Monk prestige class suggestions.

[Doomboy911]

I'm looking for monk prestige classes. I've never played a monk before and I want to know if they have anything interesting.

My focus would be sticking to actual martial arts principles and techniques and keeping away from developing magic. If there's anything like iron body techniques that would be the most interesting to me.

[Anxe]

Tattooed Monk gives some protective stuff. If you're into Dragonball Z sort of things you can also go Warlock/Monk/Enlightened Fist

[Metahuman1]

Enlightened fist combined with either Astectic Mage or Carmadine Monk (Or Kung Fu Genius.) and then some combo of Spellsword/Abjurant champion, or going to Sacred fist with a dip into a Divine Casting Class, Cleric being the best for your purposes, is really the best thing you can do with the monk.

Next best option is to pick up some Psionics Levels and the Tashlorana feat, and maybe Kung Fu Genius or something depending on your manifesting stat, and perhaps a Psionic Prestige Class.

After that, Just multyclass into Spirit Lion Totem Barbarian for a few levels, grab Superior Unarmed Strike as a feat, maybe a Monk's rune if you can get it more reasonably priced, and if you can get it more reasonably priced, maybe a dip into Warblade and/or Crusader, then pick up straight swordsage. In fact, retrain the actual monk levels into swordsage, you'll be better off, trust me.

[Rondodu]

That would be Carmendine Monk. David Carradine is a different kind of monk.

[sideswipe]

i would look at drunken master (for the LOL's)

[Hiro Quester]

Drunken master for the fun of it. Indeed. Doesn't add much power over your typical limited monk. But more fun

Fist of the forest can also be fun. Though having to always sleep in wild terrain makes city adventures difficult.

But unarmed swordsage will always kick a monks butt.

[Karl Aegis]

I'm particularly fond of the Zerth Cenobite prestige class. It lets you walk up walls and punch people into next week.

The Monk class doesn't do martial arts particularly well and doesn't have particularly useful class features. It's just a bad class overall, and doesn't even qualify for Drunken Master if you've taken enough ACFs to make the class useful. Sohei 5/ Rogue 2/ Drunken Master 9 is a much better build because it gives you an armor bonus on top of heavy armor.

[Doomboy911]

Most of these seem to introduce magic into the monk which is something I'm trying to avoid. The focus is on his physical abilities. I'm trying to make him physically tougher as I've already gone some paths to make him almost unkillable.

[Troacctid]

If I had to pick a nonmagical Monk prestige class, I'd probably go with Dragon Descendant, from Dragon Magic. Channel the abilities of your dragon ancestor spirits.

Psionic Fist is also not really that magical if you don't want it to be. It gives you powers that do things like increase your movement speed, let you run up walls, make a full attack on a charge, gain temporary HP, see through illusions, escape from effects that hinder your movement, and so on. These are all things Monks are already doing--it just lets you harness the power of your ki to do them better.

[Madhava]

If you aren't going the gish-route (plenty of good options here, and they're always the first to be mentioned), then, for the love of everything, be good to your BAB.

Because terrible BAB is half of everything that's wrong about the Monk. And stacking a bunch of medium-BAB PrC's on top of a medium-BAB base class will net you a BAB that's sub-terrible.

Consider Fist of the Forest and Warblade, for starters. Even consider Shou Disciple, because it's five levels of full BAB plus unarmed damage progression. And consider a level of Fighter of two, if you find you need the extra feats.

Lion Totem Barbarian would be nice, if you have one of those DM's who doesn't care about silly things like rules. Or, rules as they pertain to alignment restrictions. Monk + Barbarian isn't exactly legal. But you shouldn't find yourself wanting for pounce overly much, if you've taken levels of Warblade. Tiger claw manuevers are a fine substitution for pounce.

[Karl Aegis]

If you don't want magical you basically only have Bloodstorm Blade. Assuming you took Decisive Strike and Invisible Fist like a good Monk, you can throw a shuriken every other round using two standard actions and thunderous throw decisive strike power attack for a decent amount of damage, possibly even killing something before it gets to you.

[sideswipe]

or you know just go monk 2/fighter 2/ really doesn't matter but something cool the rest. (possibly feat rogue 2)(possibly factotum 8 for iaijitsu and extra standard actions that do double damage!) (and you will probably still have room for a nice monk prestige)

passive way, decisive strike, invisible fist, and possibly a couple other nice trades but that is the bulk.

be some sort of LA 1 ish race (i suggest half Minotaur human but you could go with something that gives str) and get large size and a nice amount of bonus str. make sure your dex is really decent too (like a 20 or so at least)

feats look a little like this (move things around so they actually fit).

monk2/fighter 2/feat rogue 2/factotum 8/prestige 6 of whatever

monk bonus 1- improved unarmed strike
monk bonus 1 - combat expertise
1- kung fu genius (or cardemine monk)
human - aberration blood
fl- inhuman reach
fl- exotic weapon prof rope dart or meteor hammer
monk 2- improved trip
3- knockdown
fighter 1- improved initiative
fighter 2- dirty fighting (this nets you the martial arts style of the broken fist from dragon mag pg 309)
feat rogue 1- combat reflexes
feat rogue 2-battle jump
6- martial study (tiger claw) sudden leap.
9- font of inspiration (or travel devotion)
12- font of inspiration
15- font of inspiration
18 - font of inspiration
(you could go for broken fist mastery 2 but its a bit redundent)

the idea being that you are a large humanoid and can therefore pick up an item of enlarge person to make huge.
you are a human with a Minotaur mother and a very brave aberration blooded father slightly on the crazy/infatuated side with this giant cow woman....

