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2020-09-24, 08:57 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2007
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- Bellona
Optimization Showcase in the Playground: Dark Side of the Moon
INTRODUCTION
With more than a decade and a half of toying around with 3.5, I’ve accumulated a lot of spare builds and ideas. While I don’t have an active game going right now, I still like to pop open my builds folder and try to refine things. Recently I decided to make a dedicated effort to flesh out some of these builds into full write-ups, and reached out to some friends in the CO community who might be interested in doing the same. In the spirit of Tempest Stormwind’s Weekly Optimization Showcase (imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, right?), I thought I’d showcase the end results here.
The goal is (usually) not to show off any fancy new TO trick, but to showcase effective, playable builds and spur discussion. While each of us has a different build philosophy, in general the intent is to create something that can be played in most groups from level 1 to level 20. Again, the goal is discussion, so feel free to discuss the build, talk about other options, make suggestions or tear it all to shreds. Also, feel free to use anything showcased here in any of your campaigns—and let us know how they work out if you do!
Right now the group consists of myself, the Viscount, Akal Saris, Venger, WhamBamSam, Darrin and daremetoidareyou.. Typically one of us writes up the build concept and possibly a stub, the others share feedback on Discord or in some of the shared documents we have, and together we refine things until we’re happy with the final product.
For this showcase, it’s time to take a good long look at the monk in: Dark Side of the Moon!
Dark Side of the Moon
Sometimes, the abyss gazes back...
BACKGROUND
There are a lot of abilities that we look at, spend hours discussing how best to build around them, and then end up buried in a morass of half-finished ideas. Two of them in particular seem to come up a lot: the planar bard’s portal dissonance, and the dark moon disciple monk’s shadow blend.
The shadow blend ability in particular has been something we keep coming back to. It's far from a new or unknown ability, but that doesn't dilute how good it is. It’s absolutely incredible, giving you total concealment in any condition other than full daylight. I can’t even begin to stress how amazing this is. Others have waxed poetic about this ability before, so I won’t waste too many lines adding to the choir, but it’s really really good.
But how do you actually build around it? While almost any build would benefit from it, how do you make it the focal point of a build? Many of the typical monk strategies rely on things like getting really big to maximize damage, which doesn’t synergize particularly well with shadow blend. In most cases I feel like it ends up just being an add-on, something that every dedicated monk build should take because it’s THAT good but something that is rarely the main point of a build.
We have a ridiculous number of Monk 7/xxx 13 builds kicking around our folders. Tashalatora war minds, kalashtars that dance with shadows, assassins and unseen seers, swordsages and shadow sun ninjas, shadowpouncers and grapplers and stunners… you name it, we’ve probably got a build stub that toys with it. But one idea that really grabbed hold was the idea of diving deep into the stealth and attack negation aspects, and building out from there. We envisioned a skill-focused monk with plenty of utility, something impossible to pin down and with just enough offensive potential to stay valuable in a fight.
THE BASICS
- Race: Human. It’s actually required here, not just recommended (otherwise strongheart halfling would be a decent alternative). You could go with azurin if you’d like, since you do dabble in a bit of meldshaping, but I prefer straight human for the skill points.
- Build Stub: Monk 7/Factotum 3/Warblade 2/Henshin Mystic 3/Heir of Siberys 3/Chameleon 2.
- ACFs: Invisible fist, hand and foot fighting style (or sleeping tiger; see level 2 notes and variants section), dark moon disciple, standing jump. As is often the case with monk, you’ll want to basically replace all the things.
- Alignment: Any lawful.
Dark Side of the Moon
Originally Posted by ”Dark Side of the Moon”
Let’s take a look at everything this build has going on defensively:
- Permanent total concealment in any condition other than full daylight, combined with Darkstalker and max stealth investment for those who have alternative senses. In addition to the 50% miss chance, this straight up blocks charges, precision damage and any spell or ability that requires line of sight.
- Complete immunity to surprise and the flat-footed condition.
