Pax_Chi
2006-12-16, 05:37 AM
In my quest to build perhaps the perfect Monk class, I have turned towards the Tome of Battle, and liked what I’ve found. For your entertainment I have taken bits from the Monk, Swordsage and Warblade to present:
Monk of the Way
Throughout the world, in parts known and unknown to civilized beings, there exists group of men, women and entities that walk a path unlike most others. They shun the use of weapons and armor and, seek power and understanding from neither the arcane nor the divine. Their locations, organizational structures, training methods, philosophies and end goals differ greatly from group to group, but they are all unified in one simple belief.
They believe that true wisdom and power come from within one’s self, and that the only way to discover them is through hard work and discipline. They are Monks, and it is their Way.
A Monk of the Way is an individual who has dedicated himself to a path of self discovery. He wishes to achieve great personal wisdom and power for any number of reasons. He may wish to avenge the death of his parents, he may wish to seek enlightenment, or he may be seeking to perfect his particular style of martial art. There are many paths that bring a person to the Way of the Monk, just as there are many paths to travel while learning that Way.
To become a Monk of the Way, one simply needs to find a proper teacher. This can be any variation of easy or difficult depending on the country one is in. In some lands, the popularity of the Monk’s Way has lead to cities being home to several Temples where one can study, while the availability of proper teachers is much more limited in other lands. Some Temples lay in secluded, hard to reach areas, while some forms can only be learned from secretive masters that take only a few students at a time.
After training with a teacher and learning the basics of their style, Monks are considered to be on the road to their own self discovery, or their Way. It is up to the individual Monk to determine what exactly their Way is. Some Monks conform to the Way of their temple or teacher, while other Monks seek to make their own Way in the world.
{table=head]Level|BAB|M.Known|M.Readied|Stances|Unarmed|AC Bonus|Speed Bonus|Special
1st|+1|3|3|1|1d6|+1|+0 ft.|
2nd|+2|4|3|1|1d6|+1|+0 ft.|Evasion
3rd|+3|4|4|1|1d6|+1|+10 ft.|Fast Movement
4th|+4|5|4|1|1d8|+1|+10 ft.|
5th|+5|5|5|2|1d8|+2|+10 ft.|Uncanny Dodge
6th|+6|6|5|2|1d8|+2|+20 ft.|
7th|+7|7|6|2|1d8|+2|+20 ft.|
8th|+8|8|6|2|1d10|+2|+20 ft.|
9th|+9|9|7|2|1d10|+2|+30 ft.|Improved Evasion
10th|+10|10|7|3|1d10|+3|+30 ft.|Wholeness of Body
11th|+11|11|7|3|1d10|+3|+30 ft.|
12th|+12|12|8|3|2d6|+3|+40 ft.|
13th|+13|13|8|3|2d6|+3|+40 ft.|Diamond Soul
14th|+14|14|8|3|2d6|+3|+40 ft.|Improved Uncanny Dodge
15th|+15|15|9|4|2d6|+4|+50 ft.|
16th|+16|16|9|4|2d8|+4|+50 ft.|
17th|+17|17|9|4|2d8|+4|+50 ft.|Tongue of Sun and Moon, Timeless Body
18th|+18|18|10|4|2d8|+4|+60 ft.|
19th|+19|19|10|4|2d8|+4|+60 ft.|
20th|+20|20|10|5|2d10|+5|+60 ft.|Perfect Body
[/table]
Abilities: Wisdom and Dexterity are the main abilities of the Monk. Wisdom aids in sensory perception and is the source of several innate monk abilities, as well as being a key component for several techniques. Dexterity is useful for making them harder to hit and maximizing several skills, and feats like Weapon Finesse can let their Dex make up for a low Strength score when it comes to melee accuracy.
Alignment: Monks can be of any alignment, though most tend towards Neutral, understanding that true wisdom lies in the balance between Law and Chaos rather than adhering strongly to either.
Hit Die: d8. Monks rely primarily on avoiding damage, not soaking it.
