch spell. The character also gets diamond soul, one of the best upper level monk abilities, and ki strike (magic). Fist of energy and arcane rejuvenation are useless, being far overcosted for the benefits they grant.
The natural synergy of unarmed attacks with touch spells, which enlightened fist enhances, is central to the offense of any arcane monk build. Arcane fist gives the monk an advantage over a pure arcane caster, because they can effectively quicken high level touchspells many times a day, and an advantage over monks, who have no spell-casting.
[Aside for people used to reading gish builds: why is arcane fist so much better than channel spell? The basic reasons are that arcane fist allows (and requires) a full-attack action, meaning that an arcane fist isn't "giving up" any combat damage to use it, and that it can be used many more times per day. The following list of spells that are good to use with arcane fist also applies, to some extent, to channel spell.]
Before delving into the details of spells, it seems worthwhile to discuss the role of the arcane monk in the party. The arcane monk is a meleer, not a caster; depending on your choices of spells, feats, and items, you may be able to substitute for a primary arcane caster, but you will not be nearly as effective as a true primary caster. You should impress this point on your allies.
Offensive Spells:
So, at this point, I'm going to examine the offensive touch magic available to the build.
The short lists:
Must-have spells:
1st: /chill touch/, /ray of enfeeblement/
2nd: none
3rd: /vampiric touch/, /shivering touch/
4th: /enervation/
5th: none
6th: /disintegrate/
7th: none
8th: /irresistible dance/
9th: none
Useful spells:
1st: /shocking grasp/, /shivering touch, lesser/
2nd: /touch of idiocy/, /ghoul touch/
3rd: none
4th: /dimensional anchor/
5th: /prismatic ray/
6th: none
7th: /emerald flame fist/
8th: /polar ray/
9th: /imprisonment/
1st-level spells:
Shocking Grasp: An impressively useful spell once the arcane monk acquires arcane first, you get 5d6 extra electricity damage and a +3 bonus if your opponent is wearing (or carrying, or made out of) metal on one attack. This spell more or less dominates fist of energy and allows the arcane monk to dish out damage on par with the other specialized attack abilities (smite, sneak attack, etc.). Shocking grasp fades later, but by then you have better options.
Chill Touch: This normally useless spell is awesome for arcane monks, because you can cast it and have it last over a series of unarmed attacks (1/level), dealing 1d6 negative energy damage and 1 Str damage (Fort negates) extra. With arcane fist, using this becomes automatic for every combat that doesn't involve undead, and some that do.
Ray of Enfeeblement: With hold ray, the arcane monk can deal 1d6+5 (or so) Str damage per turn, with no save.
Corrosive Grasp (PGtF): While this spell does slightly more damage, for the most part /chill touch/ is probably better.
Shivering Touch, Lesser (FB): 1d6 Dex damage, no save. Probably not as useful as /ray of enfeeblement/, but doesn't require hold ray.
Spirit Worm (PGtF/MoF): Minor Constitution damage if the target fails to save, minor damage if it saves. Probably not worthwhile in the context of other available spells.
2nd-level spells:
Acid Arrow: With hold ray, this ability deals less immediate damage than /shocking grap/, but offers another element and can be useful against low-level casters.
Touch of Idiocy: Useful mostly for shutting down casters at low levels, but excellent for this purpose.
Scorching Ray: The usefulness of this spells depends on how multiple-ray spells interact with hold ray.
Ghoul Touch: Using this spell is far better than making a stun attack for the range when the spell's save DC isn't much lower than your stunning fist. Later on, it fades in usefulness.
Bone Chill (FB): By the time you get hold ray, this spell has probably outlived its usefulness.
3rd-level spells:
Ray of Exhaustion: This spell can be useful with hold ray because it only allows a save for partial effect, not a full negation.
Vampiric Touch: This spell is one of the best for arcane monks, period. Besides offering decent extra damage that is hard to resist and scales all the way to level 20, it also helps with one of the major problems for arcane monks, lack of hit points.
Shivering Touch (FB): 3d6 Dex damage, no save. This spell can be lethal in the hands of an arcane monk, rapidly reducing a target's AC and making it helpless when it reaches 0 Dex. With metamagic and critical hits, this spell is capable of rendering a target helpless in a single attack.
Spider Poison (PGtF/MoF): I don't know why you would use this spell once you have access to /ray of enfeeblement/ with hold ray.
4th-level spells:
Dimensional Anchor: Requires hold ray. This spell is only useful in certain situations, but may be worth taking for those situations.
Bestow Curse: A good spell for weakening opponents, but has a save.
Contagion: A more flexible spell for dealing ability damage, but it has a save, making it less useful.
Enervation: With hold ray, one of the most powerful spells in the arcane monk's arsenal, mostly because it has no save. Enervation is a powerful anticaster spell, since one lucky hit (or use of Empower or Maximize) can strip most of a caster's highest level spells. Meanwhile, enervation also makes a target less effective at damaging the monk and sets it up for subsequent kill spells (from either the monk or the monk's allies) by reducing saves and possibly spell resistance. Finally, enervation can kill all on its own, though doing so is often an inefficient use of spell slots and stunning fist uses.
5th-level spells:
Prismatic Ray (CA): Like most of the prismatic spells, a decent and flexible tool for attacking enemies, and hard to defend against.
6th-level spells:
Disintegrate: Another power spell for the arcane monk (and you should have hold ray by the time you get it), disintegrate is often best used as a finisher after some uses of enervation to weaken an enemy's saves.
7th-level spells:
Emerald Flame Fist (CA): This is another awesome spell for arcane monks, and possibly the only circumstance I've seen where you want your opponent to _succeed_ on their save. 3d6 + 1/level fire damage to all your unarmed attacks for 1 round/level is amazingly strong.
8th-level spells:
Irresistible Dance: This is one of the best upper level spells for an arcane monk. The spell has no save, prevents the target from taking actions, reduces its AC, and allows you (and anyone else threatening it) to take an attack of opportunity against it each round. What's not to like?
Polar Ray: Lots of damage, no save.
Blackfire (CA): This spell has the potential to do lots of Constitution damage, but has a save. Best followed with several applications of enervation, if you want to use it, but this probably isn't the best spell for arcane monks.
Bestow Curse, Greater (CD): This spell offers a save, and given this, may not be worth an 8th-level slot.
Simbul's Skeletal Deliquescence (PGtF/MoF): This spell has a save and is mostly useful for disabling opponents without killing them.
9th-level spells:
Imprisonment: This is a good finisher spell.
Energy Drain: Like /enervation/, but more so. However, an Empowered Maximized /enervation/ applies more average negative levels.
I should note that while I focused on touch and ray spells in the prior section, an arcane monk can exploit one other type of offensive magic: spells with areas that extend from the caster. However, the arcane monk is generally no better at this than other arcane warrior builds, and other arcane warriors tend to have fewer of the arcane monk's problems.
In this vein, one spell deserves a special note: /antimagic field/. Monks have decent abilities for fighting in an antimagic field, and are the best equipmentless fighters in an antimagic field, bar none. I'll examine this topic further in the section on spell/feat combinations.
Buff Spells:
After touch magic, the most important spells to an arcane monk are buffs, because they help make up for the arcane monk's deficiencies compared to combat-focused monks and to overcome the weaknesses of monks compared to "full" melee classes with better hit dice, BAB, and abilities. The following lists are focused on combat utility, as opposed to general utility spells.
Essential spells:
1st: /mage armor/ (until surpassed), /true strike/, /magic weapon/ or /laeral's cutting hand/, /fist of stone/
2nd: /false life/, /lion's charge/
3rd: /magic weapon, greater/ (unless you have an alternative means of
getting the same effect), /haste/ (ditto)
4th: /polymorph/
5th: /draconic polymorph/, /mestil's acid sheath/, /blink, greater/
6th: /heroism, greater/
7th: none
8th: none
9th: /shapechange/
Useful spells:
1st: /shield/, /enlarge person/, /kaupaer's skittish nerves/
2nd: /mirror image/, /invisibility/, stat pumps
3rd: /heroism/, /rage/, /displacement/, /blink/
4th: /fire shield/, /invisibility, greater/, /assay resistance/
5th: /permanency/, /touch of adamantine/
6th: /contingency/, /transformation/, /starmantle/
7th: /spell turning/
8th: /mind blank/, /polymorph any object/
9th: none
1st-level spells:
Protection from Evil etc.: Too specific for limited-knowledge casters, but useful for others in appropriate situations.
Shield: This is a strong spell for all arcane casters from low to high levels, and the arcane monk receives particular benefit from it.
Mage Armor: One of the paramount spells at low levels for an arcane monk, this allows you to not only compete with but surpass the ACs available to most other characters at those levels. Eventually, /mage armor/'s bonus may be too low, but it remains an excellent spell for a long time.
True Strike: One of the low-level arcane spells most useful at high levels, Quickened /true strike/ is mainstay of later-game combinations.
Enlarge Person: Another power spell for arcane monks, this gives you 10 feet of reach with your unarmed attacks and bonuses when making special attacks such as trips.
Magic Weapon: Besides granting the ability to pierce damage reduction/magic early, this spell helps overcome some of the arcane monk's low-level problems with damage and hitting.
Laeral's Cutting Hand (PGtF/MoF): This spell grants a +2 enhancement to attack and damage with one hand, but you can't cast spells with it and it doesn't last as long as /magic weapon/. This spell definitely deserves consideration, but which spell you prefer depends on other variables.
Kaupaer's Skittish Nerves (PGtF/MoF): A bonus to initiative is always a good thing, but this spell competes with many other good buffs and doesn't last very long.
Fist of Stone (CA): An amazing spell for the low-level arcane monk, granting you an extra attack (though at a -5 penalty) and a hefty bonus to Strength for your attack rolls and damage.
2nd-level spells:
Protection from Arrows: Good for defeating low-level archers.
Blur: Good protection spell for low levels in melee.
Mirror Image: Another strong protection spell, better than /blur/ in many respects.
Invisibility: Useful for stealth and sneak attacks.
False Life: This is another essential for low-level arcane monks, helping to mitigate their generally terrible hit points.
Alter Self: This spell can be powerful in combat if your type is something besides humanoid; if not, it still has uses, but is not nearly as potent.
Stat Pump Spells: A typical arcane monk can make good use out of four or five of these spells, but typically, can only afford to use one or two. Prioritizing them is often difficult and situational.
Lion's Charge (SS): This spell is a must-have for arcane monks, because it allows you to use the monk's improved movement speed while still making full attacks and thus using arcane fist.
Claws of Darkness (PGtF/FRCS): Most useful at low levels when the claws' advantages are strongest and their disadvantages least annoying, but not all that helpful for an arcane monk, especially since the best effect, /slow/, requires grappling.
Create Magic Tattoo (PGtF): This flexible spell can create a variety of useful effects, but unfortunately requires a costly material component.
3rd-level spells:
Arcane Sight: Useful for determining your enemies' vulnerabilities.
Heroism: This is an excellent buff when it first arrives and remains helpful later because it can be cast long before.
Rage: Mostly useful in later levels when you've maxed out the more common bonus types.
Displacement: Another good protection spell.
Blink: An excellent physical defense spell, if you're willing to take the risk that your spells won't function.
Magic Weapon, Greater: This spell is essential, though isn't necessary until the midlevels.
Haste: This spell is also essential.
Weapon of Impact (PGtF, MoF): If you're playing with the moronic 3.5 rule, /weapon of impact/ provides all the increase you will ever need to your unarmed threat range.
4th-level spells:
Stoneskin: This is a useful spell to cast in emergencies, but is too expensive to use routinely.
Invisibility, Greater: This spell has obvious uses in combat and for stealthy arcane monks.
Fireshield: This is a good spell to make melee attackers hesitant about striking you as well as providing you protection from fire or cold.
Polymorph: In my opinion, this is the single most important buff for an arcane monk, because it simultaneously tackles several of the central problems with the build. /Polyrmorph/ helps mitigate MAD by replacing your physical stats, allowing you to invest more in mental stats without hurting your combat ability as much. Many of the forms you can polymorph into have special attacks that are similar to feats, allowing you to make use of combat maneuvers without needing to spend feats to get them. Unarmed combat synergises with natural attack forms, since an arcane monk can make a full unarmed attack and then follow it with the natural attacks of any form the monk has polymorphed into.
Assay Resistance: Like /true strike/, calling this a buff is a bit of a stretch, but it gives a +10 bonus on the check to beat spell resistance for one spell, which can be incredibly valuable against an opponent with high spell resistance.
5th-level spells:
Permanency: The arcane monk benefits from having a number of spells cast permanently. At the top of the list is /magic fang, greater/, which an arcane monk should try to find a +5 version of ASAP and make permanent, thereby saving the need for any expensive magic items and/or buff spells. Another good choice is /enlarge person/. The various supplements contain other useful permanent spells. For limited spell knowledge casters, /permanency/ is often best obtained
from scrolls.
Draconic Polymorph (Draconomicon): Like ordinary /polymorph/, but scales better with level and grants some stat bonuses to your alternate form. This is an excellent spell and, provided you have the slots, can more or less completely replace /polymorph/.
Mestil's Acid Sheath (PGtF/MoF): Similar to /fires of purity/, but does _lots_ more damage. One of the best midlevel unarmed boosters. [Seems to have no damage cap . . . is this right?].
Kiss of the Vampire (PGtF/MoF): This spell probably doesn't allow you to make unlimited unarmed attacks with /enervation/ and /vampiric touch/, but it still might be worth considering; it's unclear to me how this spell interacts with 3.5.
Blink, Greater (CA): /Blink/ without the disadvantages. This is an extremely useful spell for an arcane monk.
Touch of Adamantine (BoED): This spells allows you to bypass the corresponding damage reduction and ignore hardness like an adamantine weapon; given the arcane monk's lack of ki strike (adamantine), this spell can be very useful, especially if you're using sunder.
6th-level spells:
Contingency: This spell has many creative uses, but can be difficult for a character with limited spell knowledge to afford.
True Seeing: This can be an important spell, but its usefulness is situational and with the expensive material component, may not be worth taking for limited spell knowledge castes.
Heroism, Greater: A strong melee combat buff.
Transformation: This spell is always a popular one for arcane warriors, and is better in many respects for arcane monks since they're combinations of casting and a lower-powered meleer. Unfortunately, most of the arcane monk's power comes from the effective combination of spellcasting and unarmed fighting; so while this spell may have situational uses, more often than not it's not a good idea.
Mass Stat Pumps: The usefulness of these spells depends mostly on the choices of the rest of your party.
Brilliant Blade (CA): Give your fists the brilliant energy property; useful in some situations, dependent on what you're fighting.
Fiendform (CA): This is essentially an alternate form of /polymorph/. It has its uses, but is probably a judgment call whether it's worth a 6th-level slot in any particular campaign.
Fires of Purity (CD): Similar to /emerald flame fist/, does less damage, but no chance of "losing" the spell to a lucky failed save on your opponent's part and it does damages to anyone who attacks you. However, it's not a touch attack spell, so you can't pseudo-Quicken it with arcane fist.
Starmantle (BoED): Despite this spell's minor component cost, it can be extremely useful for any kind of arcane monk; as a rule, arcane monks have abnormally high reflex saves compared to most meleers or casters, and they can use the decreased damage from weapons this spell grants. However, if you aren't fighting things with weapons, you're wasting your time.
7th-level spells:
Spell Turning: This is a generally useful spell that you don't usually see on a meleer.
Arcane Sight, Greater: Another useful spell unusual for a meleer.
8th-level spells:
Mind Blank: This is a good spell for anyone, though generally you need it less than most characters because you have an excellent Will save and often higher than average Wisdom.
Moment of Prescience: This is mostly an emergency spell, and only dubiously worth an 8th-level slot.
Iron Body: The penalties for this spell generally exceed the benefits.
Polymorph Any Object: Like all the polymorph spells, this one is a good choice for the arcane monk, but often you can get the spell's benefits from only a few castings, which means that for limited knowledge casters it's often better obtained from a scroll.
Ghostform (CA): Being incorporeal is a double-edged sword for an arcane monk, unless you can find a way of making your fists ghost touch weapons.
Heart of Stone (CA): DR and energy resistances are highly useful, if you're willing to deal with the possible problems and the experience cost; limited knowledge casters should, of course, cast this from a scroll, if you can find one.
9th-level spells:
Foresight: This spell is overcosted for a 9th-level spell, but useful nonetheless.
Shapechange: _The_ spell for high level arcane monks, this spell has all the advantages of polymorph with more flexibility, longer duration, the ability to change forms as a free action once each round, and the ability to acquire all the extraordinary and supernatural qualities of the shape you assume. /Shapechange/ is simply awesome, and should be a priority acquisition for any arcane monk if at all possible.
Absorption (CA): Similar to /spell turning/, except that you can use it to cast spells rather than causing them to rebound on the caster. The utility of this spell is a judgment call, but it's certainly better for casters with more limited numbers of spell slots.
Superior Invisibility (CA): This spell has its uses, but also some serious problems, and the CA version as written makes no sense. /Stalking spell/ from SS, if you can persuade your DM to use it, is better and makes more sense.
Concluding comments: I ignored many useful spells in these analyses, including battlefield control (/wall of force/), movement (/dimension door/, /ethereal jaunt/), and general utility (/dispel magic/). You will almost certainly want a few spells beyond combat magic and buffs.
It's highly unlikely that you will be able to provide all the buffs and utility spells you want on your own. I focused my discussion on spells with range Personal and buffs that are especially helpful for arcane monks. Obviously, it's a good idea to coordinate buffs with your allies.
Arcane monks need more feats than they can possibly get, so have to make some significant sacrifices somewhere. I'll start my discussion of required feats and feats designed to enhance the synergies between arcane casting and monk abilities, or to mitigate the disadvantages of multiclassing.
Required Feats:
Stunning Fist, Improved Unarmed Strike, Combat Casting
Synergy Feats:
Kung-Fu Genius (DR 319): Allows you to substitute Int for Wis for monk class abilities. It's not clear (to me, at least) Stunning Fist DC counts as a "monk class ability" for this purpose since it's a feat, though I'd hazard that other feats are not. However, stunning DC and the AC bonus are the only monk abilities available from monk levels reachable for arcane monks that matter at all.
Ascetic Mage (CAdv): Allows sorcerer levels to count for the monk's AC level-based AC bonus and gives Cha to AC instead of Wis.
Comments: These feats are both pretty good since they help reduce MAD. Whether they are worth taking depends on how good your stats are and how much you need AC.
Arcane Strike (CW): Burn prepared spells or spell slots to add a bonus to your attack roll and damage for one round. Simply put, this feat is essential for arcane warriors, and the monk gets more advantage from it than most because of their typically lower attack bonus.
Practiced Spellcaster (CD): This feat is very strong in the opening but weaker past level 15 or so. However, because of the way the levels work out, it's normal for an arcane monk to be a 6th-level character with a caster level of 3, or an 11th-level character with a caster level of 7. In those level ranges, Practiced Spellcaster can make a huge difference in the amount of damage a monk can do and the length of time their damaging spells and buffs last.
Stunning Feats:
Extra Stunning: This feat is most useful at low levels when the arcane monk doesn't have many uses of stunning per day. However, it still makes a substantial difference in the number of stunning attempts you have available at level 15 (14 or 15 vs. 11 or 12).
Rapid Stunning: It is the opinion of some posters that Rapid Stunning allows extra uses of arcane fist per round. If your DM permits this, Rapid Stunning is a must-have feat, and it may be worth taking a second time (but after that, you tend to run out of good BAB attacks to use to deliver your touch spells).
Combat Maneuvers and Special Attack Feats:
Rather than examining specific feats for the first part of this section, I'm going to look at specific types of fighting styles.
Tripping [Combat Expertise, Improved Trip, Combat Reflexes, Defensive
Throw (CW), Elusive Target (CW)]: With the help of /polymorph/ and /enlarge person/, an arcane monk can become quite accomplished at battlefield control, though will obviously never reach the abilities of a true tripping or disarming expert like a spiked-chain wielder. Combat Reflexes can help this kind of build. Note that many wolf-type monsters have inherent trip attacks, so if you plan to use tripping without reach, these are often a better option.
Disarming [Combat Expertise, Improved Disarm]: Disarming, in my experience, is rarely a worthwhile strategy, and unarmed disarming is particularly problematic, especially since an arcane monk's strength bonus on the check is often poor.
Grappling [Improved Grapple, Earth's Embrace (CW), Clever Wrestling (CW)]: This is terrible idea. Arcane monks always take Stunning Fist instead of Improved Grapple, casting spells while grappling is difficult at best, none of the enlightened fist's abilities help grappling, and arcane monks don't have the Str scores to grapple well. If you want to grapple, /polymorph/ into something with good Str and Improved Grab.
Bullrush and Overrun [Improved Bull Rush, Improved Overrun, Shock Trooper (CW)]: These maneuvers are generally better used by characters with less MAD, and rarely worth specializing in even for those characters.
Feint [Combat Expertise, Improved Feint]: Arcane monks don't get Bluff in-class and receive no special benefit from denying opponents their Dex bonus to AC, making this a poor option.
Mounted Combat [Mounted Combat, Ride-By Attack]: The usefulness of mounted combat is highly campaign-dependent.
Sunder [Improved Sunder, Eagle Claw Attack (CW), Combat Brute (CW)]:
This particular combat maneuver has great potential in the hands of an arcane monk, helping to reduce the advantage that equipment-wielding characters have over the monk. Spells and feats like Arcane Strike can also make destroying weapons much easier.
Spring Attack [Spring Attack]: While ordinary monks can get a good amount of mileage out of Spring Attack because of their high movement, arcane monks rely much more on full attack actions and spellcasting, both of which undermine the value of Spring Attack.
Unarmed Special Attacks [Ability Focus (MM), Fists of Iron (CW), Freezing the Lifeblood (CW), Pain Touch (CW), Stone Monkey (DR 309), Weakening Touch (CW)]: The central problem with most of these feats is that they require a high Wis to take, which increases your MAD problems. Also, since they require stunning fist uses, their opportunity costs are much higher for you than for most monks.
A few deserve special notes. Fists of Iron is a complete waste of time and one of the most worthless feats I've ever seen published. Stone Monkey requires grappling, making it less useful. Weakening Touch gives a -6 noncumulative penalty to Str that stacks with spell-derived ability damage, making Str-based disabling attacks that much more effective.
