Stories of success about monks


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion

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As the title says,i woud like to read stories about how having "X" monk abilityhelp/saves the party. It would be better if such ability is hard to obtain from another class (i kill the Big evil guy with flurry would be boring because do damage is the job of a lotof classes).

So, somebody have a good story to share?


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Nicos wrote:

As the title says,i woud like to read stories about how having "X" monk abilityhelp/saves the party. It would be better if such ability is hard to obtain from another class (i kill the Big evil guy with flurry would be boring because killing things is the job of a lotof classes).

So, somebody have a good story?

I had a monk in one of my old 3.5 games that jumped off a city wall sprinted across an enemy army occupied field, and engaged the BBEG (Wizard) currently assaulting the city. She rocked, kept him busy long enough to keep the city walls intact while the rest of the party sallied forth. She was also wonderful in every combat we had as a drunken monk, and kept up with a (non-optimized) barbarian, and almost kept up with an arcane archer.

Caveats:

1.)However the barbarian did follow her one round later by simply eating the fall damage and then starting to wade through the army she dodged through. Took the Barb 3 rounds to get to her, though, and she did keep the BBEG busy the whole time.

2.) Her stats were insane as we were rolling at the time. Honestly she asked if she could re-roll or lower her stats when she first rolled them in front of the group. However we at that time had a strict no-re-rolls policy, so she selected Monk so as to lower the impact of her ridiculous stats.

Pre-Racial level 1

Str: 18

Con: 16

Dex: 18

Wis: 18

Int: 16

Chr: 15


A few adventures I have run have had a lot of poison, monk was immune. Doesn't matter if it is a monster, a trap or a rogue, the monk was immune or if low level, his saves were good enough. :)

Fighter monk falls down a pit and onto spikes. Takes a lot of damage.
If he was a pure monk, his reflex would have been higher and he wouldn't have taken the falling damage. The players is still running the fighter/monk, and has been lately leveling his monk levels. ;)

Monk's speed and climb is so good, he quickly climbs a dormant volcano and down inside it, while carrying a small cannon (it was not like he was wearing armour). :}

Shadow Lodge

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My player's half-orc monk, Vati, managed to solo a rakshasa and a fire giant in my 3.5 Shackled City game. He ran ahead of the party and ended up in melee with both of them. Winning initiative, he used Stunning Fist on the rakshasa while pummeling the fire giant. When the greatsword damage hurt him, he disarmed the giant of his greatsword and tossed it behind him. Then he stopped the giant's overrun attempt on the AoO, scoring a crit and knocking him backwards. By the time the party arrived, the fight was over.

My own epic level monk was forced to flee from an advanced blackstone gigant along with her party. Unfortunately the party NPC was grappled in the constructs hand. Taking the spare freedom of movement ring from the pack, she proceeded to climb up the construct to reach him, hand off the ring, and allow them both to escape the gargantuan creature.

At another time, a party member was knocked from the clifftop they were fighting from. On her action, my monk went over the side, speed climbing straight down before activating a Leap of the Heavens class-feature, spanning the chasm in one jump, snatching the PC from mid-air and latching on to the far wall of the canyon.


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i was playing my tetori monk a few months ago. i was level 14 and we were fighting a gargantuan red dragon that kept strafing us with fire. so my monk had enough of it, DD over the dragon grappled him and we both went plummeting down to the ground. we fell 150 feet and when we landed the dragon and i took full damage from the fall. i had 1 hp left and the dragons turn was coming up. luckily the dragon missed his first attack allowing me to pin him using snapping turtle clutch, then the big dumb fighter coupe de graced the dragon allowing us to win the encounter.


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I remember a monk sundering the ghost of a pirate captain's cutlass with ki blast. Interrupting the coup de grace about to be performed on the party fighter.


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I had a human Monk / Magic User who basically kicked all the @$$ there was to kick. Grand Master of Flowers FTW!

Um, you didn't mean in 1st edition AD&D? I got nothin'.


I had a moment of success with my monk in the last campaign, when I achieved the one-in-a-million shot with stunning fist on a horned devil. it took some setting up, though: I had to get out of sight, drink a potion of invisibility, move back into sight, abundant step behind the devil, and on round three deliver a flurry-of-blows. My stunning fist rolled a 20, the DM's save rolled a '2' (he would have saved on a '3'!). It turned a five-round grinder into a three-round massacre.