Class Skills: Balance, Climb, Concentrate, Craft, Diplomacy, Escape Artist, Heal, Intimidate, Jump, Knowledge (Arcana), Knowledge (History), Knowledge (Local), Knowledge (religion), Listen, Martial Lore, Move Silently, Perform, Profession, Sense Motive, Spot, Swim and Tumble.
Skill Points at 1st Level: (4+Int mod) x4
Skill Points at Each Additional Level: 4 + Int Mod
BAB: 4/4 Base Attack Bonus, same as Fighters, Paladins and Rangers.
Saves: A Monk’s training varies from school to school, and thus you have fighting forms that rely on incredible fortitude, great reflexes or intense willpower. As such, a Monk may select 2 of his three saves and receives high saves in them, while receiving low saves with the third. The default Monk saves are high Reflex and Will saves with a low Fortitude save.
Weapon and Armor Proficiency: Same as a 3.5 Monk, while also being proficient in the weapons of whatever disciplines he knowledge of (IE, the disciplines of which he has at least one maneuver or stance).
Multi-Classing: This Monk faces the same multi-class restriction of a 3.5 Monk.
Disciplines Available: The disciplines a Monk can practice depend largely on a combination of the schools available and his personal strengths and weaknesses. When creating the Monk, select any 5 of the 9 disciplines. These are the only disciplines the Monk will be able to choose from during his lifetime.
Maneuvers: You begin your career with knowledge of 3 martial maneuvers, selected from the disciplines available to you. Once you know a maneuver, you must ready it before you can use it. A maneuver usable by Monks is considered an extraordinary ability unless otherwise noted in its description. Your maneuvers are not affected by spell resistance, and you do not provoke attacks of opportunity when you initiate one.
You learn additional maneuvers at higher levels, as shown on the table below. You must meet a maneuvers prerequisite to learn it. See page 39 of Tome of Battle to determine what maneuvers you can learn. On reaching 4th level and every even numbered level after (6th, 8th, etc.) you can choose to learn a new maneuver in place of one you already know. In effect, you lose the old maneuver in exchange for the new one. You can choose a new maneuver of any level you like, as long as you observe your restrictions on the highest-level maneuvers you know; you need not replace the maneuver with a maneuver of the same level. You can only swap a single maneuver at any given level.
Maneuvers Readied: You can ready all 3 of your known maneuvers at 1st level, and as you advance in level and learn more maneuvers, you are able to ready more, but you must still choose which maneuvers to ready. You ready your maneuvers by meditating and exercising for 5 minutes. The maneuvers you choose remain readied until you decide to mediate again and change them. You need not sleep or rest for any long period of time to ready maneuvers; any time you spend 5 minutes in mediation, you can change your readied maneuvers.
You begin an encounter with all your readied maneuvers unexpended, regardless of how many times you might have already used them since you chose them. When you initiate a maneuver, you expend it for the current encounter, so each of your readied maneuvers can be used once per encounter (unless you recover them, as described below).
You recover all expended maneuvers by using a full round action to quickly mediate. Doing this does provoke attacks of opportunity, as the focus required does leave you open to attack. You may cancel your mediation any time during the round to respond to an attack, such as using a counter or making a reflex save, though doing so will break your concentration. Conversely, you can opt to just take the hit and continue to mediate, though you must make a Concentration Check (DC 10 + damage taken) in order to maintain your mediation. If you successfully complete your mediation, all of your maneuvers are renewed and available in the following round.
Stances Known: You start the game with 1 stance known. The number of stances you know increases over time, and unlike maneuvers, stances are not expended, nor do they need to be readied. You may switch between stances at any time as a swift action. A stance is an extraordinary ability unless otherwise stated in the stance description. Unlike maneuvers, you cannot learn new stances at higher levels in place of ones you already know.
AC Bonus: Monks get their Wisdom bonus added to AC if they wear no armor, plus an additional bonus to AC based on the Monk's level. At level one, the Monk gains a +1 to AC. At level 5 and every 5 levels afterwards, the Monk gains an additional +1 to AC. So a Monk would have a +2 bonus from his Monk Class at level 5, a +3 bonus at level 10, +4 at level 15 and a +5 at level 20.