Group Attacks [Cleave, Great Cleave, Whirlwind Attack]: These feats are no more or less useful for an arcane monk than for most arcane warriors. In most cases, arcane warriors have better ways of dealing with groups of enemies than using Cleave or Whirlwind Attack.
Sunset School (CW): This feat is mostly notable for the ability to attack after using /dimension door/ et al., since an arcane monk is probably able to use this ability more often than a normal monk can.
Other Melee Combat Feats:
Two-Weapon Fighting (need I say?): Many of the arcane monk's spells and abilities (such as Arcane Strike) give bonuses to all attacks in a round, so getting more attacks is very useful; also, using two-weapon fighting with unarmed attacks makes it no harder to cast spells, since you have both hands free. That said, using two-weapon fighting increases the arcane monk's already significant problems with hitting. When you add up the numbers, an arcane monk's BAB progression is caster-like for the first eight levels or so. Meanwhile, a typical
full attack sequence for a mid-level arcane monk is -2/-2/-2/-7/-7/-7 (haste, flurry, one iterative attack, and two natural attacks from a /polymorphed/ form) on a base attack bonus of +6 or so. Adding Two-Weapon Fighting to this can make it very difficult to hit, even with a bonus from Arcane Strike. The other problem with Two-Weapon Fighting is that the Dex requirements tend to be prohibitive.
Weapon Finesse: This feat is of questionable value. While the arcane monk, like a rogue, has damage that isn't so reliant on Str, and thus can afford to concentrate on taking Dex for its other advantages, many of the best forms you /polymorph/ into have much higher Str than Dex, particularly if you use /draconic polymorph/. Weapon Finesse does have utility in decreasing MAD until you get /polymorph/, particularly if you're taking other feats with high Dex requirements, like the two-weapon fighting tree. Using Weapon Finesse tends to make the early levels suck more, because you will be doing even less damage in a level range where your damage is weak already.
Intuitive Attack (BoED): Similar to Weapon Finesse, this feat allows you to substitute Wis for Str when making attack rolls. The major differences are that it helps a different set of abilities (an AC bonus that you retain when flat-footed, different skills, and the unarmed special attacks tree) and that Wis isn't replaced when you /polymorph/, which may or may not be an advantage depending on your perspective. One disadvantage of Intuitive Attack is that as an exalted feat, it is a supernatural rather than an extraordinary ability, so does not function in an antimagic field; it also requires a good alignment.
Weapon Focus (unarmed strike): This feat does provide a +1 bonus to all your unarmed attacks that stacks with everything. However, +1 is not all that much and it doesn't help your natural attacks; I'm dubious whether this feat is worthwhile.
Improved Natural Attack (unarmed strike) (MM): This increases an arcane monk's base unarmed damage, which can be quite good given the typical number of attacks you get: for instance, if you are a Medium-sized and deal damage as a 16th-level monk, Improved Natural Attack adds 4.5 damage, on average, per hit.
Multiattack and Improved Multiattack (MM): If your DM allows you to take these feats, depending on what types of typical polymorph forms you use, they can be well worth it, since frequently an arcane monk gets as many attacks with natural weapons from /polymorph/ as from iterative BAB-based unarmed strikes.
Improved Critical: My understanding of the rules is that if you use an unarmed strike to deliver a touch spell and you get a critical hit with that strike, the unarmed damage is doubled, rather than the spell's damage. Now, in most cases, it's much better for an arcane monk to double spell damage rather than strike damage. So, can you choose to critical your touch spell instead of your unarmed strike? If so, Improved Critical (touch spell) might be worth taking. Improved Critical (unarmed strike) is worthless in any event: much of your extra damage comes in the form of extra dice (Arcane Strike, many spells, etc.), which aren't multiplied by criticals, and your damage bonus is often rather small, so the damage boost Improved Critical provides is minuscule.
Roundabout Kick (CW): This feat is a better way to boost unarmed criticals, though the additional damage is still not all that good.
If your DM doesn't use the idiotic 3.5 rule that Improved Critical doesn't stack with other ways of increasing threat range, /weapon of impact/, Roundabout Kick, and Improved Critical are the best way to wring extra damage from unarmed criticals, and can provide a noticeable damage boost.
Power Attack: Arcane monks, as I have mentioned many times, have problems hitting. However, if you're fighting an opponent you don't have much trouble hitting, for whatever reason, Power Attack is one of the best and most flexible ways of boosting your damage that exists. It also synergises well with any ability that gives you a bonus to hit or reduces your opponent's AC, like many of the arcane monk's spells do.
Mage Slayer (CA): If you take this feat, you more or less have to take Practiced Spellcaster to make up for the reduction in your caster level. That said, this does make you considerably more threatening as mage killer, but I think this is a poor feat for arcane warriors: there are many other builds that can use it more effectively.
Deflect Arrows: You can get this feat free with monk 2, which is the only reason it deserves mention. Its usefulness is dependent on how often you expect to meet archers. It's better at low levels than high because high level archers can more or less ignore it with a full attack. One particular use of this feat is defeating the ever-popular "ready an action to fire an arrow if they cast a spell."
Miscellaneous Caster Feats:
Arcane Preparation (CA): I still don't know why this feat exists except to rub in the prep-caster favoritism. More or less the only reason to take this feat is Quicken, and even Quicken is not worth 2 feats.
Counterspell Feats [Improved Counterspell, Reactive Counterspell (PGtF)]: Counterspelling is usually better left to the primary arcane caster of your party.
Eschew Materials: The situations in which this feat does something are rare, and usually there are better ways of dealing with them than wasting a feat.
Spellcasting Prodigy (PGtF): This feat was marginal even before the gimping of save DCs, but it does help to mitigate MAD.
Spell Focus and Greater Spell Focus: Arcane monks' MAD and lower-level
spells means that breeching opponents' saves is often unrealistic. The +1 DC bonus provided by Spell Focus and Greater Spell Focus is rarely enough to matter and moreover, the good spells with saves are scattered across several schools (necromancy, enchantment, transmutation, illusion). Finally, most touch and ray spells don't have saves.
Spell Penetration and Greater Spell Penetration: Spell resistance can be a serious problem for arcane monks, because almost all of their spells are resistable. With Practiced Spellcaster, typically an arcane monk is no worse than a normal caster at breaking resistance, but this may not be good enough.
Arcane Mastery (CA): Take 10 on caster level checks. This is another aid to beating spell resistance, though you have to be careful about when you use it (hint: you can use /chill touch/ as a test spell to find out if you breech a target's SR taking 10 on your caster level check).
Feats to Learn Other Spells [Extra Spell (CA), Arcane Disciple (CD)]: I have heard interpretations of Extra Spell indicating that you can use it to obtain spells that are not your casting class's spell list. Arcane Disciple gives you domain spells to your class spell list, though you still have to learn the spell, which can be costly for a spontaneous caster.
These options are important because there are some spells that exceptionally powerful for arcane monks that do not appear on typical arcane lists. Healing spells are an obvious if boring option, but healing is probably better left to other party members. There are several strong cleric combat buffs that are worth examination: /divine favor/, /divine power/, and /righteous might/. The inflict spells are all reasonable choices, and /harm/ is an amazing complement to an arcane monk's repertoire. The supplements contain other good domains and spells: for instance, several of the spells from the Madness domain (CD) are useful for an arcane monk's arcane fist, as is /blast of force/ from the Force domain (CD). The Competition domain (CD) grants both Divine Power _and_ Righteous Might, along with some other potentially useful spells.
Metamagic Feats:
Most metamagic feats are useless. I'm only going to mention the ones you might want to use (or think you might want to use, but actually don't).
Empower: This feat is the best general damage-boosting feat available, for two reasons. The first is that Empower is almost as good as Maximize on small die sizes: on 1d4, Empower yields an expected value of 3.5, and in the limit of large numbers of d4, an expected value of 3.75. On 1d6, Empower's expected value is approximately 4.83, and in the limit of large numbers of d6, 5.25. Back when it was possible to multiple Empower, Empower was more or less just better than Maximize. The other reason Empower is good is that at equivalent spell-slot levels, Empowering a lower-level spell is often better than using a higher level spell: the classic example showing this is a level 10 caster using Empowered Fireball to do 15d6 damage while a /cone of cold/ only does 10d6. Arcane monks have a lot of spells that benefit from Empower, so this feat is a good choice for them.
Maximize: Maximize is only worth taking if you want to double Maximize and Empower, in most circumstances. There are a few corner cases where Maximize is much better (/false life/, for instance), but I think these are outweighed by all the circumstances where Empower is better.
Extend: Arcane monks use many buffs, so this feat can be quite useful to them. However, metamagic rods of Extend are rather cheap and in many cases you can get away with using them rather than taking the feat.
Silent and Still: Both of these feats are of only situational value. Still allows spells to be used while grappling, unless you're a spontaneous caster. Silent and/or Still can allow you to use spells while /polymorphed/ into something that can't speak or make arcane gestures. Generally, these feats are useful only if you expect to
regularly create circumstances where you want to cast a Silent or Stilled spell; a feat is too expensive a cost for an arcane monk to take them "just in case."
Quicken: Probably the best metamagic feat, if you're a prep caster. If not, you can't use this feat, unless you make a house rule (I think stripping Quicken from spontaneous casters is unjustified and maims their competitiveness with prep casters).
Energy Substitution (CA): While this feat is popular with primary arcane casters, many of the best spells for arcane monks are nonelemental and moreover, arcane monks tend to have a fair amount of elemental diversity just from picking appropriate touch spells. Also, arcane monks are not reliant on only elemental spells to boost their damage. Finally, Consecrate/Corrupt, depending on your alignment, is often a better way to break elemental resistances if you must.
Consecrate/Corrupt (CD): Useful for piercing resistances, but do arcane monks don't rely on elemental spells for damage the way primary arcane casters do.
Persistent (PGtF): At the 3.5 +6 adjustment, unless you're an incantatrix, have Divine Metamagic, or have some other way of bypassing a level adjustment, this feat is close to useless. For arcane monks, who have few high-level spell slots anyways, this feat is even worse.
Innate (PGtF): The new version of Innate Spell is good for both prep casters and spontaneous casters. Prep casters can get more uses/day of their most commonly used spells (for an arcane monk, often /polymorph/, say). Spontaneous casters can convert a spell into spell-like ability and then swap it out, effectively gaining an extra known spell. Having a spell-like ability has other advantages, such as not needing verbal, somatic, or material components to cast it. The one problem for an arcane monk is that you can't convert your offensive spells into spell-like abilities, because by the RAW arcane fist does not work with them.
Item Creation Feats:
Arcane monks based off wizard get Scribe Scroll for free. Beyond this, the vast majority of items you will want to craft for yourself are wondrous items, so Craft Wondrous Item is the only other feat worth taking; this is a specific extension of Craft Wondrous Item being far and away the best item creation feat.
Exalted Feats:
One exalted feat was covered earlier, Intuitive Attack. Most of the monk exalted feats require ki strike (lawful), which arcane monks do not get. One exalted feat deserves a special mention: Vow of Poverty. Arcane monks who need not rely on a spellbook combine the two classes that need equipment least, monk and arcane spellcaster, so Vow of Poverty is a natural choice for them, especially since the bonus exalted feats can help deal with their limited numbers of feats.
Unfortunately, the number of exalted feats that are actually useful for arcane monks is limited. Intuitive Attack and Celestial Familiar are useful enough to justify to take even if you're not getting free feats, but only for certain builds. Touch of Golden Ice is an excellent addition to an arcane monk's attack, dealing additional Dex damage (though the save DC is too low for the feat to be worth taking if you're not getting free feats from Vow of Poverty). Nymph's Kiss, Favored of the Companions/Knight of Stars/Servant of the Heavens, Exalted Spell Resistance, Gift of Faith, and Nimbus of Light are all varying degrees of useful (Nymph's Kiss and Exalted Spell Resistance are by far the best), but not something worth taking for an arcane monk outside Vow of Poverty. All told, there are about six feats in
this collection I consider decent: Intuitive Attack, Celestial Familiar, Golden Ice, Nymph's Kiss, and Exalted Spell Resistance.
A final note are the other Vow feats. Most of the best ones boost Will saves, but an arcane monk's Will save is typically already disgusting. Luckily, some of the feats that are better for arcane monks have roleplaying restrictions that aren't as heinous. In general, the largest problem with loading up on Vow feats is that you
can end up with a character whose roleplaying options are crippled.
Random Feats:
Quick Draw: For an arcane monk, if your DM allows it, this feat is for retrieving a stored item (such as scrolls, wands, etc.) as a free action.
Great Fortitude: The arcane monk's "weak" save is Fortitude. While your Fortitude save will not be terrible, it will be noticeably lower than your other saves, so it may be worth increasing.
Improved Toughness (CW): The arcane monk's low hit points make this feat a good choice, though it's probably a better idea to offset low hit points with spells than feats.
Familiar Boosting Feats [Improved Familiar (DMG, PGtF, CW), Exalted Familiar (BoED)]: Most arcane casters view familiars as experience drains waiting to happen. This is mostly true of arcane monks' familiars as well, unless you're willing to spend some effort boosting them. Note that because arcane monks have better saves and hit points than most arcane casters, their familiars are inherently more survivable. Also, familiars share spells, so they benefit from any of the arcane monk's melee buffs, which other arcane casters also often lack.
Given these advantages and the frequent usefulness of a companion in melee, familiars can be more useful to arcane monks than primary arcane spellcasters. The most important principle of improving a familiar is to turn them into something with more combat ability. The expanded familiar lists in CW, PGtF, and BoED help with this, but this can also be accomplished with spellcasting, since a familiar shares any /alter self/ or /polymorph/ spell you cast on yourself. Familiars
are magical beasts, which considerably expands the available combat-worthy options for /alter self/. Familiars have the full range of forms available to you with /polymorph/, and you can turn them into forms that you wouldn't want to take because of spellcasting or other limitations. If you use share spells to /polymorph/ your familiar, beware of the risk of becoming separated from them in combat; this is one reason why it's often a wise idea to have a familiar with a sturdier base type than the typical small animal.
Leadership: Cha-based arcane monks can get significant mileage out of a cohort: for instance, a primary arcane caster to provide buffs and backup firepower. Int-based arcane monks usually dump Cha, making this feat a poor choice for them.
Improved Initiative: Winning initiative is always helpful and in higher-level combats is often critical, with the side that wins initiative able to dominate the battlefield by forcing their opposition to react, rather than the other way around. I view Improved Initiative as a must for almost all characters.
Skills:
Knowledge (arcana) 5 and Spellcraft 5 are requirements for enlightened fist. Concentration 8 is also a requirement, and maxed Concentration is _essential_ to the class, since you will be casting in your enemies' threat ranges in almost every combat. Tumble is the arcane monk's other essential skill, since it gives you combat mobility without costing you feats and offers you some other helpful abilities (particularly once you can hit epic-class Tumble DCs).
Given how little a typical arcane monk wants to grapple (at least without using /polymorph/ first), Escape Artist is a good combat skill, and is also helpful for other situations; it also decreases the needs for Still Spell. Listen and Spot are good skills for any character; if you need to act as a scout, you probably want Hide and Move Silently along with them. Finally, Diplomacy and Sense Motive
are odd but not insensible choices, particularly for an arcane monk using Cha for casting, but both have the problem that they are not class skills for enlightened fist.
The traditional method to constructing a build is to discuss race and class order first. I inverted this so to motivate the decisions in this section.
Race:
By far the strongest choice for race, in my opinion, is human, for the bonus feat, flexible favored class, and +1 skill point per level.
Gnomes and halflings are small, which is a nasty penalty for any melee combatant and worse for a monk; while arcane monks can work around this disadvantage to some extent, taking a -2 Str penalty and an inconvenient favored class on top of this is a serious problem. Meanwhile, their other racial bonuses are not particularly helpful for arcane monks. Elves aren't small, but their racial bonuses are again not all that helpful for an arcane monk. Half-orcs take enalties to both arcane spell-casting abilites and have a bad favored class. Dwarves have a useful ability distribution for an Int-based casting arcane monk and some useful combat abilities, but a poor favored class; they're the only core alternative I'd consider to human for an arcane monk.
There are probably non-core races somewhere with more helpful abilities for arcane monks. However, a level adjustment is a serious problem for an arcane monk: they already lose essential casting levels from taking monk and enlightened fist, and a level adjustment puts them even further behind the curve. On one final note, races with the outsider base type can use /polymorph/ and /alter self/ much more effectively than a normal arcane monk, and may even be worth a +1 adjustment.
Class Order:
As with most odd multiclass characters, it's essential to enter your prestige class as soon as possible: staying longer in either base class dilutes the progression of your key abilities. For enlightened fist, level 6 is the earliest you can take the class.
The fundamental decision an arcane monk has to make is what casting class to build off. While sorcerers make terrible primary arcane casters, sorcerer casting has definite advantages for arcane warriors. As a rule, arcane warriors don't need to be as flexible as primary casters, lack a high enough spellcasting ability to gain substantial numbers of bonus spells and so need more spell slots from their casting class, can use large numbers of spell slots more effectively than a primary caster (via Arcane Strike and other such means), often need to cast one spell many times per day, and can deal with a staggered spell progression more easily than a primary caster (since not all their capabilities rest on their spellcasting). As an ability, Cha is weaker than Int, but it has some worthwhile uses, such as the Leadership feat. Sorcerers get Bluff in-class.
The other option is wizard. Wizards get all Knowledges in-class, which can be helpful. High Int offers the arcane monk the ability to max many skills, and arcane monks (as opposed to primary casters) have a good selection of useful skills. Having to prepare spells in advance is a disadvantage in using arcane fist, but not a disadvantage in buffing; Arcane Strike also provides a good way for the arcane monk to use otherwise wasted prepared slots. Wizards get Scribe Scroll and
a bonus metamagic or item creation feat at 5th level; as usual, unlimited spell knowledge enables useful item creation. Finally, wizards get higher level spells earlier, and wizard is the only way for an arcane monk to get 9th-level spells pre-epic.
Wizards also have the option of specialization, which helps reduce the spell slot disadvantage. However, arcane monks face hard choices in specializing, since between combat and buffs they cover all the schools to roughly the same depth. Transmutation and necromancy are the schools with the best coverage of each level of spells (to ensure that the arcane monk doesn't waste any specialized slots), but their coverage is by no means complete. Abjuration and conjuration contain the fewest spells that are true power spells for the arcane monk, but they also contain many essential utility spells like /dispel magic/ and teleportation spells.
Sorcerer-arcane monks tend to be stronger in combat, able to deal more damage, more consistently, while wizard-arcane monks have more flexibility and stronger out-of-combat abilities: a wizard-arcane monk can serve as an excellent scout, for instance.
[Alternate arcane casters: I neglect other arcane casters here because most of them are much worse for an arcane monk than normal sorcerer or wizard. As a general rule, classes with slowed spell progression are disadvantageous to classes that add to arcane caster level like enlightened fist, because such prestige classes are balanced against full spellcasting classes like sorcerer and wizard and you lose the special abilities those other base spellcasting classes grant when you go into the prestige class. Prestige classes that rebuild spell
progression, like assassin, are interesting choices for arcane monks, tend to lead to very different builds, and are often even slower than a straight arcane monk, which in most campaigns is a problem. Also, all Cha-based casters except sorcerers suffer from increased MAD because Ascetic Mage does not work for them, unless your DM makes a specific exception.
Bard: Bards get healing and some of the buffs that are good for arcane monks, and don't suffer as much from the slowed spell progression (since a bard can still max out at 6th-level spells pre-epic while taking 4 levels that don't increase spellcasting). Their better BAB, hit dice, and skills are all helpful, and bardic music is always useful. However, bards lack almost entirely the touch and ray spells that make arcane monks worth playing, and armored casting is useless for arcane monks.
Hexblade: Hexblades get good hit dice and BAB, and Bluff and Diplomacy In-class (which can be helpful for certain ways of playing an arcane monk). Their spell list contains a good selection of buffs and touch attack spells, including many of the key spells for arcane monks; with their limitations on spells known, they can't actually use any more spells than they get on their list. Their biggest limitation is their shortage of slots, but the good hit dice and BAB can allow an arcane monk to allocate more points to a high spell-casting ability, which makes up for this deficiency to some extent. Some of the hexblade's class abilities are quite good for monks, such as mettle. The hexblade's most serious problem is probably an inability to penetrate spell resistance because their caster level is only 1/2 that of a full caster; Practiced Spellcaster can improve this situation if your DM allows it to be used thus.
Warlock: Warlocks can qualify for enlightened fist. Warlocks have a better BAB, slightly more hit points, better skills, and some mildly useful class abilities for an arcane monk. Several of the warlock's invocations are useful for an arcane monk.
However, there's a catch: arcane fist and hold ray work on spells, not spell-like abilities, meaning that there's little to no synergy between an arcane monk's and warlock's abilities beyond the buffs, which aren't that great for an arcane monk anyways. If your DM permits you to use invocations with arcane fist/hold ray, with
appropriate choice of invocations adding your eldritch blast damage to your unarmed attack each round can be decent, though often not as good as the damage an arcane monk based off wizard or sorcerer can dish out. However, you can do it all day, every attack, without worrying about spell slots. If your DM is not so generous, you're forced to rely on the hideous blow invocation, which isn't that bad at low levels, but falls further and further behind relative to a normal arcane monk as levels increase. Warlocks are also critically short on good buffs to make up for the arcane monk's weaknesses as a melee combatant.
Warlock seems like it should work for arcane monk, but in practice, it's not very good, at least once the flexibility and firepower of true arcane spellcasting arrive.
Warmage: Warmages get full spellcasting and some of the touch and ray spells good for arcane monks. However, their spell list has no buffs, armored casting is useless, and their warmage edge ability gives the arcane monk MAD of the worst possible kind. Thus, warmage is an awful class for an arcane monk.
Wu Jen: In an OA setting, wu jen is a viable alternative to wizard or sorcerer: it gets many of the same buffs and touch spells, along with a few useful buffs and touch spells wizards and sorcerers don't. You want to ask your DM about including certain appropriate spells from other sources on the wu jen list.
Assassin: Assassins have some useful spells, but their casting is too weak and their spell list too limited for arcane monks.
Some prestige class builds that work, more or less, are included in the sample builds section, below.]
Now, finally, I'll get to the part that most people start with =): builds.
