[3.5] Buddhist Monk + Feed the Hungry Slaad = Win?

[Maginomicon]

This feat was designed ostensibly for monks, but any high-wisdom character could take it.


Feed the Hungry Slaad [General]

You can focus your ki to increase one mental ability score at the expense of another.

Prerequisites: Wis 17, Improved Unarmed Strike, Iron Will

Benefit: Once per day as a standard action, you can voluntarily reduce your Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma score by up to four points (to a minimum of 1) to increase another of those three scores by the same amount. The effect lasts for 1 minute per character level.

It gets really good for clerics and other Wisdom-based casters (albeit with a feat tax), especially since it likely stacks with the Owl's Wisdom spell (others can get it on a wand or something). It's also debatable whether this feat allows bonus spell slots since it doesn't give that exception like seen in Owl's Wisdom. (I personally would house-rule against that though.)

The feat tax is HARSH though... unless you're a...


Buddhist Monk
Must be Lawful Good.
Skill bonus: Sense Motive
1st-level bonus feat: Iron Will
2nd-level bonus feat: Combat Expertise
6th-level bonus feat: Intuitive Attack
6th-level capstone prerequisites: Concentration 5 ranks, Sense Motive 9 ranks
6th-level capstone ability: Your quest for enlightenment has focused your intuition. The bonus granted by your still mind ability increases to +5.

While dipping Buddhist Monk means you can take Feed the Hungry Slaad at 1st level, think of what this means for the Intuitive Attack feat that you get from Buddhist Monk. :smallamused: (It's not enough to make monks really good of course, but it's a neat trick regardless if I'm reading this right.) Plus, it makes a ton of sense flavor-wise to dip monk before going cleric with this kind of build.

[Prime32]

Don't forget to dip Shiba Protector for +Wis to attack and damage, Paladin (with the Serenity feat) for +Wis to saves, then become a saint. :smallwink:
EDIT: Prestige Paladin/Sacred Fist perhaps.

[Rubik]

For even more fun, there's a feat in Hyperconscious called Psychic Bastion that has the fun effect of ability depletion resistance, which is actually what amounts to ability-based hardness of 3. That is, any effect that depletes or reduces an ability score, regardless of ability damage, ability drain, ability burn, or anything else, is reduced by 3 for every time you're affected by it. Everything from Body Fuel to Feed the Hungry Slaad is affected by this. You can take it more than once to increase the amount of ability depletion resistance. The only prereq is a power point pool.

[edit] Looking over it, FtHS isn't worth it. 1/day, for 1 min/lvl, reduce one ability score to increase another? With those prereqs? Feats are valuable. So, bleh.

[Vaz]

Most feats can be bought for around 10-40k as an item, as per the A+EG.

Alternatively, Iron Will is 3K.

Consider a Saint (LA2)/Monk 2/Ninja 2/Fist of the Forest 3/Shiba Protector 1

Enduring Ki and Ki Pool feats, Invisible Fist monk, combined with Ur Priest 2/Sacred Fist 8 is pretty decent with that.