Unarmed Strike: A Monk is highly adept at unarmed combat, favoring it heavily over weapons based fighting. As such, a Monk gains Improved Unarmed Strike at level 1 as a bonus feat, and follows all of the normal rules regarding off hand, damage type and how their strikes are treated for the purpose of spell and effects that enhance or improve manufactured or natural weapons. Furthermore, a Monk’s unarmed strike is considered an associated weapon for whatever disciplines he is trained in.
Monks also deal more damage than a normal being due to long hours of intensive training. Their damage increases as their level progresses as per a normal Monk, but their damage increases after level 20. At lvl 24 the damage increases 4d6, and 4d8 at 28.
Evasion: At 2nd level, the Monk gains Evasion. At 9th, they gain Improved Evasion.
Fast Movement: At 3rd level, the Monk’s running speed increases as per a normal 3.5 Monk.
Uncanny Dodge: At 5th level, the Monk gains the Uncanny Dodge ability, similar to Rogues and Barbarians. At level 14, they gain Improved Uncanny Dodge.
Wholeness of Body: At level 10, the Monk gains the ability to heal their own wounds, as well as heal others by transferring power into them. By lowering the number of maneuvers they can ready by 1 for the rest of the day, the Monk can heal up to twice his Monk level in hit points for himself or anyone he’s touching. He may do this multiple times, each time lowering his maneuvers readied by 1. At the start of the next day, the Monk regains all of his sacrificed maneuvers readied slots.
Diamond Soul: At level 13, the Monk gains spell resistance as a normal 3.5 Monk.
Timeless Body: As level 17, the Monk stops aging as a normal 3.5 Monk.
Tongue of the Sun and Moon: At level 17, the Monk can communicate as a normal 3.5 Monk.
Perfect Body: At level 20, the Monk attains true mastery of themselves as a normal Monk, save for Damage Reduction. At level 20, the Monk gains Damage Reduction 10/-, and afterwards, they may choose to give up any bonus feats to increase the DR by +2. This DR stacks with any DR gained from Discipline Stances or Maneuvers.
Well, that’s my latest stab at a more cinematic and useful Monk class, though as is often the case, I may have overpowered the class a bit and swung from one extreme to the other. Let me know what you guys think, what bugs might need to be worked out, and I sincerely appreciate any and all thoughts, critiques and suggestions.
Monk of the Way
Throughout the world, in parts known and unknown to civilized beings, there exists group of men, women and entities that walk a path unlike most others. They shun the use of weapons and armor and, seek power and understanding from neither the arcane nor the divine. Their locations, organizational structures, training methods, philosophies and end goals differ greatly from group to group, but they are all unified in one simple belief.
They believe that true wisdom and power come from within one’s self, and that the only way to discover them is through hard work and discipline. They are Monks, and it is their Way.
A Monk of the Way is an individual who has dedicated himself to a path of self discovery. He wishes to achieve great personal wisdom and power for any number of reasons. He may wish to avenge the death of his parents, he may wish to seek enlightenment, or he may be seeking to perfect his particular style of martial art. There are many paths that bring a person to the Way of the Monk, just as there are many paths to travel while learning that Way.
To become a Monk of the Way, one simply needs to find a proper teacher. This can be any variation of easy or difficult depending on the country one is in. In some lands, the popularity of the Monk’s Way has lead to cities being home to several Temples where one can study, while the availability of proper teachers is much more limited in other lands. Some Temples lay in secluded, hard to reach areas, while some forms can only be learned from secretive masters that take only a few students at a time.
After training with a teacher and learning the basics of their style, Monks are considered to be on the road to their own self discovery, or their Way. It is up to the individual Monk to determine what exactly their Way is. Some Monks conform to the Way of their temple or teacher, while other Monks seek to make their own Way in the world.