All arcane monks start with monk at first level, to take advantage of the better hit die and skills (and also the early dominance of warrior-types over arcane casters). After that, you have to decide whether to focus more on combat and skills, or go straight for higher caster level (which often doesn't pay off for many more levels). A second level of monk gets you Combat Reflexes or Deflect Arrows, a +1 bonus to all saving throws, and evasion, along with its other benefits
(taking a 2nd level of monk is forced on characters without monk or wizard/sorcerer as one of racial favored classes). Wizard-arcane monks can get 9th-level spells at level 20 if they avoid losing any more caster progression than monk at 1st level; sorcerers max out at 8th-level spells in any case, but gain more slots and known spells. For those using UA rules, Human Paragon is an attractive option for arcane monks, particularly monks using sorcerer (which has no class features after 1st level except for familiar advancement): it allows
you to get into enlightened fist at level 6 while giving you better hit dice, better class skills and more skill points per level, and a bonus feat and a +2 ability boost, both of which an arcane monk can badly use.
In the realm of the more exotic, you can delay enlightened fist to take other abilities. For a martial focus, fighter 1 or 2 (possibly with monk 2), will greatly delay your caster advancement, but will give you more combat feats to play with, some better hit dice, and a bonus to your Fort save. A character starting with monk 1/wizard 4 can take wizard 5 to get an item creation or metamagic feat, which is often worthwhile; taking wizard 5 later is also an option.
The fractional base attack bonus rules from UA are amazingly helpful for arcane monks; see if you can get your DM to use them. (I think they're good period, but I imagine not everyone shares my opinion).
Abilities:
An arcane monk's spellcasting stat is usually their most important ability, because it has to be good enough for them to cast 6th, 7th, 8th, or 9th-level spells. Str, Dex, and Con usually follow in that order. However, as I will show in the next section, you can create arcane monks with a wide variety of different ability orderings, depending on your selection of feats and classes.
Feats:
Most arcane monk builds take a feat to reduce MAD at first level; this is a good idea unless you rolled quite well or you're using a high value point buy. Practiced Spellcaster is useful for any build, but if you're going monk 1/PAC 4, you can avoid it in favor of another feat if you so desire. Builds that lose more caster levels more or less have to take it, because being a 6th-level character with a
caster level of 3 is rather awful. Combat Casting is a necessity at 1st or 3rd level. Every arcane monk should take Arcane Strike as soon as they can, which in almost all cases is 9th level unless you're using fractional base attack bonus, in which case it's sometimes 6th level. Other than that, feats mostly go where they fit. Metamagic feats and certain general utility feats like Improved Toughness and
Improved Initiative can be safely taken in late levels, being less essential earlier.
Sample Builds:
The next section lists a set of sample builds to show how all the proceeding abilities work in practice. Most variants will start with monk 1 or 2 followed by PAC 3 or 4 (PAC stands for Primary Arcane Caster, meaning either wizard or sorcerer in most cases). Anywhere where you have PAC 4, it's possible to replace it with PAC 1/Human Paragon 3; in most circumstances where I'm allowed to do this, I prefer it, because the bonus abilities, better skills, and better hit dice are quite helpful. Anywhere wizard appears, wu jen can be substituted. Finally, a more martial build may want to go to monk 2 while maintaining PAC 1/Human Paragon 3 and/or take a level or two of fighter for more feats; I'll mention some builds that do this explicitly, but I'll discuss other builds that don't.
I use the elite array for stats because it's simple and fairly representative.
Most builds go only to 15th or 16th level. This is intentional: since most campaigns don't survive to see 20th level, I'm most concerned with the performance of characters in the level range 5-15. You can make an argument that how characters perform in levels 1-5 is most important, since many campaigns don't make it past those levels, but the balance is so different at those levels, compared to higher levels, that those comparisons are terrible guidelines for most of the rest of a character's career.
What do arcane monks do after 15th level? This is a difficult question without any good answers. Master of the East Wind (DR 314) gives full arcane caster advancement and advances the standard complement of monk abilities, but has no class features worth speaking of. Most other arcane warrior classes are designed for weapon-wielding, armor-wearing tanks (spellsword, dragonslayer, rage mage, etc.). The rest still presume the use of weapons (bladesinger, eldritch knight, etc.). In both cases, the requirements tend to be heinous and the flavor wrong. Caster classes can offer the arcane monk some useful options, but only at the cost of badly-needed BAB and hit points. Pursuing other monk prestige classes gimps your casting progression.
The "best" solution, in most cases, is to beg and plead with your DM to give you an option that doesn't suck. Luckily, in most cases, you won't have to exercise that option because your campaign will end first.
The Basic Arcane Monk:
Human, L?
Monk 1/PAC 4/Enlightened Fist 10
Monk 2/PAC 3/Enlightened Fist 10
Feats: Ascetic Mage or Kung-Fu Genius (1st), Combat Casting (1st), Empower Spell (3rd), Leadership (or any feat for wizards) (6th), Arcane Strike (9th), Improved Natural Attack (unarmed strike) (12th), Improved Initiative (15th)
Skills: Concentration maxed, Jump 5, Knowledge (arcana) 5, Spellcraft 5, Tumble maxed, at least 2 other high skills
Abilities: 14/13/12/15/10/8 for wizards, 14/13/12/8/10/15 for sorcerers (it's debatable whether a sorcerer-arcane monk would apply the 8 to Wis or Int)
This build is simple and to the point. Rather than attempting to build a feat tree or select feats that combine well, it picks independent useful feats. Because of this, you can easily swap out one feat for another: Practiced Spellcaster for Empower Spell, for instance. Wizard-arcane monks will often want to take the 5th level of wizard for the extra metamagic or item creation feat.
The monk 2 variant sacrifices caster level for better saves, slightly better monk abilities, evasion, and in most cases, Deflect Arrows (Combat Reflexes is often not all that useful unless you specifically select feats that make it useful).
Multicaster:
Human, L?
Monk 2/PAC 3/Enlightened Fist 10
Feats: Ascetic Mage or Kung-Fu Genius (1st), Combat Casting (1st), Practiced Spellcaster (3rd), Leadership (or any feat for wizards) (6th), Arcane Strike (9th), Rapid Stunning (12th), Empower Spell (15th)
Abilities: 14/13/12/15/10/8 for wizards, 14/13/12/8/10/15 for sorcerers
The only difference here is the second level of monk to get Combat Reflexes, a prerequisite for Rapid Stunning. This build presumes that Rapid Stunning does, in fact, allow extra uses of arcane fist. The only reason you get Rapid Stunning so late is because of BAB issues (an arcane monk at level 12 has a BAB of +7). With fractional BAB, this build can take Rapid Stunning at 9th level; unfortunately,
because you can't take Arcane Strike at 6th level, you're still in trouble. If you are using fractional BAB, see if you can persuade your DM to allow you to take human paragon, as well, which will give you the BAB at 6th level (though it does cost you another caster level). Failing that, your best option for speeding up your feat acquisition is a well-placed level of fighter or two.
Weapon Finesse/TWF Fighter
Human, L?
Monk 1/PAC 4/Enlightened Fist 10
Feats: Combat Casting (1st), Two-Weapon Fighting (1st), Weapon Finesse (3rd), Weapon Focus (unarmed strike) (6th), Arcane Strike (9th), Improved Two-Weapon Fighting (12th), Improved Natural Attack (unarmed strike) (15th)
Abilities: 10/15/12/14/13/8 for wizards, 10/15/12/8/13/14 for sorcerers
This build focuses on maxing out its number of attacks and the damage those attacks do. The first two levels will suck because you can't take Weapon Finesse until you get a better BAB. Generally, if you're taking the -2 penalty for fighting with two weapons, you want to climb as far up the TWF tree as you can, since there are no additional penalties. It takes Weapon Focus to help mitigate some of the TWF penalty.
To meet the Dex requirements for TWF, it uses Weapon Finesse to reduce MAD. However, this build's ability scores are still not good enough: this build can reach 8th or 9th level spells, which requires either better ability scores than these, use of human paragon, or use of /wish/ or tomes. Ideally, this build also wants better BAB so it can get Greater Two-Weapon Fighting, but that requires taking a hit on
caster level or using fractional BAB. Note that if it takes human paragon earlier and uses fractional BAB, it can take Greater Two-Weapon Fighting at level 15, having just hit +11 BAB, but this requires a /wish/ or tome to reach the necessary value for your spellcasting stat unless you rolled rather well or are using high-value point buy.
Martial Artist:
Human, LG
Monk 1/PAC 4/Enlightened Fist 10
Feats: Ability Focus (stunning fist) (1st), Combat Casting (1st), Intuitive Attack (3rd), Pain Touch (6th), Arcane Strike (9th), Weakening Touch (12th), Improved Natural Attack (unarmed strike) (15th)
OR
Monk 2/PAC 3/Enlightened Fist 10
Feats: Ability Focus (stunning fist) (1st), Combat Casting (1st), Intuitive Attack (3rd), Extra Stunning (6th), Arcane Strike (9th), Rapid Stunning (12th), Weakening Touch (15th)
Abilities: 10/13/12/14/15/8 for wizards, 10/13/12/8/15/14 for sorcerers
In this case, it's not BAB that's the limiting factor for these builds, but rather getting high Wis soon enough. Adding human paragon for the ability boost at 3rd level helps immeasurably, giving you a Wis of 17 at 5th or 6th level, depending on how you take it; this, in turn, allows you to take Weakening Touch earlier, possibly skipping Pain Touch entirely if you so desire. In general, these builds have a lot of flexibility, and you choose alternate martial arts feats without much trouble. If you want to enhance your use of stunning fist, Ability Focus (stunning fist) followed by Pain Touch is the way to do it. Weakening Touch is better when combined with magic, though you can also (presumably) take Ability Focus for it as well. Rapid
Stunning and Extra Stunning are good for most of these builds. All these builds have the same weakness in antimagic fields since they rely on Intuitive Attack. Freezing the Lifeblood requires too high a BAB to be shown in these builds, though you can get it at 15th level if you're using fractional BAB and human paragon.
If you want to be able to function in antimagic fields, you have to use Weapon Finesse (unless your DM allows Kung-Fu Genius to affect: Stunning Fist and the other feats; Ascetic Mage doesn't help you in either case). Your ability distribution is similar, but you tend to always have more trouble hitting. Alternatively, you can stop worrying and learn to love your MAD, which is a lot easier if you roll really well for stats.
Tripper/Maneuver Fighter:
Human, L?
Monk 2/PAC 3/Enlightened Fist 10
Feats: Ascetic Mage or Kung-Fu Genius (1st), Combat Expertise (1st), Improved Trip (3rd), Practiced Spellcaster (6th), Arcane Strike (9th), Dodge (or a random feat for sorcerers) (12th), Defensive Throw or Karmic Strike (or a random feat for sorcerers) (15th)
Abilities: 14/13/12/15/10/8 for wizards, 14/10/12/13/8/15 for sorcerers
Wizards make better trippers because of Combat Expertise's requirement. You _could_ take monk 6 for Improved Trip, but this costs you so much in caster level that I doubt it's worth doing for an arcane monk (though see the suel arcanamach section below). Wizards can also take some of the other tripping feats because of their better Dex.
This basic build can be used for any maneuver fighter: at 1st level, take the qualifying feat for your maneuver (typically Power Attack, Combat Expertise, or Dodge), at 3rd level, take the maneuver feat, and then continue to build the tree if you desire and there are good feats for it using your feat at 6th level (possibly), 12th, and 15th. Builds that don't need Combat Reflexes can go monk 1/PAC 4.
Human paragon and a level or two of fighter can be quite helpful for maneuver builds, if you're willing to take the hit to your caster level (which tends to work better than for most arcane monks, because you should fight better than a typical arcane monk).
Vow of Poverty:
Human, LG
Monk 1/Sorcerer 4/Enlightened Fist 10
Feats: Sacred Vow (1st), Vow of Poverty (1st), Nymph's Kiss (1st), Touch of Golden Ice (2nd), Combat Casting (3rd), Intuitive Attack (4th), Celestial Familiar (6th), Leadership (6th), Favored of the Companions/Knight of Stars/Servant of the Heavens (depending on who you want as a patron) (8th), Arcane Strike (9th), Vow of Purity (10th), Vow of Abstinence (12th), Improved Natural Attack (unarmed strike) (12th), Exalted Spell Resistance (14th), Improved Initiative (15th)
Abilities: 10/12/13/8/15/14
This build can go in many different directions using variations on the above builds; Vow of Poverty mostly grants random abilities on top of an arcane monk's other abilities, with the only possible synergy with the preceding builds being Intuitive Attack.
Variant Builds:
These builds use alternative spellcasters, either base or prestige. I don't really recommend them, but you can try them if you wish.
Hexblade:
Human, LN or LE
Monk 1/Hexblade 6/Enlightened Fist 10
OR
Monk 2/Hexblade 3/Enlightened Fist 10
The difference between the first and second build order is a question of whether Practiced Spellcaster grants you the caster level to meet Enlightened Fist's requirements. It's far from clear to me which build is better.
Arcane monks based on hexblade have much better BAB than normal arcane monks, so they have fewer problems hitting and can take high BAB feats much earlier; they also have better hit points and a few more interesting things they can do with skills. In compensation, of course, their spellcasting is much weaker, though because their progression is slower, they can afford the hit to spellcasting more easily than an arcane monk based on a full caster. (Amusingly, a high-level hexblade actually gets _more_ known spells than a sorcerer, for the spell levels they get, though arcane monks lose enough casting levels so that this isn't true for them.) Hexblade has one notable synergy with enlightened fist: at hexblade 5, you can choose a bonus feat, and your options include Combat Casting.
There are many possible different class orderings that work. For feats, you probably want to select one of the more martially oriented builds in the previous section.
As for spells, the spells specifically useful for an arcane monk on the hexblade spell list are:
1st: /magic weapon/, /phantom threat/
2nd: /alter self/, /bull's strength/, /eagle's splendor/, /false life/, /invisibility/, /mirror image/, /rage/, /touch of idiocy/
3rd: /arcane sight/, /dispel magic/, /magic weapon, greater/, /poison/, /vampiric touch/
4th: /assay resistance/, /cursed blade/, /dimension door/, /enervation/, /invisibility, greater/, /polymorph/
Sublime Chord:
Using this prestige class as a basis for an arcane monk works far better than it has any right to. The best thing about sublime chord is that it restarts your spell-casting, which frees you to take more levels of monk (or fighter, or racial paragon, or what-have-you) without hurting your spell progression past level 10. Exploiting this, however, will put you at a disadvantage at low to mid levels, particularly if you try to use wizard to speed your progress to 3rd level spells, since that maxes out your MAD.
The peculiar aspect of going for sublime chord is that monks (though not enlightened fists) get all the skills necessary to qualify for sublime chord as class skills (with the addition of Spellcraft from a casting class). The other prerequisites that matter are bardic music, which requires a level of bard (or virtuoso, but I will discuss that later), and 3rd-level arcane spells. Thus, typically a character intending to use this combination should take bard first (to help with the skill points), then monk levels at periodic intervals (the last must be at level 7 or later, if you don't want to lose skill points) to fill out the ranks in the necessary skills. It should be noted that at some point between bard and monk, you have to switch alignments, which some DMs may object to.
That said, here are some builds, in order of increasing low-level suckage.
Bard 1/Monk 1/PAC 3/Enlightened Fist 5/Sublime Chord 2/Enlightened Fist 5
This build is a standard enlightened fist build except that it subs a level of bard for a second level of monk, decreasing your BAB, caster level, and monk abilities (though further increasing the ridiculousness of your Will save and helping your Reflex save). It's also inefficient in the sense that it increases caster level past the 3rd level spells needed for sublime chord, and that it also takes one level off sublime chord casting.
[Note for rules-lawyers: in CA, enlightened fist's spellcasting increased refers to classes before you gained the enlightened fist _level_, allowing you to take the 1st level of enlightened fist before taking sublime chord.]
Bard 1/Monk 3/Wizard 5/Enlightened Fist 1/Sublime Chord 2/Enlightened Fist 8
Bard 1/Monk 2/Sorcerer 6/Enlightened Fist 1/Sublime Chord 2/Enlightened Fist 8
[Multiclassing note: enlightened fist relaxes the monk multiclassing restriction, so you can actually arrange your monk levels to get the skills when you need them.]
These builds squeeze more out of the rebuilt spellcasting you get with sublime chord, at the cost of delaying enlightened fist abilities and inefficient use of casting classes. Wizard 5 and monk 2 aren't terrible, since they give you feats, but an arcane monk gets almost nothing worthwhile from monk 3 or sorcerer 6.
Bard 1/Monk 2/Wizard 3/Human Paragon 3/Enlightened Fist 1/Sublime Chord 2/Enlightened Fist 8
Bard 1/Monk 1/Sorcerer 4/Human Paragon 3/Enlightened Fist 1/Sublime Chord 2/Enlightened Fist 8
These builds use human paragon to avoid having to spend so much time in base casting classes. The wizard variant doesn't gain much, though, since wizard 5 grants a bonus feat, and the sorcerer variant loses the second level bonus feat from monk and evasion.
Monk 2/Wizard 2/Human Paragon 3/Enlightened Fist 1/Prestige Bard 2/Sublime Chord 2/Enlightened Fist 8
Monk 1/Sorcerer 3/Human Paragon 3/Enlightened Fist 1/Prestige Bard 2/Sublime Chord 2/Enlightened Fist 8
These builds use prestige bard, but mostly have the same problems. I do have one last sleazy trick I can pull, though, if I use Complete Adventurer.
Monk 2/Wizard 1/Human Paragon 3/Enlightened Fist 1/Virtuoso 3/Sublime Chord 2/Enlightened Fist 8
Monk 1/Sorcerer 1/Human Paragon 3/Enlightened Fist 1/Virtuoso 4/Sublime Chord 2/Enlightened Fist 8
The sorcerer can't avoid losing the second level of monk, but does at least get to take levels in virtuoso instead of sorcerer. Virtuoso does have the definite advantage that you don't have to change alignments at any point during the progression.
Most DMs would look at these class orders and conclude, quite correctly, that you were minmaxing. For all the effort, though, in many cases the character you get is at best only marginally effective at low to mid levels, a sort of low-powered bard-caster-monk hybrid.
By level 20, a sublime chord/enlightened fist is better off than most more normal enlightened fist builds in terms of spellcasting and skills, but is it worth it?
Finally, you can use virtuoso to qualify for sublime chord while not delaying enlightened fist:
Monk 2/Wizard 4/Enlightened Fist 3/Virtuoso 1/Sublime Chord 2/Enlightened Fist 4-10
Monk 2/Sorcerer 4/Enlightened Fist 3/Virtuoso 1/Sublime Chord 2/Enlightened Fist 4-10
Note that you have to delay taking the second level of monk until after you enter enlightened fist to optimize your expenditure of skill points to meet the requirements for virtuoso and then sublime chord. The wizard variant of this build is probably better off to take wizard 5 at some point and drop the last level of enlightened fist.
Monk 1/Wizard 1/Human Paragon 3/Enlightened Fist 4/Virtuoso 1/Sublime Chord 2/Enlightened Fist 5-10
Monk 1/Sorcerer 1/Human Paragon 3/Enlightened Fist 4/Virtuoso 1/Sublime Chord 2/Enlightened Fist 5-10
Human paragon allows you to qualify for virtuoso and sublime chord with less pain. If I was going to attempt to play an arcane monk using sublime chord for my casting, this is how I would do it; and you aren't too much worse off compared to an ordinary arcane monk in the midlevels, though your BAB suffers. (You really, really want fractional BAB. At level 18, without it, your BAB is +9; with it,
your BAB is +12.5.)
Suel Arcanamach:
The suel arcanamach spell list is not especially suited to an arcane monk because it doesn't contain many good offensive touch spells, since it lacks access to evocation, necromancy, and enchantment. However, suel arcanamachs do get access to most of the best buffs for an arcane monk. If your DM allows you to use Extra Spell to take other spells off the suel arcanamach spell list, two or three spells can make them competent users of arcane fist, though they will never be as good as an arcane monk based on a full casting class. Arcane Disciple is another possible choice for domains such as Death, Decay (Eb), Destruction, Force (CD), Necromancy (Eb) (this domain is a
_perfect_ choice for a suel arcanamach/arcane monk), or Undead (DR 312). /Shadow evocation/ and /shadow conjuration/ are both worth considering as spell options.
The reason to bother with suel arcanamach at all is that you can spend all the levels until you enter the prestige class taking levels in fighter-type classes. Monks going for arcane monk meet all the requirements trivially except for the +6 BAB, language requirement, and 5 ranks of Spellcraft. The necessary language can be bought cross-class, but 5 ranks in spellcraft require character level 7 if you're buying it cross-class and a monk doesn't hit BAB +6 until level 8. Since the advantage of suel arcanamach is better melee ability, typically you want to arrange your classes to maximize that.
Monk has, for meleers, five natural drop points of relevance: monk 2 (bonus feat, evasion), monk 5 (-1 flurry), monk 6 (bonus feat), monk 9 (+0 flurry, improved evasion), and monk 11 (greater flurry). The shortest way to enter suel arcanamach is hexblade 6, because it's the only way to get +1 BAB/level and Spellcraft in-class. An arcane monk entering suel arcanamach will have to be at least one level slower, meaning that you can always afford to take Spellcraft cross-class. Note that if you take monk to 5, you lose 2 BAB (even if you're using fractional progression, this can't be sped up again to bring you to +6 by level 7). Thus, a monk has the following options: monk 2 followed by 5 levels of a +1 BAB/level class, monk 5 or 6 followed by 3 or 2 levels of a +1 BAB class, or monk 9.
With monk 2, 5 levels in another class, then another 3 levels in suel arcanamach, I don't understand why you'd multiclass into enlightened fist: your monk abilities are so weak that enhancing them isn't worth your time. Of core classes you can splash, the sensible choices are fighter 2, paladin 2 or 3, or ranger 2; if you're using fractional BAB, you could also go cleric 2 (or rogue 2 or druid 2, though why you'd want to is beyond me). There are no doubt other options beyond the core classes, hexblade 3 being a good example.
After qualifying, you need suel arcanamach 3 to meet the requirements for enlightened fist (which incidentally gives you all the worthwhile abilities from suel arcanamach for an arcane monk). If you only spent 8 levels in other classes before going into suel arcanamach, you get all the worthwhile abilities from arcane fist and full suel arcanamach spellcasting at 20th level; else, you fall one level short.
