Gestalt Warlock//Monk Help

[RedneckMonkey]

I'm having two slight issues with a build that I'm thinking of making as a back up character for a campaign that I'm currently in, and my Google-Fu has failed to properly come up with answers. The build, as you already saw, is a Gestalt Monk//Warlock build.

My first issue is if Enlightened Fist is worth it or not. I'm tempted to say "No," since rereading the class shows that the PrC wouldn't get the ability to Flurry with EB held since it says that only one usage per Full Round Attack.

My second issue was brought on by an epiphany. Unorthodox Flurry from Dragon Compendium says that you can choose one light weapon that you are now proficient in, and you may treat the weapon as a Monk Weapon that you can use in a Flurry of Blows. Eldritch Blast is a Ray Spell like Ability, and Rays are considered as weapons for several feats, and my searching has brought up that they're considered to be Light Weapons. Would I be able to take Unorthodox Flurry (Ray) and fire off a shower of Eldritch Blasts??

[Troacctid]

The gestalt rules suggest that enlightened fist shouldn't actually be allowed. That said, it's not actually any good, so I would still skip it either way.

Only melee touch spells count as light weapons, and, AFAICT, only for the purpose of Weapon Finesse. "Ray" is not a valid choice for unorthodox flurry. My recommendation, assuming you have access to magazine content, would be to stick with the classic Eldritch Claws + Beast Strike combo. Then your unarmed strikes will simply deal eldritch blast damage—and I don't have the book in front of me, so someone can correct me if I'm misremembering, but I believe claws are a valid choice for Unorthodox Flurry. Alternatively, trade away flurry of blows for either decisive strike or rage, neither of which restricts you to monk weapons.

[RedneckMonkey]

I'm allowed access to the Beast Strike+ Eldritch Claw combination, and I had already planned on taking it. I was willing to sacrifice half of the combo's unarmed damage for both range and blast mods.

As for the Enlightened Fist I know that the progression of both Monk and Warlock wasn't optimal with the way that Gestalt works, but seeing as how I really only care about the Eldritch Blast for the Clawlock anyways it was no biggie.

I'd thought that Eldritch Blast was a valid option for Unorthodox Flurry seeing as how it was treated as a Ray. I'd read in another thread on how, since there's no difference between a ranged or melee touch spell, they fell under the category of 'Armed' Unarmed Weapons.

[schreier]

Are you playing a Lawful evil character? Or using the Chaos monk variant? The alignment restrictions are somewhat problematic.

Instead of monk, you could go battle dancer from dragon compendium. It gives you the same unarmed damage as a monk, adds Charisma to AC (which is a synergy with warlock), and is chaotic alignment.

I know you can't take two prestige classes at once when building gestalt, so that hampers you some.

One class to consider is fist of the forest - you would have to clarify if you would get both con and wis to AC, or just one. With the 3 levels of fist of the forest though, you get 3 advances to your unarmed damage (which means you only need 12 levels of monk/battle dancer to max out monk damage)

My experience with flurry is that it is nicer in concept than reality, as the loss of BAB hurts more than gaining an extra attack, especially since you are combining two classes with less than full BAB.

One option would be to build in BAB classes since you are gestalt to maximize BAB (since warlock and monk are always 1 level off you would have max BAB).

For example:

level 1 - Barbarian / Warlock - Chaotic Good, take city brawler (give up weapons, get improved unarmed and TWF when unarmed), wolf totem (trip at lvl 2, give up uncanny dodge, trap sense) , lion spirit totem (pounce, give up fast move), whirling frenzy -- you would have d12 HP, 1 BAB, +2 to Will and Fort saves, 4 skill

level 2 - Monk / Warlock (switch to Lawful because you are taken into a monastery to control your rage or something) -- d8 hp, +1 BAB, +2 to all 3 saves, 3 skill - take martial monk to get fighter bonus feats most likely as they will be more helpful

level 3-13 - Monk / Warlock
Level 14-16 - Fist of the Forest / Warlock
Level 17-20 - Warlock / Enlightened Spirit (gives you +2d6 extra eldritch blast and a few more invocations)

[Troacctid]

I'd thought that Eldritch Blast was a valid option for Unorthodox Flurry seeing as how it was treated as a Ray. I'd read in another thread on how, since there's no difference between a ranged or melee touch spell, they fell under the category of 'Armed' Unarmed Weapons.
Not sure why someone would say there's no difference between them since there clearly is (you can't hold the charge for rays or deliver them with unarmed strikes, for example). Not that it matters, since even if it were a monk weapon, you can't cast a spell as part of a full attack. Closest you can get to that is...well, enlightened fist, I guess.

[Silvercrys]

I'm having two slight issues with a build that I'm thinking of making as a back up character for a campaign that I'm currently in, and my Google-Fu has failed to properly come up with answers. The build, as you already saw, is a Gestalt Monk//Warlock build.

My first issue is if Enlightened Fist is worth it or not. I'm tempted to say "No," since rereading the class shows that the PrC wouldn't get the ability to Flurry with EB held since it says that only one usage per Full Round Attack.Well, sort of, but also not. At 7th level of Enlightened Fist you can (probably, spell-like abilities are weird) use Hold Ray to get one unarmed strike+full EB damage. Might be good with the Decisive Strike monk from PHB II, though you won't be doing as much damage as the old reliable Eldritch Claws shape. Fun idea though.