There was an earlier run-in with a giant crayfish that attacked our boat where I performed the "kung fu tap-dance of doom" on it's shell. Two successful stuns kept it dropping the PCs it was trying to drown, and let us kill it without sustaining heavy losses.

Ah, good times...and three of the four occasions when stunning fist worked for that character's 14-level career.


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Once upon a time, my GM had decided he was just done with our game, and set up an encounter that was specifically too hard for us to beat, totally intending on killing us all to end the game.
Well, I don't remember why, but something held up my character and I arrived late to the scene to see the rest of the party either dead or dying. I proceeded to avenge the hell out of them, one-shotting the entire encounter myself without taking a single hit. It was epic.
Seriously, just like that scene in Ip Man where he takes on half the dojo.

Things You Should Know:

This was a 3.5 game and we were playing with the Book of Exalted Deeds for the first time.
I rolled STUPID good (Seriously, I think I had 4 18s, a 16 and a 15 from rolls alone).
The GM was being kinda stingy with loot and I had taken Vow of Poverty, so I was actually ahead of the "magical" curve.
I had the Saint template.

Grand Lodge

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*fistbumps Neo* VoP monk brother!


Monk in my group's Monday game has been surprisingly awesome. He threw a stingray at some crabs we were fighting and managed not only to hit but to hit with the pointy end and inflict the ray's poison on the crab. In another fight he tangled up a Druid pretty good, keeping his casting to a minimum while my Witch and the Gunslinger whittled him down.


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There was one time when our party had cornered a group of bandits in an abandoned farmhouse. They were using the front hall as a choke point so only the barbarian could engage them in melee. My monk decided to scout around the back to see if he could find another way in when he spied a large window on the first floor where the bandits were massed. With the appropriate tumble checks I was able to dive roll through the window, shattering it in the process, spring attack in, punch someone in the back of the head, and back flip back out the now broken window all in one round. The bandits had a "what the hell just happened" kind of moment, and thinking themselves now surrounded, decided to surrender.


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Two sessions ago, our manuever master monk was able to trip up all the zombies we were facing, allowing the rogue and other 3/4ths BAB classes to hit them much more easily. Sure,since the zombies used natural attacks they could attack prone just as easily, but since my party was hitting more often, the combat was shortened by a ton of rounds.

He's also been the de facto party tank until we got an Armiger last night. Due to his high AC without much gold spent, he's been able to hold areas pretty easily and also was able to buy a few alchemical items and potions with the money saved, both of which have saved the party.

Oddly enough, the monk and the rogue are carrying the team in this campaign.


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This is my new favourite thread.


Cheapy wrote:
Oddly enough, the monk and the rogue are carrying the team in this campaign.

What's the rest of the party make up, if you don't mind sharing?


Blueluck wrote:
Cheapy wrote:
Oddly enough, the monk and the rogue are carrying the team in this campaign.
What's the rest of the party make up, if you don't mind sharing?

PMed, so as to not derail.


Neo2151 wrote:
** spoiler omitted **

One of my players in an old campaign was all of this except the actual Monk class, she was playing a Monk-style Swordsage. I think her stats were slightly less obscene though, but still crazy good.


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This thread is awesome, dotting. I am also curious about the rest of your party make up, Cheapy.


I find that, though I haven't seen any pure monk success stories in my party, I have seen a some monk-dip success stories.

For example, our Dex Aldori Swordlord/Monk, has been nearly untouchable so far thanks to his insane defensive abilities. Level 11 with armorclass in the mid thirties, great saves, and evasion (which is very handy with all the 130+ damage fireballs our Sorcerer throws out.)

In one of our battles, where our party split and one sided with Bard, one sat out, and the others sided with Takaral, he was the only one who came out of the fight unscathed, and that was while pulling off stunts like running along the arm of a cloud giant skeleton in order to jump onto an archon. :P


Danny Kessler wrote:
This thread is awesome, dotting. I am also curious about the rest of your party make up, Cheapy.

Yeah, me too. it would not be a derail if the op would like to hear about it right?


Hah, fine with me.

We're playing Way of the Wicked, book 1.

We have the halfling monk, who is also the underfoot archetype. He's focusing on trips and grapples right now.

