The Gaming Den

Owen works for Paizo, he just also has his side company. Alexander freelances for Paizo and also writes his own things.

Lurky Lurkpants wrote:

I want to punch whoever wrote that and the guy who clearly does not work as a editor at Paizo.

Alexander Augunas and Owen K.C. Stephens. Probably Owen's editing, he cranked out those "Horribly Overpowered Feat" books with all the entirely acceptable martial feats and I can't recall him ever defending a decision that wasn't awful. For example, he is on the Starfinder team.

Augunas, on the other hand, fills books with feats and other options that let Fighters buy better class features and magic spells. They aren't phenomenal, but for Paizo that is like five star mad genius work.

The weird thing is only one or two of the feats in "Horribly Overpowered Feat" actually are.

So, having already asked about and explored alternative punch classes, I must wonder, is it possible to build a monk (like, the actual monk class) that doesn't suck monkey bollocks? Some manner of piling archetypes on, or holding one's nose and using unchained, or whatever?

What on Earth do you mean by "like the Monk class"?

I mean, the Tome Monk is pretty much the perfect Monk version.

EDIT: Oh, I see, you meant, is it possible to take monk level from the PHB/Pathfinder book and voltron on enough archetypes to not suck.

Not make a class that doesn't suck.

Uh... sure? You just take Monk levels, then you buy a Candle of Invocation, then you wish for a Ring of Infinite Wishes, then you use Wish spells all the time as your actions? I mean. How much cheese do you want?

play a Zen Archer, suck donkey balls till level 3 (yep) and then kill everything that can't run away fast enough from your arrow barrages. or make some multiclass grapplestein, or something, those can contribute fine enough.

got to ask though... why? not that someone playing a non cheesed healbot has any right to judge, but playing a monk seems odd.

Rawbeard wrote:got to ask though... why? not that someone playing a non cheesed healbot has any right to judge, but playing a monk seems odd.

As with most things, probably just a fun thought experiment.

Looking at it, I'd say there's no way to make it good without making your average DM grimace.

Pretty much just a theoretical/hypothetical thing. I've been playing a lot of smash 4 and street fighter 4 and while monk is on the fluff side a good parallel to the likes of ryu and akuma, I'm also aware that the typical pathfinder monk is... well, poop on a stick.

The Unchained Monk puts out the most melee damage at the very low levels, and gets short-range pounce at level 5, but he does it with a two-handed weapon.

Unchained Monk gets a Ki pool at level 3... feels weird that what's arguably the signature monk ability is still acquired faster by Ninja.

So looking at the hybrid classes I see that Slayers and Arcanists and such can still multiclass with their 'parent' class. There anything interesting you can do with that, particularly at lvl8 and lower?

Ninja/Slayer feels like it has potential

Kaelik wrote:Uh... sure? You just take Monk levels, then you buy a Candle of Invocation, then you wish for a Ring of Infinite Wishes, then you use Wish spells all the time as your actions? I mean. How much cheese do you want?

I imagine he wants to fight primarily with his hands and do some crouching tiger/hidden Dragon style wire acrobatics shit occasionally, preferably without needing to carry around a spellbook or feel like an asshole.

SlyJohnny wrote:

Kaelik wrote:Uh... sure? You just take Monk levels, then you buy a Candle of Invocation, then you wish for a Ring of Infinite Wishes, then you use Wish spells all the time as your actions? I mean. How much cheese do you want?

I imagine he wants to fight primarily with his hands and do some crouching tiger/hidden Dragon style wire acrobatics shit occasionally, preferably without needing to carry around a spellbook or feel like an asshole.

Yes, this. Maybe with a dash of Hadouken.

I've heard the Tetori is not bad at what it does. And Quingong can replace your normal Ki abilities with better SLAs.

Also, once you get enough magic items, Monks become pretty decent (for non-casters). In Kingmaker, for example (significantly above WBL), the Monk was doing quite nicely. That's not going to help you at low-mid levels though.

Conversely, if the campaign is only going up to single digits, dipping a bunch of things may be the way to go.

I keep browsing low level spells and what the shit is up with Paizo? the most stupid seem to all be from the "Arcane Anthalogy" (Linked Legacy, Human Potential), but Ultimate Intrigue also has spells that baffel my mind. what the actualy shit is shit like Know Peerage supposed to do, when it is written in a way that yes, you can cast it, but it can totally do nothing, because the spell is actually just an excuse to make "metagaming" less stupid, or so the fighter can feel like he can contribute for once.

What. The. Fuck.

I can't right now.

SlyJohnny wrote: I imagine he wants to fight primarily with his hands and do some crouching tiger/hidden Dragon style wire acrobatics shit occasionally, preferably without needing to carry around a spellbook or feel like an asshole.

Then play a Deadly Fist (and maybe combine with Gifted Blade.) Soulknife with a monk dip probably in Master of Many styles or something else that gives up Flurry. Not great but not the failure that is the regular monk.

Even if the DM doesn't like Psionics just don't combine with gifted blade and the class doesn't use PPs or Psionic Powers.

