Swordsage Variant

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Okay, friend of mine was really wanting to do a 'fists of fury' kind of character in a game I will shortly be running. Only problem is that it's the 'beta test' for my Incantation classes that goes along with ToB. As you might expect, a Monk will just... yea. So I have a suggested variant to the Swordsage that gives them the unarmed niftiness without the suck.

Replace
All Discipline Focus and Armor Proficency

With
monk unarmed attack progression, monk Flurry progression (for unarmed ONLY), Monk Ki Strike progression.

Balanced? Unbalanced?

[Stycotl]

he's gaining more than he's sacrificing, but since monk was such an underachiever anyway, looks good to me.

[ZeroNumerous]

Might wanna include a little line that says Swordsage flurry can be done as a standard action to get rid of some of the suck.

[Roderick_BR]

You are giving up the discipline focus for flurry and ki strike. Not that bad a trade.
Flurry will get better at higher levels, and ki strike is not really all that powerful. Some magic itens and many maneuvers works better for it, but getting it working all the time is good enough to replace the discipline focus without making it overpowered.
Trading light armor proficiency for full unarmed damage progression was cheesey for me in the first place anyway.

[Stycotl]

it's been a while since i've done anything w/ monks, but wasn't the idea of a flurry to add attacks to the end of a full attack routine? are you suggesting that the monk could make a full attack+flurry as a standard act, or are you suggesting that the monk could add his extra one or two attacks from flurry to a single standard attack?

or are you suggesting something that i am missing completely?

i'll be the first to admit that my one-track mind is short enough that a lot of concepts go right over the top of it...

aaron out.

[EvilElitest]

Fluff (cruch) is always a nice thing to read (hint hint)
from
EE

[ShneekeyTheLost]

it's been a while since i've done anything w/ monks, but wasn't the idea of a flurry to add attacks to the end of a full attack routine? are you suggesting that the monk could make a full attack+flurry as a standard act, or are you suggesting that the monk could add his extra one or two attacks from flurry to a single standard attack?

or are you suggesting something that i am missing completely?

i'll be the first to admit that my one-track mind is short enough that a lot of concepts go right over the top of it...

aaron out.

This is a swordsage build, not a monk build. I will be giving swordsages Flurry like a monk, which is to say, with a Full Attack action, and Ki Strike so his unarmed attacks won't suck so hard against things with DR/magic. I will be removing the Discipline Focus line in exchange. Oh, and swapping out unarmed damage as a monk for light armor proficency.

That's all the crunch. It's a simple swap-out, everything else is the same. All the 'fluff' is the same. He's just a more 'martial artist' sort of swordsage.

[ZeroNumerous]

or are you suggesting something that i am missing completely?

I'm suggesting that this variant(and by extension, all monks) should gain his extra flurry attack(s) as a standard action. Rather than standing around trading full attacks with a monster and dying horribly.

[Stycotl]

thank you zero. that was what i was wondering. i like the idea of being able to flurry even on standard action attacks. that will add some leverage to the otherwise feathweight monk (and in this case, more-monkish-than-normal-swordsage).