Need help with a combination purely for flavor

[RNightstalker]

Ah yes, another "this build would be cool to try someday" thread. But this time I'm asking for a friend lol. No, really, a buddy wants to do a monk base with a pirate prestige class. The problem is the only two I've pulled up have opposing alignment restrictions: monk's are any lawful, and pirates are by their trade non-lawful. Is there any way to make this work without screwing things up too much, or is there another sea-themed PrC that I'm missing that a monk could actually prestige into? I know there's the Drunken Master but that seems like low-hanging fruit. While it definitely fits the bill, it is also overly generalized to fit in where any drunkard seems appropriate.

My buddy thanks you in advance.

[pabelfly]

Maybe you can justify it by saying that pirates adhere to the laws set down by the pirate captain and the crew.

[Inevitability]

Would you need to be a monk? An unarmed swordsage can be nonlawful no problem and gets most of the monk's toolkit.

There's also Inquisitor of the Drowning Goddess, but it's kuo-toa exclusive...

Nightsong Enforcer might work if you want to focus on the leadership, 'pirate captain' esque side the way Dread Pirate does.

Ninja of the Crescent Moon is a monk-targeted SA class but otherwise doesn't really fit the pirate niche.

[Falcii]

Legendary Captain from Stormwrack is an option. No alignment reqs and could definitely work with the pirates code angle.

I'd also personally reflavor monk to be something of a pugilist, but that's just me.

[Chronos]

Most "pirates", historically, have had the sponsorship of some government or quasi-government or another (and the hatred of all other governments and quasi-governments, of course). Even if you interpret "lawful" as literally "follows the law", there's still plenty of room for piracy.

[ciopo]

What level are you talking about,both starting and ending?
Nominally, he can simply stop being lawful after he's done taking his early monk levels until he qualifies for his pirate/corsair prestige class of choice, the only "drawback" from not being lawful anymore is not being allowed to take more monk levels, or if we want to be nitpicky he can't gain any more monk level anyway once he has one level jn any other class, so no big loss either way if he etarts to carouse until he ism't lawful anymore. He doesn't lose any of the monk class features!

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Chaos Monk from Dragon 335 p88 must be any chaotic alignment. Monk is absolutely awful, don't use it, go Unarmed Swordsage instead. Or go with literally any melee build and wear a Monk's Belt (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/wondrousItems.htm#beltMonks).

Scarlet Corsair (https://web.archive.org/web/20180127075713/http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/iw/20050805b) may be worth a look, if your'e into intimidating, but I'd only bother with five levels. Fighter 9 with Zhentarim Soldier (https://web.archive.org/web/20211001135255/http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/we/20060327a) (reflavored), Thug (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/variantCharacterClasses.htm#fighterVariantThug), and Sneak Attack (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/variantCharacterClasses.htm#fighter) instead of bonus feats would be a good start for going into that. Take Imperious Command in DotU, so you can Initmidate as a swift action, Scourge of the Seas makes it affect all enemies in 30 ft., and they'll cower for a number of rounds equal to your Cha modifier.

[Maat Mons]

What aspects of Monk and Pirate are you looking to incorporate? Personally, I envision Pirates fighting with cutlasses, which would mean ditching the whole unarmed aspect of Monk. You could keep the unarmed aspect. If you use the Unorthodox Flurry feat (Dragon Compendium, p109), you could even keep Flurry of Blows.

[Saintheart]

Stupid idea: reverse it, go Swashbuckler 4/Fist of the Forest 3/back into Swashbuckler. MAD as hell, but you punch things harder and more intelligently.

[Harrow]

Depending on how much work your friend is willing to put in and the permissiveness of the DM in question, you might be able to back-port the Pathfinder Brawler in place of Monk levels. It's good at punching things, doesn't wear heavy armor, gets around the Combat Expertise Int tax and picks up some bonus feats, all without any alignment requirements. They lack a lot of the mysticism of the Monk, so if that's a necessary part of the character, then Unarmed Swordsage is likely the way to go.

[Moak]

Maybe you can replace Monk with a Battledancer (from Dragon Magazine Compendium), that is a sort of monk-debuffer Cha based that must be chaotic.

There was also a Chaos Monk on a Dragon magazine that had a variable flurry of blows (I don't remember the dragon magazine issue)

[Bonzai]

Pirate crews usually had charter, a strict hierarchy, and were democratic in nature. While piracy is generally against the laws of nations, the crew itself has its own laws and codes of conduct.

