The Gaming Den

Yet another monk PrC.

Yeah, it's based on Neji from Naruto. I got bored and started watching part of the series.

Gentle Monk

The Gentle Monks are a feared order. The irony of their name sends shivers down the spines of martial artists. You see, Gentle Monks don't attack your bones or your muscles. They use their techniques to directly damage the organs and the flow of energy through the body itself.

They don't even have to hit hard to do this. As a fight goes on, a Gentle Monk will sap the strength of his opponent, making him physically weaker and making it all the more difficult to use their non-mundane powers, until the opponent cannot use them at all. Furthermore, the Gentle Monk's concentration and awareness of life means he is practically impossible to surprise--for he will indeed see you coming from behind him.

Requirements:
BAB +6
Concentration 9 Ranks
Heal 9 Ranks
Fighting Style which inflicts Constitution Damage
Two-Weapon Fighting
Insightful Strike



Features:
d8 HD
Good BAB
Good saves
4 Skill Points
Skills: Bluff, Balance, Climb, Concentration, Diplomacy, Heal, Hide, Intimidate, Jump, Knowledge (all), Listen, Move Silently, Sense Motive, Spot, any other Monk skill I missed that people think is important.

1 Monk Training, The White Eye, Gentle Strike,
2 Chakra Disruption
3 Heavenly Sphere
4 Chakra Shock
5 Closing the Soul

Monk Training: Levels of Gentle Fist stack with levels of Monk for determining Armored in Life bonuses.


The White Eye (Su): By focusing his mind and gaining sensitivity to the winds of life, the Gentle Monk gains a powerful ability. The benefits of this are manyfold:

-He gains All-Around Vision, preventing him from being flanked.

-He gains Lifesight with a range of 50 feet per character level.

-He gets Detect Magic within the range of Lifesight.

Gentle Strike: Combined with the White Eye, the Gentle Monk may use the technique which defines his style.

By injecting some of his own Ki into specific points on his opponent, he may debilitate them. When using his Fighting Style which inflicts Constitution Damage, he may, at his option, target Strength or Dexterity rather than Constitution.

The second function is perhaps the more insidious: By interfering with the flows of magic through an opponent, the Gentle Monk may make it difficult to use spells, spell-like abilities, or supernatural abilities. Rather than inflict ability score damage, he may instead apply a 10% failure chance to activate a target's spell-like abilities, spells, or supernatural abilities, with each successful hit (Fortitude Negates. DC 10 +1/2 Character level + Wis mod). All effect of this disappear after one hour's rest (or any sort of restoration spell).

The Gentle Strike technique does not work on enemies who lack a constitution score.

Chakra Disruption (Su): The Gentle Monk learns to make discord in the ki of his opponent. As a standard action, he make a touch attack that nauseates or exhausts (his choice) an opponent who fails a Fort save. If the opponent passes the save, they are instead sickened or fatigued (whichever is appropriate).

Heavenly Sphere (Su): By emitting his ki from all over his body and spinning rapidly, the Gentle Monk may create a 10-foot radius sphere, centered on him, as a swift or immediate action.

Anyone (apart from the Gentle Monk) within the radius takes Xd8 Force damage (X equal to Wisdom modifier), and is pushed out to the edge of the sphere. This is useful when surrounded, but the more important function is that the force of the spinning ki disrupts magical effects which come in contact with it.

It stops any targeted or area-of-effect spell from affecting the Gentle Monk, and blocks Line effects. He may do this a number of times a day equal to his Wisdom Modifier. Because of the strain involved in doing it, it only lasts for an instant--long enough to negate one spell or attack.

Chakra Shock (Su): As a readied action, the Gentle Monk can inject his ki into a creature which successfully hits him, affecting them as if they had been hurt by the Gentle Strike or the Chakra Disruption effect.

Closing the Soul (Su): If the Gentle Monk performs a full attack with the Gentle Strike style and successfully hits at least four times, the target must make three Fortitude Saves (usual DC), to avoid losing spellcasting, spell-like abilities, and supernatural abilities, respectively. A day's rest will restore these abilities.

There we go.

Just trying to get something out of my head.

Comment if you want to.

Does the magic-disruption variant of Gentle Fist apply its failure chance to ongoing effects, or only to effects that need to be activated?

For example, which of these effects would get a failure chance?

- A Mage Armor spell cast before being hit.
- A Mage Armor spell cast after being hit.
- A Fire Mage's Hand of Fire Supernatural ability.
- A Fire Mage's Firewalk SLA.
- A unicorn's Magic Circle against Evil Supernatural ability.

It disrupts their ability to activate abilities.

So attempting to cast Mage Armor after being hit would suffer the penalty, so would both the Fire Mage's abilities if he used them after being hit. If the Magic Circle Against Evil is constantly active, though, it's safe.

Call a class that around most groups I'm familiar with and there will be exchanged glances and giggling muttering about "Gentle Fisting".

That occurred to me.

But I'm at a loss for a better name.


Edit: There we go.

Something occurred to me.

This is the third Monk PrC I've written.

I might as well write some more of the silly things. They're pretty fun, the Fighting Styles give a lot of room to play with, and, well, there's so much source material to play with. Let's see...


Great Monk--Goes around challenging people to see who's the stronger. Good at breaking things/people. Requirement: Juggernaut, Fighting Style which ignores DR and Hardness.

Maybe good/evil monks? Of course, I don't want to pull a Vile Darkness/Exalted Deeds inversion. I'll think about it.

The Blind Master--nice idea, but handled by taking Blind-Fight and Alertness. If I find a way to make it worth a class, I'll do it.

The Spirit-Wave Monk--Since I've been rewatching YuYu Hakusho, this will be very easy to write.

The Fast Monk--Again, easy to write.

Other sources of inspiration: Regal Bryant from Tales of Symphonia and Lucario.

Gentle monk (really should stay "fist"): might wanna know monks don't have Heal. Might as well require that the style both inflict Con damage and employ a weapon, since the class involves TWF. Monk training: seems to have leftover text from D&D Wiki - also, standardize your armored in life equivalents' terminology among your classes. White eye: why deactivate? Gentle strike: whatever a magic failure's supposed to be, define it way better. Heavenly sphere: I'd add a save against the push and, given the use limit, make the damage 2d6/class level; line is a kind of area; clarify that it only stops instantaneous effects (AFAICT at least). Chakra shock: both actions are available as standard actions, which anyone can ready - so the only benefit's the effect going off automatically; even the best of those (1 round denial) isn't worth it given that you pretty much negate your round to do it, and it might happen of nobody attacking you - a possible start might be to ditch the readying part and make it a standard action that lasts for 1 round, against anyone that attacks you; then you might be able to figure out crowd denial, but it might still need more.