Question about a halfling..

[EndocrineBandit]

Racial substitution for a halfling with monk.. It gives a skirmish. There's a feat in the complete scoundrel that requires skirmish and sneak attack. halfling monk 5/rogue 1 and gain a bonus to skirmish as a scout equal to your rogue? Or would he need to have a level of scout, too?

[Bohandas]

Can you rephrase that? I'm not sure what you're getting at.

[claypigeons]

Racial substitution for a halfling with monk.. It gives a skirmish. There's a feat in the complete scoundrel that requires skirmish and sneak attack. halfling monk 5/rogue 1 and gain a bonus to skirmish as a scout equal to your rogue? Or would he need to have a level of scout, too?

Swift Ambusher allows you to stack rogue and scout levels to determine skirmish damage.

You'd need at least one level of scout, and even then, you'd gained only a couple extra d6 in damage over the course of your life. It's a lackluster investment.

[Extra Anchovies]

@Bohandas: the Halfling Monk substitution levels (Races of the Wild p. 158) provide (among other things) skirmish +1d6 at 1st level, and skirmish +1d6/+1 at 5th level. The Swift Ambusher feat (Complete Scoundrel p. 81) says "Your rogue and scout levels stack for the purpose of determining the extra damage and bonus to Armor Class granted when skirmishing." OP is wondering if a Halfling Monk 5/Rogue 1 could use monk levels in place of scout levels for that feat.

My answer to that is no, on two grounds.
1. Halfling-sub-Monk (hMonk) and Scout have different skirmish progressions. The Scout's skirmish damage starts at +1d6 at 1st level increasing by +1d6 every 4 levels above 1st, and +1 AC at 3rd level increasing by +1 AC every 4 levels above 3rd. The hMonk's skirmish damage starts at +1d6 at 1st level increasing to +2d6 at 11th level, and +1 AC at 5th level increasing to +2 AC at 15th level. The hMonk's skirmish does not follow the same formula as the Scout's, and increases at about half the rate.
2. In 3.5, a lack of a stat and a 0 in a stat are different. A character who cannot cast arcane magic does not have an arcane caster level of 0; they do not have an arcane caster level at all. The same goes for nonabilities (Con — and Con 0 are very different) as well. Extending that to class levels, a character with no levels in scout does not have 0 effective scout levels, they have — effective scout levels, which is not a number and thus cannot be added or added to. The same goes for other "stacks with ___ level for X" effects, such as Tashalatora.

But also... why hMonk 5? There's not much of anything that you're getting from Monk 3 or 4, and Monk 2/Scout 3 has Skirmish +2d6/+1 AC to the hMonk 5's +1d6/+1 AC.

[EndocrineBandit]

Was just something I stumbled upon browsing. In the Complete Adventurer there is a feat that also allows stacking of Monk/Rogue. I was thinking of like, a monk5/rogue10 for a sneak attack 5d6 and skirmish of 4d6 +4 AC, along with unarmed strike progression of a monk15, Without any actual levels of scout. Two weapon fighting, throwing shurikens. I thought it might be a mean little hit-and-run fighter.

[Blackhawk748]

You'd be better off with the standard Shuriken Machine Gun build, which is just Monk/Rogue/Master Thrower. Grab Palm throw and chuck stuff to your hearts content.