Andrian Timeswift's page

So, I'm going to be playing a solo gestalt campaign and I decided to play a Master of Many Styles Monk//Brawler because it basically makes me an Ubermonk. However, I'm having a little bit of difficulty deciding exactly where to go with it. For example, what style feats should I take?

I will point out right now that, because of the nature of the campaign, I had to dump Int a little, so that doesn't give me much to work with in terms of skills. I've got Acrobatics, Intimidate, Perception, and Perform (dance).

You might rightly wonder why I took Intimidate and Perform instead of other skills. My answer is that this campaign will be heavily focused on the Performance Combat rules and as such I need those skills to win performance checks (in the case of Perform) and take advantage of Performance Feats (in the case of Intimidate).

I bring up my low int and few skills because a lot of style feats have skill levels as prerequisites. Fortunately, as a MoMS, I don't need to meet those requirements to get the feats I want. (Also fortunately, as a Brawler, I don't need 13 Int to get a lot of important combat feats.)

I'm planning to go primarily unarmed, but I can use Martial Flexibility to pick up just about any weapon I want in a pinch.

Now, keeping all that in mind, what suggestions would you all have for building this character?

Okay, so I'm finding a consistent problem with my characters at early levels. Unless I'm building a STR-based character, it is virtually impossible to carry all the gear I need to start with at early levels. Later on, when bags of holding and handy haversacks come around, this problem is largely eliminated, but until I can afford them, I need options. Masterwork backpacks are super expensive at Level 1, where this problem is most acute, and only help a little. So far, the only options I see the game providing me are:

Option 1: Go with insufficient gear. This means either traveling around without food or water or anything but the stuff you need to stay alive in combat or carrying around your food, water, and other necessities but being seriously under-equipped for a fight.

Option 2: Go encumbered. Medium encumbrance sucks, especially for dex-based melee builds, who are the characters who suffer most from this problem. Still, it's an option, about on par with carrying insufficient battle gear.

Option 3: Take an animal. This seems like a great option. Just pick up a donkey for cheap and throw anything too heavy for you to carry on that. However, this does come with its problems, since most of the characters who have the gear problem also have low charisma scores, and so either have to put points into Handle Animal (and still suck at it) or slow down the game wrestling with their beast of burden. Plus animals add work for the GM and extra bean-counting.

What I really wish I could have would be:

Option 4: A hand cart or wheelbarrow or similar device that would be a free action to let go of and reduce my encumbrance. I don't need to carry MUCH more than my encumbrance level, and I don't need to carry all my survival gear into every fight (or any fight, for that matter). Sure, it would be easier for someone to come along and steal my stuff while I'm busy fighting, and if I have to retreat I might lose the stuff, but that's all true about an animal, too.

The problem is that while Option 4 is definitely possible in real life and can be accomplished quite easily with medieval technology, I don't think there are any rules for it. There's a cart that can carry up to 300 pounds, but takes two medium-sized creatures to pull it. I just wish there was something about a quarter of the size that could be pulled by one medium creature that could carry up to 50 pounds.

Is there something like this in the game that I've just not found yet? Are there other options for low-level characters to haul their gear around?