[Telonius]

Kind of echoing some of the others here, but the standard advice is, usually, whatever you want to get from Monk can be had from better sources. What part of "Monk" does your buddy want to be able to do - high movement, unarmed combatant, martial artist feel, able to fall off a mainsail and not splat on the deck?

For what it's worth, I think that the Monk class is a pretty decent skill chassis for the things that a typical sailor would want to do. A level or two dip wouldn't sink the build. I'd also suggest that you shouldn't get too hung up on the prestige class names, and pay more attention to what the features give you. A high-level Rogue/Swashbuckler who says, "Arr!" a lot, might be just as good at pirate-ing as a Scarlet Corsair. It all depends on what you want the build to accomplish.

[RNightstalker]

Would you need to be a monk? An unarmed swordsage can be nonlawful no problem and gets most of the monk's toolkit.

There's also Inquisitor of the Drowning Goddess, but it's kuo-toa exclusive...

Nightsong Enforcer might work if you want to focus on the leadership, 'pirate captain' esque side the way Dread Pirate does.

Ninja of the Crescent Moon is a monk-targeted SA class but otherwise doesn't really fit the pirate niche.

Yeah we need to have some sort of monk in it. It's a flavor thing, not an optimization.


Legendary Captain from Stormwrack is an option. No alignment reqs and could definitely work with the pirates code angle.

I'd also personally reflavor monk to be something of a pugilist, but that's just me.

I remember going over that and totally missing it. That might have to work.


What level are you talking about,both starting and ending?
Nominally, he can simply stop being lawful after he's done taking his early monk levels until he qualifies for his pirate/corsair prestige class of choice, the only "drawback" from not being lawful anymore is not being allowed to take more monk levels, or if we want to be nitpicky he can't gain any more monk level anyway once he has one level jn any other class, so no big loss either way if he etarts to carouse until he ism't lawful anymore. He doesn't lose any of the monk class features!

No campaign for it yet, just getting things together.


What aspects of Monk and Pirate are you looking to incorporate? Personally, I envision Pirates fighting with cutlasses, which would mean ditching the whole unarmed aspect of Monk. You could keep the unarmed aspect. If you use the Unorthodox Flurry feat (Dragon Compendium, p109), you could even keep Flurry of Blows.

Might be able to work the cutlass in as a "monk" weapon, could stretch it for a Kukri or something like that.


Stupid idea: reverse it, go Swashbuckler 4/Fist of the Forest 3/back into Swashbuckler. MAD as hell, but you punch things harder and more intelligently.

That's a possibility, I'll have to look into incorporating Swashbuckler since it definitely fits thematically. Isn't there something in Complete Scoundrel that combines monk and swashbuckler?


Depending on how much work your friend is willing to put in and the permissiveness of the DM in question, you might be able to back-port the Pathfinder Brawler in place of Monk levels. It's good at punching things, doesn't wear heavy armor, gets around the Combat Expertise Int tax and picks up some bonus feats, all without any alignment requirements. They lack a lot of the mysticism of the Monk, so if that's a necessary part of the character, then Unarmed Swordsage is likely the way to go.

Kinda still need to be some sort of monk.


Kind of echoing some of the others here, but the standard advice is, usually, whatever you want to get from Monk can be had from better sources. What part of "Monk" does your buddy want to be able to do - high movement, unarmed combatant, martial artist feel, able to fall off a mainsail and not splat on the deck?

For what it's worth, I think that the Monk class is a pretty decent skill chassis for the things that a typical sailor would want to do. A level or two dip wouldn't sink the build. I'd also suggest that you shouldn't get too hung up on the prestige class names, and pay more attention to what the features give you. A high-level Rogue/Swashbuckler who says, "Arr!" a lot, might be just as good at pirate-ing as a Scarlet Corsair. It all depends on what you want the build to accomplish.

Yeah well like the title says, it's for flavor, not optimization. I'm definitely liking the swashbuckler idea so I'll try to incorporate that. And losing the lawful to turn to piracy could be part of the story why the character turns from the path of the monk.

Any other ideas?

