Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 Shaggy_Rodgers May 05, 2014 11:04:51	my friend is starting a short campaign and I wanted to try a monk... lvl 2, 14 str, dex, and wis. 13 con 10 int and 8 chr... berry little money to start out and only gonna last a cupple of sessions... in the world there are no big towns so I thought monk... stunning fist and fiery fists as the monk feats but not shore where to go from there for my 2 human feats... thinking weapon focus unarmed strike and evasion. Do you think that will work? If not how would you do it...?
#2 Shaggy_Rodgers May 05, 2014 11:11:31	Forgot to mention this is 3.5
#3 Tempest_Stormwind May 05, 2014 14:05:32	Shaggy_Rodgers wrote:
#4 Andarious-Rosethorn May 05, 2014 17:49:16	I second everything Tempest says and add to that as follows. If your ability scores are not set in stone, try to think of Monk not as a skill monkey, but as a type of warrior. As a result your stat priority should probably be Str, Con, Wis, Dex, Int, Cha. It looks like you're using 25 point buy, so consider this.   Str 16  (10 points) Dex 10 (2 Points) Con 14 (6 Points) Int 10 (2 Points) Wis 13 (5 Points) Cha 8 (0 points)   If you do hit level 4 you can up your Wis, if you don't? Who cares really. Take Decisive Strike instead of Flurry of Blows (PHB2 to find it). The best standard feats for 1 and 2 Monk are probably Stunning Fist and Deflect Arrows as monks don't have full BAB so won't ever be expert grapplers and Combat Reflexes requires a high Dex and several supporting feats to be useful.   For your level 1 feats? Sadly Monk doesn't get a lot of amazing choices.
#5 Maat_Mons May 08, 2014 13:30:53	For your circumstances, I'd probably go with a class with heavy armor proficiency and take the dragonscale husk alternative class feature (Dragon Magic, p12). You'd lose your armor proficiency, but gain the ability to grow a scaly hide that acts as armor with a +6 armor bonus, a max dex bonus of +2, and a -4 armor check penalty. You need the dragon blood subtype to take dragonscale husk, but silverbrow human (Dragon Magic, p6) is an easy way to get that.   The other option is to choose warforged (Monster Manual III, p190) and take the adamantine body feat (Monster Manual III, p192). That give you built-in armor with a +8 armor bonus, a max dex bonus of +1, and a -5 armor check penalty. Also you gain DR 2/adamantine. It's better protection than dragonsale husk, but your spending a feat and also giving up the bonus feat you'd get by being human.   If you were playing to higher levels, the fact that the warforged route allows adding an enhancement bonus and armor special abilities while the dragonscale husk route doesn't would come into play. As it stands, I'd favor dragonscale husk for leaving you more feats to play with.   A club is free and deals 1d6 damage. If you can scrape together 20 gp, you can get a greataxe, which deals 1d12 damage. Even 5 gp gets you a greatclub, which deals 1d10 damage.   If you want to keep up the theme of needing nothing, the ancestral speaker variant (Dragon 311, p47) of cleric lets you be your own holy symbol. Generally, the spells you'd have access to don't require material components, so you wouldn't need a spell component pouch.
#6 StevenO May 08, 2014 15:31:05	Andarious-Rosethorn wrote:
#7 Andarious-Rosethorn May 08, 2014 17:25:24	Dex is overrated unless you have a lot of feats to make it do some heavy lifting. Combat Reflexes, Weapon Finesse and Shadow Blade (at least 2 feats or a Swordsage level required) for starters. If you've got all that? Sure Dex can be a solid stat to build on. Without it, Str is key for any melee character.