Viability of monk PrCs.

[IlexTM]

It seems to me that there are very few truly powerful PrCs for monks.(note: I'm not the most experienced at playing them this is my first time.)

I currently have a shardmind monk and tattooed monk and drunken master have been shot down by the DM due to a shardmind's inability to get drunk or tattooed. I have heard rumors about Kensai, but I can't find it, and I don't know which book it's in.
Also, are there any other viable monk PrCs?

Thanks!

[Telonius]

Just to warn you, Monks are generally seen as horrifically underpowered on this forum. Most advice you're likely to get will come in the form of "Take unarmed Swordsage" (from Tome of Battle) or "take as few levels in Monk as possible."

Going with the second, Sacred Fist (Complete Divine) and Enlightened Fist (Complete Arcane) are usually seen as the best actual-Monk PrC's. They're basically hybrid Monk/Clerics and Monk/Wizards respectively. Fist of the Forest is another PrC (from Complete Champion) that gets mentioned often.

Kensai is in Complete Warrior.

[Feralventas]

With a dip in Swordsage or a couple of uses of the Martial Study feat, Shadow Sun Ninja isn't half bad and progresses monk abilities as well.

[Psyren]

The best monk PrC is Tashalatora :smalltongue:

Pity you can't use Tattooed Monk - it's great for all-day, supernatural Alter Self alone (+8 natural AC from being a troglodyte helps your survivability a lot.) Shou Disciple is handy for martial flurry. For barehanded monks I'm a fan of Monk of the Enabled Hand from Dragon Compendium; their ability to counterattack every incoming strike is nifty, as is their bonus to disarm, and the ability to send foes flying is nice too.

[docnessuno]

The best monk PrC is Tashalatora :smalltongue:

Pity you can't use Tattooed Monk - it's great for all-day, supernatural Alter Self alone (+8 natural AC from being a troglodyte helps your survivability a lot.) Shou Disciple is handy for martial flurry. For barehanded monks I'm a fan of Monk of the Enabled Hand from Dragon Compendium; their ability to counterattack every incoming strike is nifty, as is their bonus to disarm, and the ability to send foes flying is nice too.

Sacred fist is also quite good, moreso if combined with Ur-priest.

[Juntao112]

It seems to me that there are very few truly powerful PrCs for monks.(note: I'm not the most experienced at playing them this is my first time.)

I currently have a shardmind monk and tattooed monk and drunken master have been shot down by the DM due to a shardmind's inability to get drunk or tattooed. I have heard rumors about Kensai, but I can't find it, and I don't know which book it's in.
Also, are there any other viable monk PrCs?

Thanks!

Kensai is in Complete Warrior.

[gallagher]

I know I bring this up a lot when it comes to monks, but if you are planning on monking around, you should consider being a half orc so you can take two levels of half orc paragon, which will garner you a daily use of rage without having to switch from lawful.

With that single use of rage, you now open yourself up to all the wonderful barbarian PRCs that dont restrict your alignment. I for one really like Runescarred Berserker, as you will get divine spells, and improve your rage, and some other passive bonuses. It is like a million times better than tattooed monk.

[Phelix-Mu]

Not really familiar with shardminds, but I will second that Tashalatora (Secrets of Sarlona Eberron supplement) is quite strong with the force. Psychic warrior, the most straightforward app of Tashalatora, can add a bunch of utility to monk and dramatically improve combat effectiveness. Plus, it opens up all kinds of psionic prc options once you have manifesting. Sadly, Tash requires Monastic Training, although you can pick this up as a monk bonus feat, and overall it's still well worth it.

And all of that requires psionics available in the campaign, as well as setting-specific stuff (though Tashalatora is pretty generic in flavor). In terms of more monkish monk prcs, I would like to mention Initiate of the Draconic Mysteries. Not sure about the op-level of this prestige class, but it does have some cool class abilities and some pretty cool flavor. It's from Draconomicon. Haztaratain, also from Secrets of Sarlona, also has cool flavor.

Key to making a good monk are alternative class features. Drop slow fall for anything else; Wall Walker in Dungeonscape is made of awesome, 1000% better than slow fall. Look in Complete Champion for some good options, like Prayerful Meditation over Still Mind (which is kind of terrible). There are lots of interesting ACFs and setting-specific substitution levels in FR materials, perhaps Player's Guide to Faerun.