When all is said and done, suel arcanamach doesn't work all that well for an arcane monk, but is nonetheless an interesting option for monks experiencing a midlife crisis (and these builds can get some ridiculously high saves).
Magic Items:
This section is mostly an overview of magic items in the core; there are undoubtedly other good items in the supplements. I'm not going to mention the usual suspects, such as items to provide enhancement bonuses to stats, cloaks of resistance, etc., only specialty items.
Ring of Counterspelling: Use this to store /dispel magic/ and /dispel magic, greater/ to protect your buffs; after a certain point, it's well-nigh essential.
Ring of Wizardry: Arcane monks need lots of spell slots, and often don't mind using lower level spells: casting /vampiric touch/ is probably a waste of a high level caster's action, but an arcane monk is more than happy to do so even at 15th level while also using another 3rd-level slot to power Arcane Strike.
Metamagic Rods: Arcane monks can rarely afford to take more than one or two metamagic feats and these rods can help make up for that deficiency. Monks are also normally good at using rods in combat, since they can hold a rod in one hand and attack with the other (or their knees, elbows, legs, etc.)
Extend rods, to max out buff lengths, are cheap and incredibly useful, and don't even need to be combat capable. Silent rods are useful against the risk of being silenced, and can allow you to use spells while /polymorphed/ into something that can't speak but has hands (legendary ape is a good example). You typically want to use Empower too often for a rod to be useful, but an Empower rod or a Maximize rod can add punch to a few spells a day.
Amulet of Mighty Fists: This item is ridiculously too expensive. You can afford to pay for many /magic fangs/ and scrolls of /permanency/ for the cost of one of these items, at the same caster level. Alternatively, you can cast /greater magic weapon/ on yourself and it will last all day past a certain level.
Monk's Belt: Overcosted, but a useful piece of gear anyways all the way into epic levels.
Some Sample Combat Tactics:
Using Antimagic Field to Kill Mages: Most casters (if you're dealing with a martial cleric wearing heavy armor, look at the warrior section, below) are crippled in an antimagic field, since they will be wearing no or light armor, have weak weapons and melee combat skills, and few hit points. Simply put, you can pound most casters into a pulp in an antimagic field, the key problem is keeping them in it. You have several options for doing so. One of the best is grappling (one of the conditions under which an arcane monk _wants_ to grapple): in most cases, once you succeed in a grappling a caster, they're helpless and you can use the damage opponent grapple option to squeeze them to death in short order. If you choose this option, make sure your Str in an antimagic field is decent, and it may even behoove you to take Improved Grapple for the +4 bonus, since often your BAB won't be much higher than the caster's; when using this method, watch out
for casters with Escape Artist.
Another possible method is tripping the caster. Since you're in an antimagic field, you won't have reach (unless you're playing a non-core race), so they can use the withdraw action to escape from you if they aren't prone at the start of their turn, so you must trip them as soon as possible once they're in the field. If they are prone at the beginning of their turn, they have to use a move action to stand
and another to leave the field, both of which provoke attacks of opportunity you can use to trip them again. If you're trying to trip, watch out for casters with Tumble.
A final option for keeping a caster in the field is using Stunning Fist or other unarmed special attacks to stun, paralyze, nauseate, or otherwise disable the caster. This technique requires a decent Wis to increase the save DC on your Stunning Fist (or other martial arts attack), but most casters have poor Fort saves, so you have decent odds of them failing their save. This technique also synergises well with the other two options.
Using Antimagic Field to Kill Warriors: This may seem perverse at first sight, but it can work. The essential fact to note is that you don't need equipment to melee, but most other warriors do. For the most part, then, dealing with a warrior consists of taking away their weapons and then dropping them into an antimagic field where the rest of their equipment is useless or near useless.
The first step is to sunder or disarm your opponent's weapons. In most cases, sundering is a _lot_ easier, but of course costs the (virtual) money you might get if you defeat the opponent some other way and then sell or use their weapon. However, if you manage to deprive your opponent of the use of a weapon, typically they become helpless in combat. Smart warriors will have reserve weapons, so you have to sunder those too. Unusually smart warriors will have a
reserve weapon that they only bring out in an antimagic field, so it is best to prepare to sunder another weapon while in the field.
Preventing your opponent from using a weapon is the most critical point, because it reduces them to unarmed combat. A typical arcane monk at level 15 does 2d6 + Str bonus damage with attacks at +7/+7/+2 from BAB and flurry, before adding your attribute bonus to attack. Most opponents will be doing 1d4 + their Str bonus in damage, with say 4 attacks, but each attack they make draws an attack of opportunity. An armored warrior can get an AC of 23 (+8 mithral full-plate, +3 Dex,
+2 shield); your AC will typically be worse, but not much worse. This situation is advantageous to you, and you can improve it by using one of the techniques mentioned above in dealing with arcane casters, though against warriors your best option is usually unarmed special attacks. Note also that by the RAW, since a feat is an extraordinary ability unless stated otherwise (as for the exalted feats), you can use Arcane Strike in an antimagic field (though many DMs might object), which can give you a huge advantage. Having enough ranks in Sense Motive to deal with feinters who have sneak attack or similar abilities in an antimagic field is a good idea.
There are some opponents that using this strategy on is a terrible idea. A combat-focused monk, a fighter specializing in unarmed techniques, grappling, or who has too many weapons to sunder, or certain rogue builds, will destroy you. Since you can't always identify such a lethal character ahead of time, it's best to make sure that you have Tumble, Escape Artist, or similar abilities to improve
your chances of escaping or getting a standard action to dismiss the field. Luckily, arcane monks are more survivable than pure casters, in most cases, so your chances of escaping are better than a typical pure caster.
Sundering: Improved Sunder is usually a necessity for sunder tactics. One excellent spell for sundering is /touch of adamantine/: ignoring hardness less than 20 allows a single attack to destroy many pieces of equipment (though unfortunately by the time you get it, adamantine and mithral items with good pluses start to appear). /True strike/ allows you to all but guarantee that you hit your target, and if you have good mods on your attack roll, you can use Power Attack to boost your damage (typically, given an arcane monk's low BAB, maxing out Power Attack is a good strategy on a sunder). Finally, /Mestil's acid sheath/ in conjunction with /shocking grasp/ or /emerald flame fist/ are the best spell for boosting the damage you do to your sunder target.
Conclusion:
I haven't covered everything here, and I'd appreciate comments covering important things I missed.
I've been considering running an Enlightened Fist on one of the one-shot adventures we seem to have from time to time. The low BAB for a melee type had scared me away and I wasn't confident of how well the EF could use magic to overcome this. Your post went a long way towards giving me the itch to give it a try.
-ateve the mighty mouse
I really hate to point this out, as you really have done a great job of putting this all together and its really well thought out, but one cannot take Ascetic Mage at first level, as it requires the ability to cast second level spells. I'm sure this can be adjusted for but hampers the abilities of an arcane monk sorcerer at low levels.
-ateve the mighty mouse
That's true. And let this be a lesson that glancing through something is bound to lead to stupid errors.
With that change, I think a lot of the basic sorcerer builds are screwed . . . getting through levels 1-6 would be too painful. (Speaking of which, why did they make this feat so useless? They duplicated a weaker form of Arcane Strike and gave it unreasonable prereqs).
I suppose that if you have access to human paragon, it's probably survivable. You just take human paragon 1 as your first level, picking skills to match your monk skills, a level of sorcerer, two more levels of paragon, monk 1, then enlightened fist, then you have 2nd-level spells to pick up Ascetic Mage at 6th level.
However, taking monk at first level with sucky Wis, then multiclassing into sorcerer, sounds like it wouldn't work. You'd be so weak for the first couple levels that it wouldn't be worth playing.
Personally, I think the feat is poorly written, given the existence of Arcane Strike. I'd houserule it if I were to play it.
Excellant job, Ralphie. You get an A++++++++
If it works on all your unarmed strikes that would make the most disgusting combo for an Enlightened Fist. Lots of attacks with Flurry and Haste, no Save and as the abilities gained are described as Supernatural no SR.
Anyway, two thumbs up for the great work
I love the idea of a Sublime Fist. I know that there are alignment issues, but Bard 4/Monk 2/Enlightened fist 4/Sublime chord 2 seems like the best entry (using Ascetic mage). It is just silly to ream your BAB with a PAC, especially when you're already taking a bard level to begin with. And when you can get better skills and saves (and some music) with bard.
However, I woulden't take any more then enlightened fist 4 for that build. For example, in a lawful good Sublime Fist build, something like Bard 4/Monk 2/Enlightened fist 4/Sublime chord 2/Sacred exorcist 8 seems much better. Turn undead (for Divine might), better BAB, and some nice class abilities too.
For comparison:
Bard 1/Monk 1/PAC 3/Enlightened Fist 5/Sublime Chord 2/Enlightened Fist 5
-BAB: +9 for a 20th level melee character? WTF???
-Saves are mostly good: F 6, R 11, W 17.
-HP are pretty good too: 3d6+11d8+3d4.
Monk 1/Sorcerer 1/Human Paragon 3/Enlightened Fist 4/Virtuoso 1/Sublime Chord 2/Enlightened Fist 5-10
-BAB: +10... Not to good.
-Saves: F 6, R 9, W 19.
-HP not bad: 14d8+1d4+3d6.
Bard 4/Monk 2/Enlightened fist 4/Sublime chord 2/Sacred exorcist 8
-BAB: +14. Not great for a melee character, but passable.
-Saves: F 7 R 13, W 20.
-HP: 6d6+14d8.
All builds get 9th level spells, though the Sublime Fist Exorcist gets 10 levels of SC vs. the others with 9.
I guess overall I don't like EF above level 4. Arcane rejuvination is, IMO, and insult. The Sublime builds get better healing from Cure light wounds then a 9th level spell. Fist of energy is cool, but not (IMO) worth the loss of a caster level. Hold ray is also rather silly. If you're using touch attacks, use touch attacks!
The only ability that really stands out to me above level 3 is Diamond soul, and I question whether it is really worth the 5 levels to get it. If there is something I'm missing please tell me!
I realize that this is a compilation of builds centered around Enlightened fist, but it basically becomes the center of any spellcasting build that takes it, even for just three levels. And while there aren't a lot of options, there are some very good ones if you look hard enough (like Sacred exorcist). And even if the requirements are annoying, Eldritch master is still a decent choice.
Oh ya, and Kiss of the vampire is 3.5: Check Libris Mortis.
A Fighter 2/Monk 2/Warlock 6/Enlightened Fist 10 will only have a +14 BAB, but with Hold Ray and 7d6 Eldritch Blast, you could be pretty frightening.
Offensively they do OK but really miss out by not having access to Arcane Strike & other attack roll bosters.
Defensively & buff wise they suck wind ... and this is one of the best thing that the other arcane casters bring to the Enlightened Fist.
At best your Monk-1 / Warlock-9 / Enlightened Fist-10 is going to be a sub-par blaster who can melee unamred if he has to. Only with crazy good items does the picture start to change.
*edit* my bad... 3rd lvl caster.. not spells..
under asthetic mage it says that you have to add your CHA instead of your WIS to your AC as far as monk AC goes.... that kinda sucks i think. especially if you start at lvl 1. why wouldnt they let you choose?
and go slow and detailed. im trying to wrap my brain around this.
Also, you may want to add giant size to your spell list, makes HP much better, makes AC much better, makes str much better & i don't even want to start to figure out the unarmed damage of a collossal character.
I'd suggest including the illumian as a good race, particuarly with LA buyoff...using sigils to get str as casting stat reduces MAD.
You are aware that Illumian's are a LA-0 race now, are you not? The web preview we saw was changed quite a bit before publication.
Ray of Enfeeblement: With hold ray, the arcane monk can deal 1d6+5 (or so) Str damage per turn
Except it is a penalty, and not damage
Do you think a few levels of Initiate of the Sevenfold Veil is worthwhile? You take up 3 feats and get wiz HD/skills/BAB, but you get wardings that /really/ make the opponent not want to hit you.
Another point about Sublime Chord - much earlier access to Irresistable Dance. Could be fun.
If you do get beyond 15-16th, some standard gish tactics might be useful, like Dragonslayer 1 & Spellsword 1. They don't advance your monk abilities, but they are +1 caster level with +1 BAB, and most of these builds seem to need a BAB boost. Usually you need a monk item to make up your early spellcaster levels. If you happen to have a second item (like a monk's tattoo in FR), then some of the monk aspect is covered as well and these make a good finisher.
Weak BAB seems common in EF builds. While the ability to hit can be boosted by spells, what advice do you have to get more attacks? Even with flurry (which costs more attack bonus), your number of attacks is way down vs. other melee-specific characters.
You covered enlarge person (and using arcane discipline to get righteous might), but what do you think of going for a large race? Most likely +1-2 LA, which slows down your casting, but you do more monk damage which offsets, and reach means that early on you can be in the second row and avoid attacks (low level melee with low HP are not durable) and at later levels the if you pick up combat reflexes as you monk 2 feat you can do decent battlefield control. Trip works well, and land your spells after tripping them.
Cheers,
=Blue(23)
soooo.... if you were to build a monk, with as many class abilities as possible, and about half melee progression, half spellcasting with sublime chord how would you go about it.
and go slow and detailed. im trying to wrap my brain around this.
I've already done your homework for you. Enjoy!
http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=365813
That may be what you're looking for, I don't know. I have 2 primary builds in there, one an arcane/divine caster monk mix with a bit of holiness tossed in, the other a psychic/divine holy man, very suited to a Taoist type concept.
How about flurry of touches? hit the guy with 3 chill touches but no unarmed strikes. Masive str damage, which makes up for your bad HP. It could work real well if you focus on necro.
--mycroft65536
This, I think, depends on a technicality: do touch attacks count as monk weapons? Flurry of blows specifically states that you can only flurry with unarmed strikes or special monk weapons; since melee touch attacks are not listed as monk weapons, by the RAW, I don't think this works.
If your DM is willing to allow it, this is probably a decent strategy at lower levels, but at higher levels, you want the extra damage from your unarmed attacks. /Brilliant blade/ offers the ability to make melee attack rolls against touch AC.
Any opinions or rule fixes on this spells (/kiss of the vampire/)?
If it works on all your unarmed strikes that would make the most disgusting combo for an Enlightened Fist. Lots of attacks with Flurry and Haste, no Save and as the abilities gained are described as Supernatural no SR.
--Cappo
Frankly, this spell confuses me. I haven't looked at _Libris Mortis_; I'm assuming it underwent some serious rewriting.
If I had to rule on it, as written, in 3.5, I'd probably treat the use of /vampiric touch/ or /enervation/ granted by it as supernatural abilities that require a standard action to activate, meaning that they can't be combined with flurry, unarmed strikes, or spellcasting.
Sublime Fist . . .
--catharz
The sublime fist is, IMO, blatant powergaming, because even though the skills and feats work out all right, thematically the prestige classes go in different directions. Meanwhile, in my gaming groups, alignment changes for the purposes of powergaming are viewed skeptically, to say the least. Adding on sacred exorcist adds to the character's thematic problems.
I only like sacred exorcist as a 1-level dip class. The class gets fewer skill points per level from a less useful list (Tumble, for instance, is a must-have skill IMO) than enlightened fist. I don't think much of the exorcist's class abilities, though they can be good in a certain kind of campaign.
Also, I think you're seriously undervaluing hold ray: it approximately doubles the number of spells you can use with arcane fist, including some of the best ones (/enervation/, /ray of enfeeblement/, /disintegrate/, etc.). As you note, the other good ability enlightened fist has is diamond soul, though because a sublime fist has fewer monk and enlightened levels, this is not as good as it could be.
I agree with your opinion of arcane rejuvenation, and fist of energy, while not terrible, is not great either. It does add some elemental diversity for sorcerer-based arcane monks, though.
I'll freely grant that sacred exorcist is among the better options for an arcane monk after they complete enlightened fist, but I still don't like it much.
Other races:
A lot of the alternate races have always struck me as rather silly. From reading the preview, I can't imagine permitting or playing an illumian in a campaign: they're a human subrace without a compelling reason to exist. However, I'm a fan of human-only campaigns, which I recognize is not the norm.
As for large races, LA is a serious problem, and many of the large races I'm familiar with have racial hit dice as well: an ogre with 2 levels of monk, for instance, is an ECL 8 character. At that point, I don't see that picking up a casting class is reasonable, unless you're playing in a very high level campaign (well into epic levels). If there exists a large race with an LA-adjustment of +1 or +2 with no racial hit dice, it would be worth considering, but I'd still be hesitant.
Ray of Enfeeblement: With hold ray, the arcane monk can deal 1d6+5 (or so) Str damage per turn
Except it is a penalty, and not damage
--Pinky's brain
Thanks for catching my mistake. I must not have been paying attention; I guess I had /chill touch/ on the brain =). Anyway, it's still a good spell, and stacks with other penalties that aren't of the same type (Weakening Touch is an unnamed bonus, IIRC) and strength damage from spells like /chill touch/ and /contagion/.
Do you think a few levels of Initiate of the Sevenfold Veil is worthwhile? You take up 3 feats and get wiz HD/skills/BAB . . .
--Blue23
An arcane monk is very tight on feats, and the three feats the initiate of the seven veils are more or less useless for the arcane monk; basically, the requirements for the two classes have almost no synergies. The veils do provide excellent personal protection, but they add little to your offense. All in all, the class is certainly no worse than many other options, but I can't see myself spending the three feats.
Dragonslayer requires two feats that arcane monks don't take, and spellsword requires a way to get martial weapon proficiency and all the armor proficiencies (which dragonslayer does provide). That said, yes, the standard arcane warrior tricks do work. Thematically, I don't think dragonslayer and spellsword "fit" for arcane monk, but then, nothing else does either. If you have the feats to burn, dragonslayer 1/spellsword 1/eldritch knight 3 isn't a terrible way to end your progression.
The flip answer is, "convince your DM to use fractional BAB." The less flip answer involves noting that at "lower" levels, you can self-cast /haste/. Once you get 4th-level spells, /polymorph/ allows you to add all the natural attacks of any form you change into to your iterative-BAB unarmed strikes (with flurry, if you wish), without any restrictions on needing to use weapons in your alternate forms. Finally, you do get at least +11 BAB (even without a fractional progression) before 20th level, so you get three attacks, you're just slow. However, ultimately, this is more or less an inevitable liability of the build without fractional BAB, and I don't see a way around it.
Has anyone consider the synergy of the 5th level warmind ability sweeping strike and the arcane fist ability? That ability treat any melee attack as one attack on 2 opponents in squares you threaten. Power up that arcance fist, put on psionic fist 2d6 or 4d6 depending and go to town.
--Dragon3
There are two major problems with this. The first is that doing psionics and arcane magic on the same character often results in both sucking, since you don't get either high-level spells or high-level powers. The second is that while sweeping strike works well with spells that add damage to your melee attack for a number of attacks (like /chill touch/) or a duration (like /Mestil's acid sheath), it doesn't allow you to affect more targets with a touch spell (the description of the ability says "attack"); or, at least, that's my reading.
The sublime fist is, IMO, blatant powergaming, because even though the skills and feats work out all right, thematically the prestige classes go in different directions. Meanwhile, in my gaming groups, alignment changes for the purposes of powergaming are viewed skeptically, to say the least. Adding on sacred exorcist adds to the character's thematic problems.
Is what is in your opinion blatant powergaming a problem for you? Because if it is, I'm wondering why you posted Sublime Fist builds in the first place.
And I don't think that sacred exorcist adds to any thematic problems at all. If you can't imagine a lawful good character who sings to aid her party, has taken a vow to use only unarmed attacks (because weapons are inherently deadly/evil, and she likes to deal subdual damage), has studied arcane magic, and is at the same time consecrated by her temple... IMO it is to your discredit, not mine.
For me the sacred exorcist really seems to tie the character together thematically.
Is what is in your opinion blatant powergaming a problem for you? Because if it is, I'm wondering why you posted Sublime Fist builds in the first place.
And I don't think that sacred exorcist adds to any thematic problems at all. If you can't imagine a lawful good character who sings to aid her party, has taken a vow to use only unarmed attacks (because weapons are inherently deadly/evil, and she likes to deal subdual damage), has studied arcane magic, and is at the same time consecrated by her temple... IMO it is to your discredit, not mine.
For me the sacred exorcist really seems to tie the character together thematically.
I'm not trying to use powergaming as an insult. In my discussion, I was focusing on characters that develop from 1st to 15th level or so, so I've been de-emphasizing builds that work better for high-level play, like sublime fist, nothing more than that. Blatant powergaming has its place (it's an activity I enjoy too, though not all the time), though I tend to reserve it for campaigns that start at higher levels: in my experience, it's a lot easier to invent plausible alignment changes in a character history than to make planned changes during a campaign. While it's certainly possible to change alignments, usually this is in response to events that happen during the campaign, and these are inherently hard to predict or plan for; moreover, if I were DMing, I'd be disturbed if a player wanted to invent a personal crisis around 4th level for the purpose of changing alignments so they could qualify for monk. Scripting your character like that seems wrong to me, but that's my personal opinion.
Anyway, that's why sublime fist bothers me in this context. I included many things that I don't consider particularly good ideas or like personally, because I know other people might want to play them; the sublime fist was more or less in this vein. If I was playing in a campaign that was starting at 20th level, sublime fist is certainly one of the builds that I would consider. However the bard has pseudo-Celtic overtones, and the monk has pseudo-Eastern overtones. These clash for me; the idea of a singing monk just doesn't work with my conceptions of the monk class. Sacred exorcist has pseudo-medieval-Catholic-Christian-priest overtones for me, which clash with both the pseudo-Eastern and the pseudo-Celtic overtones. Though, come to think of it, sacred exorcist/arcane monk does work pretty well, since the notion of monks as exorcists fits well into certain Eastern cultures. However, that still doesn't mesh with the Celtic bits.
Anyway, in conclusion, I'm not trying to insult you, I'm just maundering about my feelings on the build. If you and your DM like it, feel free to play it, and I'll be more than happy to discuss the optimization of it =).
