Advice on making a monk / barbarian (hear me out!)

[Anastasius Brightstar]

Okay so I live with some other people that play pathfinder and we were coming up with crazy class combos that just might work.

Or rather, coming up with combos and trying to make them work.

Anyway, we were laughing about a monk/barbarian and initially rode it off as not doable because of the alignment clash.

But I was rolling up a monk as a pre-made character for a university gaming group and discovered on the monk class descriptions:

"Ex-Monks:
A monk who becomes nonlawful cannot gain new levels as a monk but retains all monk abilities."

That does mean I can "try really hard to be a monk" (for say 5 levels or whatever) and then just get sick and tired of all the rigidity and "always eating stupid rice!" and flip my lid and all the sudden take my next level in Barbarian?

Because I'd kind of love to rage with flurry of blows.

[KotC ChaiGuy]

There’s the drunken master monk archetype, it doesn’t remove the lawful requirement requirement, but should IMO, if it’s a home game maybe the GM could approve a drunken master/barbarian build. I mean the drunken master fluff states “the drunken master finds perfection through excess”, sounds like a cool add to a barbarian.

drunken master

The martial artist monk archetype does remove the lawful requirement; they can be any alignment, so they don’t have any problems multiclassing with barbarian. This archetype even gets immunity to fatigue at level 5, not the best way to get rage cycling, but it’s there.

martial artist

[EvilPaladin]

There's an Aasimar racial trait called Enlightened Warrior that lets you be a non-lawful monk[must be N or NG, or L[any]]. Also, there is the previously-mentioned Martial Artist, the idea that you can simply stop taking monk levels, and the alignment-free Bloodrager, which can be pretty much the same thing but with more magic.

[Renegadeshepherd]

EvilPaladin wrote:

There's an Aasimar racial trait called Enlightened Warrior that lets you be a non-lawful monk[must be N or NG, or L[any]]. Also, there is the previously-mentioned Martial Artist, the idea that you can simply stop taking monk levels, and the alignment-free Bloodrager, which can be pretty much the same thing but with more magic.

This.

First the negative....

Despite the flavor of it though I've never made a build I was happy with. The power of a proper made barbarian just completely overshadows the idea except for roleplay and person satisfaction. By mid levels the 50% more HP, much better saves against spells, and the DR4/- is just too much.

Now the good...

I did make a sensei monk build once where when using urban barb I could rage, perform to allies, and attack with my wisdom attribute. The result was a decent skill monkey who had ridiculous will save, speed, and survivability but had limited damage output on e monsters were getting good DR. My party sometimes joked his best action was to just run from the dragon with his 70 ft speed.

[Chengar Qordath]

Alternately, one could use the Brawlet class to stand in for the Monk levels.

[Zhayne]

There's no reason the barbarian or the monk should have an alignment restriction; I'd think most reasonable GMs would happily waive those.

[Marcus Robert Hosler]

Zhayne wrote:

There's no reason the barbarian or the monk should have an alignment restriction; I'd think most reasonable GMs would happily waive those.

I would not.

Just go brawler bloodrager if you want no alignment restrictions.

[Shimesen]

The OP's original idea is solid. Just take all levels in monk you intend on taking, the multi class into barbarian.