[Urpriest]

Guys, I'm pretty sure the OP is talking about 4e, given that that's where sharminds exist. Looks like the thread was accidentally put in the wrong place.

[Daftendirekt]

Guys, I'm pretty sure the OP is talking about 4e, given that that's where sharminds exist. Looks like the thread was accidentally put in the wrong place.

Right, except he mentions prestige classes (at all), which makes it 3rd edition. And he also mentions some SPECIFIC prestige classes, solidly cementing that he's talking about 3rd edition. They've probably homebrewed a 3.5 shardmind race.

[WhatBigTeeth]

Shardminds? Are you playing some sort of 3/4e hybrid?

The general trend, like everything in 3e, is more casting -> more viable.

Sacred fist, enlightened fist, master of the east and west wind and tashalatora are all setups that can have 9th level spells or powers, and are unsurprisingly the most viable setups. Master of the north wind might get an honorable mention for easy 8th level spells and wild shape.

Psionic fist, shadow sun ninja and master of the south wind all have lesser magic-like systems and wind up pretty good.

The other mundane monk prcs are at best as capable as fist of dal'quor, fist of the forest, ninja of the crescent moon, shou disciple and tattooed monk, which make passable strikers, but not much beside skill points for utility abilities, and at worst things like cloud anchorite, monk of the long death or haztaratain that are just monks, but worse.

edit to add
Ninjaed on the 4e thing

[Person_Man]

Assuming that we are talking about 3.5, here are some options (in addition to tattooed monk and drunken master, which have already been excluded. Apologies for duplicate suggestions, I'm cutting some of these from a previous post):

Monk 1 or 2/Psychic Warrior 18 or 19: Tashalatora feat (Secrets of Sarlona) allows Monk levels stack with a psionic class to determine unarmed damage. Add this to the Expansion power and the Improved Natural Weapon Feat, and you get fairly high unarmed damage. Best psionic option if you know that you're going to levels 16+.

Monk 1 or 2/Whatever 3/Warmind X: Warmind has fairly light requirements, and provides decent Psychic Warrior powers plus the Sweeping Strike ability, which allows you to hit one adjacent enemy each time you attack.

Monk 3/Whatever 3/Psionic Fist X: Another psionic option. Psionic Fist also gives you psionic powers, but has the added benefit of stacking with the Monk's unarmed damage, Armor Class bonus, and unarmored speed.

Monk 2/Totemist 2/Whatever 1/Incarnum PrC X: There are a bunch of different iterations of this. The basic idea is that the Totemist, improved by an Incarnum based prestige class, adds a bunch of natural weapons. Monk grants you some useful Skills plus Improved Unarmed Strike, which doesn't conflict with your claw attacks, and can be improved by certain soulmelds. But Magic of Incarnum is a fairly difficult rule set, so I wouldn't suggest this unless you already own the book.

Disciple of the Eye (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ex/20060106a&page=2): A strong low level option. This prestige class gives you a few potent Fear effects. (And Fear effects from different sources stack. If you inflict 2 on an enemy, he's basically lost). It also stacks to determine both Fast Movement and Flurry of Blows, with the latter being pretty rare for Monk PrC.

Monk/Cleric or Wizard/Enlightened Fist or Sacred Fist: Your basic "Gish" options - someone who fights with melee and magic.

Fist of the Forest: A short, 3 level PrC that increases your unarmed damage and adds your Con bonus to AC, plus a few other perks. If you happen to have a high AC and are playing in a low-mid level game, it's worth looking at.

Monk 2/Half Orc Paragon 3/Whatever X/Bear Warrior 1: Half Orc Paragon lets you Rage while being Lawful. Bear Warrior lets you turn into a bear, which adds some fairly large bonuses.

Warshaper: Can be added to a Bear Warrior build, or you can be a Shifter and have it on all the time. Adds reach, Fast Healing, and various bonuses. It also theoretically adds any number of natural weapons. Though most DMs will limit it to improving existing natural weapons.

[Yora]

Tashlatora should be the most simple thing to do. It's a feat that allows a character to combine monk and psychic warrior levels and pretty much have the best of both worlds.