Monk1/Sorc4/EF10/DrSl1/EK4
Caster level16, BAB 14, Base Saves F:11, R:11, W:18
Spells known: 1: Fist of stone, chill touch, ray of enfeeble, true strike, shield
2: ghoul touch, scorching ray, see invis, spider climb, touch idiocy
3: ray exhaustion, vamp touch, haste, dispel magic
4: enervation, poly self, g invis, dimen door
5: pris ray, overland flight, telekinesis, mind fog
6: disentigrate, brilliant weapon, heroism greater
7: emerald flame fist, antimagic ray
8: polar ray
I was thinking about adding shivering touch but I think it might be banned, also avasculate was another possibility.
Feats:
EK Bonus: Power attack
H dodge
1 iron will
3 combat casting
6 arcane preperation
9 arcane strike
12 quicken
15 split ray
18 maximize
If there was a large race with only +1 or +2 LA...
Half-ogre. +1 or +2, depending on whether it's the Savage Species or Races of Destiny version. The two versions are identical, except for the LA.
Monk 2
Wizard 3
Enlightened Fist 5
Master Tranmogrifist from then on.
Practiced Spellcaster is absolutely must have feat.
If you are willing to suffer hideously at low levels, this build can avoid MAD by ignoring the physical stats, because they will be replaced when you polymorph. You wind up with a max BAB of only +10, and a max caster level of 13, but you do get a lots of great shapeshifting powers.
What do you think?
Cheers,
quetzyl
I'm not trying to use powergaming as an insult. In my discussion, I was focusing on characters that develop from 1st to 15th level or so, so I've been de-emphasizing builds that work better for high-level play, like sublime fist, nothing more than that. Blatant powergaming has its place (it's an activity I enjoy too, though not all the time), though I tend to reserve it for campaigns that start at higher levels...
OK, just checking. A lot of people do seem to think of it as a bad thing ;)
in my experience, it's a lot easier to invent plausible alignment changes in a character history than to make planned changes during a campaign. While it's certainly possible to change alignments, usually this is in response to events that happen during the campaign, and these are inherently hard to predict or plan for; moreover, if I were DMing, I'd be disturbed if a player wanted to invent a personal crisis around 4th level for the purpose of changing alignments so they could qualify for monk. Scripting your character like that seems wrong to me, but that's my personal opinion.
I completely agree that suddenly having a character change alignment to fit a "build" midcampaign is very tacky. However, I also view use of the D&D alignment system to arbitrarily destroy certain character concepts as being very tacky.
An example: In a campaign I played in a few years back, one of the PCs was a Paladin/Bard. A multiclass Paladin/Bard. That is, he started out as an apprentice-level Bard 0/Paladin 0, became a Bard 1/Paladin 1, Bard 2/Paladin 1, Bard 2/Paladin 2, etc.
No one viewed that as tacky, and no one actually made him change alignments every single level. He may have had a permenantly Enlarged Dire weasel for a mount, but that is beside the point.
Thankfully, in Unearthed Arcana there is actually a bard capable of being lawful. Unfortunately, they're limited to LN... Ah well.
Anyway, that's why sublime fist bothers me in this context. I included many things that I don't consider particularly good ideas or like personally, because I know other people might want to play them; the sublime fist was more or less in this vein. If I was playing in a campaign that was starting at 20th level, sublime fist is certainly one of the builds that I would consider. However the bard has pseudo-Celtic overtones, and the monk has pseudo-Eastern overtones. These clash for me; the idea of a singing monk just doesn't work with my conceptions of the monk class. Sacred exorcist has pseudo-medieval-Catholic-Christian-priest overtones for me, which clash with both the pseudo-Eastern and the pseudo-Celtic overtones. Though, come to think of it, sacred exorcist/arcane monk does work pretty well, since the notion of monks as exorcists fits well into certain Eastern cultures. However, that still doesn't mesh with the Celtic bits.
I agree completely that the bard is created from pseudo-Celtic mythology and the monk from Pseudo-"Oriental"-Hollywood mythology. Unfortunately, there isn't any non-Occidental bard class in the PHB. I have to work with what I have.
And mechanically, I don't think that there really is any difference between an Oriental or Occidental bard beyond a bit of flavor text residue that leaves an odd taste in the mouth. And the bard has as little resemblance to actual Celtic bardic tradition as the Druid.
Similarly, there is only one unarmed/unarmored "martial artist" class in the PHB. And mechanically, the monk isn't a bad fit until the higher levels. And it still makes more sense than a Fighter/Rogue combo (Yes, I trained in the use of heavy armor and backstabbing to be an unarmed/unarmored paragon of good...)
And I feel that (beyond the crosses...) the sacred exorcist is a good fit for any exalted/enlightened type-spellcaster with a martial bent.
So I'm not saying you're wrong about clashing flavor, what I'm saying is that there isn't a better way.
Oh, and I've looked at Hold ray and the spell options again. I don't like it (I feel that a ranged touch is better than a melee attack), but it is still quite powerful. I guess I just like being able to add a touch attack to every attack in a flurry (like Chill touch) and leave the rays to ranged combat.
However, I also view use of the D&D alignment system to arbitrarily destroy certain character concepts as being very tacky.
I'll agree with you on that.
I agree completely that the bard is created from pseudo-Celtic mythology and the monk from Pseudo-"Oriental"-Hollywood mythology. . . . And mechanically, I don't think that there really is any difference between an Oriental or Occidental bard beyond a bit of flavor text residue that leaves an odd taste in the mouth.
I think that the Chinese kung-fu genre is better cited as the source . . . Hollywood "borrowed" the ideas.
I'm not familiar with anything like the D&D bard outside bad fantasy novels . . . there are some vague archetypes in European traditions, but I can't think of anything analogous in East Asian ones.
So I'm not saying you're wrong about clashing flavor, what I'm saying is that there isn't a better way
I guess that depends on how seriously you take the core classes. I find this is a persistent problem in D&D.
I think this discussion is wandering away from the CO board's topic, though, so I'll confine myself to brief comments =).
Oh, and I've looked at Hold ray and the spell options again. I don't like it (I feel that a ranged touch is better than a melee attack), but it is still quite powerful. I guess I just like being able to add a touch attack to every attack in a flurry (like Chill touch) and leave the rays to ranged combat.
A ranged touch is better for a pure caster . . . but the power of hold ray is that you can cast a spell and make a full attack in the same round. If you can beat an enemy's Fort save (with, say, earlier applications of enervation), that's easily another 20d6 damage damage on top of your full attack damage, which is impressive no matter how you slice it. Even with full Two-Weapon fighting and flurry, you can't get more than 7 unarmed attacks, meaning that only something like emerald flame fist or mestil's acid sheath is even competitive for damage, presuming all attacks hit and yada yada yada. Certainly, spells that add damage to each attack are good, but spells that don't also have their uses.
Half-ogre. +1 or +2, depending on whether it's the Savage Species or Races of Destiny version. The two versions are identical, except for the LA.
Do they take a penalty to the spell-casting abilities? Ogres have a -4 to Int and Cha. That's the other problem with most large races for arcane monks . . . your spell-casting ability tends to be either your first or second priority, and if you don't have awesome stats, taking a penalty to it can be problematic.
Monk 2
Wizard 3
Enlightened Fist 5
Master Tranmogrifist from then on.
Practiced Spellcaster is absolutely must have feat.
If you are willing to suffer hideously at low levels, this build can avoid MAD by ignoring the physical stats, because they will be replaced when you polymorph. You wind up with a max BAB of only +10, and a max caster level of 13, but you do get a lots of great shapeshifting powers.
Frankly, I think master transmogrifist sucks too much to use, particularly for an arcane monk. It gets d4 hit dice, poor BAB, Will favored, and 2 + Int skills per level, while granting only 6/10 caster levels of advancement. The d4 hit die is a serious liability for character who spends all their time in melee, and even with the bonus to hit from master transmogrifist, your to-hit situation isn't much better while your number of iterative attacks sucks. Tumble is important for monks in general and arcane monks in particular, who don't have the feat slots to spend to assist their ability to move around the battlefield. Meanwhile, your casting advancement is too slow to make up for any of these liabilities.
Basically, master transmogrifist is an arcane warrior class with caster-class stats. Because of this, no one can make effective use of it.
Monk1/Sorc4/EF10/DrSl1/EK4
Caster level16, BAB 14, Base Saves F:11, R:11, W:18
Spells known: 1: Fist of stone, chill touch, ray of enfeeble, true strike, shield
2: ghoul touch, scorching ray, see invis, spider climb, touch idiocy
3: ray exhaustion, vamp touch, haste, dispel magic
4: enervation, poly self, g invis, dimen door
5: pris ray, overland flight, telekinesis, mind fog
6: disentigrate, brilliant weapon, heroism greater
7: emerald flame fist, antimagic ray
8: polar ray
I was thinking about adding shivering touch but I think it might be banned, also avasculate was another possibility.
Feats:
EK Bonus: Power attack
H dodge
1 iron will
3 combat casting
6 arcane preperation
9 arcane strike
12 quicken
15 split ray
18 maximize
You take some spells that I see as better suited to a primary arcane caster: for instance, mind fog and telekinesis. You have some utility spells that I'd replace with some combination of skills, scrolls, and other spells: spider climb is good, no doubt, but you have Climb in-class, can buy scrolls, and can polymorph into something with a climb speed; overland flight is another good example. See invisible you should get through permanency or a magic item. I'd swap out ghoul touch at high levels, since it has a save. I would rarely take polar ray as my first 18th-level spell, but that's dependent on what you're fighting (if it's nothing but constructs and undead, yeah, polar ray is a decent choice).
As for feats, I like Empower much better than Maximize. From my reading of arcane fist, Split Ray is useless to an arcane monk (though it's awesome for a primary caster). I also think Arcane Preparation is an insult to spontaneous casters; IMO, if you're taking Arcane Preparation, you might as well just play a prep caster. Also, with arcane fist, it's rarely useful except for Quicken, and Quicken is not worth two feats. I personally, would also not spend so many feats on magic, but that's a matter of playstyle.
Final note to someone who asked: Kung-Fu Genius is from Dragon Magazine 319. I generally follow crystalkeep's conventions in denoting sourcebooks, so I referred to it as DR 319.
First of all, I'm not buying your assertion that a Warlock build is worse off than a Sorcerer build in this case. Warlocks have an inherently better BAB progression AND a better Hit Die type than Sorcerers.
Furthermore, the one problem with relying on Arcane Strikes and other such silliness to make up for all the BAB you lose to the Sorcerer levels is that you give up endurance. Once you've cooked off all your spell slots, you're done for the day. And is a +3 to hit for a round really better than a well-used Dispel Magic or Vampiric Touch? The whole point of being a meleer is to be able to keep dishing that damage every round without stopping, all day long. You keep that as a Warlock.
In a straight-up comparison of two simple builds, Monk 2 / Sorcerer 8 / Enlightened Fist 10 versus Monk 2 / Warlock 8 / Enlightened Fist 10 you lose 2 net BAB from the Sorcerer levels and have to make it up by dinking around with a Fighter level and entering Eldritch Knight or some such at later levels.
Also, the Warlock actually has better self-healing options than the Sorcerer or Wizard Enlightened Fist.
1. Decieve Items ability and the fact that Use Magic Device is a Warlock class skill means that a Wand of Cure Light Wounds is readily accessible.
2. Fiendish Resilience 1 is an ability the build gains at level 20, which grants Fast Healing 1 for 20 combat rounds.
3. The Devour Magic invocation allows you to strip buffs off enemy spellcasters and gain temporary hitpoints for it.
4. Invocations have a spell-level equivalent, and therefore can be used with the Arcane Rejuvenation ability of the Enlightened Fist. Which means that instead of being totally useless, Arcane Rejuvenation quickly becomes an "I'm fully healed after every fight" power. Some of our rules-lawyers should check that one to ensure that it's totally bulletproof.
5. Let's not forget the Warlock's Damage Reduction. How many orcs carry cold iron weapons? Or, for that matter, how many Dire Tigers?
I've worked out a possible build scheme below. The final build is Monk 2 / Warlock 8 / Enlightened Fist 10. You could also tinker with it a bit...Acolyte of the Skin might make an interesting dip somewhere in there.
White dragon spawn might be good for a sorcerer based enlightened fist, you still get the caster level aswell as some nice stat bonuses, natural armour & a fly speed (having a fly speed makes VoP a much better option, as the lack of fligh is one of the major problems for VoP builds). If you have LA buf off available, it goes from good, to just plain sick.
I agree with Eidolon that a warlock can make a good enlightened fist. I especially lthink there alot cooler.
Out of interest, has anyone tried an artificer sacred fist? Could be good/wierd/fun?
Okay...
First of all, I'm not buying your assertion that a Warlock build is worse off than a Sorcerer build in this case. Warlocks have an inherently better BAB progression AND a better Hit Die type than Sorcerers . . .
First, comparing a build including sorcerer 8 with one including warlock 8 is unfair: no sane player (at least, no one with any desire to min-max) would ever take more than 3 or 4 sorcerer levels, because sorcerer has no class features (which is a serious design problem). Any full-casting prestige class is a better choice, and there are many classes that a monk 2/sorcerer 3/enlightened fist 10 can easily meet the requirements for. Sacred exorcist (CD) and master of the east wind (Drg 314) both have 3/4 BAB, d8 hit dice, and near-trivial requirements for an character coming out of enlightened fist. There are many other possibilities as well.
However, I explicitly worked out builds only up to level 15, because, as I noted, most campaigns don't make it that far, much less level 20. So for a fairer comparison, I'll assume 3 levels of warlock and 3 of sorcerer. From those warlock levels, you get detect magic at will, DR 1/cold iron, and three d6 hit dice instead of d4s (amounting to an average difference of 3 HP), and +1 BAB. Unless you have unusually high stats and can afford a bonus to Int on top of high Cha, physical stats, and decent Wis, you won't have enough skill points to buy much Use Magic Device because you have to spend at least 5 points in Spellcraft and 3 in Concentration. (In general, because UMD is a cross-class skill for enlightened fist, even if you spend two ranks pumping it every level, it will still be about 7-8 points lower than maxed, and you won't be able to buy any other skills beyond Concentration and Tumble.)
Now, for the rules. "Since spell-like abilities are not actually spells, a warlock cannot benefit from the Spell Focus feat." (CA p7) "Metamagic feats cannot improve a warlock's eldritch blast (because it is a spell-like ability, not a spell)." (CA p7) ". . . his invocations are spell-like abilities, not spells." (CA p8) The description of arcane fist on p36 uses the word, "touch spell." Arcane rejuvenation refers to "prepared spells or unused spell slots;" (CA p36) a warlock has neither. Hold ray refers to "any spell that produces a ray effect." (CA pp36-37) The warlock's abilities are not spells, and the enlightened fist's abilities do not apply to them, just like feats that apply to spells don't apply to them.
In my discussion of the warlock, I mentioned that an exceedingly generous DM might create a house rule that an enlightened fist could use the warlock's invocations with arcane fist and hold ray. No DM I have ever played with would allow unlimited self-healing with arcane rejuvenation and warlock invocations: besides being against the rules, it's also ridiculous.
Moving on, by the rules as written, there is only one way to combine eldritch blast and a melee attack: the hideous blow blast shape invocation. However, this only allows you to make one melee attack, as a standard action. You can't combine it with natural attacks, two-weapon fighting, flurry of blows, haste, or anything else. This means that the warlock-arcane monk at 15th level with Practiced Spellcaster can do 7d6 damage in addition to a normal melee attack. A minimal arcane monk at 15th level can make three attacks (haste and iterative BAB), but can add another with flurry, at least two more with two-weapon fighting feats, and then natural attacks from polymorph. A Medium-sized monk at that level does at least 2d6 damage plus their Strength bonus with each attack; when adding all the other random bonuses any character of that level will have, hideous blow is completely dominated by just making ordinary melee attacks.
If your DM is exceedingly generous, you can at best add 7d6 unspellresistable damage with to one attack each round using vitriolic blast. A sorcerer-arcane monk can deliver 5d6 each round using 1st-level spell slots for shocking grasp. Meanwhile, they can also cast chill touch and do 1d6 damage with each unarmed attack they can make in a round, which can range up to a maximum of six and is more typically around four. They can also stack the damage from using shocking grasp, chill touch, and other spells that add to their unarmed damage, along with Arcane Strike, doing far, far more damage in a single round than 7d6.
A typical arcane at that monk has at least 8 1st-level slots, 7 2nd-level slots, and 7 3rd-level slots, and 7 4th-level slots. That's 29 rounds worth of combat spells, which in my experience is far more than you use in a typical day. With appropriate conservation measures when your remaining slots get scarce, such as using scrolls and wands to cast buffs, it's unusual, in my experience, to run out; and this situation only improves with level.
The other huge advantage the sorcerer-arcane monk has is buffs, which improve their chances of hitting, their AC, their ability to take damage, and give them flexibility that a warlock lacks.
By the rules as written, a sorcerer-arcane monk with arcane fist and hold ray outdamages a warlock-arcane monk. Period. A generous house rule allows the warlock-arcane monk to deal some extra damage each round, but a sorcerer-arcane monk can still far outdamage them until they run out of spell slots, and they have a lot of spell slots. The minimal extra advantages of warlock do not make up for these incredible weaknesses in my opinion.
Now, I'm not saying that the warlock is a bad class, or that it can't work for melee builds (see the warlock/telflammar shadowlord builds). I'm just saying that it doesn't work for an arcane monk, in particular.
Thinking abotu the warlock made me wonder what other classes would be interested, and amusingly enough, arcane/divine casters get some benefits. Basicly, Arcane Fist and Hold Ray work on touch spells and ray spells, not specifically arcane touch/ray spells. An enlightened fist/sacred fist could have some fun.
Clerics have some fun touch spells, like the inflicts, harm, slay living, poison, or doing a death knell as your last attack against a down opponent. Talking about that, use your last attack, the one with the worst BAB so it will miss anyhow, to attack YOURSELF and drop a touch spell like a Cure or Heal. Heck, many buff spells can use your least-likely-to-hit last attack to instead go on yourself. Normal EFs also can do this, it isn't a divine only.
I was mucking with trying to get a Fochluren Lyricist build with this, but I'm not of fan of planned alignment shifts so I would have had to go for something like Shou Disciple to get unarmed attack damage and EF wouldn't add to it. Mystic Theurge isn't worth it because it will kill your already low BAB.
So, who can pick up that ball and run with it?
Cheers,
=Blue(23)
The only possible exceptions are doing something like tacking ur-priest and Fochlucan lyrist onto one of the sublime chord builds in my main post, or using chameleon: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/iw/20041210b.
Monk-2 / Paladin-8 / Sorcerer-3 / Enlightened Fist-7
You get BAB-15, arcane caster level of only 8 but you do have hold ray, and paladin 8 casting. You attack as a 17th level monk and have the AC of a 12th level one. You can smite evil and have arcane strike. This is more melee than spellcaster but I think that it might be fun to play.
In my discussion of the warlock, I mentioned that an exceedingly generous DM might create a house rule that an enlightened fist could use the warlock's invocations with arcane fist and hold ray. No DM I have ever played with would allow unlimited self-healing with arcane rejuvenation and warlock invocations: besides being against the rules, it's also ridiculous.
I admit that 90% of DM's are going to Rule 0 the Arcane Rejuvenation thing, but let's face it, it's still a full-round action to heal at MOST nine hit points. And that's at 20th level. It's not as horrifically unbalancing as you seem to think.
Besides, it's far from the sickest part of the build anyway.
But I do not see anything in the RAW that prohibits the use of Arcane Fist, Hold Ray, OR Arcane Rejuvenation being used with Warlock abilities. Has there been an errata or ruling somewhere I'm not aware of, or am I reading the book wrong?
This build isn't fully optimised yet so please feel free to leave comments. (BoED's Vow of Poverty would enhance the build many times over, but I don't want to put it here as not every DM would allow the stuff that's in there)
STR 8, DEX 14, CON 12, INT 10, WIS 16, CHA 14
1 Monk1 - Imp Unarmed*, Stunning Fist*, Ability Focus, Improved Initiative
2 Sorcerer1
3 Sorcerer2 - Weapon Finesse
4 Sorcerer3 - Wis+1
5 Sorcerer4
6 E. Fist 1 - Ki Strike (magic)*, Weakening Touch
7 E. Fist 2 - Fist of Energy*
8 E. Fist 3 - Arcane Fist*, Cha+1
9 E. Fist 4 - Sun School Tactical
10 E. Fist 5 - Arcane Rejuvenation*
11 E. Fist 6 - Fist of Energy Burst*
12 E. Fist 7 - Hold Ray*, Feat, Cha+1
13 E. Fist 8
14 E. Fist 9 - Diamond Soul*
15 E. Fist 10 - Feat
16 Monk 2 - Evasion*, Combat Reflexes*, Wis+1
17 Monk 3 - Still Mind*
18 Monk 4 - Slow Fall 20ft*, Feat
19 Monk 5 - Purity of Body*
20 Monk 6 - Slow Fall 30ft*, Improved Disarm*
Spells needed for the build.
_________________________________________________________________
Decastave (source FR Unapproachable East)
Conjuration (Creation) [Force]
Level: Sor/Wiz 2
Components: V, S, M
Casting Time: 1 Standard Action
Range: 0
Effect: Quarterstaff of Force
Duration: 1 round / level (D)
Saving Throw: None
Spell Resistance: Yes
You conjure into existence a quarterstaff of force, approximately 8 feet in length and 2 inches in diameter. The decastave lasts so long as you keep it in your hand; if you give it to another character or drop it, it vanishes. You can cast other spells with somatic components by holding the staff in one hand.
[INDENT] [/INDENT] You can use the decastave in combat to strike with a melee touch attack, dealing 1d6 points of damage per hit. Since the decastave is made of force, it affects incorporeal and ethereal creatures normally (provided that you can see such creatures). The decastave possesses the thundering weapon ability and deals 1d8 points of bonus sonic damage on a critical hit. Subject dealt a critical hit by the decastave must also succeed a Fortitude save (DC14) or be deafened permanently.
[INDENT] [/INDENT] Material Component: a slender wand of duskwood (see chapter 6: Magic of Faerun).
Wraithstrike (source Complete Adventurer)
Transmutation
Level: Assassin 2, Sor/Wiz 2
Components: V, S
Casting Time: 1 Swift Action
Range: Personal
Target: You
Duration: 1 round
When you cast this spell, your melee weapons become ghostly and nearly transparent for a brief time. While this spell is in effect, your melee attacks are resolved as melee touch attacks rather than normal attacks.