- Mind blank twice per day, not only defending you from mental influence but also preventing information-gathering divinations (including those that scan an area) from working.
- Fully ethereal movement at will (not incorporeal, ethereal).
- Iron heart surge to shut down any negative conditions.
- Unable to be flanked.
- Ability to fully negate any effect that would force you to move.
- Cunning insight and cunning defense to get +Int to a save or AC as a free action.
- Wall of blades and Deflect Arrows to negate an attack that, against all odds, manages to pierce your defenses.
- Scent, darkvision, Blind-Fight and excellent skills for locating hidden foes.
- Immunity to poison and disease.
- Immediate action ability to go invisible for a round, for those levels before your shadow blend goes online or when you are in full daylight.
- Several stacking bonuses to AC and various saves.
That’s an awful lot of ways to NOPE your way out of an attack. Many of these abilities come online early, many of them have offensive or out of combat utility as well, and you’ve got some other neat tricks up your sleeve like scrying. You’re hyper-mobile, and with a monk’s belt you have a base unarmed damage of 3d8 before spells or other augmentation (or 4d8 with Superior Unarmed Strike via your floating feat), plus Mantis Leap and sudden leap for swift action punching.
Damage is not your main focus at all, but it stays decently competitive early on thanks to cunning insight and Knowledge Devotion combined with an Int focus and excellent skills, while at later levels you can use Mantis Leap and unarmed strike enhancers. Greater mighty wallop alone can increase your damage from 3d8 to 12d8 per punch in a single casting; add in level-appropriate Knowledge Devotion, Strength bonus and enhancement bonuses and that’s an average of 69 points of damage per hit. Spend your floating feat on Superior Unarmed Strike or get yourself a size bonus elsewhere and that jumps to an average of 87 damage per hit. This is without looking at other low cost damage boosters such as the collision enhancement, a fanged ring, etc. You’re no ubercharger, but landing a couple of punches a round will certainly sting. While your BAB is a bit low, maxed out Knowledge Devotion clears much of that gap, and you’ve got constant total concealment and can cast wraithstrike any round you aren’t using that swift action for something else. That should allow you to flurry to your heart’s content without running into the dreaded flurry of misses.
VARIANTS
There are a few interesting options. One is to go with sleeping tiger instead of hand and foot as your monk’s fighting style. This gives you Weapon Finesse and Improved Initiative for your first couple of levels. Losing Stunning Fist and Deflect Arrows is a bit sad but neither is essential to the the build, and by focusing on just Dex and Int you’ll end up with somewhat better attack, AC and stealth skills at the cost of damage and the ability to do things like trip. It’s probably the better option in lower point buy games or games where you roll for stats and end up with something unbalanced.
Speaking of the sleeping tiger variant, another consideration would be swordsage over warblade. Losing more BAB hurts, but you get a free weapon focus to make up for it, plus better skills and more maneuvers. (And if you’re really really nice to your DM, maybe you can convince them to let the unarmed swordsage stack with monk for unarmed damage instead of having its own progression.) You won’t be able to pick up iron heart surge, which felt so perfect for the build, but it would open up Shadow Blade, which would make the sleeping tiger variant definitely the better option.
The last four levels can definitely be fiddled with as well. Four more levels of henshin mystic would net you blindsight, a few semi-situational bonus abilities, greater flurry and the ability to hit the damage of a 20th-level monk with just a monk’s belt and Carmendine. I personally prefer the floating feat, extra inspiration point and +Int to initiative and other Str/Dex checks and skills, but there’s definitely an argument to be made for the henshin mystic route. And if you’re not playing with multiclassing penalties I’d actually avoid both options and take four more levels of warblade, which will give you another stance and bump you up to 7th-level maneuvers.
