Dungeonomicon

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Crissa
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Re: Dungeonomicon

Post by Crissa »

Very humorous writing style. Enjoyable reading.

Notes:

Clumsy sentence: 'That doesn't even mean that lethal traps can be in places that unauthorized residents aren't allowed (like the master's bedchamber) – that's going to end up beheading servants and guests.' ... Does this mean that deadly traps can or can't be where?

...I was thinking, however, that Polymorph should be split into two axis - look like anything and be anything, and be able to be specific and be unable to be specific.

For instance, there shouldn't really be more than one spell to be disguised as a humanoid, be it orc or elf; and a different spell to be stuck with the physical abilities of an orc or an elf -> Though the latter requires a definition of what is and isn't physical; but remaking the character sheet (heavily) while you're stuck an orc or a pig is annoying. There's no reason the pig can't still have your Fighter feats... Or BAB. Anyhow:

  1. Polymorph methods wanted:
  2. Look like a class of critter
  3. Be a class of critter
  4. Add/subtract ability to target
    (one of a specified list such as wings/fins, gills, claws/fangs, venom)
  5. Look like anything
  6. Make two critters into one critter
  7. Be anything
  8. Change target into something inspecific
    (CR doesn't change)
  9. Change target into something more specific
    (Choose to add/subtract CR from target)
  10. Add Type to target
    (Humanoid, Fire, Fiend)
  11. Multiply target into n lesser copies of itself
    (Mitosis, Flocking, Swarm)

You also didn't explain how the attack progressions should be chosen, either in the poly section or the character section. Examples, please?

Also missing are the other types of unarmored fighter from the classic D&D - Ranger, Archer, Scout, Pirate. Heavily armored was also missing.

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Re: Dungeonomicon

Post by Username17 »

Make two critters into one critter


That kind of thing makes for a really cool story but a really shitty game. Unfortunately, there's just no way to do partial character replacement and have it do anything we want it to do.

If you take something from Column A on creature A and something from Column B on creature B you get broken fvcking game mechanics that don't work at all. It's sad, but it's something we just have to face.

For instance, there shouldn't really be more than one spell to be disguised as a humanoid, be it orc or elf; and a different spell to be stuck with the physical abilities of an orc or an elf


We got the ability to look like an Orc or Elf as Human Form. The ability to graqft the abilities of an Orc or Elf onto an already extant character has proven to be broken beyond belief. That line of inquiry is not salvagable. D&D's repeated flops in attempting to make that work are emblematic of the core difficulty - creatures are constructed as an amazingly complex system of advantages and limitations, and such as they are balanced at all they cease being so as soon as you hamhandedly take them from one creature to another.

A special quality could just as easily be "weapon immunit" or "Damage Reduction" as "Illiteracy" or "Cold Vulnerability. An attribute is as likely to be a primary power as a secret weakness. Partial replacement simply does not function in that context.

You could write a monster system where you could mix and match them like that - but D&D isn't it.

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Re: Dungeonomicon

Post by User3 »

...I was following this up until the prestige classes. What the heck inspired these? :wtf:
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Re: Dungeonomicon

Post by Crissa »

FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1151437294[/unixtime]]
Make two critters into one critter


That kind of thing makes for a really cool story but a really shitty game. Unfortunately, there's just no way to do partial character replacement and have it do anything we want it to do.

Actually, I just want goofy results. Sometimes people want spells which are just bad ideas. The Mad Wizard Whackdoodle was mad, ya see?

Anyhow, I have a suggestion, but will post it elsethread.

For instance, there shouldn't really be more than one spell to be disguised as a humanoid, be it orc or elf; and a different spell to be stuck with the physical abilities of an orc or an elf


We got the ability to look like an Orc or Elf as Human Form. The ability to graqft the abilities of an Orc or Elf onto an already extant character has proven to be broken beyond belief. That line of inquiry is not salvagable. D&D's repeated flops in attempting to make that work are emblematic of the core difficulty - creatures are constructed as an amazingly complex system of advantages and limitations, and such as they are balanced at all they cease being so as soon as you hamhandedly take them from one creature to another.

