Halfrican's page

blackbloodtroll wrote:

You should absolutely, at all costs, not mix Monk and Rogue.

It will be a huge disappointment, and you will not have the viable PC you want. At best, you will be The Load, that everyone loves/hates. Like Scrappy-Doo.

Well, I've made a Flowing Monk/Rogue and he wasn't the "load", unviable, or a disappointment in the slightest. Flowing Monk gives a Save-or-Flat foot with AoO's, and Trip abilities that let him generate AoO's, along with giving some solid survivability due to high saves and AC, and then Rogue grants sneak attack to give the monk a bit of damage on top of the normal attacks. Getting the trip attempt off is a little difficult unless you are [like me] lucky enough to fight mostly humanoids, but still, if you can that helps with attack rolls. Saying that Monk/Rogue multiclass is certainly going to make you the load is not correct. In fact, Monk/Rogue can be a surprisingly effective multiclass.

Halfrican wrote:

Won't it take me way longer and have steeper prereqs without the free feat though? Maybe I'm wrong. I guess the whole idea was to abuse all of the free sneak attacks granted by the level 2 flowing monk feature. At the same time, all of those attacks can probably stand on their own without sneak attack.

No rogue talent gives you any of those for free, except for 1 that grants a combat feat and 1 that grants Improved Unarmed Strike. Monk Bonus Feats will give you IUS, Imp. Trip, and Combat Reflexes. Rogue will help you get 1 of them quicker, so if you want to get Sneak Attack, dropping a few levels of rogue might be nice, but fighter will be faster at progressing it. You will wait another 1 level to get the additional Vicious Stomp without rogue levels, but you still will probably get 1 AoO when the enemy feels like standing up. So while it can be nice, it isn't necessary.

I more meant that combat trick as the level 2 rogue talent lets me get vicious stomp one level sooner that I could have otherwise, as I'd be getting a feat at a level I wouldn't be otherwise. But if you've tried it and it was underwhelming, that's solid advice. I was worried about non-humanoids as well.

EDIT: I'm dumb, that's exactly what you said.

You don't need a rogue talent to get 3 AoO's/round with tripping. All you have to do is take Improved Unarmed Strike, Combat Reflexes, Vicious Stomp, Improved Trip, Greater Trip, and Combat Expertise. Most are prerequisites, but Greater Trip and Vicious Stomp both give AoO's when you trip.

Won't it take me way longer and have steeper prereqs without the free feat though? Maybe I'm wrong. I guess the whole idea was to abuse all of the free sneak attacks granted by the level 2 flowing monk feature. At the same time, all of those attacks can probably stand on their own without sneak attack.

Or would I be better of dropping rogue and dipping into unarmed fighter for elemental fist?

See above for explanation of why I was gonna try it.
Alternatively:
1. Get attacked
2. Misdirection, free trip attempt
3. If he fails the save, he's sickened
4. Repeat steps 2-7 above, but on his turn
5. My turn happens
6. Flurry of blows w/ sneak attack
(Or flurry of maneuvers, I guess. Not sure which is the better choice.

The idea is that i'll be tripping and sneak attacking all the time. 2nd level flowing monk makes you flat footed with opportunity attacks, rogue talent gives me an opportunity attack when they fall prone, greater trip, when I have it gives me another. Just a fun little gimmick I wanted to try. Don't think it'll work?
EDIT: To explain, by the time I have greater trip, it should work like this:
1. Make trip attempt
2. Enemy falls prone
3. Opportunity attack, opponent has to make REF save
If he fails, he's flat-footed
4. Second opportunity attack is sneak attack.
5. He has to make another REF save
If he fails, he's still flat-footed
6. He dares to get up from prone
7. Another opportunity attack, still sneak attack

http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2qw1c?Help-with-Undine-Flowing-MonkRogue
Not optimal by any means, but should be fun to play. Considering the group is nothing but newbies, I'm not expecting it to bee too terribly difficult.

Looking at witch right now. This seems promising. Thanks for the advice guys. The impression I'm getting is that viable or not, this is going to be really hard for a complete newbie to pull off and have fun. I guess we'll see. Anybody feel like popping over to my other thread and helping me out with my character?

Eh, I have lots of vegan friends, and very very few of them are sanctimonious about it. I have a lot of respect for someone that can really stick to it. My last girlfriend was vegan, and she was never ever judgy about the fact that I'm not. She was always really polite about it when we'd have dinner with my parents, and my grandmother adored her. We've been broken up for a month now and my grandmother still makes a vegan dish at our family dinners "just in case." Total non-sequitur. Just to note, the girl playing the pacifist is not vegan. The dwarf and the elf are, however.

I'll try to convince her to look at nature cleric. That was what I was initially thinking she'd do in the first place. I doubt she'd have any qualms about fighting the undead, or demons, or things that can't be reasoned with. At least, it'd be silly if she did IMO. I'll talk to her about building around nonlethal attacks and grapples and stuff in case things get hairy. I think it'd be kind of neat if she had a few "I'm sorry I have to do this" moments.

I think she's going to probably protest a lot of the time when fighting happens and try to at least resolve things peacefully when possible. I think it'll be important for her character if the following two things are guaranteed.
A) We have a damn good cause
B) She is at least in some way fiercely loyal to the rest of the PCs. My character has room in his backstory to be a childhood friend, or have been mentored by her character in some way. I'll talk to her about it.