We have the elven rogue, focusing on longbows and rapiers using my sneak attack replacement. He hasn't actually gotten to use that in a situation where he couldn't have gotten sneak attack, so that's not the reason he's doing well.

We have a changeling witch who is actually mostly useless right now. We were going through a dungeon, and she used up her Fortune hexes on a big fight before. Well, ran out of targets for that. And due to unfortunate spell choices, was boned for most of the dungeon. I ended up just saying he could cast acid splash.

We had a human inquisitor of Asmodeus who was doing alright, until the fight last night where he perished. This guy fought with morningstars, and was actually decent with his spells. He's being replaced with a barbarian that focuses on hurling stuff, and I suspect he'll be taking a bit of the spotlight too.

We had mighty godling from the start. He did a lot of damage, but died in the second session. Got jumped by a giant frog that swallow whole and basically died there. The player brought back another mighty godling, with a much different build, and did alright then, but died the session after he brought that guy. So he hasn't been too useful, what with dying half way through the session after he's brought in.

We had a fetchling bard that died trying to kill the frog that killed the first mighty godling. The player replaced this with the rogue.

We now have an armiger, which is a defensive class. 3/4ths BAB, d12* hit die. The guy who was playing the godlings is now playing this, and we're hoping he can beat his old record of surviving a total of 1 sessions. This guy was pretty key in the one fight he's been in, and is probably responsible for avoiding the potential TPK, since both the rogue and monk (and inquisitor) were unconscious.

The rogue's sneak attack and the high crit range of the rapier ended up ending the boss encounter we were just in, and he's saved the party a few times from traps. He was also pretty useful against zombies earlier, as he was able to kill some from afar. The monk has been tripping and grappling foes to kingdom come, which either ties them down, saving others from being attacked, or makes it easier for allies to attack.

The dungeon we're currently in meant to weed out the weak, so encounters are generally quite a bit above APL, hence 3/5ths of the group going unconscious in the last fight.


I don't know if it's more of a "success" story as it is a horror story about a frighteningly competent monk villain in the last campaign I was in.

The GM of it is a total fanatic for the Monk and makes them effective to the point where I really have to question what the hell people are talking about when they say the Monk is weak.

In the two big encounters with said villain that's come to mind, this villain has been able to completely cripple my character (being a straight Fighter with as much AC as I can pump out of him, somewhere around 60 or 70 AC last I ran the numbers), ripping apart over half my HP in a single Flurry and being downright impossible to hit with any attack other than the one at my highest BAB. Not even the party Gunslinger could reliably touch this guy, as his Touch AC was insane. And we weren't using any homebrew magic items or anything to tip the scale in either direction; if Paizo made it and it was posted on d20PFSRD.com, that's what we had to work with.

What makes it worse is that the character was originally supposed to be a Monk of the Four Winds, which he wanted to test out in a mock session, so we were allowed to create anything we wanted, insisting that we create whatever insanely cheesy and broken thing we could come up with to really see what the character could do. Of the party of 4, two died in the first round of combat to this character and the only reason we "won" was because one of the party members was wielding 2 vorpal weapons and crit on every single hit of his dual-wielding full-attack action (seriously, I can't make that up, it was the best string of dice rolls I've ever seen; we even told him he could stop rolling after the first one, but no...).

I can't officially say how powerful the character ended up being in the final fight against him, since I couldn't stay for the whole session.


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According to my sources, all of the stories in this thread are made up.


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Abraham Lincoln told me the same thing!

Grand Lodge

According to my sources your sources smell funny.


According to my sources your sources are made up and also smell bad.


At fifth level, my party lost a battle against one tough and deadly opponent. I'll leave out details to avoid revealing spoilers, because this encounter was halfway based on a published module. We were totally outclassed, unable to hit her through her armor and buffs. Instead of killing us, the villain charmed half the party to temporarily replace the minions we had killed. The rest of us ran away. We intended a rescue and a rematch, after recruiting more help (two new players joined us after summer break).

The Missing Spoiler Details:
The villain was the sorcerer lamia matriarch Xanesha, alias Mistress Wanton in human form, at the end of the Skinsaw Murders module in the Rise of the Runelords adventure path. She had ogre-level strength in lamia form to combine with spells and at-will abilities. The original version of Xanesha was a notorious killer of sixth-level parties. Through good detective work, we had encountered her early at fifth level. Ouch.