My second issue was brought on by an epiphany. Unorthodox Flurry from Dragon Compendium says that you can choose one light weapon that you are now proficient in, and you may treat the weapon as a Monk Weapon that you can use in a Flurry of Blows. Eldritch Blast is a Ray Spell like Ability, and Rays are considered as weapons for several feats, and my searching has brought up that they're considered to be Light Weapons. Would I be able to take Unorthodox Flurry (Ray) and fire off a shower of Eldritch Blasts??Unfortunately, no, it doesn't reduce the action it takes to use Eldritch Blast. You can't use Unorthodox Flurry to get extra attacks with Eldritch Glaive, either, sadly, because it has an activation of 1 Full Round Action so you can't combine it with Flurry of Blows.

You might be able to argue that Daggerspell Mage's Invocation of the Knife allows you to apply slashing weapon feats like Slashing Flurry from the PHB II, which miiiiight give you two Eldritch Blasts and an extra Eldritch Glaive attack, but you'd have to be a Warlock 5/Daggerspell Mage||Rogue 3/Fighter or something for that and it doesn't come online until late (level 15ish). Whether it works or not depends on whether using an Eldritch Blast as a standard action counts as "using a standard action to attack with a slashing weapon" if it deals half slashing damage.

[Bphill561]

Schreier listed some important variants.




Instead of monk, you could go battle dancer from dragon compendium. It gives you the same unarmed damage as a monk, adds Charisma to AC (which is a synergy with warlock), and is chaotic alignment.

One class to consider is fist of the forest - you would have to clarify if you would get both con and wis to AC, or just one. With the 3 levels of fist of the forest though, you get 3 advances to your unarmed damage (which means you only need 12 levels of monk/battle dancer to max out monk damage)



Using some of his ideas, I would diverge a little further and drop monk completely especially if you cannot get multiple monk like ability scores to AC.

Level 1 - Barbarian / Warlock as suggested, but focus on the lion spirit totem and keep your weapons

Level 2-5 - Fighter / Warlock: This assumes dragon magazine is on the table, but the Pugilist variant of fighter is in dragon 310. Loss martial weapons and shields; but get endurance, improved unarmed strike, and a modified fighter bonus feat list. Grab Dodge, weapon focus unarmed strike, and Great Fortitude.

Level 6-10 - Shou Disciple / Warlock: You will need cross class tumble and balance at 4 ranks (Jump on warlock list), and some of the bonus feats above. Shou disciple is full BAB, gets 2d6 unarmed strike damage at level 5, and some bonus feats. Take Power Attack and Improved Initiative.

11 - 13 - Fist of the Forest 3 / Warlock: Now you are in business. Your unarmed strike is maxed at 2d10, you have your Con to AC, and you still have max BAB. More level 4 cross class skills needed, but you can swing it.

Up to that point, no feats need to be spent for class entry since they are all covered by bonus feats. If you are human, you can even afford Able Learner if you want better skill access. Take Eldritch Claws at 3 and Beast strike at 6. Primal living does not require you to give up gear, so you can always buy/craft a monks belt if you want Wis to AC or you can just cross Wisdom off your SAD list. Think about pumping your Con score and adding in the Steadfast Determination feat from Players handbook II. It replaces Wis with Con on Will saves, and a natural 1 on a Fortitude save is not considered an autofail. It requires the endurance feat, but once again already covered by bonus feats. The thing you loss here of course is furry of blows and any base monk class abilities you may have wanted.

To get ranged, look to the spell blood wind in the spell compendium. You are a warlock that can craft anything, see if you are allowed to make an use activated blood wind item. Now you can make all your unarmed attacks with a range increment of 20 feet. Blood wind is swift to cast, so according to the magic item compendium you can activate it that way as well even if it is not use activated and requires an action.

From here pretty much anything is open.

You can loss 4 BAB if you wish and still end up at 16 by level 20.

Hellfire warlock + Binder is on the table for 6d6 more damage. You can even take warlock across from your binder level to get to full warlock damage.

If you are really playing at high levels, Divine Crusader from Complete divine for 7 levels can grant you Charisma based spell casting from on domain list. 7th level spells at level 20 could be a nice add on.

If evil, you could go lawful evil Kensai and imbue your fists. Likewise Souleater would be on the table (can we say energy drain).

Bear Warrior + War shaper. More Con and Str, more natural weapons and damage, fast heal, melee reach, .... (Plus there is that low level druid spell that causes you to rage, another warlock crafting project)

Any Full BAB class or PrC verse warlock or warlock Prc. You even have room at this point to take a level of Duskblade if you low level spells to access arcane classes to advance warlock.

You can make up flurry of blows with haste effects. If you still want flurry, the level 5 ability of shou disciple still allows you flurry with any weapon so it is a consideration if you want to add in eldritch glaive. Overall though, it seems cleaner to leave it out.

[RedneckMonkey]

I greatly appreciate everyone's help and input, and several of these paths will be explored.

With my mind working as it does I wanted to see if the same concept would work by mixing Duskblade into the mix. The final character would be Duskblade 13, Monk 7, Warlock 10, and Enlightened Fist 10.

The way I was able to figure it out was that by the time I'm at level 13 I'll be able to activate my Eldrich Claw/Beast Strike Combo and add to it the effects of a Touch or Ray spell; i.e a Flurry of Blows that deals my Clawlock's combo, and has the effects of say a Ray of Enfeeblement or Scorching Ray. And if I need to, also by 13, be able to sacrifice half my unarmed damage to add Invocations to my Eldritch Blast rays to do a massive debuff to a single target or add the chaining effect to my strikes.

By my figuring I'd come out with 13 Caster Levels of Duskblade; the Unarmed Damage, AC Bonus, Speed, and Stunning Fist usage of a 17th Level Monk; the Eldritch Blast dice and Invocations of a Level 20th Warlock.