We also had a LOT of other versions of the same basic concept, such as Factotum 8/Monk 7/Heir of Siberys 3/Chameleon 2, Monk 7/Swordsage 3/Henshin Mystic 8/Heir of Siberys 2, Monk 7/Psionic Fist 10/Heir of Siberys 3, Monk 7/War Mind 10/Fist of the Forest 3, Rogue 1/Monk 7/Assassin 1/Heir of Siberys 3/Unseen Seer 8, Monk 7/Swordsage 3/Telflammar Shadowlord 4/Blade of Orien 6, Monk 7/Swordsage 4/Nightsong Enforcer 1/Shadow Sun Ninja 8, Monk 7/Swordsage 3/Heir of Siberys 2/Shadow Sun Ninja 8, Factotum 1/Monk 7/Chameleon 10/Heir of Siberys 2, Monk 7/Ardent 13, Monk 7/ Assassin 10/Heir of Siberys 3 and a bunch of others I’m probably forgetting, plus many little variants of all of the above. Yeah, I wasn’t kidding when I said we went through a lot of different build stubs on this one.
SOURCES
- Hand and foot/sleeping tiger fighting style: Unearthed Arcana/SRD
- Dark moon disciple monk: Champions of Valor web enhancement
- Invisible fist ACF: Exemplars of Evil
- Warblade, maneuvers: Tome of Battle
- Heir of Siberys, Mark of Stars, Heroic Spirit, Favored in House: Eberron Campaign Setting and Dragonmarked
- Henshin mystic, Mantis Leap: Oriental Adventures
- Carmendine Monk: Champions of Valor
- Factotum, standing jump/wall walker ACF: Dungeonscape
- Able Learner, chameleon: Races of Destiny
- Skill tricks: Complete Scoundrel
- Darkstalker: Lords of Madness
- Shape Soulmeld, Open Lesser Chakra, phase cloak: Magic of Incarnum
- Improved Natural Attack: MM/SRD
***
And that’s that! Please let us know what you think in the comments, and what you’d like to see for future showcases! (Spoiler alert: one of the potential showcase options MAY involve the other build element mentioned in the intro…)Optimization Showcase in the Playground
Former projects:
Shadowcaster Handbook
Archer Build Compendium
Iron Chef Awards!
Spoiler
GOLD
IC LXXVI: Talos
IC LXXV: Alphonse Louise Constant
IC XLIX: Babalon, Queen of Bones
IC XLV: Dead Mists
IC XL: Lycus Blackbeak
IC XXXIX: AM-1468
IC XXXV: Parsifal the Fool
IC XXX: Jal Filius
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2020-09-24, 08:58 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2007
- Location
- Bellona
Re: Optimization Showcase in the Playground: Dark Side of the Moon
Optimization Showcase in the Playground
Former projects:
Shadowcaster Handbook
Archer Build Compendium
Iron Chef Awards!
Spoiler
GOLD
IC LXXVI: Talos
IC LXXV: Alphonse Louise Constant
IC XLIX: Babalon, Queen of Bones
IC XLV: Dead Mists
IC XL: Lycus Blackbeak
IC XXXIX: AM-1468
IC XXXV: Parsifal the Fool
IC XXX: Jal Filius
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2020-09-24, 10:17 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2017
Re: Optimization Showcase in the Playground: Dark Side of the Moon
Interesting build! What do you think/did you consider feign death instead of invisible fist? Seems to fit well too.
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2020-09-24, 10:39 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2007
- Location
- Bellona
Re: Optimization Showcase in the Playground: Dark Side of the Moon
I think it's really hard to give up the utility of invisible fist - even beyond the sneaking aspects, the ability to negate line of sight as an immediate action is crazy useful. But if you're starting in the mid-levels, when shadow blend is already on, that's actually a pretty decent option. Invisible fist can still come in handy at level 9+ in full daylight situations, but given the duration on darkness and similar spells, you should pretty much always be able to ensure you have shadow blend as an option. In that case feign death is definitely more useful.
Optimization Showcase in the Playground
Former projects:
Shadowcaster Handbook
Archer Build Compendium
Iron Chef Awards!