Whoa, that's totally not what I was saying.

I totally like your Humanoid character replacement suggestion - I was just suggesting making the Disguise portion seperate from the character replacement polymorph.

Either the spell is about making you look just like George, or not; the Disguise Skill use of the spell just sucks and makes no sense. The Spell that does character replacement should say in big bold letters: YOU CANNOT USE THIS SPELL TO LOOK LIKE A SPECIFIC INDIVIDUAL. IE, you can turn someone into a 'dog' but not a 'white dog'. If it's the latter, it should not be doing character substitution, and instead some sort of DISGUISE roll.

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Re: Dungeonomicon

Post by Save_versus_Stupid »

Guest (Unregistered) at [unixtime wrote:1151450917[/unixtime]]...I was following this up until the prestige classes. What the heck inspired these? :wtf:


One was Garet Jax, and i'm not sure about the others. I assume other fantasy characters from literature. I was wondering myself, frank and K. Mind explaining the others?
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Re: Dungeonomicon

Post by Username17 »

Crissa wrote:I totally like your Humanoid character replacement suggestion - I was just suggesting making the Disguise portion seperate from the character replacement polymorph.


It totally is. Human Form doesn't do anything to your abilities or stats, it jst makes you look like a humanoid of oyur choice and get a disguise bonus.

Polymorph Self, OTOH, replaces your ass with a new creature that has completely different stats.

Imban wrote:...I was following this up until the prestige classes. What the heck inspired these?


Old D&D mostly. If you need the Seeker or the Ninja of Gax explained, open an AD&D sourcebook. Not even a 2nd edition AD&D sourcebook, an original AD&D book.

Also, I regard the Elothar Warrior of Bladereach to be a sort of artistic protest. It's playable all the way to 20th level and not even unbalancing. In a way, that makes the class even more disrespectful.

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Re: Dungeonomicon

Post by User3 »

We all know that 90% of PrCs are "Steve's Ninja of the Cresent Moon" rather than "Ninja of the Cresent Moon", a PrC intended for mass play.

The Elothar Warrior is our way of pointing out this fact. Lets face it: people don't even consider playing most PrCs. Not only do they have a very specific flavor, but they are usually intended to shore up the weaknesses of specific players and not their characters.

Just look at the Daggerspell Jag-offs in Complete Adventurer. That's one dude's hard-on for double daggers and not anything the average gamer even wants in his game (did we ever need double dagger arcane/druid wildshapers? Ever?).
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Re: Dungeonomicon

Post by Crissa »

FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1151469911[/unixtime]]
Crissa wrote:I totally like your Humanoid character replacement suggestion - I was just suggesting making the Disguise portion seperate from the character replacement polymorph.


It totally is. Human Form doesn't do anything to your abilities or stats, it jst makes you look like a humanoid of oyur choice and get a disguise bonus.

Okay, I guess that differentiation wasn't entirely clear.

I know there were 'two types of polymorph' but I think they should co-exist, depending on what you want to have happen. The difference between what a Succubus uses and what Miguel uses...

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Re: Dungeonomicon

Post by dbb »

I like the prestige classes very much, in particular the EWoB (though I keep wanting to drop the "the" and add a comma). I would presume it's there not so much to be actually played (although it's kind of neat) as to serve as an object lesson to DMs on how they can, and should, be tailoring their Prestige Classes to the players and the campaign.

The Ninja is I guess derived from the "Ring of Gaxx", an artifact from 1E (and maybe from "Eldritch Wizardry", but I'm still shaking off the effects of food poisoning and don't feel like getting up to look). The original version was a ring with a many-faceted gem which the wearer could turn in its setting by mental effort, and each facet of which had a different power (some good, some bad). It would turn when you were asleep, much to your dismay if you weren't aware of this, and the facets were unmarkable.

