Skill-monkey ideas

[Miras]

Me and my ground are usually playing mildly optimized campaigns in DnD 3.5 , no real pressure to create "killer PCs" or "arms raicing" between players and DM. That being said, we like effective characters as nooone wants to feel useless when the roleplaying ends.

I'm looking for the ideas to create skill-monkey PCs. It feels nice to sneak around, prevent ambushes, gather clues with various skill checks. But in the end combat breaks out and I'd like to feel like I can add to the party value in this area as well. 2WF rogue and reliance on sneak attacks is one thing but I'd like to try something different from time to time (as sneak attacks are really easy to break too).

Do you guys have any ideas? I'd prefer to use a relatively small ammount of supplements (Complete series is just fine), Tome of Battle is a big no as noone in my group likes the idea behind this supplement. The goal is to create a character with a lots of skill points, not a full caster (and preferably with trapfinding) who can hold it's own in combat. I'm not really looking for full builds (those are welcome tho), it's more about brainstorming. At the moment I'm fiddling with the idea of spring-power-attack with a reach weapon.

[ComaVision]

So you want a Swordsage without using Tome of Battle, right?

Have you tried a Swift Hunter build yet?

[OldTrees1]

A "Rogue" (well, any skillmonkey with 1 die of sneak attack) that flanks can potentially Stagger someone on a flank assisted sneak attack. (Staggering Strike, Requires +6 BAB and +1d6 SA, Complete Adventurer). This would fit in with a Spring Attack build(provided enough land speed and tumble) and the DC would be increased by the damage bonus from Power Attack.

[Talionis]

My favorite Skill Monkey was an Incarnate (from Magic of Incarnum)... Look at Incarnate by the numbers in a google search to see how good they can be at playing Skill Monkey. You have to get a soulmeld or two with feats from Totemist so you can boost your Hide and Move Silently, but you can be extremely effective at a number of skills with an Incarnate. You aren't locked into one build and can give yourself a ton of versatility which is nice when you are the Skill Monkey.

I highly recommend a three level dip in Umbral Disciple. It will further boost your sneakiness and grant Hide in Plain Sight. I also really recommend a level of Psychic Rogue (ideally) or some other skill monkey base class for your first level so that you'll have a great base of skills to work from. Psychic Rogue works well with many of the feats found in Complete Incarnum, Azure Talent allows you to refill some of your lost Power Points with Psycarnum Infusion which allows you to fill up a Soulmeld with Essentia for a single round by expending your Psionic Focus. Psychic Rogue can also probably pick up a Power with a feat, to further give you something to do with your extra Power Points.

Magic of Incarnum is a very poorly organized book, but the classes in it are low tier 3 classes other than Soulborn which should never have been printed. Incarnum is a very fun system and creates for very cool management of a character that always has options. You shouldn't really break games, but you'll have a ton of fun playing the characters because you'll have lots of options.

[jok]

I would suggest the Factotum. The only thing this class is lacking is high damage numbers. Wich can be reached, but require some shenanigans with Ijiutsu focus.

Starting at mid levels a devine variant anima mage with cloistered cleric and one binder level should be an interesting twist on the skill monkey. Best domains would be kobold and trickery. So I guess one has to play a kobold. Between the domains, cleric casting and vestiges one should have enough options to deal with most classic skill monkey challenges. But this class would not have very high skill ranks.

[mabriss lethe]

I'd go with Spellthief. (I have a soft spot for them)

They have good skills and a solid number of skill points, 1/2 SA progression 1/2 casting from the largest list in the game (All level 1-4 spells from 5 sorc/wizard schools.) Steal spell and related abilities are a bit niche, but fun.(buy pearls of power/memento magica for any primary spellcasters in your party so that you can stay topped up on stolen spells without causing fellow pcs too much difficulty or waiting for a spellcasting foe to feast on.)

Feats like Master Spellthief and Gods blood spellthief can expand your options. and Craven can give you a solid damage boost to your otherwise small SA damage.

[Miras]

So you want a Swordsage without using Tome of Battle, right?

Have you tried a Swift Hunter build yet?

That's one way to look at it I guess. I'm not really looking into reaching swordsage power-level though. Just find a way to keep skillmonkeys relevant in straight combat.
You could say that "relevant = not being a deadweight" in this case.