The best way to confront our enemy when she was unbuffed and without armor was by surprising her at a formal dinner (we knew she planned to murder another guest at the dinner). But that required my gnome ranger, our most social character remaining, to show up to the dinner in dress clothes with no armor himself, hiding nothing more than a dagger in his clothes. If the entire adventuring party rushed in wearing full armor before she began the murder or a fight, the house guards would assume that we were the bad guys.

Where does a monk fit into this story? My character had earned enough experience points in planning the encounter to level up. Sixth-level ranger gave a combat style feat, so maybe if I selected carefully, I could find a way to stop our enemy. But none of the ranger combat feats would help, not even if I talked the GM into letting me switch to another combat style from my brand new Advanced Player's Guide. So I looked to other classes for their first-level abilities. In the monk bonus feats, I spotted Improved Grapple.

Our enemy relied on a two-handed weapon that we had seen deal 40 damage a turn in a full attack (It would have killed our wizard if our GM had not fudged his death and allowed the cleric one round to heal him. And our enemy was too busy laughing to take an attack of opportunity on the cleric). If my gnome grappled her during the rematch, she would not be able to attack with it and the rest of the party could defeat her.

The armorless bonus to AC from the monk class looked good, too, given that my character was not wearing armor. And a 1d4 unarmed strike was preferable to sneaking in a 1d3 dagger.

I made up a new backstory as to how my ranger could really be a ranger monk. This was the first time in his adventuring career when he fought without armor, so finally his monk abilities could be on display. My GM agreed. But she had a price: my gnome could not dip into monk for just one level. He had to continue taking levels in monk, enough to show that he really thought of himself as a ranger monk. She also let me change my gnome's ranger class to the Guide archetype, which better fit the way my character had been played and let me declare a +4 Ranger's Focus against our enemy. The monk level had both the Ki Mystic and Four Winds archetypes.

We defeated the enemy. The grapple plan did not work as expected. Our enemy transformed into a monster to break the grapple. But that showed the confused guards who the real bad guy was, and we gained their aid.

One of the jobs of a monk is pulling the party's fat out of the fire. This holds even for one level of monk on a sixth-level character.

The next encounter in which being a monk mattered was two weeks later during a midnight attack on our travel camp by a trio of owlbears. My ranger monk was one of the first sleepers to join the defense, shooting with his bow. But soon he was face to face with an owlbear. He was able to melee with Elemental Fist unarmed strike while holding his bow in one hand. Thus, after he, his flanking buddy, and the spellcasters defeated that owlbear, he was able to return without pause to shooting the other owlbears.

At the next level, our party's figher died a heroic death and my monk found himself on the front line as a dedicated melee fighter. He could handle that role well twice a day with Ranger's Favor. The rest of the time, he served as a stubborn speed bump to protect the spellcasters. Though he was not great in his new role, it does illustrate the versatility of his two classes.

I was looking forward to using the monk Fast Movement at third level instead of Longstrider to keep up with the rest of the party, but I retired the character soon after reaching that level in order to take over as the new GM.


Someboy hae another story? so far all have been good.


I have a tiefling monk that is half of a two PC party. (To compensate for our small party, we are given max hp each level and were able to roll good stats during char creation.) During one session, we had infiltrated a certain cult. At one point, an especially thuggish member of the cult, accompanied by a guard, more or less forced (vs. risk blowing our cover) the wizard PC to follow him to a basement level of the complex.

Suspecting foul play, my monk tailed them without being spotted (using Stealth checks several times and Disable Device [class skill via a trait] on a single locked door). The aforementioned guard was left guarding the door outside the interrogation room where the thug had the PC wizard. My monk took the guard by surprise and smashed him down before he could act.

My tiefling then kicked open the door (taking the thug by surprise) and extinguished the single torch in the room, leaving the human thug in darkness. The thug had time to grab his greatclub, but a lucky Stunning Fist from my monk made him drop it. My monk brought down the brute with unarmed flurry of blows (extra atk each round w/ ki points) in 4 rounds, taking only one especially vicious hit from the greatclub (after the thug picked it up again).

