The baseline monk class seems to reflect striking martial arts like karate and most kung fu. I myself study martial arts like aikido and aikijujutsu which are focused on throws, pins, joint locks, and, when neccessary, chokes and joint breaking and/or dislocation. When one does strike, it's with the sole aim of stunning or unbalancing an opponent in order to create an opening in which to apply one of the techniques mentioned above as opposed to causing massive damage with the blow itself.
I could see this working as a core class variant or a prestige class. My "d20 fu" is just really weak, so I'd leave this for somebody else to actually write-up. :)
The baseline monk class seems to reflect striking martial arts like karate and most kung fu. I myself study martial arts like aikido and aikijujutsu which are focused on throws, pins, joint locks, and, when neccessary, chokes and joint breaking and/or dislocation. When one does strike, it's with the sole aim of stunning or unbalancing an opponent in order to create an opening in which to apply one of the techniques mentioned above as opposed to causing massive damage with the blow itself.
I could see this working as a core class variant or a prestige class. My "d20 fu" is just really weak, so I'd leave this for somebody else to actually write-up. :)
My first impression would be that all of your holds and locks would fall under "grapple", while throws would effectively be "trip attacks"...but my 'martial-arts fu' is weak; I'd suggest finding every grapple and weaponless attack feat you can find to build your class with, but I'm sure it goes farther than that.
Some resources:
Martial Arts Mayhem
Blood & Fists
M
Crippling joint breaks and dislocations might need some new rules, though. Also, some new abilities for enhancing the damage of throwing might be good, reflecting the skilled practitioner's ability to use the environment as a weapon by throwing people down onto their heads or necks on hard or irregular surfaces (and so on).
Even though he's (supposedly) a jerk and overrated as a martial artist, a typical Steven Segal movie provides some good examples. :)
Not to mention the fact that the man has the actining ability of your average brick.
Hey, Yamo. I have yet to see any rule variants in 3.5 for broken bones and torn ligaments, but if you were to build this kind of character or prestige class, you might want to add Earth's Embrace as a bonus feat. And perhaps make a new one later in the level progession called Greater Earth's Embrace that allows the grappler to inflict double the former damage.
If you went with a monk build prestige class, you could opt to have the grappler be able to substitue one of his stunning fist usages for the day to instead break a bone or ligament if he wins on an opposed check after pinning his target. It would inflict the same damage, but also either reduce the target's speed by half (similar to a caltrop effect) or render one of his arms unusable until having the full damage from the attack healed.
Anyway, just my thoughts on the matter...