[Maat Mons]

First thing that comes to mind:

Monk 2 / Rogue 3
ACFs: Penetrating Strike (Rogue), Sleeping Tiger (Monk)
Feats: Improved Initiative, Two-Weapon Fighting, Unorthodox Flurry (cutlass), Weapon Finesse



Normally, I’d prefer to put the Rogue levels first, for more skill points, but you said you like the idea of starting as a Monk and picking up the less reputable aspects later.

A Couple of the fighting styles in Dragon 330 give Monks the ability to treat short swords as Monk weapons. Cutlasses are essentially short swords with the damage type changed to slashing and a nigh-useless bonus to avoid being disarmed.

Maybe later go for Martial Study and Martial Stance to pick up Island of Blades. Snap Kick is nice too.

If you like Swashbuckler, the Daring Outlaw feat could make that a sensible addition to the above build stub. Annoyingly though, Swashbuckler wants Int while Monk wants Wis. You could remedy that with either Carmendine Monk or Kung Fu Genius.

[Harrow]

Yeah we need to have some sort of monk in it. It's a flavor thing, not an optimization.


Kinda still need to be some sort of monk.


Yeah well like the title says, it's for flavor, not optimization.

I'm a little confused by what you're saying. I was assuming that you were looking for mechanics that supported a "monk/pirate" concept. Flavor is highly mutable, only really straining when you can't accomplish things that you're supposed to be good at. You could have a character that's a monk, that only has levels in Fighter. Something like Brawler, if you're looking for a character that's supposed to be good at punching people, or Unarmed Swordsage if you want to be less good at wrestling but more mystical, both make for a character that's an excellent monk. But, it sounds like you're hard-set on taking levels in the Monk class. So, acknowledging that you don't need levels in Monk for your character to be a monk, why do you want to have levels in the Monk class? Like, what parts of the fantasy archetype are you looking to fulfill?

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Yeah we need to have some sort of monk in it. It's a flavor thing, not an optimization.

Classes don't exist in-character, there's absolutely no in-character flavor about picking a given class, apart from the abilities granted correctly portraying that flavor. You can flavor your character any way you want regardless of what classes you pick, as long as their abilities match the flavor. Order of the Stick taught us this with Miko the "samurai" who's a multiclass character with no levels in any class named samurai.

Flavor Is Free (https://tabletopbuilds.com/flavor-is-free/), i.e. there's no opportunity cost to flavoring your character however you want to. Taking levels of Monk is not free, as you're wasting levels on a weak class that's going to make your build weaker overall. Figure out a strong, synergystic build that has abilities similar to a monk, call the character a monk all you want, you don't need to bother with any actual monk class levels to accomplish this.

[RNightstalker]

I'm a little confused by what you're saying. I was assuming that you were looking for mechanics that supported a "monk/pirate" concept. Flavor is highly mutable, only really straining when you can't accomplish things that you're supposed to be good at. You could have a character that's a monk, that only has levels in Fighter. Something like Brawler, if you're looking for a character that's supposed to be good at punching people, or Unarmed Swordsage if you want to be less good at wrestling but more mystical, both make for a character that's an excellent monk. But, it sounds like you're hard-set on taking levels in the Monk class. So, acknowledging that you don't need levels in Monk for your character to be a monk, why do you want to have levels in the Monk class? Like, what parts of the fantasy archetype are you looking to fulfill?

I apologize for the confusion. And you're right, I do need to review the thread and take another look at the suggestions. It's probably going to go two levels of monk and then "yeah this isn't working let's do something else". There's no intent of optimization but hopefully by the end of the progression the character would be able to hold his own.

[pabelfly]

I apologize for the confusion. And you're right, I do need to review the thread and take another look at the suggestions. It's probably going to go two levels of monk and then "yeah this isn't working let's do something else". There's no intent of optimization but hopefully by the end of the progression the character would be able to hold his own.

If you're dead-set on taking Monk levels, the Tashalatora feat would let you combine psionics with being a Monk, and the Ascetic Mage feat would let you combine Monk and Sorcerer (and get CHA to AC instead of WIS). For Tashalatora, you can use one of your monk bonus feats at first or second level to pick up the prerequisite feat Monastic Training.

If I were going full mundane, I'd probably go with Chaos sorcerer and take a level of Barbarian to get Pounce, then just go Fighter for the extra feats and full BAB progression. But I think an unarmed build would be better off with Barb/Fighter than Barb/Monk/Fighter, and just use your spare feats to give yourself whatever flavour you think your Monk character would have.