Would an armored monk build work?

[akma]

I thought about this idea recently, and wondered if it will work. Imagine a low wisdom heavily armored monk with a shield (maybe even two shields, if it could work with the rules). He would still use unarmed attacks.
Could this kind of build work? Will the monk lose things beside his wisdom bonus to AC for being armored?

[Arbitrarity]

Why?

Also, you lose flurry of blows, AC bonus, Evasion and fast movement.
Soooo.... you get the less helpful parts of the class. Yay, high unarmed damage dice?

[Tyger]

I thought about this idea recently, and wondered if it will work. Imagine a low wisdom heavily armored monk with a shield (maybe even two shields, if it could work with the rules). He would still use unarmed attacks.
Could this kind of build work? Will the monk lose things beside his wisdom bonus to AC for being armored?

First off, he's not proficient, so he either has to spend feats, or take penalties.

Secondly, he's going to take skill penalties for the heavy armor.

And he's not going to add much, if any DEX bonus to his AC, due to the DEX penalty.

Lose Flurry, lose Evasion and lose Fast Movement.

In short no, its a bad idea. Worse even than a normal monk. And that is saying something.

[Forged Fury]

You could try the Argent Fist PrC from Faiths of Eberron. It's not great, but provides an interesting Monk/Paladin combo.

[Lans]

Yes take the Decisive blow, barbarian damage reduction, and hidden fist ACFs and be a warforged and you should be fine.

[Grynning]

Or, even better, don't be a Monk. A dungeoncrasher variant fighter with the right feats is a better unarmed combatant. Warblade and Barbarian can also go unarmed with a few feats and will likewise be better than a monk in general, and can wear medium armor.

[Elvenoutrider]

I made this work in gestalt with an artificer/ monk wearing mithral platemail.

While it wasnt the most optomized build, i had pretty much decided that i wanted to play as iron man in d&d 3.5

[ericgrau]

Bonus feats, SR, boosted unarmed / grappling damage, great saves, all the minor misc. special abilities. You still keep evasion in light armor but heavy armor is fine too. Your AC will actually go up (well, except for touch AC), so pretty much you only lose flurry and fast movement. With boots of speed or haste later on, you mostly only lose flurry. There is also the typical splat-book build method, where you dip 2 levels of monk for the feats and then grab something else entirely.

I actually ran some tests a long time ago on this, including heavy armor and a weapon at high levels for better damage, and when at least 50% of enemy attacks are save-based instead of physical, this build is superior to a typical martial class. Certainly a million times better than the typical effort to grab iron will for a whopping +2 and calling it a day, as if that was even enough to be worth a feat. To hedge off some complaints: Minor benefits from all the misc. stuff are minor benefits. Minor benefits are minor benefits not drawbacks. SR is far too powerful to ignore just because of some minor drawbacks which can be worked around.

[SurlySeraph]

@^: Except if a martial character's trying to improve his saves, he's not going to take Iron Will. He's going to take Steadfast Determination. Or he's going to get a Cloak of Resistance, two levels in Paladin, or one of the countless other ways to improve saves.

The monk's spell resistance would stop incoming spells half the time... against casters with no CL boosts, who don't have Assay Resistance or other ways of overcoming SR, and aren't using SR: No spells. Such as the Orb of X line, which is conveniently touch-attack-based.

I have never heard of a game where half the attacks were save-based rather than attack-based. A very trap-heavy dungeon populated exclusively by casters, perhaps, but given the ease of getting multiple attacks per round and the difficulty of getting multiple spells per round the casters would still have difficulty forcing more saves than a meleer could make attacks. And, of course, no-save and touch attack spells still can screw him over.

[HunterOfJello]

Since pretty much all non-Gestalt monk builds don't work, why would adding armor help?

[Starbuck_II]

I thought about this idea recently, and wondered if it will work. Imagine a low wisdom heavily armored monk with a shield (maybe even two shields, if it could work with the rules). He would still use unarmed attacks.
Could this kind of build work? Will the monk lose things beside his wisdom bonus to AC for being armored?

You can only use Mithral Meduim armor and keep Evasion. Light or no Armor.

[ericgrau]

@^: Except if a martial character's trying to improve his saves, he's not going to take Iron Will. He's going to take Steadfast Determination. Or he's going to get a Cloak of Resistance, two levels in Paladin, or one of the countless other ways to improve saves.

The monk's spell resistance would stop incoming spells half the time... against casters with no CL boosts, who don't have Assay Resistance or other ways of overcoming SR, and aren't using SR: No spells. Such as the Orb of X line, which is conveniently touch-attack-based.

I have never heard of a game where half the attacks were save-based rather than attack-based. A very trap-heavy dungeon populated exclusively by casters, perhaps, but given the ease of getting multiple attacks per round and the difficulty of getting multiple spells per round the casters would still have difficulty forcing more saves than a meleer could make attacks. And, of course, no-save and touch attack spells still can screw him over.

I've seen iron will in builds quite often, never said it was a good idea though. Never said most attacks were save based; I usually assume most are physical in the program. But who knows, some campaigns might, and it shows that the build is at least passable even when the ratio isn't quite that high.

Obscure tricks that only come from the internet 95% of the time are not a safe baseline assumption. For that matter they often invite escalation of the nukes (scintillating scales, double stacking X to Y touch AC & save bonuses, etc.), such that anyone who doesn't use them instantly dies and playing any other character concept or asking for a sensible reason why every monster in the world has them is laughable; that's the point where suspension of disbelief and thus the RP and thus the Stormwind Fallacy (normally true enough) all dissolve.

Or assuming a build that is optimized but not over the top, the common way as said is to dip monk 2 then multiclass and prc in to all kinds of other things. You're still not losing much by wearing heavy armor.

[AslanCross]

Echoing the Argent Fist PrC from Faiths of Eberron. You retain a lot of abilities in heavy armor.

It's not AWESOME (considering it IS the Monk plus the Paladin), but it's pretty cool flavor-wise.

[Gavinfoxx]

So isn't there a PrC that lets lightly armored monks work? I think the Monk/Cleric one, that requires an absolute minimum of Monk investment?

[true_shinken]

So isn't there a PrC that lets lightly armored monks work? I think the Monk/Cleric one, that requires an absolute minimum of Monk investment?

Argent Fist, I believe.

[AslanCross]

Argent Fist, I believe.

Argent Fist is a heavy armor PrC, though.

[Gavinfoxx]

Argent Fist, I believe.

I thought there was a non Eberron one that did something similar too?

[Quirinus_Obsidian]

You wanna be an armored Monk? Take Swordsage instead. you get light armor, or rather armor that is classed as light. Mithril is your best friend. Plus, the Sworsage is more like the eastern Monks that we see in all these kung-fu movies.

The original WoTC monk is just not technically sound.

[Lans]

Since pretty much all non-Gestalt monk builds don't work, why would adding armor help?

It shores up mad making it dual stat dependent. Though there really isn't much reason to take more than the level required for improved evasion. Still needs a 12 wisdom for Hidden fist at that point. Or a more likely two level dip.

[Curmudgeon]

The Shou Disciple (Unapproachable East) is a Monklike character with light armor proficiency. If you already have flurry of blows the Shou Disciple advances it (but doesn't appear to grant that ability, so you'll probably need a Monk dip). This isn't exactly what you had in mind because you'll lose the benefits with heavier armor; but with mithral construction dropping the armor one weight category you should do OK. (Shou Disciple is also a 3.0 PrC, so it'll need the usual "minor adjustments" as per DMG page 4.)