{table=head]Level|BAB|M.Known|M.Readied|Stances|Unarmed|AC Bonus|Speed Bonus|Special
1st|+1|3|3|1|1d6|+1|+0 ft.|
2nd|+2|4|3|1|1d6|+1|+0 ft.|Evasion
3rd|+3|4|4|1|1d6|+1|+10 ft.|Fast Movement
4th|+4|5|4|1|1d8|+1|+10 ft.|
5th|+5|5|5|2|1d8|+2|+10 ft.|Uncanny Dodge
6th|+6|6|5|2|1d8|+2|+20 ft.|
7th|+7|7|6|2|1d8|+2|+20 ft.|
8th|+8|8|6|2|1d10|+2|+20 ft.|
9th|+9|9|7|2|1d10|+2|+30 ft.|Improved Evasion
10th|+10|10|7|3|1d10|+3|+30 ft.|Wholeness of Body
11th|+11|11|7|3|1d10|+3|+30 ft.|
12th|+12|12|8|3|2d6|+3|+40 ft.|
13th|+13|13|8|3|2d6|+3|+40 ft.|Diamond Soul
14th|+14|14|8|3|2d6|+3|+40 ft.|Improved Uncanny Dodge
15th|+15|15|9|4|2d6|+4|+50 ft.|
16th|+16|16|9|4|2d8|+4|+50 ft.|
17th|+17|17|9|4|2d8|+4|+50 ft.|Tongue of Sun and Moon, Timeless Body
18th|+18|18|10|4|2d8|+4|+60 ft.|
19th|+19|19|10|4|2d8|+4|+60 ft.|
20th|+20|20|10|5|2d10|+5|+60 ft.|Perfect Body
[/table]
Abilities: Wisdom and Dexterity are the main abilities of the Monk. Wisdom aids in sensory perception and is the source of several innate monk abilities, as well as being a key component for several techniques. Dexterity is useful for making them harder to hit and maximizing several skills, and feats like Weapon Finesse can let their Dex make up for a low Strength score when it comes to melee accuracy.
Alignment: Monks can be of any alignment, though most tend towards Neutral, understanding that true wisdom lies in the balance between Law and Chaos rather than adhering strongly to either.
Hit Die: d8. Monks rely primarily on avoiding damage, not soaking it.
Class Skills: Balance, Climb, Concentrate, Craft, Diplomacy, Escape Artist, Heal, Intimidate, Jump, Knowledge (Arcana), Knowledge (History), Knowledge (Local), Knowledge (religion), Listen, Martial Lore, Move Silently, Perform, Profession, Sense Motive, Spot, Swim and Tumble.
Skill Points at 1st Level: (4+Int mod) x4
Skill Points at Each Additional Level: 4 + Int Mod
BAB: 4/4 Base Attack Bonus, same as Fighters, Paladins and Rangers.
Saves: A Monk’s training varies from school to school, and thus you have fighting forms that rely on incredible fortitude, great reflexes or intense willpower. As such, a Monk may select 2 of his three saves and receives high saves in them, while receiving low saves with the third. The default Monk saves are high Reflex and Will saves with a low Fortitude save.
Weapon and Armor Proficiency: Same as a 3.5 Monk, while also being proficient in the weapons of whatever disciplines he knowledge of (IE, the disciplines of which he has at least one maneuver or stance).
Multi-Classing: This Monk faces the same multi-class restriction of a 3.5 Monk.
Disciplines Available: The disciplines a Monk can practice depend largely on a combination of the schools available and his personal strengths and weaknesses. When creating the Monk, select any 5 of the 9 disciplines. These are the only disciplines the Monk will be able to choose from during his lifetime.
Maneuvers: You begin your career with knowledge of 3 martial maneuvers, selected from the disciplines available to you. Once you know a maneuver, you must ready it before you can use it. A maneuver usable by Monks is considered an extraordinary ability unless otherwise noted in its description. Your maneuvers are not affected by spell resistance, and you do not provoke attacks of opportunity when you initiate one.
You learn additional maneuvers at higher levels, as shown on the table below. You must meet a maneuvers prerequisite to learn it. See page 39 of Tome of Battle to determine what maneuvers you can learn. On reaching 4th level and every even numbered level after (6th, 8th, etc.) you can choose to learn a new maneuver in place of one you already know. In effect, you lose the old maneuver in exchange for the new one. You can choose a new maneuver of any level you like, as long as you observe your restrictions on the highest-level maneuvers you know; you need not replace the maneuver with a maneuver of the same level. You can only swap a single maneuver at any given level.