Spoiler
GOLD
IC LXXVI: Talos
IC LXXV: Alphonse Louise Constant
IC XLIX: Babalon, Queen of Bones
IC XLV: Dead Mists
IC XL: Lycus Blackbeak
IC XXXIX: AM-1468
IC XXXV: Parsifal the Fool
IC XXX: Jal Filius
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2020-09-24, 04:09 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2014
Re: Optimization Showcase in the Playground: Dark Side of the Moon
How is this build getting around the Ex-Monk restriction for the warblade break?
Excel sheet for 3.5 -- Native support for stacking rules and multiple forms; as lightweight as possible otherwise. (links currently broken, if you want a copy LMK)
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2020-09-24, 04:18 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2014
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- Sub-Prime Material Plane
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Re: Optimization Showcase in the Playground: Dark Side of the Moon
Nice build! I've always thought it was a shame for stealth characters that Cerebral Blind was gated behind six levels of Slayer... It might have been useful here
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2020-09-24, 04:23 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2007
- Location
- Bellona
Re: Optimization Showcase in the Playground: Dark Side of the Moon
Whoops, good point! I originally had both warblade levels come up at levels 9 and 10, but decided the low level progression was smoother if we took the first warblade level earlier and moved it.
There are three easy fixes:
1. Move your first warblade level to 9, keeping the build as is in all other respects.
2. Replace Deflect Arrows with Monastic Training.
3. Take your first warblade level at level 2, and replace claw at the moon and wall of blades with wolf fang strike and steel wind/steely strike (or go wolf fang strike/moment of perfect mind and replace hunter's sense with punishing stance).Optimization Showcase in the Playground
Former projects:
Shadowcaster Handbook
Archer Build Compendium
Iron Chef Awards!
Spoiler
GOLD
IC LXXVI: Talos
IC LXXV: Alphonse Louise Constant
IC XLIX: Babalon, Queen of Bones
IC XLV: Dead Mists
IC XL: Lycus Blackbeak
IC XXXIX: AM-1468
IC XXXV: Parsifal the Fool
IC XXX: Jal Filius
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2020-09-24, 04:29 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2014
- Location
- California
- Gender
Re: Optimization Showcase in the Playground: Dark Side of the Moon
The dark lantern from ToM is a good way to ensure that you can always use shadow blend.
Rhymes with "Protracted."
Handbooks: The Warlockopedia | The Warmagepedia (WIP) | Tier List (2019 Update)
Spreadsheets: Spellcasting classes | Deities | Useful items
Homebrew: Gestalt Theurge | Fighter and Monk fixes | Warlock stuff | Houserules and quick fixes
Original Fiction: The Wizard's Familiar
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2020-10-05, 12:00 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2014
Re: Optimization Showcase in the Playground: Dark Side of the Moon
Not to be the guy that says "hey this is really cool here's some more work you could do" but Imma be that guy, feel free to completely ignore this :P
One of the things that's kind of challenging reading these builds is answering the question "if I'm DMing and this character is in my party, how do I design challenges appropriately". With this build I think it's actually less of a problem (so maybe my timing is bad here) but a lot of the previous non-damage-focused ones have had a "no save just lose" theme. I know that high level 3.5 often devolves into debuff rocket tag, but sometimes it can get extreme. With this question in mind, even a thin section on example challenges and the thinking behind them would be kinda sweet.Excel sheet for 3.5 -- Native support for stacking rules and multiple forms; as lightweight as possible otherwise. (links currently broken, if you want a copy LMK)
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2020-10-05, 12:42 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Sep 2018
- Location
- Seattle, WA
Re: Optimization Showcase in the Playground: Dark Side of the Moon
I do love Monk builds. A while ago I entered Junkyard Wars with a similar build, though much more focused on DPR than this one. Another two levels in Monk gives you permanent blink as long as you've got a Wis of 16+, and two levels of Rogue gives you Spell Reflection (between high AC, total concealment, blink, and Wall of Blades you should be able to reflect just about every spell cast at you that targets AC).
Originally Posted by Darths & DroidsOptimization Trophies
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