_________________________________________________________________
Survival at low levels depends on disabling strategies, which Ray of Enfeeblement and Chill Touch will allow you to do.
Decastave and Wraithstrike play an important role from levels 5 to 7 as they provide melee touch attacks. Decastave also negates the character's Strength penalty, as it is a force effect that doesn't apply Str modifiers to damage. The Weakening Touch feat (target loses 6 Str, no save, on a successful hit, source Complete Warrior) is the reason why I gave the build such high Wisdom. This can be easily delivered via Wraithstrike.
A note on Decastave with Fist of Energy, as FoE says it can be channelled through a wielded monk's weapon. I also like the critical combo here as at higher levels, both the Decastave and Fist of Energy have a nice critical combo. You can use Blades of Fire (swift action), Arcane Strike (free action) and Fist of Energy (free action) to enchant your Decastave. Total is 3d6 + 1d4/spell lvl sacrificed per hit.
At level 9, I took the Sun School Tactical Feat (source Complete Warrior) in anticipation of Dimension Door at level 10. The feat allows one attack to be made after a Dim Door, and that would allow me to deliver a Str sapping spell. If you went Wizard with the build, you will get Dim Door at level 9. I opted for Sorcerer because the build needs only a few specific spells and many, many uses of the same spells.
I haven't had the time to optimise the build further than this, but I intend to level Enlightened Fist at least up to Level 9, both for the abilities (especially Diamond Soul) and the spell levels (up to Level 6).
Spells to consider include Orb of Force (range touch, no save, no SR, no energy resistance) and Enervation (no save, can be held as a melee touch spell if you miss).
I can assure you that the Hollywood versions of the martial Buddhist is no further from the truth than Asian folklore versions. Did they really do the things the stories say? Probably not, but it's legend, just like the Middle Ages knights and their quests, codes of chivalry, and honor are mostly legend rather than a historical, sociological structure.
But there actually is an archetypal bardic monk (or rather, a kungfu fighter who also uses music, usually the flute) character in Chinese lore. His flute carries special powers channeled through qi, which can confuse, incapacitate, or possibly mind control enemies. Sound familiar? In addition, his martial prowess is significant. There is actually one example of such a character in a very popular novel written in the 70s (which has achieved a sort of Lord of the Rings status). The character's style of fighting, especially the flute bit, is considered the ancient Chinese equivalent of "dishonorable," which is different from pure evil in that he has common decency, etc. but he does not adhere to the established norms of etiquette.
Basically, he's a chaotic good/chaotic neutral bard monk.
Regardless of whether a character concept exists in human civilization, mythological or historical, DnD should not prohibit it based on that. However, I like to think of the CharOp board builds as confining themselves to the rules. In something as clear-cut as "only lawful" and "only chaotic," I would not consider a bardic monk as legitimate. In one of my games, however, I would probably allow it. Do you get what I'm saying?
But there actually is an archetypal bardic monk (or rather, a kungfu fighter who also uses music, usually the flute) character in Chinese lore. His flute carries special powers channeled through qi, which can confuse, incapacitate, or possibly mind control enemies. Sound familiar? In addition, his martial prowess is significant.
Yep, Bill :P
(Just kidding, I know David Carradine's various characters are modeled after the Chinese arctype.)
However, I like to think of the CharOp board builds as confining themselves to the rules. In something as clear-cut as "only lawful" and "only chaotic," I would not consider a bardic monk as legitimate. In one of my games, however, I would probably allow it. Do you get what I'm saying?
Well, then we can count on the Aescetic knight feat never appearing in any C.O. builds too.
Seriously, alignment change is part of the rules. Pretending that it isn't is no better than acting as if unlimited numbers of alignment changes are reasonable.
Folks,
Thinking abotu the warlock made me wonder what other classes would be interested, and amusingly enough, arcane/divine casters get some benefits. Basicly, Arcane Fist and Hold Ray work on touch spells and ray spells, not specifically arcane touch/ray spells. An enlightened fist/sacred fist could have some fun.
Clerics have some fun touch spells, like the inflicts, harm, slay living, poison, or doing a death knell as your last attack against a down opponent. Talking about that, use your last attack, the one with the worst BAB so it will miss anyhow, to attack YOURSELF and drop a touch spell like a Cure or Heal. Heck, many buff spells can use your least-likely-to-hit last attack to instead go on yourself. Normal EFs also can do this, it isn't a divine only.
I was mucking with trying to get a Fochluren Lyricist build with this, but I'm not of fan of planned alignment shifts so I would have had to go for something like Shou Disciple to get unarmed attack damage and EF wouldn't add to it. Mystic Theurge isn't worth it because it will kill your already low BAB.
So, who can pick up that ball and run with it?
Cheers,
=Blue(23)
Try this: Monk 3/Paladin 3/Pious Templar 3/Sacred Fist 2/Suel Arcanamach 3/Enlightened Fist 2/Mystic Theurge 4
Take Acetic Knight as your 6th level feat. You have 1d10 unarmed damage, up to 2d6 with Improved Natural Attack. In the Realms you can also worship Ilmater for the Templar levels. 1d10+2+Str ain't bad alone, 2d6+2+Str+spells is even better.
You really will only get personal buffs with this, as Arcanamach's spell access is best used for that--- extended spellstrength and tenacious spells are tailor-made for a long-term buffer. You also get a few paladin spells, so you can toss some cures in there, but mostly you get the "holy grail" of paladin spells, Holy Sword. Anyone want +5 Holy Unarmed Strikes? Yeah, I thought so too.
I admit that 90% of DM's are going to Rule 0 the Arcane Rejuvenation thing, but let's face it, it's still a full-round action to heal at MOST nine hit points. And that's at 20th level. It's not as horrifically unbalancing as you seem to think.
You may be right. I'm always wary of granting unlimited use for what's typically a limited resource: healing, in this case. The most powerful thing I can figure out to do with this ability is with a rod of unlimited use healing sting or some similar spell, which works out to unlimited out-of-battle healing for party: heal yourself with arcane rejuvenation, then pass the hit points to other party members. This is certainly good. Is it broken? Hard to say.
Can items such as monks belt & monks tatoos not get you around the problem of low monk damage for the divine/arcane monk?
Monk's belt gives you +5 effective level for AC and unarmed damage. A lot of arcane fist builds will use almost all of this increase to make up for arcane caster levels, leaving nothing left over for divine caster classes. Most of the people I play with would look somewhat skeptically upon using both a monk's belt and a monk's tattoo, particularly since the tattoo is a 3.0 Faerun item.
I would like to contribute some of my own ideas for the Enlightened Fist as I have been trying to optimise her for some time using the 28 point buy system. This build cannot do insane amounts of damage but is able to deliver disabling attacks via Strength ability damage/debuff.
This build isn't fully optimised yet so please feel free to leave comments. (BoED's Vow of Poverty would enhance the build many times over, but I don't want to put it here as not every DM would allow the stuff that's in there)
STR 8, DEX 14, CON 12, INT 10, WIS 16, CHA 14
1 Monk1 - Imp Unarmed*, Stunning Fist*, Ability Focus, Improved Initiative
2 Sorcerer1
3 Sorcerer2 - Weapon Finesse
4 Sorcerer3 - Wis+1
5 Sorcerer4
6 E. Fist 1 - Ki Strike (magic)*, Weakening Touch
7 E. Fist 2 - Fist of Energy*
8 E. Fist 3 - Arcane Fist*, Cha+1
9 E. Fist 4 - Sun School Tactical
10 E. Fist 5 - Arcane Rejuvenation*
11 E. Fist 6 - Fist of Energy Burst*
12 E. Fist 7 - Hold Ray*, Feat, Cha+1
13 E. Fist 8
14 E. Fist 9 - Diamond Soul*
15 E. Fist 10 - Feat
16 Monk 2 - Evasion*, Combat Reflexes*, Wis+1
17 Monk 3 - Still Mind*
18 Monk 4 - Slow Fall 20ft*, Feat
19 Monk 5 - Purity of Body*
20 Monk 6 - Slow Fall 30ft*, Improved Disarm*
Spells needed for the build.
_________________________________________________________________
Decastave (source FR Unapproachable East)
Conjuration (Creation) [Force]
Level: Sor/Wiz 2
Components: V, S, M
Casting Time: 1 Standard Action
Range: 0
Effect: Quarterstaff of Force
Duration: 1 round / level (D)
Saving Throw: None
Spell Resistance: Yes
You conjure into existence a quarterstaff of force, approximately 8 feet in length and 2 inches in diameter. The decastave lasts so long as you keep it in your hand; if you give it to another character or drop it, it vanishes. You can cast other spells with somatic components by holding the staff in one hand.
[INDENT] [/INDENT] You can use the decastave in combat to strike with a melee touch attack, dealing 1d6 points of damage per hit. Since the decastave is made of force, it affects incorporeal and ethereal creatures normally (provided that you can see such creatures). The decastave possesses the thundering weapon ability and deals 1d8 points of bonus sonic damage on a critical hit. Subject dealt a critical hit by the decastave must also succeed a Fortitude save (DC14) or be deafened permanently.
[INDENT] [/INDENT] Material Component: a slender wand of duskwood (see chapter 6: Magic of Faerun).
Wraithstrike (source Complete Adventurer)
Transmutation
Level: Assassin 2, Sor/Wiz 2
Components: V, S
Casting Time: 1 Swift Action
Range: Personal
Target: You
Duration: 1 round
When you cast this spell, your melee weapons become ghostly and nearly transparent for a brief time. While this spell is in effect, your melee attacks are resolved as melee touch attacks rather than normal attacks.
_________________________________________________________________
Survival at low levels depends on disabling strategies, which Ray of Enfeeblement and Chill Touch will allow you to do.
Decastave and Wraithstrike play an important role from levels 5 to 7 as they provide melee touch attacks. Decastave also negates the character's Strength penalty, as it is a force effect that doesn't apply Str modifiers to damage. The Weakening Touch feat (target loses 6 Str, no save, on a successful hit, source Complete Warrior) is the reason why I gave the build such high Wisdom. This can be easily delivered via Wraithstrike.
A note on Decastave with Fist of Energy, as FoE says it can be channelled through a wielded monk's weapon. I also like the critical combo here as at higher levels, both the Decastave and Fist of Energy have a nice critical combo. You can use Blades of Fire (swift action), Arcane Strike (free action) and Fist of Energy (free action) to enchant your Decastave. Total is 3d6 + 1d4/spell lvl sacrificed per hit.
At level 9, I took the Sun School Tactical Feat (source Complete Warrior) in anticipation of Dimension Door at level 10. The feat allows one attack to be made after a Dim Door, and that would allow me to deliver a Str sapping spell. If you went Wizard with the build, you will get Dim Door at level 9. I opted for Sorcerer because the build needs only a few specific spells and many, many uses of the same spells.
I haven't had the time to optimise the build further than this, but I intend to level Enlightened Fist at least up to Level 9, both for the abilities (especially Diamond Soul) and the spell levels (up to Level 6).
Spells to consider include Orb of Force (range touch, no save, no SR, no energy resistance) and Enervation (no save, can be held as a melee touch spell if you miss).
A few comments:
I think shorting your spellcasting key ability (Cha) in favor of Wis is a mistake. Wis increases your AC, the DCs for your unarmed attacks, and a few skills, but Cha increases your spell DCs and gives you bonus spell slots (and also boosts some skills, but they tend to be incidental to many arcane monks). In my opinion, the latter advantages are better than the former, because a lot of the power of the arcane monk flows from your spells. In particular for this build, the only DC you're increasing is the DC for your Stunning Fist; but you want to save stunning fist uses for arcane fist, and you can use spells to stun opponents as well. Meeting the requirements for Weakening Touch might justify more expenditure there (it's certainly a good feat), but after hitting 17 Wis, I wouldn't pump it more.
I would never return to monk after maxing enlightened fist, because D&D casting has strong increasing returns. By the time you have 6th level spells, there is practically no ability you can gain from any class that exceeds the benefit you get from increasing your spellcasting.
I considered including decastave in my main discussion and decided it wasn't that good. It's only useful in a tight level range, only has the special advantage that you can flurry with it, can't be enhanced with spells like magic weapon, and does less damage than your unarmed strike in many cases.
Wraithstrike is a good spell; I haven't gone through the CV spells yet.
Sun School is a decent feat, but you can't combine it with arcane fist, which makes it less useful, which doesn't mean that it isn't worth taking.
Orb of force isn't a ray spell, which means that IMO it isn't worthwhile for an arcane monk. Enervation is a great spell, but by my reading of the rules, you can't use it as a ray and then hold the charge if you miss: you either have to cast it as a ray or cast it as a touch spell, allowing you to hold the charge if you miss.
Assuming your target doesn't have spell resistance you're trading in your normal unarmed damage for 1d4 cold damage and resolving all your attacks with the claws as touch attacks. The fact that you may use these claws with your normal iterative attacks allows you drop a spell onto your claw attack with arcane fist and resolve it as a touch attack while maintaining an otherwise normal attack scheme or, alternatively, buff yourself up with various spells that apply to multiple attacks (corrosive touch, chill touch, emerald flame fist etc) and just attack with the claws for your entire scheme, resolving the attacks as touches.
The only downside is that you're not going to want to do this when facing monsters with spell resistance you can't reliably overcome. On that front, incidentally, what are people's opinions for good Arcane Fist spells that don't allow SR; I'm finding them few and far between...
I did some looking for good spells without save DCs or SR that can be delivered as touch attacks (with or without hold ray) and found almost nothing. The only one that I can even remember is acid arrow. Any other contributions would be appreciated.
Monks are fast. This, combined with feats like mobile spellcaster makes for a nasty magical ranged attacker, particularly if the casting class in question is a warmage or sorcerer with a high volume of distance spells. Being able to stay out of range of most melee fighters and even a lot of archers has some substantial advantages in a fight. Even a monk1/sorcerer4/enlightened fist 10 is going to have a speed of 60 feet, which is double what most other characters of the same level will have, and triple that of warriors in heavy armor or most small-sized characters. Add in expeditious retreat, haste, and/or movement boosting items and it gets... scary. Being able to move 240 feet (with exp. retreat & haste up) and cast a spell halfway through that move (with mobile spellcaster) is pretty good...
Also, if I'm not mistaken, Ascetic mage & arcane strike are almost redundant if you don't plan on using weapons. The dame output potential of arcane strike is a little bit higher, but I'm not convinced it's enough to use another feat on.
At the very least, I'd say its worth considering as a secondary role for the monk in question. But, still, GREAT thread!
Haste, expeditious retreat, and the monk's speed bonus are all enhancement bonuses, meaning they don't stack. The enlightened fist's signature ability, arcane fist, requires that you use a full attack and thus that you don't move. If you're interested in mobile ranged spellcasting, haste and no armor will do it: you don't need to screw with monk. But yes, given that you're an arcane monk, if you can't afford to stand and fight, you can take advantage of your good mobility. The other good feature of the monk's mobility is that you can use it an antimagic field, which I believe I mention in the section on antimagic field tacitcs.
Ohh, and on Quicken Spell, it doesn't require a full round action for a spontanious cast spell to use it, it DOES require that you have a full round action remaining when you use it. So you can quicken a dim door at the begining of your round, but not at the end, even with multispell. Auto quicken 4 times would also rock in the epic end, auto quicked dim door!
Stats: 12/12/12/14/16/8 (rolled ‘em, this is what I got to work with)
Race: Human
Cleric1 War, Celerity Feats: C. Casting, Spont. Wounder, Weap Foc: Unarmed (war domain)
Monk 1 Stunning Fist, Improved Unarmed Strike
Wiz 1 Scribe Scroll, Practiced Spellcaster
Wiz 2
Wiz 3 Improved Toughness
Enlightened Fist 1
Enlightened Fist 2
Enlightened Fist 3 Weakening Touch
Enlightened Fist 4
Enlightened Fist 5
Enlightened Fist 6
Enlightened Fist 7 Rapid Stunning
Enlightened Fist 8
I really liked the possibilities of using the arcane fist ability with the inflict spells. Spontaneous Wounder seemed a better route to go rather then Arcane Disciple. Plus, it allows me to have an offensive spell ready no matter what I have prepped.
However, I'm a little concerned with my BAB, and I don't know if my feat choices are the best. I'm limited to the Complete Books for access.
Also, one wacky possibilty would be to add another lvl of monk, dropping one of wiz, and adding 5 lvls of Sacred fist after the 1st 3 lvls of Enlightened fist.
This would help my BAB, and while I wouldn't have any big guns spellwise I sure would have a lot of low level spells I could throw around.
Any thoughts?
I need some help with my current build. I'm creating a 13th level character and this is what I have so far:
Stats: 12/12/12/14/16/8 (rolled ‘em, this is what I got to work with)
Race: Human
Cleric1 War, Celerity Feats: C. Casting, Spont. Wounder, Weap Foc: Unarmed (war domain)
Monk 1 Stunning Fist, Improved Unarmed Strike
Wiz 1 Scribe Scroll, Practiced Spellcaster
Wiz 2
Wiz 3 Improved Toughness
Enlightened Fist 1
Enlightened Fist 2
Enlightened Fist 3 Weakening Touch
Enlightened Fist 4
Enlightened Fist 5
Enlightened Fist 6
Enlightened Fist 7 Rapid Stunning
Enlightened Fist 8
I really liked the possibilities of using the arcane fist ability with the inflict spells. Spontaneous Wounder seemed a better route to go rather then Arcane Disciple. Plus, it allows me to have an offensive spell ready no matter what I have prepped.
However, I'm a little concerned with my BAB, and I don't know if my feat choices are the best. I'm limited to the Complete Books for access.
Also, one wacky possibilty would be to add another lvl of monk, dropping one of wiz, and adding 5 lvls of Sacred fist after the 1st 3 lvls of Enlightened fist.
This would help my BAB, and while I wouldn't have any big guns spellwise I sure would have a lot of low level spells I could throw around.
Any thoughts?
Spontaneous Wounder doesn't work the way you think it does, I believe--the inflict spells must already be on your class spell list to use it.
I'm not certain the speed benefit from the Celerity domain and that from monk stacks: most speed bonuses are enhancement bonuses, and therefore don't. More to the point, arcane monks don't really need more speed: between arcane spells like expeditious retreat and haste (for the earlier levels) and the monk's speed boost (later on), you have more than enough speed for almost any conceivable combat purpose.
I honestly don't think splashing cleric is worthwhile: the level of cleric doesn't advance any of your core competencies (monk abilities or arcane casting) and doesn't give you enough to make up for it. You could make an argument that the two bonus feats from say, the Planning and Time domains, are worth it, but I'd be skeptical even in that case. This is particularly true since taking a level of cleric hurts your BAB even more (you don't get +1 BAB until 4th level; this sucks, a lot) and not leading with monk hurts your skills.
If I was you, if I was going to allocate abilities like that, I'd go for a heavier martial arts special attack focus. There's not a lot of benefit to such a high Wisdom otherwise. More to the point, I'd strongly consider Intuitive Attack, because I don't think that roll supports a good martial arts set-up otherwise. If you don't have the option to go Intuitive Attack, I'd shift focus: you can go Two-Weapon Fighting and Weapon Finesse (12/16/12/14/12/8), or just go for a plain build with Kung-Fu Genius or nothing at all (14/12/12/16/12/8).
How about Sor 5 / Monk 3 / Ur-Priest 1 / Sacred Fist 8 / Enlightened Fist 3? You lose out on the high-level arcane buffs but do gain all the divine-persistent ones and decent BAB.
How do you get turning to power Divine Metamagic?
You have an inefficient distribution of class levels there. You're spending far too much time in sorc, and I don't see what monk 3 is doing for you. If I were going to do something like this, I'd suggest,
Monk 2/Sorc 3/Ur-Priest 2/Enlightened Fist 3/Sacred Fist 10.
However, this is costly and your casting ability will not be competitive with a less multiclassed caster until late.
Ur-Priest gains Rebuke Undead at class level 2, not class level 1 like I had thought.
That being said there is a case to make for sor4/sacred fist9; +1 BAB, +1 divine caster level and inner armor is very nice, but so is the opportunity for persistent greater invisibility.
This build is of course a moot point for characters in a necessarily good party, since ur-priest requires one to be evil.
Arcane Strike: This feat does not say you can only use it once/round. IE you can fire with BAB 6, 6 level 1 spells to fuel it all as free actions. That's amazing for +6 attack bonus and +6d4 damage.
Hold Ray: Amazing ability, allows you to by 2 monk, 8 Sor, 10 EnlF hold ray a polar ray once per round. since you can make a touch attack as an attack action, and your rays can now be touch attacks.
So with that progression, you would have BAB 12 (Pretty crappy, but that's okay), you can cast haste to make up for lack of attacks and arcane strike will give you an effective BAB of 24 if you're willing to burn off spells like a mad man.
MAD: Jesus man, you're already suffering MAD for being a monk, don't make it worse by being a cleric AND a sorceror too. Ascetic Mage is broken, use it up. And remember Divine Metamagic was errated to only effect divine spells now.
If you did a Cleric/monk/Sacred fist, I'd say celerity is INDEED a good choice, as both speed bonus's are nameless and imply nothing about not stacking with other nameless bonus's. In THIS case Quicken Spell, Divine Quicken Spell, and Divine Spellpower are all awesome character improvements.
In either case Sun School is awesome, especially with autoquicken and Multispell.
These are two seperate character concepts and you're going to fall WAY behind in every way if you try and mix em below say level 34 characters. At that point you could add 10 levels of geomancer if you felt really wild and crazy.
Instead of adding a level of cleric, the same effect could be had by taking Arcane Disciple (Destruction Domain) and then Spontaneous Wounder. This could be a handy way for a Sorc to effectively learn several inflict spells for the price of one. But I'll admit that it's pretty cheesy.
If you did a Cleric/monk/Sacred fist, I'd say celerity is INDEED a good choice, as both speed bonus's are nameless and imply nothing about not stacking with other nameless bonus's. In THIS case Quicken Spell, Divine Quicken Spell, and Divine Spellpower are all awesome character improvements.
I don't know about Celerity off the top of my head, but a monk's speed bonus counts as an enhancement bonus.
Actually, I double checked Complete Divine, and I do believe that Spontaneous Wounder does allow you to swap any spell. It makes no limits on the type of spells you convert into inflict (arcane is fine) and only limits the number of times per day you can do the effect, and that you be able to cast an inflict spell.