Maneuvers Readied: You can ready all 3 of your known maneuvers at 1st level, and as you advance in level and learn more maneuvers, you are able to ready more, but you must still choose which maneuvers to ready. You ready your maneuvers by meditating and exercising for 5 minutes. The maneuvers you choose remain readied until you decide to mediate again and change them. You need not sleep or rest for any long period of time to ready maneuvers; any time you spend 5 minutes in mediation, you can change your readied maneuvers.
You begin an encounter with all your readied maneuvers unexpended, regardless of how many times you might have already used them since you chose them. When you initiate a maneuver, you expend it for the current encounter, so each of your readied maneuvers can be used once per encounter (unless you recover them, as described below).
You recover all expended maneuvers by using a full round action to quickly mediate. Doing this does provoke attacks of opportunity, as the focus required does leave you open to attack. You may cancel your mediation any time during the round to respond to an attack, such as using a counter or making a reflex save, though doing so will break your concentration. Conversely, you can opt to just take the hit and continue to mediate, though you must make a Concentration Check (DC 10 + damage taken) in order to maintain your mediation. If you successfully complete your mediation, all of your maneuvers are renewed and available in the following round.
Stances Known: You start the game with 1 stance known. The number of stances you know increases over time, and unlike maneuvers, stances are not expended, nor do they need to be readied. You may switch between stances at any time as a swift action. A stance is an extraordinary ability unless otherwise stated in the stance description. Unlike maneuvers, you cannot learn new stances at higher levels in place of ones you already know.
AC Bonus: Monks get their Wisdom bonus added to AC if they wear no armor, plus an additional bonus to AC based on the Monk's level. At level one, the Monk gains a +1 to AC. At level 5 and every 5 levels afterwards, the Monk gains an additional +1 to AC. So a Monk would have a +2 bonus from his Monk Class at level 5, a +3 bonus at level 10, +4 at level 15 and a +5 at level 20.
Unarmed Strike: A Monk is highly adept at unarmed combat, favoring it heavily over weapons based fighting. As such, a Monk gains Improved Unarmed Strike at level 1 as a bonus feat, and follows all of the normal rules regarding off hand, damage type and how their strikes are treated for the purpose of spell and effects that enhance or improve manufactured or natural weapons. Furthermore, a Monk’s unarmed strike is considered an associated weapon for whatever disciplines he is trained in.
Monks also deal more damage than a normal being due to long hours of intensive training. Their damage increases as their level progresses as per a normal Monk, but their damage increases after level 20. At lvl 24 the damage increases 4d6, and 4d8 at 28.
Evasion: At 2nd level, the Monk gains Evasion. At 9th, they gain Improved Evasion.
Fast Movement: At 3rd level, the Monk’s running speed increases as per a normal 3.5 Monk.
Uncanny Dodge: At 5th level, the Monk gains the Uncanny Dodge ability, similar to Rogues and Barbarians. At level 14, they gain Improved Uncanny Dodge.
Wholeness of Body: At level 10, the Monk gains the ability to heal their own wounds, as well as heal others by transferring power into them. By lowering the number of maneuvers they can ready by 1 for the rest of the day, the Monk can heal up to twice his Monk level in hit points for himself or anyone he’s touching. He may do this multiple times, each time lowering his maneuvers readied by 1. At the start of the next day, the Monk regains all of his sacrificed maneuvers readied slots.
Diamond Soul: At level 13, the Monk gains spell resistance as a normal 3.5 Monk.
Timeless Body: As level 17, the Monk stops aging as a normal 3.5 Monk.
Tongue of the Sun and Moon: At level 17, the Monk can communicate as a normal 3.5 Monk.
Perfect Body: At level 20, the Monk attains true mastery of themselves as a normal Monk, save for Damage Reduction. At level 20, the Monk gains Damage Reduction 10/-, and afterwards, they may choose to give up any bonus feats to increase the DR by +2. This DR stacks with any DR gained from Discipline Stances or Maneuvers.
Well, that’s my latest stab at a more cinematic and useful Monk class, though as is often the case, I may have overpowered the class a bit and swung from one extreme to the other. Let me know what you guys think, what bugs might need to be worked out, and I sincerely appreciate any and all thoughts, critiques and suggestions.