Help me help our monk

[Trilby]

Hi all,

In the campaign we're playing (monk, ninja, warblade, and my ultimate magus, all lvl 9), we're running into a problem. In fights I tend to cast Invisibility and buff/bfc/heal-via-UMD, the ninja uses her ki to ghost step, and is thus invisible, and the warblade has a maneuver turning him invisible. This all leads to the monk standing there soaking up all the hits, which he's no good at (the problem I'm trying to solve).

I already cast Greater Mage Armor on him, and if we have a buff round, he gets Owl's wisdom and Cat's grace, and I cast Haste and Slow. Still he takes massive damage, due to 'tanking' all of the attacks.
I don't have many lvl 4 spell slots (no 5s yet, caster level behind), but right now the only thing I haven't done yet seems to be to cast Greater Invis to help Monky hide too, and force our DM to finally play monsters with see invis/other ways to track the other PCs.

I guess what I'm asking is, what are some other things I can do to help Monky out, that won't lead to my own demise? Polymorph does not exist in this world, only it's derivatives, so that's not an option. The last fight I ended up tanking in Displacer Form, but that is not something my squishy mage particularly wants to try again. Also, I hadn't done that before, so the other characters spent the round after the bogeys' demise attacking me (Yay for Displacement, they all missed). That was kinda funny.

Most WotC books are on the table (no drag mag) and I'm in the position to learn 5 new spells of up to 4th level. No banned schools, I'm a generalist. Help a mage out, please?

[jiriku]

The trouble here is that your party has a tank, the warblade, who's hiding instead of tanking. You might encourage the warblade's player to start thinking of ways to peel some aggro off the monk. Someone playing a d12 class in medium armor shouldn't have trouble figuring out how to survive a few hits.

For your part as the party caster, you want fewer buffs and more battlefield control. Instead of owl's wisdom, cat's grace and haste, think glitterdust, web and stinking cloud. Blind, nauseated and entangled foes deal a lot less damage, both to monks and to everyone else.

Also, instead of everyone just starting the fight invisible, consider encouraging the team to be more tactical about their invisibility. Spread out and get the enemy to follow you, scattering all over the battlefield, then turn invisible and quickly reposition so that all of your strength is brought to bear against one or two opponents while they're out of position and unable to support one another. Right now you're actually encouraging the enemy to use that tactic against you, funneling all of their attacks against the squishiest members of your team. You need to reverse that dynamic.

[Regissoma]

Cast spells in his area that cause concealment, because miss chances are a melees best friend if he has a way to ignore it. If not see if the Smoking enchant exists in your world, it is a +1 enchantment added to a melee weapon that covers a 5x5 square the weapon is in but does not effect the character wielding it. This essentially gives off the top of my head like 20% miss chance. Stack those miss chances eventually they will fail their roll to hit even if they crit.

Magic Items: Obi of the white lotus/protection (true miss chance), smoking enhancement(concealment)

Otherwise only thing I can suggest is make it harder to get to him. Cast spells that make difficult terrain between him and the enemies. Make it so that the one guy they can get to work for it (sadly this makes the already poor monk bait, but its FOR SCIENCE!)

[Trilby]

Solid advice, I'll look into more bfc.
Sadly, the whole reason I'm playing a wizard is that we're pretty starved for magic items and enchantmemts, so I play support.
Maybe more offensively oriented spellcasting can provide enough of a boost to save him.

I'm mostly looking for advice on things that I can provide, as I'm hesitant to ask someone else to change their playstyle. I'm playing support anyway, and I enjoy it, so I'm mostly looking to change what I can.
But web, glitterdust, I'll be able to do those.
Keep it coming!

[lord_khaine]

Im a little confused about how the Warblade is turning invisible though, there should not be any maneuver that would let him do so.
Because while the second level shadow hand boost cloak of deception does turn you invisible, then its only until the end of your own turn.

Else i would recomend the monk to make greater use of total defence, his high movement rate and the tumble skill to kite the opponents.

At the moment it sounds like he is trading full attacks with groups of monsters, but thats rather unhealthy, instead he should be turning the combat into something resembling an old Benny Hill movie, making the monsters run past and around as many hazaradous terrain features as possible (meaning invisible ninjas ect).

[FreakyCheeseMan]

What maneuver turns the Warblade invisible?

Edit: Ninja'd. Or more appropriately, Swordsage'd, cause Warblade doesn't even get that manuever.

[StreamOfTheSky]

Ouch, monk does very poorly in a low wealth game....

And does the Warblade have Greater Invisibility for multiple rounds somehow, or is he just using invisibility and not attacking at all (if so, wtf)? What "maneuver" is this exactly? Cloak of Deception is greater invis but only till end of turn (not even 1 entire round), and One With Shadows is super high level and still only protects for 1 turn. Neither is even available to a warblade, either.

