Monk TWF [3.5]

[SilverLeaf167]

If a monk accepts the penalties for fighting with two weapons, can he make an extra attack with his off-hand when full attacking?

[tyckspoon]

Answer is unclear. Ask again later.

It's a vigorously debated question. On balance, the very very technical answer seems to be no, but you can absolutely do it if you just pick up a monk weapon and use that as one of your weapons instead (recommend a Scorpion Kama once you have enough cash, because it will carry through your unarmed strike damage) and there's no real balance issues with letting people do it.

Personally, I think the RAW answer is yes, it's a similar situation to TWFing with armor spikes and other weapons that don't actually use a defined hand, but it's not a clear-cut situation.

[ffone]

There will be others more sure about the RAW answer, but my comments:

-Snap Kick is a much better feat for monks than TWF (actually, it is for most anyone who qualifies). It's like TWF but you can use it on standard action attacks, charges, AoOs, etc. Also I believe it will give you monk's progressive unarmed damage.

-The 'Rules of the Game' series at Wizards, for 'All About Unarmed Attacks' (easy to find via googling) gave me the impression you can TWF with unarmed and a weapon, and can even flurry with the unarmed, but not TWF with unarmed on 'both sides'. Nor can you do two flurries, even with unarmed + special monk weapon.

I realize the monk doesn't even need to use his hands....my explanation would be that the feat is 'two weapon fighting' rather than 'two hand fightng' (and sadly you need three or more hands for Multiweapon Fighting).

-It's probably suboptimal to TWF as a monk, for several reasons. First, your BAB is already 3/4ths, and your DM may not be letting you use an item like the Amulet of Natural Attacks to keep up with 'weapon' enhancement bonuses for the same price as fighter-types (and monks have bad MAD). Secondly, you have a lot of attacks with flurry, so that's more attacks already taking a -2. If your off hand attack has a 40% chance to hit, and is stealing 10% from four other attacks, it breaks even on expected number of hits, and thus is behind because of the feat investment, 1/2 Str damage, weapon investment, etc.

It might be worth it if your DM declares that you can TWF with unarmed on both sides, and using one cast of Greater Magic Fang/Weapon to enhance all those attacks (or one amulet of natural attacks), since then you're cheating the two-weapon investment cost faced by most TWFers (which I wouldn't allow as a DM, or attempt to 'slip in' as a player, and may be way the Wizards article suggests you have to use a different weapon on one side.) But even thenit'll only be worth it if you hit a high percentage of the time, and full attack often as well, and even then the only advantage vs Snap Kick I can think of is ITWF.

[SilverLeaf167]

Good point with the suboptimality.
Because the build is Monk 4/Swordsage 3/Shadow Sun Ninja 3, my FoB kind of sucks, as I get the same number of attacks normally without any penalty. Of course, I might have misunderstood how FoB works when you stop progressing as a Monk. Do you still simply get an extra attack with your best BAB, or do you use the BABs shown on the Monk table?

[tyckspoon]

You get another attack at your highest BAB; the table on the Monk class is just for quick reference assuming you are single-class Monk. All the base class tables and writeups are done with the assumption you straight-class it. Since Shadow Sun Ninja advances Flurry, you Flurry as a 7th level Monk- which means 1 extra attack at -1 to hit for all your attacks that round.

[Lord Vukodlak]

Huh-oh a monk TWF thread.

[SilverLeaf167]

Okay, that definitely makes Flurry a lot better. Combine that with Snap Kick, and that's 4 attacks. Each attack deals 3d8+5 damage (Improved Natural Attack, Superior Unarmed Strike, Monk's Belt), so if they all somehow hit, that's 12d8+20. Pretty good for a 10th-level character, right?

Another question that came to mind... the character is a Psychic Warrior gestalt, which I didn't find necessary to mention, for some reason. If I use expansion, my unarmed damage becomes that of a Huge Monk. How can I calculate how much that is? Do I use the next damage step from the Monk table (4d8), or does it get even higher?

[ffone]

SRD, I think, has tables for damage at all sizes. Increasing a size is different than increasing 4 monk levels.

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/equipment/weapons.htm

It may not have every case (3d8 is not found i the Large column, but it is in Huge, suggesting 4d8 is the next step).

At the high end, damage becomes exponential in size, and you can do ridiculous damage with stacking size increasers. And the reach and grapple mods are nice.

Personally, as a DM I would not let Expansion and Enlarge Person stack, as the former is obviously just the psionics rewrapping of the former, but either will stack with INA.

Another nice thing about Snap Kick, and bad thing about monk TWF, and monks in general, is two of the monk's best features - flurry and speed - are at loggerheads; you can't use both in the same round. Snap Kick lets a monk do long-range, two-attack charges, like a lesser pounce.

[ffone]

Huh-oh a monk TWF thread.

I recommend Googling the Rules of the Game article for anyone interested....it doesn't cover ever case, but it's an official treatment of monk TWF which is nice.

[tyckspoon]

Dice progressions for size are given in the text of Improved Natural Attack and in the Weapon Sizes chart in the equipment chapter of the PHB. 3d8 does indeed step up to 4d8 and then 6d8, although Enlarge Person won't stack with Expansion- Enlarge Person doesn't stack with other magical effects that increase size (which means psionic effects by transparency), and Expansion just has a blanket 'size increasing effects do not stack' statement.

[Lord Vukodlak]

Another nice thing about Snap Kick, and bad thing about monk TWF, and monks in general, is two of the monk's best features - flurry and speed - are at loggerheads; you can't use both in the same round. Snap Kick lets a monk do long-range, two-attack charges, like a lesser pounce.

Yeah what a monk could do with pounce.

ffone, my post was a commentary on how these topics tend to turn into huge long running arguments.

[SilverLeaf167]

Well, I could still use an Oil of Mighty Wallop (Races of the Dragons) on my fists, right? It doesn't change the size of the weapon, only advancing its damage by one size category. That should take me to 6d8 without any legal problems?

About the anti-synergy with speed and flurry: I have a psionic power called Psychic Lion's Charge, that allows me to make a full attack after charging. This solves that problem, a few times per day at least.

[Coidzor]

I believe the order of operations is to do the size-upadvancement from being largehugesize first and then apply the monk advancement of die sizes.

Or did I misinterpret what you guys were saying as counter to that?

About the anti-synergy with speed and flurry: I have a psionic power called Psychic Lion's Charge, that allows me to make a full attack after charging. This solves that problem, a few times per day at least.

Yes. That is a contributing factor to why Tashlatora is generally regarded as the superior monk option.

[SilverLeaf167]

As a Medium Monk, I'm simply using the table for Large unarmed damage in the Monk entry in the PHB, and advancing from there.