The Seeker's powers are all based on how magic worked in 1E. Originally, fireballs really did expand to fill the allotted space; spell ranges were increased outside (actually, multiplied -- feet to yards, I think) because the game used different scales for indoor and outdoor adventures; lightning bolts would bounce off surfaces and zap people twice over; level caps (e.g., for Fireball) didn't exist; you had to harvest bits of dead monsters to make magic items; and Stoneskin absorbed a set number of hits completely rather than 10 per strike. Et cetera. The restriction on specialization is a nod to the fact that the only specialist wizards were Illusionists. The race restrictions mimic those on the original wizard ("magic-user") class. It's a nice dose of nostalgia.

--d.
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Re: Dungeonomicon

Post by Neeek »

dbb at [unixtime wrote:1151481740[/unixtime]]spell ranges were increased outside (actually, multiplied -- feet to yards, I think) because the game used different scales for indoor and outdoor adventures;


I coulda sworn that Fireball had a bigger AoE inside than outside back then. Like a 30 ft radius inside and 20 ft outside. Ofcourse, my memory is mostly from the old SSI games for that sort of thing.
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Re: Dungeonomicon

Post by Neeek »

On a side note, where is the "they charge me and end up on their ass behind me" mechanic for the monk that we discussed?
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Re: Dungeonomicon

Post by Username17 »

Neeek wrote:On a side note, where is the "they charge me and end up on their ass behind me" mechanic for the monk that we discussed?


Monk[/quote wrote:While Active, your Fighting Style allows you to make an attack of opportunity against any opponent who attacks you. This attack of opportunity must be a trip or disarm attempt.


Monk wrote:While Active, your Master Fighting Style affects any opponent you successfully trip or bulrush with the violent thrust version of telekinesis, with a caster level equal to your character level. There is no saving throw against this effect.


It's a Master Fighting style. You take the extra AoOs as one of two Fighting Style options and the "send opponents flying" option from the master fighting styles. Then you have one other Fighting style option and you're good to go.

Dbb wrote:The Ninja is I guess derived from the "Ring of Gaxx"


The Ring is for some reason in the ELH, despite the fact that it doesn't do anything good, let alone "Epic". It's also a portion of Gygax's name, and was his own favorite artifct to torment players with (it had a facetted die that determined which powers were active. In the original writeup it was seriously a a die in a socket that would slip to reveal different facets and thus different powers). The Ninja himself has the same stupid power set that Gygax gave Ninjas back in the AD&D Oriental Adventures book.

Dbb wrote:I would presume it's there not so much to be actually played (although it's kind of neat) as to serve as an object lesson to DMs on how they can, and should, be tailoring their Prestige Classes to the players and the campaign.


Yes, although they are playable. Plus, the Master of Snake Mountain is totally Skeletor.


dbb wrote:
The Seeker's powers are all based on how magic worked in 1E.


Yeah. We were thinking about having an additional level that allowed you to cast spells like passwall and teleport that didn't shunt people if they ended up trapped in stone as an offensive move. But unfortunately that's just as broken now as it was then.

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Re: Dungeonomicon

Post by MrWaeseL »

Would you mind expanding a bit on building a decent dungeon? Because it occured to me I don't know anything about it and those few sentences in here are only tantalizing.

Also,
FrankTrollman wrote:I’m certain people are more likely to remember a dungeon built as a giant hive with hexagonal rooms, honeycombed passages, and undead bees than they are going to remember a standard temple of Orcus.


Was this a deliberate Haunted Apiary reference?
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Re: Dungeonomicon

Post by Username17 »

MrW wrote:Would you mind expanding a bit on building a decent dungeon? Because it occured to me I don't know anything about it and those few sentences in here are only tantalizing.


I've been thinking about how to answer this, and I'm honestly not sure where to begin. To start off with, every Dungeon has an intended purpose and a current purpose. Identifyig those should come before you even look at a piece of graph paper.

For example:

  • A dungeon might have been constructed as a temple to the Great Mother of the Kuo-Toa and then buried by an earthquake during the Sahuagin conflict and only now been uncovered by Dwarf mining teams. The original purpose was as a temple to dark gods and the current purpose is as a mining and archaeological expedition.