EDIT: There's some monk substitution levels in the same online excerpt that famously has Zhentarim Fighter. The first and last of the three suck as far as I can tell, but you're not required to take all sub. levels, so that doesn't matter. The 2nd sub. level, around monk 7, gives them an at will invisibility feature similar to shadowdancer's hide in plain sight. Monk might want to take that so he's not the only visible sap for the monsters to target.
EDIT again: Dark Moon Disciple (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/we/20060327a). 7th level, get total concealment (ie, can't be seen!) in less than total sunlight. There's also the "Invisible Fist" alt. class feature, too.

[nedz]

Monk should be able to hide, it is a class skill — but this does depend upon the terrain and the DM.

He could buy a Ring of Invisibility, but not if the DM doesn't make that possible.

[Pluto!]

Cast BFC before Invisibility instead of after? It should be filtering the monsters that can reach him, and that whole class of spells gets significantly less effective the later you wait.

[Forrestfire]

Cloak of Deception, presumably.

EDIT: Fittingly, I was swordsaged. That's what I get for getting up to grab food before hitting post XD

[jiriku]

If you're restricted to your own options, then you could shift gears and tank for/with him. Stay away from displacer form, though. The classy way to spell-tank is to summon. Grab summon monster IV and take the arcadian avenger from MMV as an alternate summon. They have super hit points, decent AC and do a great job sucking up damage.

Luring the enemies into traps and ambushes can also be effective. If you know a fight is coming, use a summon or an illusion to bring your foes to fight in an area where the terrain favors you and where your allies can get in a surprise attack. If the fight opens with the warblade and the ninja performing an alpha strike on the most dangerous enemy and killing it, you're in good shape to win without significant injury. Likewise, if you can barge in on the enemy, kill one, then stage a mini-retreat and force your opponents to come at your through a chokepoint where you've concentrated your forces... hmm. I'm giving party tactical advice again. Sorry. :smallbiggrin:

Ok, single spellcaster tactics. Solid fog and evard's black tentacles are godly. Grab those spells and never look back. They work best if you drop them such that they lock down about half your foes. This essentially lets you break each encounter into two back-to-back encounters of half the difficulty. It radically reduces the damage you take. Wall of chains and dancing chains from Book of Vile Darkness are both great for breaking up or distracting the enemy. Neither of those is an [evil] spell, by the way. Your slow spell remains a great choice against monsters with multiple attacks, to deny them a full attack. What metamagic feats do you have? Fell drain kelgore's grave mist is a fantastic no-save debuff that becomes outright deadly if you throw it on people who are already locked down or blinded and can't easily get out of it. Even fell drain or fell frighten magic missile at the beginning of combat will soften up the enemy nicely.

The key take-away here is that instead of trying to shore up a soft target by buffing the monk to where he can take a few hits, you want to limit or entirely shut down the enemy's ability to attack him (or anyone). When your foes are blinded, entangled, fatigued, level-drained, and on the wrong side of a wall with three huge fiendish monstrous centipedes grappling them, they're not going to be causing your monk any trouble.

[MrBright01]

Talk tactics with the monk. Convince him to spend the first round of combat setting up for the surprise attack from the Invisibles. Back into a corner when possible, and full defense, combat expertise, whatever he can to pump his ac for the round (I don't play Monk much, so I can't offer good specifics, sorry). Heck, just full-move away from the foes if they are melee. Invisibles drop the hammer next round, and then he can wade in.

Possibly talk the the DM. See if he can drop something useful for the monk to make him less "gonna die" in a group that seems to favor stealth and surprise tactics. Here's a goody: A series of shimmering streamers that attach to the wrist. When using the full defense option, the flickering cloud of flashing streamers grants Concealment. That gives him a way to essentially tank through evasion, mostly non-magical, and it is not likely to be OP enough to break the game.

[Trilby]

Hey all, thanks for the great advice.

I'll be changing my tactics to play more offensively, see if I can get that alternate summon by the dm, and take it from there.
Especially grateful to those who took the time to reply with spell selection options (what I asked for) to what indeed appears to mostly be a tactics issue.

It does look like something weird is up with the warblade and his invis, but I'm assuming it's checked with the dm. Not up to me to keep that sort of stuff straight, I think.

I agree that Ev's Tentacles are great, but as Monky is a grappler, I was trying to avoid stepping on his toes by using it. I'll definitely try the solid fog and the summoning, though. Maybe I'll prepare a tentacles for an "oh crap" moment.

So thanks again guys and gals, I'll try a different spell loadout come Wednesday, and see how it goes.

I was going for flavor over power, and took deceptive spell, I will be picking up fell drain metamagic next, I think.