It helps that no one, except the dwarf paladin and urban ninja/robin hood ranger are particularly violent to begin with. My character, at least, is a whimsical LG undine who tends to not take things very seriously and focuses on misdirection and being a slippery bastard in combat. I think he could be talked out of taking a finishing blow when an enemy could be spared in most situations. So long as it isn't a sahaugin.

Funny thing is, two of the other guys in the group are vegan. Not the girl playing the pacifist, though. I think she's good friends with the elf, or something. Maybe she could have sworn to protect him or something. Like I said, I'm the only PC that has ever played before, so chances are, she just hasn't thought this through. I do know we're using Samsarans as basically 4e devas. So she's an angel that a loooong time ago elected to live a mortal life. I'm pretty sure her shtick is that she wants this to be her last reincarnation, and in some past lives she's been a part of the pretty nasty wars. It's probably along the lines of some last divine quest, but to fully purify her soul, she must cause no harm directly.

I had a player once that liked to throw rocks in various situations. He was disarmed one time, another time we had our gear taken, I can't remember the other set ups. Anyways, it doesn't sound that crazy yet, especially since he only did it like 4 times, but he literally critted every time he threw one. I'm not joking even a little bit. Nat 20s every time he threw a rock. We laughed for at least 5 minutes the last time it happened.

TBH, I don't know. I'm the only one in the group that has played in a game before. Tonight is our first game. I'm playing a gimmicky trip/sneak attack flowing monk. I think she's a samsaran, or whatever, that has been reincarnated so many times that this time, she's vowed to live a life causing no harm. Could she have a niche as a pure healer/party face? I don't know a lot about the campaign yet, except that it's a nature vs industry sort of theme and that we've all been having dreams about some lady and an intelligent tree.

We have a player that wants to be completely nonviolent. How viable is that? She wants to play druid. Can she never harm an enemy and still feel useful? What would you guys suggest in terms of a build?

Sorry to double post, but do I need to meet the prerequisites to take feats granted by rogue talents?

So, I'm playing in a really casual game with some friends. I am the only player with any experience at all. The DM wants me to build something fun and thematic but viable in case the rest of the party fails at building things. Straight up cheese is discouraged, and as such I want to build a believable character. As such, I will be selecting weapons and things based on what suits the character, not was is strictly the best option.

As a bit of background (you can skip this if you want to get to the crunch), Undines in this setting are semi-aquatic nomadic sea people whose evolution was influenced over centuries by a whale and dolphin-lubbng marid from early humans living on the coast. Over the generations, they moved further and further out to sea, learning to hunt with the dolphins and whales they travel with. They are reclusive by nature, and as such are more or less unheard of by anyone that doesn't live underwater. They have been nearly wiped out by the sahuagin(sp?), and are now reduced to a few scattered tribes on the fringes of sea elf territory. The pod is lead by a huntmaster, who I imagine is a tactician(psionic) or some shit. My character was his son. Long story short, he inherited some psionic ability, but we separated from the pod during a sahuagin attack shortly after his father died and was then marooned by a storm(which he may or may not have caused, GM is being enigmatic), and finally rescued by human sailors. He was so traumatized by the whole thing(he was 10 at the time) that he has a block on his psionic abilities now and a pretty piss-poor fragmented memory of what all went down. The sailors helped him look for his people for a few years to no avail, decided to adopted him, gave him a silly human name because aquan names are hard to pronounce and tend to involve echolocation, and eventually took him shoreside. As he grew up, he got used to life on land and spent some time at a monastery(where he gained his first level in waterben- er, monk) in hopes that repairing his damaged chi would help him to figure out what the f+~* happened to his people.

So here we are. We are level one. I am a flowing monk. I carry a short spear because I can throw it and it makes sense underwater. I mostly attack with unarmed strikes though.
We rolled stats, and I got this after race adjustments.
STR 10
CON 14
DEX 17
INT 14
WIS 17
CHA 13
Racially, I traded water affinity for hydrated vitality, hydraulic push for amphibious (quingong will give me more use for hydraulic push eventually anyways), considering trading cold resist for something (maybe blindsense?)

Featwise, I am going with Weapon Finesse, Improved Unarmed Strike, and Improved Trip. I am taking both the Flowing and Quinggong archetypes for monk. Level 2, I plan to take another level of monk. 3 and 4 will be rogue, building to vicious stomp. Then what. Probably back to monk for the quingong stuff. Maybe a dip in fighter so I can start working on elemental fist stuff. I'm afraid I'm trying to do too many things.

My questions are, will this be viable at all? How am I going to pull of a rope dart? What is the fastest way to get Marid Style? Should I dip AGAIN into unarmed fighter, or just stick with monk and rogue? Should I also take maneuver master? Any archetypes for rogue worth a shit? Is hydraulic maneuver actually any good/worth a feat? What other maneuvers should I try to utilize? Disarm? Grapple?

These are the things I want eventually:
A rope dart, because rope darts are cool
Marid Style Feats
Hydraulic Maneuver

Rest of the party is:
Dwarf Paladin
Elf Monk(plain ole vanilla monk, so we should be pretty different)
Human Ranger
Samsaran Druid using 3.5 vow of peace shit

We are not optimized.