After the session, the DM revealed that the thug was a warrior4/barbarian2 w/ 72 hp and was raging when combat went down. My monk was lvl 4. Post-action metagaming aside, the encounter felt pretty epic and dire, given the solo do-or-die scenario. Even though my tiefling had the advantage in the darkness and rolled well, while the brute botched his Fort save against my Stunning Fist, the way it all played out made me feel like my monk was a real badass, haha.


Harrison wrote:

I don't know if it's more of a "success" story as it is a horror story about a frighteningly competent monk villain in the last campaign I was in.

The GM of it is a total fanatic for the Monk and makes them effective to the point where I really have to question what the hell people are talking about when they say the Monk is weak.

In the two big encounters with said villain that's come to mind, this villain has been able to completely cripple my character (being a straight Fighter with as much AC as I can pump out of him, somewhere around 60 or 70 AC last I ran the numbers), ripping apart over half my HP in a single Flurry and being downright impossible to hit with any attack other than the one at my highest BAB. Not even the party Gunslinger could reliably touch this guy, as his Touch AC was insane. And we weren't using any homebrew magic items or anything to tip the scale in either direction; if Paizo made it and it was posted on d20PFSRD.com, that's what we had to work with.

What makes it worse is that the character was originally supposed to be a Monk of the Four Winds, which he wanted to test out in a mock session, so we were allowed to create anything we wanted, insisting that we create whatever insanely cheesy and broken thing we could come up with to really see what the character could do. Of the party of 4, two died in the first round of combat to this character and the only reason we "won" was because one of the party members was wielding 2 vorpal weapons and crit on every single hit of his dual-wielding full-attack action (seriously, I can't make that up, it was the best string of dice rolls I've ever seen; we even told him he could stop rolling after the first one, but no...).

I can't officially say how powerful the character ended up being in the final fight against him, since I couldn't stay for the whole session.

uhm, i would love to see this guys build if its legal.


In my friends 3.5ish game which has suffered innumerable delays, I play a good old fashioned 3.0 Monk with a few Oriental Adventure Feats. Now I've been marginally successful mostly cause my friends playing with the old boots of Striding and Springing(x2 speed) and he also plays with a secondary hp system called Wounds. Not sure how familiar PF players are with the concept, but wounds are Con + Level*2 and if you run out you die. It only gets get hit with it on a crit and is healed like ability damage or 1/2 regular magical healing.

So here I am, a generic Monk. My stats are not amazing(3 16s, a 12, and 2 10s), I don't have any magical gear aside from minor bracers, robes, rings, and amulets for AC. AC & Saves are good, nothing amazing. But none the less, I'm managing to hold my own due to non-optimization of most of the other characters and the lack of a caster in our party. This makes us retreat often and play generally more defensively. As such wholeness of body's a real godsend for once. Sure my monk doesn't hit that often, insert flurry of misses joke here, but none the less I'm doing well till around level 9.

However one day we teamed up with another party as part of a big group game, where we were hunting out some McGuffin to prove to a fellow PC's father he was worth acknowledging. So we brave out into the tundra looking for a frozen lake. We get there, eventually, and unsure of what's there, the two parties come up with a plan. Normally the Barbarian's the tank, but alas, he's the PC we need to live through the whole encounter. The other party did have casters tho; a Bard, a Rogue/Sorcerer, and a Druid. Since my monk was the fastest and otherwise out best front line fighter, they decided he was the tank for the next big battle and would run up to the lake first and see if anything attacked me. In exchange, they all Buffed the crap out of me.

Enlarged Person, Divine Power(w/ something to let it be cast on me), Bulls Strength, Greater Magic Fang, Haste, Cat's Grace; you Name it they cast it on me. So my monk double moves(200 ft IIRC) out onto the lake, a Frost Worm appears and attacks, it misses. Initiative is rolled, everyone else charges in to back me up, I roll middle of initiative.

When my turn rolls around, I just crit it on all of my attacks. My monk was able to confirm them all on account of the bonuses I was getting. My fist damage was stupid due to size and it immediately died exploding in a shard of ice that, I dodged due to evasion, while everyone else nearly died from the blast. Afterwards my monk just sorta just turned towards the rest of the party, knowing that if I hadn't done that at that moment, the blast would have wiped out half the party later in combat and a sense of pride washed over him.

I, as a player and dm, have never been quite so awed at a buffed character as my Monk at that moment. Yes it was partially amazing rolls and buffs make everyone look good, but even so I think I could have solo'd the thing even if I hadn't crit, and that's a hell of a thing for a level 9, poorly stated & under-geared, Monk to do.