Instead of adding a level of cleric, the same effect could be had by taking Arcane Disciple (Destruction Domain) and then Spontaneous Wounder. This could be a handy way for a Sorc to effectively learn several inflict spells for the price of one. But I'll admit that it's pretty cheesy.
Spontaenous Wounder refers to, "(from your class spell list)," which I presume to mean that you have to have the spells on your class list in the first place. Since Arcane Disciple adds the spells to your class spell list, it does work with Spontaneous Wounder. I don't think the combination is that bad . . . you have to pay two feats, and you have some tough restrictions on how often you can use the spells.
The discussion below assumes sorceror as the arcane casting class (because of charisma). It also assumes the RAW, and where ambiguities, or things i think are ambiguities, are commented on as they arise. Everything else i believe is a literal reading of the spells, feats, etc..., as written. This post assumes Libris Mortis, Complete Warrior, Complete Arcane, and the 3.5 Core (and nothing else) if i haven't forgotten anything.
Note the following:
(1) Improved Energy Drain, a monstrous feat (monstrous feats become available if you have a monstrous ability, such as energy drain as a supernatural power) that states that whenever you bestow a negative level, you gain +1 to all attacks/skills/saves for 1 hour. (unnamed, stacks) Requires an energy drain as a supernatural ability, and cha 15+. Recall that it doesnt say you had to bestow the negative level with your supernatural ability, just whenever you bestow a negative level.
(2) The Pale Master prestige class gives the PC an energy drain as a supernatural ability at PrC level 7 or 8, qualifying for the feat. Alternatively, taking the feat Graft Flesh (Undead), and using it to give yourself a particular arm graft (enervating arm) gives you an energy drain attack. Further, the section on grafts says it is like the Pale Master class ability, who merely gets more generalized versions of many of the grafts, and is therefore supernatural. This also qualifies you for Improved Energy Drain.
(3) As noted above, the feat is triggered not just when you use your supernatural energy drain, but whenever you bestow a negative level, so enervation with the feat would cause you to gain +1d4 to attacks/skills/saves for 1 hour because you bestow negative levels with it. Energy Drain (spell) would be 2d4. Eg, anything that bestows negative levels triggers this.
(4) Kiss of the Vampire (level 5), as far as i can tell, lets you use enervate as a touch attack for 1 round/Caster Level. (among other boni! What were they thinking). (It just says you gain enervate as a touch attack, no restrictions, time to use, etc...).
(5) Touch attacks can be discharged during unarmed melee strikes! (if you aren't disgusted yet, read farther).
(6) ...Arcane Fist... of DEATH! (Gets monk attacks per round, each of which drain 1d4 levels and give him +1d4 to attacks/skills/saves as enervate with Kiss of the Vampire cast... he just keeps going and going and going! Note negative levels impose -1 to attacks/skills/saves as well, so it gets harder for his enemies to hit him, not to mention resist anything else he hits them with.)
(7) Negative levels also remove 5hp. Technically, this causes the drainer to gain 5hp/neg level bestowed. So the above arcane fist also heals hp as well. (this is arguable with enervation, because while the spell description doesnt state it, the definition of the effects of bestowing negative levels does. I think technically enervate and energy drain spells do drain hp for the caster, because they don't say it doesnt happen and bestowing negative levels has well defined consequences elsewhere, but you could argue it. I'll assume it for the remainder of the post, just subtract 20 from life drained if you don't believe it works that way.)
(8) Another monstrous feat, Life Drain, which increases the life drain from bestowing negative levels by 2xcha mod per neg level bestowed. (-that from their hp, + that to your hp). Even if enervate doesnt normally drain hp (arguable under the RAW, as above), this would. Note that you are a sorceror and therefore have high cha. (Feat reqs: 13+cha, energy drain supernatural ability). This becomes painful (read more).
(9) Arcane strike....
So, our buddy starts by sacking an nth slot for +n/+nd4 attack/damage the round after casting Kiss of the Vampire. His first hit is at +n over any other boni, deals normal damage +nd4 + 1d4 neg levels and heals him (5 + 2*cha mod)*1d4 hp (dealing that as additional damage), he gains +1d4 to attacks/skills/saves for 1 hour, and his opponent receives -1d4 to attacks/skills/saves (and potentially loses spell slots, etc...). His second attack that round is at +n+1d4(result of prev enervation), and damages as above. Really, his saves and attack bonus go through the roof rather quickly. (Not to mention skill checks.... yay Tumble?), and his opponents become totally incompetent. Yes, arcane strike has previously been discussed, but it needs a quick note because its what helps ensure you get going.
(10) there is one more monstrous feat, Spell Drain that may be of use. Req is cha 15, Caster Level 5+, supernatural energy drain. Causes you to steal the spell a caster lost from losing a level, and you can cast it within 1 hour as if you prepared it. Note that this can probably sacked to arcane strike as you effectively pick up a temporary spell slot, thus fueling your arcane strike with each hit. And as they lose high level spells first, you know you're going to be getting good +att/dam. If he goes first, he probably brutalizes any high level caster (No timestop for you, you wont have 6th level spells left by the time i get done with you...). I'll admit that you're ability to sack these to arcane strike is somewhat questionable, but as you're stealing a mage's high level spells first, you may want to cast them anyway.
(11) The graft you need only requires 1200xp, so is totally doable shortly after achieving 7th level (much less 7th caster level as an arcane fist), which is when you get enervation. Certainly by the time you get Kiss you have it.
(12) Maximized Kiss of the Vampire (always bestows 4 negative levels) only takes an 8th level spell slot, assuming no rods of broken metamagic? That should, among other nice things, remove all those pesky 9th level spells from a mage's memory. Assuming +10 cha mod with an arcane fist, thats at least 80hp stolen per hit from cha mod alone, plus 20 from the normal bestowing of negative levels if you believe that applies. As these are *temporary* hp, if you strike first, they'll have a hard time bringing you down to your hp total. (Yes i realize temp hp dont stack, but thats still 100temp hp before they touch your normal hp, solving much of your life issues. Further, if you critical, you double negative levels too, so thats 4+1d4 and even more life drain, giving you the increased temp hp total). And dont forget that the hp drain is additional damage as well. 100hp drain + normal damage + penalties for 4 negative levels is just painful.
(13) Kiss of the Vampire causes you to be treated as undead for all spells and effects too. Note this means you are immune to criticals, poison, death from massive damage, sneak attack, etc... while Kiss of the Vampire is in effect. (those are all effects.) So no serious raping of your hp is going to happen while you're utterly destroying them. (Whether you are killed at 0hp or not is open to debate. You only count as undead for the purposes of spells and effects. Arguably, reaching 0hp is neither a spell nor an effect, so you don't count as undead for checking at 0hp to see what happens. But i could go the other way too).
(14) Finally, Kiss of the Vampire is persistable (either in epic or with a rod of metamagic), meaning you can do it all day. Ouch.
I'll also note that, to the best of my ability to determine, there are no erratas or sage rulings on anything integral to what i've written here. (Just checked the FAQ and the Libris Mortis errata, as well as the 3.5 PHB errata).
Personality: Ok, brokenness aside, this character actually oozes personality, even if it is Lawful Evil and somewhat subdued. While not undead himself, he is a contemplater of the mysteries of eternity, death, and the stasis that is undeath. Certainly he is powerful enough to aspire to undeath by 20th level - he could seek lichdom or find other ways to accomplish such a transformation. Does he know something that causes him to stand within death's shadow? Has his long thinking given him new clarity and insight? He is a walking contradiction - he takes up the mantle of undeath without joining the undead himself. Does he, in the end, seek death to return to the cycle of rebirth? Does he believe himself to be damned, and looks only for a worthy opponent to send him into eternity? Or does he entertain nihilistic fantasies in which nothing and something become co-joined in his perfect union of negative and positive (life) energy.
For those of you looking for an evil monk NPC concept, this has philosophical complexities and hints of insight gained from meditation and study. In combat he is devastating, outside of combat he is subdued and careful, always his mind on the nothingness which is something that follows. In addition, he'd be one hell of a challenge for a party, especially with some [evil] clerical backup. Especially without Kiss (which i'd ban), he is an interesting concept (using enervate with hold ray once per round instead, which is arguably much less broken).
(5) Touch attacks can be discharged during unarmed melee strikes! (if you aren't disgusted yet, read farther).
Are you arguing that each one of your iterative attacks triggers an enervation? I could be convinced, but I would argue only the first successful attack each round triggers the enervation.
(13) Kiss of the Vampire causes you to be treated as undead for all spells and effects too.
Are you immune to Turning? Turning is an effect. A greater turning (automatic destruction, no save or SR) could really ruin your day.
Are you arguing that each one of your iterative attacks triggers an enervation? I could be convinced, but I would argue only the first successful attack each round triggers the enervation.
I can see no other way to read it. Note that this certainly works with Chill Touch, which gives you a touch attack usable 1/CL. And for Kiss, for the duration of the spell, you *always* have enervate available as a touch spell. So you make your first attack and use it, and look, its available as a touch spell for your second attack. Kiss of the vampire never gives a limit to the number of times per round you get to use it, you just have it available. I can't construct a reasonable case that says its only once per round under the RAW.
Are you immune to Turning? Turning is an effect. A greater turning (automatic destruction, no save or SR) could really ruin your day.
Kiss of the Vampire lays out specifically what happens against turning effects. You get a save, and at worst you are stunned. i think a destroy result means you need to make a DC15 + their cha mod fort save or be stunned, or something like that. But turning is the only thing that effects undead where they specify something different from what UD experience, so presumably all other effects treat you exactly as if you were UD. Read Kiss if you want clarity.
I can see no other way to read it. I can't construct a reasonable case that says its only once per round under the RAW.
Um, you could construct the argument like this:
Kiss of the Vampire grants you some supernatural abilities, one of these is enervation (as a melee touch attack). Supernatural abilities, unless otherwise stated, require a standard action to activate and do not provoke an attack of opportunity.
There you go, a perfectly valid argument for why it's not only once per round, it's a standard action to use.
Um, you could construct the argument like this:
Kiss of the Vampire grants you some supernatural abilities, one of these is enervation (as a melee touch attack). Supernatural abilities, unless otherwise stated, require a standard action to activate and do not provoke an attack of opportunity.
There you go, a perfectly valid argument for why it's not only once per round, it's a standard action to use.
All supernatural abilities require a standard action to activate? really? A quick perusal of the MM should be enough to convince you that you're wrong. Or the PHB for that matter. Smite evil, the paladin class feature, is activated as a free action as part of a melee attack. The Monk's 'Quivering Palm' feature is a free action to activate. Nor does the Archmage feature Arcane Reach. The vampire's energy drain is a supernatural ability, and doesnt require a standard round to activate. Beyond which, there are plenty of su powers that are on continuously.
Further, all supernatural abilities that take a standard action say so in their description, or have text to that effect such as 'do x as the spell y'. But thats not what Kiss of the Vampire says. It says: "...gain the following supernatural abilities. enervation (as a melee touch attack)". Not you may drain energy with a touch attack as the spell enervation. Not that you may activate it as a touch attack spell. But that you gain it as a touch attack. Having it as a touch attack means its always active, not that you have to activate it. The text says nothing about activating, it implies that its permanently on. Even if thats not the case, as it applies to an attack, it should, like all the other (su) attack modifiers above, be a free action to activate. But the text seems pretty clear that you just get it as a melee touch attack. The wording of the spell Chill Touch also supports this interpretation: "You may use this touch attack up to one time per level." This implies that having something as a touch attack is different than having an ability you can activate which generates a touch attack. Kiss gives you the enervation like ability as a touch attack for as long as Kiss lasts, and thus that is continuously active while Kiss is.
Monk 2 / Wizard 3 / Enlightened Fist 10 / Argent Savant 5
It can be pretty useful if one plans to use a lot of force-related spells, especially mage armor or greater mage armor.
[many specific examples of supernatural abilities that are not standard actions to use, all of which state how they work in their description. Oh, and the generalised assumption that I said ALL supernatural abilities were standard actions, which I never did. This provided the basis for the subsequent argument]
Sorry, only just noticed your post while looking up stuff on enlightened fists again.
Here's why you're wrong:
Using a supernatural ability is a standard action unless noted otherwise.
Does the spell say how often these supernatural abilities can be used? No, it does not. It states that you can use enervation (a spell in the PHB) as a touch attack. The fact that it is used as a touch attack is the only modifier to the statement and is there to change the default behaviour of the spell, which is a ray with a range of Close. If you want to define the ability as not functioning like the spell Enervation (barring the modifier that it is a touch attack) I'd love to know where you intend to find a description of an Enervation ability...
That's true. And let this be a lesson that glancing through something is bound to lead to stupid errors.
With that change, I think a lot of the basic sorcerer builds are screwed . . . getting through levels 1-6 would be too painful. (Speaking of which, why did they make this feat so useless? They duplicated a weaker form of Arcane Strike and gave it unreasonable prereqs).
I suppose that if you have access to human paragon, it's probably survivable. You just take human paragon 1 as your first level, picking skills to match your monk skills, a level of sorcerer, two more levels of paragon, monk 1, then enlightened fist, then you have 2nd-level spells to pick up Ascetic Mage at 6th level.
However, taking monk at first level with sucky Wis, then multiclassing into sorcerer, sounds like it wouldn't work. You'd be so weak for the first couple levels that it wouldn't be worth playing.
Personally, I think the feat is poorly written, given the existence of Arcane Strike. I'd houserule it if I were to play it.
Precsious apprentice at first level would allow you to take astetic mage at 3rd level. Theoretically at 1st but you wouldn't have any monk levels yet.
There are spells called Storm Touch and Conflagration Touch that are 5th and 7th level respectively, and let you do 9d6 and 13d6 points of damage for up to 1 touch/caster level.
Combine that with a flurry... :D
If you take Precocious Apprentice at first level, you can pick up Ascetic Mage at third by going Sor1/Monk1/Sor1.
You still cant cast level 2 spells.
It looks like the perfect feat for a Wizard/Monk Enlightened Fist build (Swap Wis for Int on all Monk abilities).
Has anyone else seen this?
1) Need bardic music
2) Need perform as a class skill (if you want to use this at all in early levels)
3) Only works with slashing weapons
#3 is easy enough to deal with by taking one level of drunken fist.
Without multiclassing too much (diluting caster ability) can anyone think of a reasonable way to incorporate this into one of these builds? It would lessen MAD a little bit further.
Here goes.
Given how important Charisma is for the Sorcerer\Monk build I think it is worth dipping two levels in either Paladin or Hexblade for the big saving throw bonus. At high levels, saving throws become very important.
In the campaign I am playing in, prestige classes must be completed before dipping into the next prestige class. Given this fact, I have constructed the following:
Hexblade2\Sorcerer1\Monk2\Enlightened Fist10\Eldritch Knight5
BAB: +15
Feats
Two Weapon Fighting (1)
Combat Casting (1)
Practiced Spellcaster (3)
Weapon Finesse (6)
Ascetic Mage (9)
Arcane Strike (12)
Force of Personality (15)
Improved Two Weapon Fighting (16, bonus EldKnight feat)
Greater Two Weapon Fighting (18)
Bonus Feats and Abilities
Improved Unarmed Strike
Flurry of Blows
Evasion
Combat Reflexes
Stunning Fist
+40ft base movement
2d8 damage for your natural attacks (with monks belt)
+3 AC (Monk levels & monks belt)
Ki Strike
Fist of Energy
Arcane Fist
Arcane Rejuvenaion
Fist of Energy
Hold Ray
Diamond Soul (SR 22)
Base Saves
Fort: +10
Ref: +11
Will: +15
Wisdom is your dump stat for this build, Charisma is God. Charisma will add to all of your saving throws, boost all of your spell slots, add to AC, add to the DC of your spells and add to your will save in place of Wisdom (at level 15).
In my opinion, the three most important stats for this build are Cha, Dex, Con.
Assume that your stats look something like this at level 20
(obviously this includes stat boosting magic items).
Str: 16
Dex: 24
Con: 22
Int: 12
Wis: 10
Cha: 30
Your saves would be
Fort: +26
Ref: +28
Will: +35
Spells
1st: Chill touch, Shield, Expeditious Retreat, Ray of Enfeeblement, Enlarge Person.
2nd: Alter Self, Wraithstrike, Invisibility, False life, Mirror Image.
3rd: Greater Mage Armour, Vampiric Touch, Haste, Fly.
4th: Dimension Door, Dimensional Anchor, Greater Invisibility, Enervation.
5th: Dragonsight, , Teleport, Rary’s Telepathic Bond.
6th: Greater Dispel Magic, Fires of Purity.
Magic Item Suggestions (For high level gaming)
It’s possible to have a vest of resistance +5 (only 25,000gp) to add a further +5 to all saves.
This character needs to get Greater Magic Fang made permanent ASAP. The best foolproof method is to have a 20th level caster from a Metropolis (like waterdeep) cast the Greater Magic Fang and then have it made permanent.
It will be impossible for anyone to dispel the effect using dispel magic. Dispel Magic, Greater would be required, because the number required to roll in order to dispel is 31.
Have your character wear a ring of counterspells with Dispel Magic Greater stored inside to negate any attempt to debuff him. Even wearing two such rings would be worthwhile.
Given this fact, try to get certain permanent spells placed on your character.
Darkvision, See Invisibility and Arcane Sight are all good choices.
Go for Cloak of Charisma +6, Gloves of Dex +6 and Amulet of Health +6.
It’s possible to get this character’s AC quite high.
AC
Greater Mage Armour +6AC, force armour bonus
Shield +4AC, shield bonus
Charisma +10AC, stacks with dex bonus
Dexterity +7AC, dodge
Alter Self (Troglodyte) +6AC, natural
Ring of Protection +5AC, deflection. (Worth buying)
Amulet of Natural Armour +5AC, natural armour enhancment (Stacks with Alter Self) Only take this if you don’t want the Amulet of Health.
Total AC: 53
Touch AC: 38 (Greater mage armour applies, it’s a force effect)
Combat buffs
Greater mage armour
Shield
Chill Touch
Expeditious Retreat (movement will be 100ft)
Enlarge Person
Alter Self
Mirror Image
Haste
Greater Invisibility
Dragonsight
Fly
Fires of Purity
In Combat
Your Full attack looks like this
+25/+25/+20/+20/+15/+15
(BAB+15, Dex+7, Greater Magic Fang+5)
Full Attack with Flurry
+23/+23/+23/+18/+18/+13/+13
Full Attack with Flurry and Haste
+24/+24/+24/+24/+19/+19/+14/+14
Fires of Purity adds 1d6+15 damage to each attack.
Chill touch adds +1d6 damage to each attack and the chance of dealing strength damage.
Arcane Strike allows you to sacrifice a spell slot and add the level of the spell to all of your attack rolls in the round as well as +1d4 damage per spell level. To a maximum of your base attack bonus. This is a free action. So it is possible to sacrifice 15 levels of spells to gain +15 to hit and +15d4 damage for all of your attacks. You can even pay for this using low level spells, say three 2nd level, four 1st level and one 5th level spell.
As a free action, sacrificing two stunning attempts will allow you to add a further +1d6 damage to all of your attacks and also throw any single touch attack spell or ray spell at the target during the full attack.
The Result, if you have haste
+39/+39/+39/+39/+34/+34/+29/+29
Each attack will deal
2d6+3 (unarmed damage), 1d6+15 (fire damage, fires of purity), 1d6 (negative energy damage, DC 21, or lose one strength), 15d4 (Arcane Strike), 1d6 (fire or electricity, arcane fist).
Don’t forget to add your ray or touch spell.
Choices are: Vampiric Touch, Ray of Enfeeblement (Stacks with Chill Touch), or Enervation.
All of this can be done as a touch attack with Wraithstrike. Wraithstrike is a swift action spell allowing a full attack to be made while casting it.
Average damage per hit: 73
Each attack will definitely hit unless you roll a 1.
So your average damage for the full attack will be: 584
This isn’t including your touch spell. It is also not including Critical hits (God Forbid).
I am sure that I have made some mistakes in my post, I am now bracing myself for the critics.
If this works, Illumians could make great EFs by taking krau in conjunction with either aesh for STR- or uur for DEX-based casting. Decreases mad AND allows physical buffs to improve casting as well. Low-level monk/sorcerers with this could have quite a bit of fun with Fist of Stone and/or Bull's Strength
Another Illumian idea is going Naerhoon. Monk 1/Wizard 1-4/EF5/Wizard 5/Sacred Exorcist 1/etc. This gives you a twice a day Divine Metamagic effect at 12th level. Unfortunately, it's only average until you hit 12th. Also, *this* DM effect works on arcane spells. Which is why it's possibly worth trying.
The downside to this is the lack of the Krau sigil, which is by far the best for the concept. Effectively Practiced Spellcaster, if you avoid losing more than 2 caster levels. Of course, you cold just be human and take PS instead, I guess.
This build will pretty much require flaws. 2 at first level.
If not, it could be quite a benefit to those playing this class.
Races of the Dragon contains a 3rd level Sorc/Wiz spell, Greater Mighty Wallop, that lasts 1 hour/level and increases the damage inflicted by a bludgeoning weapon by 1 size category/4 caster levels, up to a max of 5 size increases. This, coupled with the monk's base unarmed attack damage, Improved Natural Attack and a Fanged Ring would do crazy things to their base damage, before adding in the various touch spells that have been the focus of this thread so far. Add a rod of lesser metamagic (extend) and this spell buff will last all day.
They gives 10BAB, 6/11/14 save,CL12 knowing one lv6 spell and other monk abilities at lv16.
I'll take Ascetic Mage at 6 and Arcane Strike at 9. Minus the required combat casting on lv1, I'll have 4~5 feats to work with(human bonus,lv3,12,15,18).
For the final 4 lv, I'm interested in the several class, also listed with their req/benifits:
(Note: DM don't allow to start new Prc before finishing one, allowed books: core + completes)
Choice A:
Paladin 2,Argent Savant 2
Req: almost nothing except have to choose a 5th lvl force spell, and 2 more at lower lvl(as I'm using mage armor and shield anyway).
Together offer 3BAB, 3/0/3 save, Cha to saves(alot!), force armor bonus(+2 at least, very likely +4 totally), +1 arcane casting, armor&weap prof(almost useless)
If this is the case, I would like to take the paladin lvl earlier than lv16. Any advice on when should I take it without risking low-mid lvl survival?
