Unchained monk help for Iron Gods


Advice


Hi all, I am looking for advice on building a decent and functional monk for an Iron Gods campaign I'm in. I'm also looking to go mainly unarmed strike (yes, I know this isn't the best, but it works better with the theme of the character), and I would prefer to be strength based. The rest of the group is primarily newer characters, so I don't need to be optimized out the wazoo, but some mild optimization is going to be helpful. The rest of the part as of now is a sword and shield paladin, a blasting focused sorcerer, a cleric of Sarenrae (the most experienced player after me and the GM, focused on Buffing), and a ranged Ranger. We were all given a stat array to work with of 16, 15, 14, 12, 10, 8. Also, humans, half-orcs, and half-elves have two floating +2s instead of one, so I'm looking at going human. Thanks in advance for any help you can give me, and let me know if there is any more information you need.


Just plain ol Unchained Monk could rock in that.

STR 18
DEX 15
CON 14
INT 10
WIS 14
CHA 8

From here you could start up either Jabbing, Dragon or Pummeling Style but Jabbing is my favorite.

You could try to double up with Ascetic Style and use a weapon like the fan favorite Sansetsuken or something a bit more flexible like a Kurisagama. It east up extra feats though and isnt strictly necessary.


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

I would make the array more like:

Street 18
Dex 12
Con 14
Int 10
Wis 17
Cha 8

Dex is normally not dumped on a strength bansed monk because of the diminishing returns on a point buy. The array doesn't have that concern. Covering the weak will save on the Unchained Monk is more important than boosting your already good reflex save. Wisdom in the flesh will cover you for acrobatics or stealth.

Sovereign Court

The big question you need to ask before committing to a monk is: how will I handle Hardness? Quite a few of the harder fights in this AP will have foes with Hardness 10-ish. Pummeling Style only helps against DR, and a +4 amulet of mighty fists likewise only helps against DR/Adamantine, not hardness.

I wouldn't recommend going unarmed in this AP for that reason. I think you would be much better served focusing on the temple sword. It's got a decent crit range too (and robots hate that), allows flurry, and you can get it made out of adamantine which will make your life SO much easier.

Evasion is fairly nice to have in this AP, there's quite a few wide-angle explosions happening. Monks could get good Touch AC (against lasers) but that's not super easy with your array.


Ascalaphus wrote:

The big question you need to ask before committing to a monk is: how will I handle Hardness? Quite a few of the harder fights in this AP will have foes with Hardness 10-ish. Pummeling Style only helps against DR, and a +4 amulet of mighty fists likewise only helps against DR/Adamantine, not hardness.

I wouldn't recommend going unarmed in this AP for that reason. I think you would be much better served focusing on the temple sword. It's got a decent crit range too (and robots hate that), allows flurry, and you can get it made out of adamantine which will make your life SO much easier.

In regards to bypassing DR & Hardness, I was planning on taking Shattering Punch as my first Style Strike, since it would allow me to bypass all DR and Hardness on one attack (I recognize that this would leave me . Would this be advantageous or would I be better served by taking Flying Kick?

For citation purposes:

Shattering Punch wrote:
The monk delivers a brutal punch that can penetrate defenses. If the attack hits, it bypasses any damage reduction or hardness possessed by the target of that attack. The monk must attack with a fist to use this style strike.
Flying Kick wrote:
The monk leaps through the air to strike a foe with a kick. Before the attack, the monk can move a distance equal to his fast movement bonus. This movement is made as part of the monk's flurry of blows attack and does not require an additional action. At the end of this movement, the monk must make an attack against an adjacent foe. This movement may be between attacks. This movement provokes an attack of opportunity as normal. The attack made after the movement must be a kick.

Sovereign Court

It might make fist-fighting a bit less pointless, but it's only one fist attack during a flurry. So it can't be combined with vital strike (flurry) nor with flying kick (fist/kick). That basically means enemies need to come to you. And you then need to be able to take them out with a single punch. I rather doubt you're going to be punching quite hard enough to do that, so then you're slugging out full attacks with a robot where you only get one really functional one. It's going to hurt a LOT. These things are absolute melee brutes. Lots of HP, AC, Hardness, good to-hit themselves and they hit for a lot of damage.

Let me be clear: you fight a variety of things during the AP, it isn't only robots and technomancers. As a GM I really dig the number of different monsters they put in. But obviously an AP called Iron Gods is going to have serious robot bosses.


Normally, Jabbing Master is pretty powerful enough to go toe to toe with Ascetic Style, but I think it can't compete with an adamantine weapon for this AP.

Taking Flying Kick at 9th level is doable, it start's pretty weak anyway (due to the range limit), although I'm not convinced Shattering Punch is worth it for only one attack - think of it as a +5 or +10 to a single attack.

Maybe ask your GM if he lets you count the dwarven FCB against construct's hardness.

Sovereign Court

There's a lot of legacy language talking about "object hardness or creature DR", from when the only creature with hardness was the Animated Object. I believe the reasonable GM call is to say that things that get through hardness of objects also go through creature hardness. (Stuff that only goes through hardness of specific object types should only go through the hardness of similar creatures of course.)


If you'd be open to changing from the monk class while keeping the unarmed idea, I have a player in my Iron Gods game that I'm running that's using a Brawler archetype that has the ability to penetrate hardness and DR. I can't remember the name of it off the top of my head, but the mechanic is that he can roll a check against the target's CR to see if he penetrates the hardness for his attacks this round. It's worked pretty well for him, allowing him to punch robots effectively as a gnome, which has been quite entertaining for the group.

If you're interested, I can ask him this evening what the archetype was called, assuming no one jumps in here with the name beforehand.

Grand Lodge

I'd just like to toss this in... Even if you can't get around hardness, you're not useless. Don't forget combat maneuvers, disarm, grapple, dirty trick, trip, etc... Maybe most or half of your damage is negated by a critter, but as you level up you won't ever be useless. Grab a couple adamantine weapons (or just one) to get around the problem and otherwise just do what you can. It's not the end of the world to not be perfectly adapted to an AP, it just means you might need to get creative in a few fights, or focus more on damage output per hit (power attack for example).

I personally find the hunt for creative solutions in mal-adaptive situations way more fun than just winning every single situation I get into with the exact same approach. It also means I get to shovel in more flavor options without feeling overly kneecapped.

Scarab Sages

I'd recommend going dwarf for an unarmed monk. The dwarf FCB allows you to ignore hardness up to your monk level, which is great for robots. Otherwise, just carry an adamantine monk weapon as a backup.


Revisiting the idea, here is feat chain for a human Unchained monk to wreck some robutt.

I will use the good Captain Morgan's stat array of

Street 18
Dex 12
Con 14
Int 10
Wis 17
Cha 8

Heavy handed and reactionary traits

feats:
level 1 Power Attack
Level 1 human bonus Weapon Focus (your choice of monk weapon. seven branch sword perhaps? Nine-ring Broadsword?)
level 1 monk bonus Dodge
level 2 monk bonus - up for grabs
level 3 Jabbing Style
level 5 Ascetic Style
level 6 monk bonus Mobility
level 7 Jabbing Dancer
level 9 Jabbing Master

Grabbing Ascetic Form after this to use flying kick with your weapon is a nice to have.

The whole reason for picking up the Ascetic line is to use an adamantine weapon to get around robutt hardness so save up for that when you can. also, it ends up being cheaper to get an enchanted adamantine weapon than getting an enchanted Amulet of Mighty Fists.

Keep strength maxed out, use that weapon two handed and burn Ki with your flurries to tack on lots of extra D6s that all bypass hardness.

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