Need help with a Monk PrC/Feat

[John Cribati]

Another week, another monk thread. Such is the life of the forum, no?

I was thinking that one of the biggest drawbacks (y'know, besides mostly everything else) to playing a monk is that even if they're supposed to fight with their hands, they still do more damage when you give them a weapon. What if you made their hands (and feet) the weapons? What I mean is, a prestige class or feat that applies a weapon template to the monk's unarmed strike. For example, a punch doing the same damage as a heavy mace. I was thinking this would work either as a stackable feat, or else a PrC that increases the damage done and/or adds piercing or slashing damage to Unarmed Strikes, which would be awesome in its impracticality.

[ErrantX]

I just always let them add their unarmed strike damage to their damage with special monk weapons (i.e. if I'm a monk and I'm fighting with sais, which are just awesome shtick, I add my whatever unarmed strike damage to the 1d6 of my sais, plus whatever magical bonuses the sais have).

-X

[Human Paragon 3]

I think you'll be needing this: My better monk fighting styles (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=143252).


They all make monk better at what he does, give him more options and give him more ways to deal damage. For pure damage dealing, Tiger Style is the way to go.

[ericgrau]

I think this misconception that monks must fight bare handed hurts monks more than anything else. Even if they still aren't that great without the misconception (debatable imo), this self-imposed nerf is by far bigger than any other drawback. At 1st level they choose between two feats that both give them more bang out of their unarmed damage, get a large number of exotic weapons to choose from, and for when they do use their level 1 feat they gain the ability to use unarmed strikes even when both of their hands are full with weapons. No matter how you look at it a normal punch or kick is a bad idea.

IMO you should home brew a new class that focuses entirely on martial arts so that people who really wanted a kung fu master and instead got a monk may finally get what they wanted. You may want to use ki as a magical way of explaining how he can actually keep up with armed opponents.

[Thomar_of_Uointer]

What about the amulet of mighty fists?


Anyways, yeah, the monk class is extremely defense-focused. You could use these ideas for a more offensive base class or prestige class:

Full BAB
Ability to take Weapon Specialization and Weapon Focus for unarmed strike
Ability to add a select number of magic weapon special abilities to unarmed strikes a limited number of times per day (Anarchic, Axiomatic, Brilliant Energy, Defending, Flaming, Flaming Burst, Ghost Touch, Holy, Merciful, Speed, Unholy, Vicious.)
Fighter bonus feats.

[Geiger Counter]

The idea that monk weapons are exotic is ridiculous. Monks fought with simple farming implements, these should be simple weapons. Being exotic should mean they are difficult to use, not just because they are historically foreign to medieval europe.