Choice B:
Argent Savant 4
Similar to above, more arcane casting but worse save, 3rd and 4th lv of this PrC doesn't seems to be useful to me.
Choice C:
Dragon Disiple 4
Req: nothing(or 2 skillpoints for draconic?)
3BAB, 4/1/4 save, +4Str, +2 natural AC, 3 bonus lv6 spellslot, claws/bite/breath(useless?)
No caster lvl, but nice bonus on BAB, Str, AC and extra spellslots. Not sure if its worth it.
Choice D:
Fatespinner 4
Req: 5 skillpoints, have to choose a div spell
2BAB, 1/1/4 save, +4 arcane casting, several interesting and useful abilities.
Choice E:
Monk 3~6
Worth it?
Choice F:
Choices from other complete books? Since i only have CA, crystalkeep notes by Chet Erez and SRD with me, I'm not completely sure what else I can do.
Also should I take the 2nd monk lvl at all? With this build, removing the 2nd lvl monk loses me evasion, 2nd lv monk bonus feat, one step of unarmed damage(2d6=>1d10) and 10 ft of movement (down to +30ft)
Alone or combined, those feats can make for an entertaining build. I should note that you must have the dragonblood subtype to attain quicken spell. There are several methods of achieving this without LA, all of which can be found in Races of the Dragon. Although it takes some trouble with the race to get, I have found that a sorcerer who can spontaneously quicken spells is nearly always more effective at it than a wizard - you often can't know what spell you're going to need in a hurry until you need it in a hurry. ;)
Also from the PHB II, Arcane Thesis is positively evil for an arcane toucher using Vampiric Touch. Thereafter, that spell will have an extra 1d6 damage (to a maximum of 10d6 at level 18), and it can be empowered or maximized a little more cheaply during field use.
1) failure to distinguish betwee attribute damage (which stacks) and penalties (which don't if from the same source) -Ray of Enfeeblement being the archetypal example.
2) Alter Self: Troglodyte is *superb* for a humanoid.
- 3 extra attacks at only -2 (not -5 due to racial feat) which can all benefit from Arcane Strike/Energy Fist/...
- +6 AC (stacks with anything else you're likely to have)
3) Empower is MUCH better than Maximise for False Life. Maximise is better on straight-dice spells (though rarely worth the extra level); virtually everything with *any* fixed component is outright better Empowered.
4) Hold Ray means that you can guarantee that the spell won't be wasted because if you miss you just hold the charge and try again on your next attack.
Anyone have any thoughts on Acolyte of the Skin or Green Star Adept after EF is finished?
[as a DM I'd offer to extend the EF PrC for another 5 levels -not as straightforward as Mystic Theurge but it seems silly to me that characters should be forced to take a break from their theme and do something else just because the PrC runs out and they haven't yet hit epic, while there is still plenty to be learnt in the direction teh PrC was going.]
Otherwise I'd think Spellsword and Eldritch Knight make reasonable finishes jsut for the BAb saves and spellcasting.
Anyone consider puttnig a Rogue level in at the beginning?
I was actually looking into the Idea of a Warlock/EF (which after reading the thread I'm not so sure is a good idea..)
But before I give up on the idea completely.....
Does the "Eldritch Glaive" invocation improve the usefullness of this combo?????
Have any of the newer books (CM, DrM, etc) included new material that might help ????
Somewhere around here I have a Warforged monk/sorc/enlightened fist/spellcarved soldier build that was solidly playable. The rune of extension (extending automatically a spell cast on yourself) is handy for making the ost of your wraithstrikes and not chewing through spells quickly. Plus it can heal itself, which is always nice.
For those who game past level 15, going back to duskblade isn't all that bad at that point. Level 6 gets you +2 bonus to your penetration checks if you've injured your victim.
I see a lot of discussions about arcane monks that mention taking Arcane Strike AND Ascetic fist. Do those stack? Example: You use the AF feat and spend 1 spell to give you +1 to attack and damage. Can you also use A.S. and spend a level 1 spell to give you an additional +1 to attack and 1d4 to damage? Or do people making this recommendation mean to use the Arcane Strike from Dragon Magazine, which is +2 to attack and +1d4 (per spell level) on your next attack?
Technically, Arcane Strike (from Complete Warrior) and Ascetic Mage do stack, since the former is a free action, the latter is a swift action, and both bonuses are unnamed. You would presumably have to burn two separate spells to activate them both.
It has been pointed out that Arcane Strike was written before the concept of the swift action had been published, so some might argue that it should be a swift, rather than free, action. But I suppose that until someone issues an erratum on the subject, the RAW stand.
a) Now that the Abjurant Champion (Complete Mage) exists, I'm sure that will become the finishing touch of choice, rather than Eldritch Knight.
b) Reserve Feats add some interesting options for the arcane monk, particularly Clap of Thunder. Has anyone looked into these more in-depth?
Do any of the new books add some cool stuff. I think in the analysis SC and CM are not even considered. Other good things from new books? Who spotted something?
For those interested, and full of suggestions, here is my current build:
Human Monk 1 / sorceror 3
14 Str; 15 Dex; 16 Con (+1 for 4th lvl, +2 amulet of health), 12 Int, 12 Wis, 15 Cha
HP: 28; AC: 13 (17 with mage armor) Saves: +6 fort; +5 refl; +6 will.
Feats: Combat Casting (1st), practised spellcaster (human), empower spell? (3rd)
Skill ranks in: concentration, spellcraft, hide, spot, listen, move silently, tumble.
Current spells known: Mage Armor; Fist of stone; Magic Missile
I find fist of stone absolutely devastating. It gives me 3 attacks total (with flurry) doing 1d6+7 damage. Thats awesome at low level. But im net yet very good at hitting. Hope wraithstrike will get me into that.
Possesions: Monks outfit; amulet of health +2; mw. sling; mw. quarterstaff.
I found the amulet pretty helpfull as my ac isnt that high i was brought down pretty quickly in battle.
This is my planned progression:
Monk1 /sorceror 4/ enlightened fist 10. giving me:
+9 BAB; sorceror spells lvl 6 and CL 15.
The five levels after that i dont know yet. Probably master of the east wind from DR or maybe abjurant champion from CM.
Feats choices:
6th: ascetic mage
9th: arcane strike
12th: sudden maximize (not sure)
15th: arcane disciple(competition)
18th: unknown (suggestions?)
Now, for an arcane monk, having two banned spell schools sucks pretty hard, but having an immediate teleport, ESPECIALLY when that teleport ends in a free attack seems pretty strong. Any thoughts?
Q
Swift Action Make a full attack action with your unarmed strikes+natural weapons as thrown weapons with 20 feet increments for 1 round. You jester like you normally make a melee attack and then it hits the target. Furthemore it retains the melee benefits and damage (such as Greater Mighty Wallop and perhaps stunning fist)
Cleric, Wiz/Sorc 1
Besides that Wraithstrike (which was mentioned on page 2) and Greater Mighty Wallop (Races of the Dragon mentioned on page 3)
It does quite a lot of damage.
Duskblade 13/EF7, done.
IMO, the best use for an Enligtened Fist is with Duskblade. Convert their polar ray into a touch spell (hold ray ability), then full attack with it.
I prefer sorcerer: Greater Mighty Wallop (Races of Dragon).
I have posted several times this combo, anyway:
Monk2/Sorcerer8/EF 10
Feats: Improved Natural attack, superior unarmed strike, ascetic mage.
Items: Monks Belt
Unarmed Damage (with greater mighty wallop): 2d10>4d8>6d8>8d8>12d8>16d8
Or anything using Duskblade for entry into Suel Aranamach.
Between my charisma to AC, my buffs that last (almost) all day and a swift action Shield with +7 AC, I was looking at almost 40 AC. (Could be higher if I was willing to give up Dispel Magic for Dragonskin or whatever that +5 natural AC spell is called)
Offensively, I don't think I'll be quite as crazy, but if I use Decisive Strike and get Holy Warrior and Blade of Force, I could deal (1d6+15) x 2 on a successful hit, which seems pretty respectable to me.
The biggest problem is spell choice. I'd need to never cast my 4th level war domain spell and I'd have to take a force spell as my only 4th level (I guess Wings of Flurry? Or Orb of Force?) for the reserve bonuses.
I thought the concepts in play were more important than the exact stats, buffs, etc, but if you can't figure it out on your own, I can post it exactly as I'm planning to play it.
I don't know if anyone has posted anything similar, but I'm looking at playing a monk/arcane hybrid soon. At 10th level, (the start and probably end) I was looking at Monk 2/Battlesorcerer 5/Abjurant Champion 3. I'd also get the War Domain through the domain variant in Complete Champion. Oh, and thankfully, we're using fractional BAB.
Between my charisma to AC, my buffs that last (almost) all day and a swift action Shield with +7 AC, I was looking at almost 40 AC. (Could be higher if I was willing to give up Dispel Magic for Dragonskin or whatever that +5 natural AC spell is called)
Offensively, I don't think I'll be quite as crazy, but if I use Decisive Strike and get Holy Warrior and Blade of Force, I could deal (1d6+15) x 2 on a successful hit, which seems pretty respectable to me.
The biggest problem is spell choice. I'd need to never cast my 4th level war domain spell and I'd have to take a force spell as my only 4th level (I guess Wings of Flurry? Or Orb of Force?) for the reserve bonuses.
I thought the concepts in play were more important than the exact stats, buffs, etc, but if you can't figure it out on your own, I can post it exactly as I'm planning to play it.
Battlesorcerer's loss of known spells is a pretty bad blow, its generally considered inferior to that of the straight sorcerer. The BAB difference isn't huge specially when you are using fractional increases and the casting in armour is useless for a monk. All in all your probably better off just using ordinary sorcerer.
Not a fan of Blade of force as it is for the next attack only and you have to use your swift action each round for it.
A must have spell is Greater mighty wallop from the races of the dragon.
Increases the effective size of a buldgeoning weapon i.e. your unarmed strikes. This can get base damage up to about 6d8 or 10d6 by level 10 with Enlightened fist and it reaches 12d8 by level 20. Improved natural attack and superior unarmed strike help.
Combine this with the bite of the werecreatures (SpC) for serious boosts to physical stats and natural armour. Lv 3 to Lv 7 versions, Lv 3 bite of the wererat to Lv 7 bite of the werebear (a nice +16 strenght etc). Some of the bites grant things like blind fight and power attack too.
Another is Dolorous blow is a handy increases that allows you to auto confirm your critical, handy with reduced BAB.
Edit: Blood wind turns your unarmed attacks into ranged attacks for 1 round
Edit2: Ray of stuipdity, deals INT damage, (horrray) and stacks with itself, take down a T-Rex (and most other animals) with one hit.
Played with a Monk 2/ Sorcerer4/Enlightened Fist 5/Abjurant Champion 4/Enlightened Fist 6-10 from low levels up its quite fun to play. Since I ended up quite stacked on defense too it worked out well for my reckless character drawing all the attention towards himself
Battlesorcerer's loss of known spells is a pretty bad blow, its generally considered inferior to that of the straight sorcerer. The BAB difference isn't huge specially when you are using fractional increases and the casting in armour is useless for a monk. All in all your probably better off just using ordinary sorcerer.
Not a fan of Blade of force as it is for the next attack only and you have to use your swift action each round for it.
A must have spell is Greater mighty wallop from the races of the dragon.
Increases the effective size of a buldgeoning weapon i.e. your unarmed strikes. This can get base damage up to about 6d8 or 10d6 by level 10 with Enlightened fist and it reaches 12d8 by level 20. Improved natural attack and superior unarmed strike help.
Combine this with the bite of the werecreatures (SpC) for serious boosts to physical stats and natural armour. Lv 3 to Lv 7 versions, Lv 3 bite of the wererat to Lv 7 bite of the werebear (a nice +16 strenght etc). Some of the bites grant things like blind fight and power attack too.
Another is Dolorous blow is a handy increases that allows you to auto confirm your critical, handy with reduced BAB.
Edit: Blood wind turns your unarmed attacks into ranged attacks for 1 round
Edit2: Ray of stuipdity, deals INT damage, (horrray) and stacks with itself, take down a T-Rex (and most other animals) with one hit.
Played with a Monk 2/ Sorcerer4/Enlightened Fist 5/Abjurant Champion 4/Enlightened Fist 6-10 from low levels up its quite fun to play. Since I ended up quite stacked on defense too it worked out well for my reckless character drawing all the attention towards himself
The loss of spells is unimportant to me as I have no interest in actually casting spells in combat at all. I wanted to play a monk, so I got a bunch of 20+ hour buffs and made a "better monk." The only spell I will have to ever cast during game play is Shield, maybe Protection from Evil, and Dispel Magic if I need it. I have enough slots for the buffs I wanted (though it'd be nice to have an extra 3rd or two, the domain option already dropped my 3rd and 4th level spells known to 1, so the battlesorcerer doesn't actually drop me any further since it says minimum of 1). If you are curious, the spells I was going to take were Mage Armor, Protection from Evil, Shield, Create Magic Tattoo, Resist Energy, Dispel Magic, and some 4th level Force spell, I guess Orb of Force unless a better one presents itself. Oh, and I'd have access to the War Domain.
Additionally, the BAB difference would be a big deal actually, since the game isn't going to last long and I wanted as many Abjurant Champion levels as soon as possible. If I went with normal sorcerer, I'd lose HP and I'd have one less Abjurant Champion level.
Blade of Force is on your next attack only, and with Decisive Strike from the PBH2, I will only be making one attack. And the damage bonus is doubled. Normally, I'd agree that Blade of Force sucks, but decisive strike makes it pretty awesome. Plus, my only real swift actions would be casting shield and/or Prot from Evil, so I'd lose maybe one round of extra damage.
I have no idea where those bites are from and never really considered them. If they last a long time, I'll look at them, but as I already mentioned, I really don't like casting much. Ray of Stupidity is pretty awesome, but anything I could one shot with it is probably the melee type, and I think my AC can handle almost any melee threat without fear. I feel like I remember Blood Wind...is that from Savage Species? I don't think 3.0 is going to be an option.
Speaking of which, the GM doesn't want dragon magic or races of dragon. Honestly, he wants it to be just core and FR material, but thats so boring, I managed to convince him to let in completes, spell compendium, and PHB2. So thats why I don't have the wallop stuff. Speaking of which that means I can't use Wings of Flurry either
Finally, I wasn't really into boosting my base unarmed damage. Since I was only taking 1 or 2 levels of monk anyway (and wasn't planning enlightened fist), my base die isn't going to go beyond d6. Raising it from there is of minimal help (the first few increases only add 1 or 2 average damage at best). I was more interested in raising the flat bonus damage, as that gets doubled with Decisive Strike. Thats why I went with Blade of Force and Holy warrior, each of which would give me +4 damage. Additionally, my unarmed is going to have a hard time breaking through DR without higher monk levels, so I need to use some of the crappy monk weapons. I was thinking Adamantine Nunchaku(for clay golems), a Cold Iron Kama, and some silversheen since he won't let me shod a quarterstaff with any kind of metal.
The loss of spells is unimportant to me as I have no interest in actually casting spells in combat at all. I wanted to play a monk, so I got a bunch of 20+ hour buffs and made a "better monk." The only spell I will have to ever cast during game play is Shield, maybe Protection from Evil, and Dispel Magic if I need it. I have enough slots for the buffs I wanted (though it'd be nice to have an extra 3rd or two, the domain option already dropped my 3rd and 4th level spells known to 1, so the battlesorcerer doesn't actually drop me any further since it says minimum of 1). If you are curious, the spells I was going to take were Mage Armor, Protection from Evil, Shield, Create Magic Tattoo, Resist Energy, Dispel Magic, and some 4th level Force spell, I guess Orb of Force unless a better one presents itself. Oh, and I'd have access to the War Domain.
Additionally, the BAB difference would be a big deal actually, since the game isn't going to last long and I wanted as many Abjurant Champion levels as soon as possible. If I went with normal sorcerer, I'd lose HP and I'd have one less Abjurant Champion level.
Blade of Force is on your next attack only, and with Decisive Strike from the PBH2, I will only be making one attack. And the damage bonus is doubled. Normally, I'd agree that Blade of Force sucks, but decisive strike makes it pretty awesome. Plus, my only real swift actions would be casting shield and/or Prot from Evil, so I'd lose maybe one round of extra damage.
I have no idea where those bites are from and never really considered them. If they last a long time, I'll look at them, but as I already mentioned, I really don't like casting much. Ray of Stupidity is pretty awesome, but anything I could one shot with it is probably the melee type, and I think my AC can handle almost any melee threat without fear. I feel like I remember Blood Wind...is that from Savage Species? I don't think 3.0 is going to be an option.
Speaking of which, the GM doesn't want dragon magic or races of dragon. Honestly, he wants it to be just core and FR material, but thats so boring, I managed to convince him to let in completes, spell compendium, and PHB2. So thats why I don't have the wallop stuff. Speaking of which that means I can't use Wings of Flurry either
Finally, I wasn't really into boosting my base unarmed damage. Since I was only taking 1 or 2 levels of monk anyway (and wasn't planning enlightened fist), my base die isn't going to go beyond d6. Raising it from there is of minimal help (the first few increases only add 1 or 2 average damage at best). I was more interested in raising the flat bonus damage, as that gets doubled with Decisive Strike. Thats why I went with Blade of Force and Holy warrior, each of which would give me +4 damage. Additionally, my unarmed is going to have a hard time breaking through DR without higher monk levels, so I need to use some of the crappy monk weapons. I was thinking Adamantine Nunchaku(for clay golems), a Cold Iron Kama, and some silversheen since he won't let me shod a quarterstaff with any kind of metal.
Ah right I get you. Didn't notice you needed battlesorcerer to get the BAB for Adjurant champion. The wallops are definitly good past a certain dice level but probably won't help you much in this case since you not increasing monk unarmed damage.
Blood wind was reprinted in the SpC but it is only for one round. The bites are major short term only one round per CL but they're excellent for the bonuses they give but really boss fights only. Basicly each one is a package deal that gives stat boosts (some quite big from +2 to +16) sometimes bonus feats, secondary natural attacks (1 to 3) and natural armour (+3 to +8). They start at level 3 with bite of the wererat. Their short time means they probably won't be much use for you though.
Force spells of lv 4, well there is one I know of since I'm building a gish based around called thunderlance (SpC). Only one round per Cl but it gives you 20ft reach with a 3d6 1- or 2-handed force weapon and allows you to swap Str for INT or CHA (wizards or sorcerers) for both attack and damage rolls ( so 1.5 times CHA mod 2hd) + some dispelling of force effects on target when it hits.
That might be more use then orb of force since you are going to be melee intensive. Or if you picked up combat reflexes with monk and have semi decent DEX it might suit you better then orb of force. They are both situational spells though and I don't know if thunderlance would work with decisive strike.
If I were going for Epic, that'd be what I would use to get Epic Enlightened Fist as per normal, otherwise I'd use the build outlined as it gets Evasion early on, and has better saves along with the same number of feats, along with Abjurant Champion's scaling abilities (increasing level for Swift Abjuration and increasing Abjuration Bonus). Similar build could be done with Battle Sorcerer, taking Practiced Spellcaster to qualify for Enlightened Fist, which just happens to carry over to Sublime Chord-CL anyways later on (as it's derived from your previous caster class). Not very practical, but if you feel guilty taking Ascetic Mage without any Sorcerer-levels, that works. Of course, either way this suffers of lower-than-prefered number of Stunning Fists, but it should work out alright with Abjurant Champ's abilities helping out.
Anyways, if I was going Sublime Chord, that'd probably be the way I'd choose since it fulfills all the usual Gish-goals and doesn't totally suck at any level (although you have to be a Bard for the first few levels, which is obviously a problem in and of itself), accumulating the most relevant abilities quite quickly (heck, the Abjurant Champ-level could be moved to 15th to get Hold Ray ASAP, on 13th). Too bad Enlightened Fist doesn't advance Flurry though
Getting full Flurry would be really sweet, but seems beyond the scope of this idea and Enlightened Fist in general.It could be good for quickened buffing, if your swift actions aren't already tied up (with greater mirror image, abjurant champion's shield, wraithstrike...)
Monk 2 / POC 3 / Enligtened fist 10 / Abjurant Champion 5
Once you get into Enlightened Fist from monk you have all teh entry requirements covered. And it has a high BAB, will boost the toughness by added hit points and serious AC gains that get rid of the need for AC items freeing up resouces for other itmes.
At low levels its difficult to deal damage and have lower hit points but your own defense is quite decent as well as your saves. Only fortitude is a bit low at +8 at lv 20. Mainly relied on touch spells like combustion to do larger amounts of damage and eventually to use it with arcane fist.
Until abjurant champion came out there was literally no decent way to finish off a straight build like this without jumping some hoops to get into another gish prestige class. So handy that Monk qualifies as it can use a handaxe (a martial weapon).
Played with improved natural attack and superior unarmed strike.
Greater mightly wallop is very handy at higher unarmed dice sizes where you get more increases out of it.
How about a human monk1/paladin2/sorceror1/human paragon3/enlightened fist...?
con - there's a loss of spellcasting
pro - better BAB; better saves, particularly fort.
Unfortunately I don't have my books available to me right now.
How about a human monk1/paladin2/sorceror1/human paragon3/enlightened fist...?
con - there's a loss of spellcasting
pro - better BAB; better saves, particularly fort.
Saves would definitly be good. If your going to lose a few caster levels anyway you might throw an extra level of monk on for evasion. That plus your Cha boosted saves might help out your low hitpoints.
Definitly want some abjurant champion (its just too handy) for the defense boost from shield. Swift action extend +9 incorporal shield is handy.
If you can get your DM to use fractional increases. The enlightened fist build suffers alot from medium/poor BAB class dips. (The difference is about 16 versus 14 but the key point is that your not behind for most of your low level career.)
Saves would definitly be good. If your going to lose a few caster levels anyway you might throw an extra level of monk on for evasion. That plus your Cha boosted saves might help out your low hitpoints.
In Living Greyhawk, I'm currently playing a Monk 2/Sorc 3/Pal 2/Enlightened Fist 7, from levels 1-14. She's always been effective - at low levels, she was a sick grappler, using Fist of Stone and Master's Touch(Scorpion Claws) to break the normal limits on what was possible.
Now she's something of a cork who can't be hit easily, but can use Arcane Strike to overcome the usual cork problems.