Non-traditional Monk-day thread

[Mjollnir075]

It has come to my attention that, in this forum right now, there happens to be a rather heated debate about the "tier" of a paladin sitting somewhere around 850 posts right about now. To me this seems a waste of talent.

Just think if we were to put our heads together in such amounts as that, but all geared towards coming up with an agreed upon "best" monk fix.

Or, you know, anything else worth putting our collective brainpower to work on.

[The Boz]

Best monk fix? Here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=13536035#post13536035).


Yes, I am shameless and full of myself.

[DMVerdandi]

I gave the battle dancer from Dragon Compendium a read.
Looks pretty darn solid.

[Amphetryon]

How have I not been swordsaged in suggesting Swordsage as the ultimate Monk "fix"? I am disappoint.

[Mjollnir075]

How have I not been swordsaged in suggesting Swordsage as the ultimate Monk "fix"? I am disappoint.

The thing about Unarmed Swordsages is, in my opinion, a little gray.

I don't know if every DM out there will be willing to assume that it works the same way as most of the Playground agrees it does, so it isn't always an option for a replacement Monk.

However, if it IS accepted, then yeah, I guess it fixes it pretty good.

As for Boz, yeah, it's actually a pretty good fix I would say. A pretty extensive one though, and may cause an instant DM "TL;DR ,so.. no"

[Carth]

If you want to argue unarmed swordsage isn't RAW, that's fine. But if homebrew is acceptable, I don't see why unarmed swordsage isn't.

[Hunter Noventa]

I've played unarmed Swordsages twice now, and they're pretty much made of awesome. Though granted, both of those were in Gestalt campaigns, so your mileage may vary.

But he general idea of taking away Swordsage armor for the Monk's unarmed strike damage works fairly well on it's own, since you have a lot of tricks to overcome the primary weaknesses of the monk.

[The Boz]

Purely out of self-interest, as I want to make my Monk 2.0 as viable as possible, what were the key things an unarmed and unarmored swordsage had that made it effective?

[Amphetryon]

I didn't even specify "Unarmed Swordsage;" plain ol' out-of-the-box Swordsage works just fine as an alternative to Monk, IME.

[Randomguy]

Jiriku's monk fix (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=150122) is my personal favourite.

[AZGrowler]

Based on the Swordsage references and some of the linked fixes, I figure this is a question for 3.5 monks. If Pathfinder options are on the table, there are three Fighter Archetypes that have features that could be useful to fixing the monk.

The Unarmed Fighter (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/fighter/archetypes/paizo---fighter-archetypes/unarmed-fighter) is proficient with all monk weapons, including exotic monk weapons. It would make sense for a monk to also be proficient with these. Otherwise, I can't imagine anyone using a feat to be able to use any of them.

The Dervish of Dawn (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/fighter/archetypes/paizo---fighter-archetypes/dawnflower-dervish) and the Mobile Fighter (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/fighter/archetypes/paizo---fighter-archetypes/mobile-fighter) both get the Rapid Attack ability at 11th Level. Rapid Attack allows allows the fighter to trade their highest bonus attack in a full attack for a move action. This ability would let the Monk flurry more often, and would tie into the idea that monks are supposed to be highly mobile. I think this would be a fair trade for Diamond Body.

[Larkas]

A favorite fix of mine has spawned from WotC itself! …Sort of. This (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=11304.0) is the adaptation of the DDO monk for tabletop play, by SorO_Lost. It was almost a stroke of genius: DDO is based on the 3.5 rule set, after all, and the class is really fun to play there! It might be a little one-sided, though. It came from an MMORPG, after all, and in these the only thing that really matters is battle prowess. Regardless, the class is at least good at what it's supposed to be doing.