Swift hunter is nice. I'll need to look it up again to gather some ideas.

[Curmudgeon]

I would suggest the Factotum. The only thing this class is lacking is high damage numbers.
No, that's not the only thing the class is lacking. It's lacking intelligibility. The Factotum may be the single worst-written class in all of D&D.

[ComaVision]

No, that's not the only thing the class is lacking. It's lacking intelligibility. The Factotum may be the single worst-written class in all of D&D.

I think Truenamer wins that prestigious award. At least Factotum's problems can be easily solved by a quick DM call.

[Grod_The_Giant]

I think Truenamer wins that prestigious award. At least Factotum's problems can be easily solved by a quick DM call.
Yeah. I'll take "slightly unclear wording" (that I suspect many groups don't even notice-- I sure didn't until I read Curmudgeon's complaints) over, oh, CWar Samurai any day.

In any case,

Scout is the simplest answer. You've got about the same skill set-up as a Rogue, albeit with a wilderness flair. Your extra d6s are safer and easier to trigger, but you don't get as many and they're harder to optimize. The Swift Hunter feat lets you flip into Ranger and continue improving your Skirmish damage, while also picking up a good BAB, spells, and still-excellent skill point loadout. Add on Sword of the Arcane Order and you've got a wonderfully well-rounded skill user.
Factotum is slightly more complex. It's got a lot of neat tricks, and has some of the best skill-boosting class abilities out there, but-- as mentioned-- it's a medium BAB class without a good source of bonus damage. Knowledge Devotion is a good and thematic boost, but not a huge one. Craven helps their d6 of sneak attack become marginally relevant. The Oriental Adventures skill Iajatsu Focus is usually mentioned, though that requires some work to use reliably.
Bard can do pretty well, though you need a dip to pick up Trapfinding. Bonus points for using the Bardic Knack ACF and Jack of All Trades feat, which lets you use 1/2 level in place of your ranks for everything.
Incarnate and, to a lesser extent, Totemist have, just, so many skill-boosting abilities. They're mildly complex and the book is very poorly edited, but they're also super-fun. The basic idea is that every morning they conjure up a bunch of quasi-real, quasi-magic-items called Soulmelds. Each meld grants a minor benefit which can be improved by investing essentia from your pool, which can be shifted from meld to meld as a swift action. (Think redirecting power to phasers, then to deflector shields, then to engines... that sort of thing.) As you progress in a class, you also unlock the ability to Bind melds, which unlocks a greater power. Theft Gloves, for example, grant a +2 bonus to Disable Device, Open Lock, and Sleight of Hand checks, which improves as you invest more essentia-- but if you bind it, you also get Trapfinding. Basilisk Mask grants low-light and darkvision, with range scaling with invested essentia, but if you bind it you get a 1-round petrification attack. Stuff like that.

Of the two, Incarnate has more varied melds but Totemist is more offensively-focused. (On the plus side, given how scaling and multiclassing work, a single dip in the one lets you shape (but not bind) all of the other classes' melds and use your own essentia to power them, and you can spend a feat to add a single one to your list). I'd probably got with a Totemist X/Incarnate 1, with a feat spent on Shape Soulmeld (Theft Gloves) if you care about Trapfinding.

[stanprollyright]

In any case,
[LIST]
Scout is the simplest answer. You've got about the same skill set-up as a Rogue, albeit with a wilderness flair. Your extra d6s are safer and easier to trigger, but you don't get as many and they're harder to optimize. The Swift Hunter feat lets you flip into Ranger and continue improving your Skirmish damage, while also picking up a good BAB, spells, and still-excellent skill point loadout. Add on Sword of the Arcane Order and you've got a wonderfully well-rounded skill user.
Factotum is slightly more complex. It's got a lot of neat tricks, and has some of the best skill-boosting class abilities out there, but-- as mentioned-- it's a medium BAB class without a good source of bonus damage. Knowledge Devotion is a good and thematic boost, but not a huge one. Craven helps their d6 of sneak attack become marginally relevant. The Oriental Adventures skill Iajatsu Focus is usually mentioned, though that requires some work to use reliably.
Bard can do pretty well, though you need a dip to pick up Trapfinding. Bonus points for using the Bardic Knack ACF and Jack of All Trades feat, which lets you use 1/2 level in place of your ranks for everything.