    In that case you'd consider the needs of an undersea temple (sources of heat, living quarters, a main worship area where aquatic creatures with 60' darkvision and an aversion to light could all see the horrible sacrifices to ancient evils - an amphitheatre shaped like a cored apple), and then you'd collapse any of the areas that you didn't feel like using, and drain any of the areas that you wanted to be easily accessible. Then you'd throw in the mining expedition and consider their needs and methodology. So you'd throw in a couple of extra tunnels across the area and some places for pumps to get the water out of the parts that are still under water.


Next, you throw a plot at your dungeon, which is why the party is even interested. The plot will shape how the occupants are acting, what immediate defenses they have up, and what the players will be attempting to do in the dungeon to achieve victory.

  • In our ongoing temple example, we'll assume that the Dwarf expedition awakened an ancient evil that the Kuo-Toa had been nurturing before they were kicked out so long ago. Of couse, some Kuo-Toa know about this for some completely arbitrary plot reason, and now they're mounting a military campaign to rretake the temple, trapping the Dwarf expedition inside.

    Because the place is a warzone, you're going to have lethal traps set up by both teams to attempt to deny territory. The Dwarf group will have a pretty nasty killzone cutting them off from the Kuo-Toa, and now they probably no longr control the area that would allow them to shut that off. Ultimately the PCs come in with the goal of "Kill the Kuo-Toa, relieve the Dwarf group." Then, when they get to the Dwarf camp after beating their way through the Kuo-Toa war group and the Dwarf defensive perimeter, they will apprised of the real situation and then they get the new quest option to go down into the Kuo-Toa temple where the ancient traps have been reactivated and the foul fiends of old are awakenig to destroy the evil in the basement.


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Re: Dungeonomicon

Post by DP »

Looking at the monk the first level is maybe a little too good and the second level is on the dead side. I'd suggest having the monk's first fighting style give only one ability at first and then getting the second ability at second.
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Re: Dungeonomicon

Post by Username17 »

Looking at the monk the first level is maybe a little too good and the second level is on the dead side. I'd suggest having the monk's first fighting style give only one ability at first and then getting the second ability at second.


I decided to do that with Rain of Flowers. But yeah, you were right about the first level appearing too large relative to the second.

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Re: Dungeonomicon

Post by DP »

I'm reserving judgement until I see the mechanics governing other Full BAB classes but under the current system I still can't picture any Full BAB character not taking a single level of monk as a dodge bonus to saves and AC of +4 is almost always better than anything attainable with 1 level of any other class.

Of course as things currently stand the monk is so much better (and by better I mean actually playable) than any other full BAB class that taking any levels of not monk would be kinda stupid.

So for a class with either: a) class level dependent spell casting or b) an at will use of a swift action ability that approaches the utility of +4 to armor class and saves, the 1st level of monk will not be a huge power up. If there are any classes where a&b are not true the first level of monk is too good a dip.

Right now I could see any of the fiendish classes benefiting significantly more from taking the first level of monk than taking the next level of their original class at some point in their advancement.

Thinking about it the best way to solve the problem may be to create some good feats that use a similar swift action/1 round duration mechanic to the fighting styles and offer a bonus that is between 1/2 and 3/4 as good as what the monk gets at first level. Like Defensive stance take a swift action get a +5 dodge bonus to armor class. Archer's stance take a swift action get +5 to attack with range weapons. Just make sure that these feats are not prereqs for anything. Lastley I'm assuming that Ki Strike weapon enhancement doesn't do anything at all with this monk.
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Re: Dungeonomicon

Post by User3 »

"Armored in Life (Su): A Monk has a special Armor bonus whenever they are not using armor or shields that he is not proficient in."

Reading over this again, I realized I don't really know what you intend here. Does the double-negative construction simplify to, "A monk has a special armor bonus whenever they are using armor or shields he is proficient in?" (Grammar side-note: switching from "they" to "he" in the same sentence is kind of confusing.) If so, why not say that?

I'm presuming that the armor bonus doesn't stack with the armor bonus doesn't stack with the, e.g., +8 from nonmagical full-plate. Does it stack with the shield bonus from a shield? (I.e., will most monks want to pick up shield proficiency to use an animated heavy mithral shield to get +2, and possibly up to +7, AC?)