you should have at last a good int, a good dex, a decent con, and OMG str. as high as you can get it (quite easy with size boosts).

using your clever fighting styles of your monk heritage you have mastered the meteor hammer (or rope dart) and the decisive strike techniques. meaning that you can attack from afar and for great damage, whereas other monks just march right into nomming range of the gibbering mouther and pitter patter off it in a flurry.
using a technique you have learned you are able to trip any opponent you hit with your meteor hammer by striking certain pressure points and getting attacks against your newly disabled and prone foe.
eventually mastering the style of the broken fist you were able to topple opponents of a much greater size, even giants and colossal creatures with your techniques.
learning to move and duck and weave in your new fighting style you are creating you gain evasion (rogue) and the ability to jump at a moments notice and fall your weapon onto your opponents giving you the edge.
with this perfected style you now travel learning all manner of things and using your intelligence as a greater and greater weapon. your much smarter then other Minotaur and most other monks. the more you adapt your style to things you encounter the more you perfect it with moment of genius inspiration and advantages that you can build up and unleash.

like i said, this could develop into other monk stuff, but you get a full round attack that does double damage and a reach of 45 ft (when not enlarged) and a reach of 60ft when enlarged. with a lot of AoO that all do double damage you do a lot.
on top of this you get another attack for each person you attack that deals double since you have knockdown.
so with a dex of 20 and say 9 inspiration points you get-

1 full round action attack.
3 extra standard actions for attacks in the encounter which give 3 trip attempts which gets 3 extra attacks for free
5 AoO per round that get a trip attempt and a free attack.
a swift action jump to act as a movement and a battle jump.
or just swift action movement 1 encounter a day with travel devotion
extra 1d4 (lol) damage on your full attack action with decisive strike with dirty fighting (dubious)

all the many many attacks each round do double damage.

how is this for a martial arts master? i built it specifically with a martial technique in mind and using martial arts techniques in the rules.

edit - i forgot your swift action invisibilities and iaijitsu damage you would get on your first attack because of it..

[Psyren]

Shou Disciple is a good mundane monk PrC as it boosts your BAB and lets you flurry with martial weapons. It's also short, so you can combine it with one of the others listed here. (My personal favorite would be Tattooed Monk, the all-day supernatural Alter Self solves a lot of monk woes.)

[General Sajaru]

As far as I'm aware most of the prestige classes that allow you to keep taking levels of monk have- at best- middle BAB progression, which, as mentioned above, isn't going to do you any favors.

There's the Ascetic Knight feat (CAd) that would allow you to multi-class into paladin, but don't feel like that's what you're looking for.

If you want to increase your grappling ability, the Reaping Mauler (CW) is a decent option, although it'd be just as easy to make a Fighter/Rogue 1/Reaping Mauler, and he'd have a better BAB.

Other than that, beyond the classes other people have mentioned, there aren't many good ones that focus on unarmed combat.

[Doomboy911]

So I'm going to mention what I have for the character so far via some loopholes. I feel he has a significant ace up his sleeve which we may be able to build around.

He's a vampire, some special tricks to protect him from some weaknesses and the ok from the dm to his backstory allowing him to be a vampire without putting levels into it. He had been bitten, changed and then he slew the vampire who turned him. So he's got vampire abilities backing his monk powers.

[(Un)Inspired]

Skip going into a prestige class and take ardent levels along with Tashslatora. Now you have avoided learning magic (although Ur a Priest would be cool too...) and you've retained mystic monk blah blah blah powerful mind and spiritual warrior flavor.

[WhamBamSam]

So I'm going to mention what I have for the character so far via some loopholes. I feel he has a significant ace up his sleeve which we may be able to build around.

He's a vampire, some special tricks to protect him from some weaknesses and the ok from the dm to his backstory allowing him to be a vampire without putting levels into it. He had been bitten, changed and then he slew the vampire who turned him. So he's got vampire abilities backing his monk powers.Unless you got the template for free, or are acquiring subordinate vampires much more powerful than yourself, that's probably going to make you worse, not better.

[atemu1234]

Drunken master for the fun of it. Indeed. Doesn't add much power over your typical limited monk. But more fun

Fist of the forest can also be fun. Though having to always sleep in wild terrain makes city adventures difficult.

But unarmed swordsage will always kick a monks butt.

Ah, Drunken Master. Because who doesn't want to see an Orc's face when he gets put down by an old drunk?

Just don't try to separate him from his booze. Nope, not even then.

[Metahuman1]

If you want to increase your grappling ability, the Reaping Mauler (CW) is a decent option, although it'd be just as easy to make a Fighter/Rogue 1/Reaping Mauler, and he'd have a better BAB.


Yeah, don't do this. Reaping Mauler is a massive, massive, massive trap. It will, long run, make you significantly worse at grappling, to the point that you won't be able to use it.



Now, that Vampire thing is probably gonna hose you. Not gonna lie, but, have you ever heard of Fistbeard Beardfist? (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?116838-Fistbeard-Beardfist)