I managed to get an unluck off on the caster last fight, that helped too. The dm didn't like rolling everything twice, so I'll use that very sparingly :smallbiggrin:.

[jiriku]

If it helps your conversation with the DM, here's some direct text from the Arcadian Avenger's entry in Monster Manual V. If you are lawful good or lawful neutral, it should be all clear. And if you're not, using summon monster IV to grab 1d3 huge fiendish monstrous centipedes from the level 3 list isn't a bad approach either.


FOR PLAYER CHARACTERS
A non-evil, lawful spellcaster can summon an Arcadian avenger using summon monster IV or a higher-level summon monster spell. Treat the Arcadian avenger as if it were on the 4th-level list on the Summon Monster table (PH 287). Non-evil, lawful clerics can use a planar ally spell to call an Arcadian avenger, who demands payment in the form of a task furthering the cause of law.

Edit: You're using Cityscape then! If retraining rules are available, perhaps you'd consider retraining Deceptive Spell to Fell Drain and then taking Invisible Spell. Invisible shares that subtle, tricksy quality that Deceptive, but if you're throwing area spells like web and kelgore's grave mist, they have the added advantage that foes can't tell where the dangerous areas on the battlefield are. A simple 0-level message spell can be used to keep your allies informed.

[StreamOfTheSky]

It does look like something weird is up with the warblade and his invis, but I'm assuming it's checked with the dm. Not up to me to keep that sort of stuff straight, I think.

Well, it mattered to me because if the DM is allowing custom / houserule stuff for the warblade... you guys should be asking him to do such for the monk as well. It's one of the weakest classes printed in all of 3rd edition, it needs all the help it can get. If your DM is already providing homebrew buffs *anyway*, it's worth pursuing. We can suggest things to ask for as buffs.

[Divide by Zero]

Well, it mattered to me because if the DM is allowing custom / houserule stuff for the warblade... you guys should be asking him to do such for the monk as well. It's one of the weakest classes printed in all of 3rd edition, it needs all the help it can get. If your DM is already providing homebrew buffs *anyway*, it's worth pursuing. We can suggest things to ask for as buffs.

Ask the DM to give him some partially charged wands.

[nedz]

Ask the DM to give him some partially charged wands.

Yeah — Mr Monk just needs to spend more skill points on UMD

[lord_khaine]

That were about as rude and unnececary as a couple of comments can be in a thread made to help someone :smallannoyed:

edit.


It does look like something weird is up with the warblade and his invis, but I'm assuming it's checked with the dm. Not up to me to keep that sort of stuff straight, I think.

Even DM's makes mistakes, and theirs usually have a larger impact.
But let me guess.. the Warblade has a maneuver that he uses each round as a free action? and then refreshes to use again?

[Trilby]

Yes, free action at the end of every round. Homebrew buffs aren't really a deliberate thing in this campaign--'low magic' (items), le sigh--so either the war blade found a (cheesy) way to make invisibility happen, or I guess something's up. But as mentioned before, I'm looking for different solutions, because I don't want to force other people to play differently (not up to me to enforce the rules).

Regarding the blue MOAR UMD WIZARDMONKY, that's kind of what I'm trying to accomplish without costing the guy his actions :smallbiggrin: (he's happy with his play style, just not about getting hit all the time).

Invisible spell is banned, sadly. It was my first choice for a metamagic feat. Really liking the Arcadian Avenger, so thanks for that. Like I said, I'll be trying the more offensive spellcasting next session.

[Averis Vol]

See if the DM will be a bro and let him take the invisible fist ACF, trading away his evasion for 1 per 3 rounds, and at level 9, blink for wis mod rounds per 3 rounds (or, forever basically.) this is something he should have taken at level two, but if he's having trouble with survivability, maybe the DM will throw the poor guy a bone.

[sideswipe]

wait until he is asleep.... stay with me on this .... and KILL HIM!!!

tell him you have saved him from his plight. make an unarmed swordsage or an unarmed fighter. or weirdly i always liked the idea of a half (minotaur/ogre/some sort of big muscular race and templates. whatever as long as its big, faster moving and strong and tough) unarmed scout.

the idea being that you have a lot of strength and con. so the small hit die hurts less. you dont really need much dex. just strength and con and enough dex to get a decent tumble.

you pick up a level of totem barbarian lion at some point and the rest is scout and maybe ranger for swift hunter. (the weapon style feats are a bit wasted but hey grab a bow too).
but i think the best is scout rogue and grab swift ambusher.

you then have a really big guy just dancing around you avoiding all AoO and hitting you in the weak spots for massive damage. REALLY massive damage. and doing it with his fists.

if you can reach DC 40 in tumble even better. but probs not.

otherwise just boots of battle charger, and pounce. or until you get to about ECL10 you only have 1 attack. so just move and strike, move and strike.