I think your conversion of the monk's unarmed strike ability to a slam attack is a good start on a path to making it make sense. However, I have two questions.

1) Is there a rule in the core about using a slam attack to make iterative BAB attacks? I don't recall it, and natural weapons usually have completely different rules than manufactured weapons. If there isn't, I'd probably write some explicit rules on how it works (Can you use it with the TWF tree? etc.).

2) What happens if you're playing a monk with a racial slam attack? Can you apply combat-style benefits to your racial slams, too, or just your monk slam?
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Re: Dungeonomicon

Post by Neeek »

Guest (Unregistered) at [unixtime wrote:1152305113[/unixtime]]"Armored in Life (Su): A Monk has a special Armor bonus whenever they are not using armor or shields that he is not proficient in."

Reading over this again, I realized I don't really know what you intend here. Does the double-negative construction simplify to, "A monk has a special armor bonus whenever they are using armor or shields he is proficient in?" (Grammar side-note: switching from "they" to "he" in the same sentence is kind of confusing.) If so, why not say that?


He saying the Monk gets the bonus as long as they aren't using armor or shields that they aren't proficient in. It's pretty clear this means:

Naked Monk = gets bonus
Monk in armor/shield w/out prof = no bonus
Monk in armor/shield w/ prof = gets bonus

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Re: Dungeonomicon

Post by The_Matthew »

Guest (Unregistered) at [unixtime wrote:1152305113[/unixtime]]I'm presuming that the armor bonus doesn't stack with the armor bonus doesn't stack with the, e.g., +8 from nonmagical full-plate. Does it stack with the shield bonus from a shield? (I.e., will most monks want to pick up shield proficiency to use an animated heavy mithral shield to get +2, and possibly up to +7, AC?)


Well, since it is an armor bonus it won't stack with armor, but it should stack with shields, especially since this ability is in fact Level 1: free chain shirt, improve to better armor at rate comparable with equipment and anyone else who uses armor can have a chain shirt and a shield at first level.
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Re: Dungeonomicon

Post by Username17 »

Neeek and The Mathew have it right. This was a sop to the original Monk who had the power to have extra stat modifiers to his AC so long as he wasn't even wearing pants. This monk gets his explicit Armor bonus as long as he is wearing no pants or he is proficient with his pants. But since it grants an Armor bonus, you're only going to care about pants that provide some sort of special ability (such as fire resistance, or whatever).

Is there a rule in the core about using a slam attack to make iterative BAB attacks?


There's a rule inferable from the Core (you can back calculate how it's supposed to work by looking at the monsters that do and do-not get iterative slam attacks), but they don't actually spell it out except in an on-line article somewhere. Here's how it works:

If you have one slam attack, you can make iterative attacks with it if and only if it is your primary weapon. If you have multiple slam attacks: Blueberry! Esspresso? Mooo.

Right. Sorry that wasn't more helpful, it ppears to have been written by Skip while on a bender. The proper answer should be:

If a slam is your primary weapon, you may make iterative attacks with it. Otherwise it falls under the normal 1 natural weapon = 1 attack paradigm of other natural weapons.

So if you have 2 slams, you can use them both as primary weaponry, and make 1 attack with each at no penalty. If you had 2 differet slams from different sources, you could se one as a primary weapon (making iterative attacks), and the other as a secondary weapon (gaining a bonus attack with it at -5 with only half your strength bonus).

What happens if you're playing a monk with a racial slam attack? Can you apply combat-style benefits to your racial slams, too, or just your monk slam?


Um... I can't think of anything bad that happens if you apply it to your Racial Slam, but my gut feeling would be that every time it reference "your slam" in the Monk description it means "your Monk provided Slam Attack" and that any other slams or other natural weaponry would require a special use of a Fighting Style Ability to get that bonus on there.