I have experience with all of these and they're all great options. Factotum is my favorite, but as has been mentioned it takes combining several tricks to be a successful damage dealer. Also of note is the Beguiler, which may be more of a caster than you're looking for, but is a great skillmonkey nonetheless. A dip into Warlock also offers several options for 24/7 skill boosts, and Eldritch Blast is nice for Rogues and Scouts wanting to do damage with a touch attack.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

The Beguiler class in PH2 is a superb skillmonkey and an ideal Tier 3 choice for a moderately optimized but not game breaking party. That can provide the party with nearly all the utility that comes with a more powerful arcane caster, but without the iwin buttons for combat. It's an Int-based caster, so you'll get tons of skill points from that as well, and it gets all the class skills that a Rogue does and then some. Ideally you would dip a single level of Mindbender at 6th level but stick with Beguiler for the rest of your class levels. Get Darkstalker and possibly Mindsight in Lords of Madness, and the rest of your feats can be pretty much anything you want. Arcane Disciple for the Travel domain could be useful if you have a decent Wis score, (Greater) Spell Focus for Enchantment or Illusion can be beneficial, and Dazzling Illusion and/or Unsettling Enchantment in CM would give you a bit more effectiveness in combat.

If you want to make the character a bit more powerful, Versatile Spellcaster is extremely beneficial as it can give you early access to the next higher level of spells, at the cost of spending all of your highest level slots for the day when used to do so. With Versatile Spellcaster and the Mindbender dip your Advanced Learning spells can be 2nd, 5th, 7th, 9th, and 9th level, in which case I would choose Ray of Stupidity, Shadow Form, Greater Shadow Conjuration, Greater Shadow Evocation, and Superior Invisibility.

[Chronos]

A straight incarnate really makes a pretty poor skillmonkey. They can almost match a straight rogue's numbers for most skills, but to do that, they need cross-class skill ranks, which they get very few of, which means that for all other skills, they'll be far behind. Plus, they have no means of getting respectable Hide or Move Silently. Yes, yes, I know, Shape Soulmeld for a totemist meld like Kruthik Claws... except that doesn't give you anything, either. If you're even remotely serious about Hide and Move Silently, then you'll already have items that boost them, and since both the items and the meld will be competence bonuses, they won't stack.

Plus, in order to get Trapfinding on a straight incarnate, you need to bind to your hands chakra, which means no Gloves of Dexterity. In other words, an Incarnate without items is comparable to a rogue without items, but why would you do that?

That said, however, a conventional skillmonkey build with a one-level dip into Incarnate is much better than either one separately. You'll only fall a little behind on skill ranks that way, but will still get most of the benefit of your Theft Gloves and other soulmelds.

[Grod_The_Giant]

I'll direct you to Incarnate By The Numbers (http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?471394-Incarnate-by-the-Numbers-(Todd)). The basic takeaway is that while it takes a little bit of cross-class investment to match a maxed-out class skill, it's not as hard as you think and you can get WAAAY more variety- just 2 to 4 melds and Able Learner will leave you matching the Rogue's investment, and you can change those out every day. A little less power, a lot more versatility. Rogue 1/Incarnate 19 is an excellent build, although you might splash in a level or two of Totemist for variety.

(As I recall there are also items in MoI that work with melds, so there's that too.)

[Âmesang]

Suddenly I want to use the awaken spell to play as an actual skill monkey. :smalltongue: Not sure if there'd be a viable way of trading out those initial animal HD, though.

(Alternatively there's the vanara from Oriental Adventures who could make a decent rogue/scout/ninja-type with their racial bonuses… but this is just me being silly.)

[Chronos]

Yes, I've read "Incarnate by the Numbers". That was the basis for my post. What that link showed was that a decently-optimized incarnate can nearly beat a zero-optimization rogue in some ways, just like I said. And even that disappears as soon as you look at any skill you didn't invest in cross-class (which is most of them, even with Able Learner), or allow the rogue standard items that any rogue will want (the bare minimum amount of optimization).

[BowStreetRunner]

I was looking into different ways to build a skill monkey (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?447110-3-5-How-many-ways-to-Skill-Monkey) a while back. Although I still haven't had the free time to play around with different builds for comparison's-sake, the thread itself may be worth a quick look for brainstorming purposes.