In my game as the dm, the party monk zen archer, has taken on so many higher cr things by himself that just in the last game i tossed a t rex at them and the monk took it out by itself before the rest of the party could act they are level 8 and he took 2 crafting feats. and after that he jumped off the phantom chariot the party was on and ran to the t rex took a tooth from it and ran back hoping on the ride.


Water-bending Undine Quinngong Monk of the Four Winds of mine was able to keep almost the rest of the party safe through a mix of Slow Time, Hydraulic Push/Torrent, Marid Coldsnap and generally just being a distracting, teleporting, occasionally tripping target. For 4 rounds or more he was the only active party member, while the rest of the party tried to actually succeed at a will save to overcome their paralysis/confusion/other debilitating spell effects they'd succumbed to. Used every trick he had to pull it off, but no friends died that day.

Sczarni

At level 4, in the depths of Thistletop, I managed to disarm, trip(AoO), and Stun the evil demon priestess deep in the depths of thistletop. I had my AC boosted to 31 between barkskin, mage armor, and ki powers. She struggled to hit me, and the yeth hounds attacks were laughable. I positioned myself in the hallway of the chamber, with the yeth hound on one side away from everyone and the priestess between me and the magus. While she went on a rampage, she specifically targeted the magus who thought he was so badass. Nearly killed him with one full attack with her bastard sword and claw, and if not for the fort save his flesh would have done something pretty awful from whatever poison she was producing in that claw.
I ended up forcing her to hate me after my Vanaras disarmed her Bastard Sword(unarmed disarm) and juggled it in her face whilst dancing like a hyped up monkey, tripping, and stunning her. She was quite helpless and it saved my party members from being decimated in one shot. It also made it much easier to destroy her. The magus, with those spiffy bonuses to hit and -ac/dex to the target, swung for a mighty 50 damage nearly outright killing her. I then took the newly acquired sword and lobbed her head off :D Our Cleric was actually still running in panic for the entire match from the Yeth hounds roar.

Monks are squirrely things. Great for controlling the field.

My DM likes to picture my Vanaras as Rafiki from Lion King. The personalities are similiar enough I suppose!


Had a Dwarven monk (the best kind of monk!) ruin a DM's story...

The party had been caught by an evil wizard while in an enchanted forest (you know, the usual). The wizard had us in a magical prison in his basement and was working on some ritual involving a blue orb. Unconcerned with his magical mumbo-jumbo, I began to look around and asked the DM to describe everything. When he mentioned the stone ceiling, I knew I had spent my favored class bonus wisely. With High Jump and the ability to ignore hardness I simply punched my way to freedom! When the wizard chased after me, the bard summoned a giant frog that ate the blue orb (go teamwork!). By the time the wizard caught up to me, I had already freed the bard and was working on freeing the rogue. The three of us quickly dispatched the unbuffed wizard (who was not at all optimized for actual combat), the session came to an abrupt end. Apparently I (well, we but we're focusing on the monk right now) had killed his plot hook. We were supposed to have been trapped in the orb and he had built an entire story arc on us escaping the orb. Go Dwarven Monks!!


I also have seen monk npcs be pretty nasty. Nearly killed a pc with orc monks recently in my play by post with vicous stomp. Also have seen monk npcs use deflect arrows on one full attack gotten off by rapid shot.


Nicos wrote:
Someboy hae another story? so far all have been good.

My brother and my friend have had great success with the psionic monk I shared on the boards a while back. Ran the group through Flight of the Red Raven (a module by Paizo) in which he played a 5th level monk.

Monk Ownage?:
So during one part of the game there is a white dragon that ambushes the party in a snowy basin, using flyby attack and its breath weapon to bring ruin to the party. He and his fried (a psychic warrior gish) were blasted pretty hard by the cold but realized the chances of fighting the dragon on the wing was not good for them. So when the dragon flew off and got ready to turn around for another sweep, he told the psychic warrior to lay down and pretend to be dead in the snow. So she did.

He used his ki to grant himself concealment and then hid in the snowy haze and waited. When the dragon returned from beyond the cloudy fog for the next blast, it saw the monk had seemingly fled and the warrior was apparently dead or unconscious (a natural assumption since traveling in the cold causes nonlethal damage and she just took a hard blast of cold on top of it). The dragon lands to enjoy its meal, and then...