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Re: Dungeonomicon

Post by Draco_Argentum »

I don't see monk 1 fighter 19 being more common than fighter 20 as long as fighter 20 gives something you'd actually want. The fact that you can now multiclass the monk is a feature, not a bug.
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Re: Dungeonomicon

Post by DP »

Not just fighter 20 but to a certain extent the abilities granted by fighter 2-19 must be as compelling as those granted by monk 1 (or they cannnot or only partially stack).

In 3.o that was THE way to make a melee character. Take two levels of fighter and two levels of ranger and either two levels of barbarian or two levels of palidan and then find a prestige class to take the first two levels of. The problem with this is that silly contrieved inorganic characters are better than consistant organic characters. You get the same character back stories where the character was a palidan and then went into the woods and joined the army where he met a gnome and moved to the orient to fight in the emperors arena.

The Monk is a good class. I really like it. I'll even go so far as to call it the best "fighting" class that I have seen. The only thing that gives me pause is the first level fighting style that gives two powerful abilities. I like to use the the +4 to Saves and AC as my example. In the context of the monk this ability isn't too powerful at first or any other level. The reason is that the monks abilities don't really stack so much as replace each other and provide versatility.

The thing that should be avoided is when taking a single level of a monk makes a fighter clearly a better fighter than taking his next level of fighter. In a perfect world taking a single level of monk should make a fighter who is just a bit worse at fighter stuff a little better at monk stuff and equally good on the whole.

I don't expect a perfect world. I expect some situations where the only thing that keeps a character from multiclassing for the quick pay off is defered gratification next level. It isn't the best way of doing things but it happens. But if in this hypothetical "balanced" fighter class has any level where what he gets is significantly lower than a +4 bonus to all his saves and armor class the first level of monk will look too attractive next to that.

Of course it doesn't have to be that silly. Say the fighter got an ability that used a swift action and lasted for a round and allowed +4 to attack. This changes the equation; the next level of fighter is no longer going up against the formidable [+4 to AC and Saves and all the 1st level monk goodies] instead it is going against [-4 to hit +4 to AC and Saves and all the monk goodies] and optimally it should be fine tuned so that at any level you should be at worst indifferent between taking a single level of monk or a level of your base class.

I'm not even saying it is a bug. Right now the monk is internally very well balanced. It is basically something to keep in mind when designing feats and mechanics for other classes.
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Re: Dungeonomicon

Post by Draco_Argentum »

Rain of flowers means you can cast subdual fireballs. Is that the intent?
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Re: Dungeonomicon

Post by RandomCasualty »

DP at [unixtime wrote:1152334677[/unixtime]]The only thing that gives me pause is the first level fighting style that gives two powerful abilities. I like to use the the +4 to Saves and AC as my example. In the context of the monk this ability isn't too powerful at first or any other level. The reason is that the monks abilities don't really stack so much as replace each other and provide versatility.


Well the main drawback to the fighting style is that you're burning a swift action to do it. Ideally, the other fighting classes are going to have swift action activated stuff too, so that you can't use the style simultaneously with other abilities.

Assuming Frank follows the paradigm with rewriting the other combat classes, it should work pretty nicely together, and won't be as much of an automatic dip as it may immediately seem.

One thing that does sorta worry me is the concealment granting styles. That's enough to make monks totally dominate rogues, and there's seemingly no way to see through it.

Also the movement rate reducing power seems a bit over the top. Can that reduce movement to 0? If so you're looking at 3 strikes to effectively kill most any monster. Were going to see a lot of monks disabling a monster's movement then slinging it to death. I'd probably set a minimum movement of 10' on that at the very least. Even still I'm not sure if it's all that fun an ability, since kiting stuff with ranged isn't all that heroic or interesting of a way to play the game.

Also the master figthing style that renders the target helpless should be a grand master style. The fact that it works agaisnt reflex instead of will is damn awesome, since reflex is monster's worst save most of the time. And it's a lot better than any of the grandmaster strikes. That's going to be able to take out great wyrms rather readily. A lot easier than any of the will based saves. Not to mention notihng is immune to the helpless status condition. So it's pretty much an automatic win.

Also a lot of these abilities probably should have tags. The feeblemind strike should be mind-affecting, the deathstrike should be a death effect and so on.
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