The downside is that one would have to learn psionics, but for a multiclass psychic warrior that isn't actually much more to learn than for a lot of specialized PrCs. Also it's technically a feat for a specific organization in a specific setting, so it might need DM approval to be adopted for the running campaign.

With the Tashlatora feat, you keep most of your monkey goodness at full strength, but you also get to add cool psychic warrior powers in addition to that, which makes monks considerably more useful. Even if you can't take a new feat right now, multiclassing into psychic warrior would still be possible and far from useful even without the feat yet. Once you can take the feat, the character would get a considerable bump up.

[Hiro Protagonest]

It's Tashalatora, Yora (hey that rhymes).

Yeah... if Tashalatora is out, Psionic Fist, Sacred Fist, and Enlightened Fist are the next-best. Then Fist of the Forest. I have no idea why Kensai was suggested.

[killem2]

I also 2nd the use of Psychic Warrior path, but otherwise, damn near anything that will increase you damage die size.

If allowed you might want to try some of the variants through our dragon magazine.

[docnessuno]

Fist of the forest it's actually very good (Con to AC, a quasi-rage and 2 unarmed damage increases), despite the awful prerequisites.

A good build for Sacred fist:

Monk 2 / Duskblade 3 / Ur-priest 2 / Sacred fist 8/10 (8 if text trumps table for your Dm, 10 otherwise).
Finish it up with Fist of the forest and/or Enlighted fist.

[The Glyphstone]

Fist of Zuoken isn't particularly good, but it's still my favorite Monk PrC solely due to its ability to punch people into the future.

[Psyren]

Fist of Zuoken isn't particularly good, but it's still my favorite Monk PrC solely due to its ability to punch people into the future.

Actually, Fist of Zuoken = Psionic Fist. You're thinking of Zerth Cenobite as the one with the timey-wimey-punchy powers.

(And for the record, I hate ZC too, but it's at least an improvement on straight monk :smallsmile:)

[Phelix-Mu]

Anybody have any experience trying to mix Mythic Exemplar (Complete Champion) into a monk build? The capstone for Sunyartra (ignore 15 points of DR (except epic...grrr) or hardness) seems pretty cool for a monk, bypassing most non-epic creatures forms of DR that are usually hard for a monk to overcome without access to spells. A lot of the other stuff also seems cool, but I've not read about it on the forum at all...is there some terrible aspect to the prestige class that I'm not seeing??

[The Glyphstone]

Actually, Fist of Zuoken = Psionic Fist. You're thinking of Zerth Cenobite as the one with the timey-wimey-punchy powers.

(And for the record, I hate ZC too, but it's at least an improvement on straight monk :smallsmile:)

er, right. I always make that mistake, too.

[Kuulvheysoon]

I was going to suggest Diamond Warrior (Mind's Eye, 3.0e) until I remembered that it was a PrC to turn PsyWars more monk-like, not the other way around.

On that note, +1 for War Mind and Zerth Cenobite.

[Phelix-Mu]

er, right. I always make that mistake, too.

For some reason something about the presentation of both classes felt similar, despite the cool Zerth flavor. Zerth, Zuoken, sounds very similar. I too have been confused, only solved by my creating an affiliation for my world around Zuoken and monasteries dedicated to him.

[Mato]

Shiba Protector (OA) deserves a mention. Like Fist of the Forest it has some bad prerequisites, and it's only one level long (officially 10 but meh) and there is a Monk Variant that can help.

However, it is completely and totally worth it. You add your Wisdom Bonus to Attack and Damage rolls. Yes, I said "add", as in not substitute. You get your Strength and Wisdom to your facekickery. And of course, Monk grants Wisdom to AC.

To really complete the Wisdom package, Dragon published a Feat called Serenity that flips all the Paladin abilities to be based on Wisdom, including Divine Grace for Wisdom to Saves. Notably, Paladin exists as a variant Prestige Class that a Sacred Fist could enter.

[Vaz]

There's a few Monk Prestige classes from Dragon Magazine, 314 I think, which advance spellcasting at least 9/10, as well as stacking monk abilities with the base class abilities; i.e Wild Shaping etc.