The monk leaped from his position and began meleeing with the dragon. Having burnt some ki to grant himself an armor bonus, he proceeded to fight and tank the dragon's natural attacks while wielding his broadsword (monk weapon) in a flurry of attacks. The dragon got angry and spat its icy breath at him but Evasion procced and he split the breath weapon with a flourish of his sword.

At this point he landed a few decent hits on the dragon and the psychic warrior sprang to life and used her swarm of crystals at short range to deal unstoppable / unavoidable damage to the dragon. The dragon, now wounded badly and now outnumbered and flanked decided to cut her losses and flee to regroup, allowing them to escape into the side of the frozen mountain and into the maze from which none return...


Is...is this the end of the monk success stories? We're only 37 posts in. Monk threads aren't supposed to even warm up until the 350s...


Ashiel wrote:
Is...is this the end of the monk success stories? We're only 37 posts in. Monk threads aren't supposed to even warm up until the 350s...

That rule only applies to "monk's suck" threads. When it's about monks being decent, you can hear the crickets.


King_Of_The_Crossroads wrote:
Ashiel wrote:
Is...is this the end of the monk success stories? We're only 37 posts in. Monk threads aren't supposed to even warm up until the 350s...
That rule only applies to "monk's suck" threads. When it's about monks being decent, you can hear the crickets.

Yeah this seems to be the case.

Shadow Lodge

I ran Severing Ties Sunday.

The party was a 4th level Gunslinger, 1st level Ninja, 1st level Monk, and 1st level Zen Archer.

Spoiler:
When the illusionary wall dropped, the gunslinger was the only one to fail his save with a natural one. The rest of the party proceeds to step into melee with the basilisk, the zen archer and ninja using masks to avert their gaze, the monk closing his eyes to flurry. A long drawn out battle commenced, with the ninja swinging with his wakazashi and the zen archer flurrying from behind. Some lucky miss chances and good saving throws allowed the three 1st level characters to triumph over the basilisk and restore their petrified ally with its blood.

Shadow Lodge

Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I have a story, though it rambles, and monk effectiveness comes in at the end.

I had joined in a Jade Regent campaign; due to playing a lot of Dwarf Fortress at the time, the character I made up was Russian-style Marksdwarf, with the crossbow archetype for the fighter. While the

halfling WoP Socrerer:
Secret cultist of Azathoth...
went from damaging to buffing to brainwashing, the elven alchemist who'd dipped into fighter kept forgetting that he could throw bombs and the tiefling witch kept closing into hand-to-hand combat and getting things stuck all over her (and nobody with a Liberating Command), my marksdwarf kept consistantly doing the most damage out of anyone. Enemy spellcasters could rarely get anything done while in his line of sight, due to (and I quote from the GM herself) "his super-deadly readied attacks". Even on the occassions where someone tried to close with him, his AC was such that he could intentionally provoke AoOs and avoid them, or even take the hits. He even took Master Craftsdwarf to pick up Craft Magic Arms to build intricately-decorated weapons for everyone, the names of which nobody liked.

Much later on, when he was level 11 and we were in the Adventue Path's obligatory super dungeon crawl, he suddenly found himself largely ineffective: despite his readied attacks resolving at flat-footed AC, most of his targets, all of whom were aware of his attacks, were monks with Deflect Arrows. He even had to spend a feat to branch out into melee weapons.

(At level 13, I might just give him Skill Focus (Cook), and he'd still be the most effective ranged combatant in the group. He'd still have to tangle with enemy monks up-close, though)


Ashiel wrote:
Is...is this the end of the monk success stories? We're only 37 posts in. Monk threads aren't supposed to even warm up until the 350s...

Well there are some restrictions. I could tell several tales of monk success but they wouldn't necessarily be monk specific. There is a lot of overlap in what the classes can do. What's your favorite ranger story that could only be done by a ranger?


Store about monks.

Well once apon a time, there was a DM. This DM, use to all way start his game at 1st level, with everyone tied up, and naked, and in jail. And it would take 2-4 game session to get our stuff back, and out of the dungeon, etc..