Shady314 wrote:

SlyJohnny wrote: I imagine he wants to fight primarily with his hands and do some crouching tiger/hidden Dragon style wire acrobatics shit occasionally, preferably without needing to carry around a spellbook or feel like an asshole.

Then play a Deadly Fist (and maybe combine with Gifted Blade.) Soulknife with a monk dip probably in Master of Many styles or something else that gives up Flurry. Not great but not the failure that is the regular monk.

Even if the DM doesn't like Psionics just don't combine with gifted blade and the class doesn't use PPs or Psionic Powers.

Alternatively, just refluff a wizard?

Prak wrote:Alternatively, just refluff a wizard?

I may be missing something. The Deadly Fist archetype turns the Soulknife into a better monk. No refluffling required. Even if you add Gifted your powers and power points are very small but you can get very appropriate acrobatic and monkish abilities but it's strictly optional. Also you can "throw" your fist attack so there's the hadouken. Saying that it would be just as viable to refluff the wizard and that it would play the same (if thats what you meant) seems incorrect.

No, I was more saying that you could refluff the wizard into a mystic tattooed fist-fighter. It'd probably be harder in PF, but in 3.5 you could point to the idea of tattooed spellbooks in CArc and work from there to refluff.

I wasn't really intending to contribute much to the actual hypothetical build...

Edit: That said, there are a few martially oriented Wizard archetypes if you actually wanted to try to do this- Weapon Champion, Youxia, and Spellhammer. Horimyo would be a cool archetype to stack onto them, if you can get your GM to let you ignore the meh ability Horimyo swaps Arcane Bond out for (since you lose Arcane Bond) for the other three).

If I wanted to throw a 'mythic' monster at a party (without mythic ranks), what's a good 'rule of thumb' of sorts regarding appropriate CR? i.e. is it something like Actual CR = Listed CR + .something * MR, Actual CR = Something * MR * Listed CR, some other formula, or is it necessary to eyeball it case by case?

Know Peerage is pretty bad. But it's bad in a way that's interesting. It's interesting because it really does give you five levels worth of character advancement in skill points. If skill points were in any way the equal of the spells you get for going up in level, that would be huge. But they aren't. It exists as sort of a meta-proof that skills are bullshit. Like how Heroics proves that feats ain't shit.

If these non-spell level-advancement paradigms were good, then the spells that just fucking gave you multiple levels worth of advancement would be overpowered at 5th level. The fact that they show up at 2nd level and no one fucking cares is proof by contradiction that skills and feats suck monkey balls and we are playing Caster Edition.

-Username17

but it only gives you those ranks if the caster has them. if the caster has none you get the amazing power of auto success on DC 10 and lower (commonly called take 10), which is probably only useful if you have a negative int mod. but I do agree it is interesting. or maybe baffeling. not sure.

radthemad4 wrote:What's a good 'rule of thumb' of sorts regarding appropriate CR?

The written "rule of thumb" is CR + 1/2 MR.

An MR 1 creature might deal tiny damage when struck, or get an extra turn every round.

Yes, you have to eyeball it in every case.

Rawbeard wrote:but it only gives you those ranks if the caster has them. if the caster has none you get the amazing power of auto success on DC 10 and lower (commonly called take 10), which is probably only useful if you have a negative int mod. but I do agree it is interesting. or maybe baffeling. not sure.

You're not thinking about it in the context of the goal of the book. The book is about intrigue, political maneuvering, spywork. The benefit of the spell is that the caster isn't there but can still identify who IS there via the target of his spell. This benefit just isn't going to come up in 99% of games because don't you know, you never split the party, but this book is designed for the 1% of games that do bullshit like this.

I get that, but I have never even seen a DC low enough for this thing to work (assuming no ranks from caster). sometimes you can't even identify the symbol of the most common deities without being a scholar. fuck, as written even with the "common knowledge" 5+CR rule you can't identify a human past level 7. this is annoying me more than it should. It's so niche, it should be a cantrip. ffs, message is more useful.

Ice9 wrote:I've heard the Tetori is not bad at what it does. And Quingong can replace your normal Ki abilities with better SLAs.

Also, once you get enough magic items, Monks become pretty decent (for non-casters). In Kingmaker, for example (significantly above WBL), the Monk was doing quite nicely. That's not going to help you at low-mid levels though.

Conversely, if the campaign is only going up to single digits, dipping a bunch of things may be the way to go.

One of my players had a high level Tetori, but unfortunately his minigame came down to "Can I grapple with that?" If yes->win if no->lose.
So it can work, especially if he can be buffed to grapple with almost anything. In that case, it comes to "Can my mage teleport me next to it?"

Lurky Lurkpants wrote:

radthemad4 wrote:What's a good 'rule of thumb' of sorts regarding appropriate CR?

The written "rule of thumb" is CR + 1/2 MR.

An MR 1 creature might deal tiny damage when struck, or get an extra turn every round.

Yes, you have to eyeball it in every case.

Drat. Guess I'll probably use them sparingly, if at all.

Thanks.