Well by the third & forth time, he did this, everyone know what was coming. So everyone in the game started there character out as a Monk.... all six of us. Then we all took our normal classes at 2nd level and on wards. In a way, the monk ability still came in useful... like when the fighter was brawling in taverns, or the +1 dodge bonus feat +1 wisdom bonus to AC, on the sorcerer.


Let's see. There was the time when the monk, rogue, and paladin were ambushed by a pack of winter wolves. The wolves surrounded the three heroes and simultaneously breathed. The paladin was frozen solid, the rogue evaded (standing on the paladin), and the monk evaded best (standing on the rogue).

Then there was time the group fought a giant squid. The squid fled but the monk wasn't about to let it get away. He drank his potion of water breathing and his buddy doused him with an oil of slipperiness. The monk chased down the squid underwater and pummelled it into submission.


Nicos wrote:
King_Of_The_Crossroads wrote:
Ashiel wrote:
Is...is this the end of the monk success stories? We're only 37 posts in. Monk threads aren't supposed to even warm up until the 350s...
That rule only applies to "monk's suck" threads. When it's about monks being decent, you can hear the crickets.
Yeah this seems to be the case.

There are circumstances in which monks can shine, even those of us who advocate improvements with the monk agree. However, they are less easily found for the monk than for other classes. At low level a well-built monk does not suffer too much, and can do some nifty tricks. In other examples, they are often corner cases, though. The problem is, what can the monk do when he can't shine in one of his corner cases?


Does this mean that we can declare monk threads true then?


TOZ wrote:

I ran Severing Ties Sunday.

The party was a 4th level Gunslinger, 1st level Ninja, 1st level Monk, and 1st level Zen Archer.

** spoiler omitted **

Wow they had knowledge arcana?

Shadow Lodge

Amazingly enough, yes!

Sczarni

So, my first Rise of the Runelords game, and my first Pathfinder campaign, we wrapped up the first chapter in the depths of Thistletop with the defeat of a VERY wicked beast.

The experience with my Monk:
Well, I must say his damage is pretty pitiful. However, his survivability is far superior to my fellow party members.

**SPOILER ALERT**

Spoiler:

Spoiler:
In one room, there were several incorporeal creatures(3 or 4) and they were hitting our touch AC instead of regular. It really hurt our Magus a good bit as his Dex was rather low and he didn't have much bonuses to anything else. For once my Monk was actually killing things, nearly killed all 3. The magus was struggling to hit them, and even when he did his damage suffered greatly. Mine was halved but I whittled away at them, eventually killing them. The Magus ended up taking 9 or 10 points of total strength ability damage and ended up having to get several restorations casted on him along with sleeping it off. My touch AC stayed around 25(with mage armor) the whole fight.
In the bigger room, the beast would take either 3 or 4 swings as a full round action, only twice out of the 5 rounds it actually hit me with a claw or two. I had purchased a wand of mage armor and given it to my wizard friend to cast on me at the start of potentially rough fights. Then he would cast bark skin on myself and I would use a ki point every round to add an extra +4 AC. After the first round of only using the ki point for AC I learned it was wiser to jack up my AC more with Full Defense. I took one attack doing 11 damage out of my 33 total health. My Vanaras cringed in pain as he's forgotten what being hit felt like. After going full defense, my AC was up to 37 for that fight and I kept doing it for many rounds. I was then untouchable it seemed except with a crit possibly. AC bonuses of ALL kinds stack super well with the Monk. The Wizard summoned two Earth Elementals that smacked for a continuous 24 ish damage total(or each?) every round. They also gave us flanking which helped the Magus finish the beast off.

It was only one creature, but it was a really nasty one. I 'think' it's base attack for melee was around +16. I've no idea what it's AC was at but it was certainly hard to hit for everyone.

The Magus smacked it one or two good times, the wizard and ranger pelted it, and our cleric decided to heal me after the two nasty attacks I received.

Monk's damage is pitiful, but their controlling and defenses are pretty outstanding so far. We are at level 4 currently and just shy of level 5. I got Lucky and the creature was facing us in a 10ft hallway just outside of the room it was binded to. It could become invisible at will, so I stood just close enough to get it's attention so the rest of the party could see and hit it. I honestly think the GM made the beast mostly attack me because he was so frustrated with my AC during every other fight in the campaign so far. Fully boosted, it still took a crit to hit me, a crit he and I never got to experience :)

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