Monks, Reach, and Whirlwind Attack

[tadrinth]

Can anyone spot any flaws in the following train of logic?

If a monk carries a reach polearm in his hands, he is still able to threaten adjacent squares with his unarmed attack because he can kick people. This means he can make opportunity attacks against anyone in a 10' radius. He isn't proficient with any reach weapons, so his attacks at 10' will be at a -4 unless he takes a feat to gain proficiency.

If a monk carries a polearm and uses Whirlwind attack, he threatens everything within 10', so he gets to attack everything within 10'. Nearby enemies get hit by unarmed attack, farther enemies get hit by the polearm. Of course, this isn't a flurry of blows, so the monk only uses his regular BAB, not his monk level.

You can make trip combat maneuver attempts in the place of any attack. So, if you use Whirlwind attack, you can substitute trip attempts for all your attacks. Monks use their monk level instead of their BAB for trip attempts, so these should be reasonably accurate.

If the monk has Greater Trip, all those trips provoke attacks of opportunity.

Normally, the disadvantage of using a reach weapon is that if an enemy moves adjacent to you, you must 5' step back in order to hit them on your turn.

A large creature with a reach weapon has a deadzone equal to their normal reach, and threatens out to twice their normal reach. This is a large disadvantage to a normal polearm wielder because now they have a 10' deadzone and cannot 5' step away from an adjacent enemy to attack them.

However, our monk can become large (buy a ring of permanent Enlarge Person, maybe, or bribe a wizard), and all that means is that his unarmed attacks now threaten up to 10' away and his polearm now threatens out to 20'. This then allows him to whirlwind attack to attack or trip every enemy within 20'. He doesn't care about 5' stepping away because he can just kick people, so he doesn't mind being large.

This does force you to use an Amulet of the Mighty Fist instead of enchanting some Brass Knuckles, and you'll also have to enchant your polearm, so this is not a cheap build.

You need to be level 9 to pull this off as a monk, since Spring Attack requires a +4 BAB, you get that at level 6, you get Spring Attack at 7th, and then Whirlwind Attack at level 9. That pushes Greater trip back to level 11.

A warrior can get Whirlwind Attack by level 4, by retraining his level 1 or 2 fighter bonus feat to Spring Attack at 4th and then taking Whirlwind Attack as his level 4 bonus feat. The fighter has a deadzone and therefore may not want to become Large, though. He could possibly fix this by taking Improved Unarmed Strike, although his damage with those attacks will be lousy.

The one thing I'm not sure of is how Lunge fits into this. Lunge increases your reach by 5', but how does that work with a reach weapon? Does it increase your base reach by 5' and then the reach weapon doubles that?

Thoughts? Did I miss some reason why this wouldn't work?

[Stynkk]

Not sure about the Whirlwind Attack and switching between weapons during the action so I'm waiting for others to comment on that part.

What you're suggesting would be like using Cleave or Great Cleave and switching weapons throughout the action to hit farther/closer adjacent foes. I think you may have to stick to a particular weapon.

Finally, the fighter you suppose at the end of your post could just use Armor Spikes instead of Unarmed Strikes...

tadrinth wrote:

The one thing I'm not sure of is how Lunge fits into this. Lunge increases your reach by 5', but how does that work with a reach weapon? Does it increase your base reach by 5' and then the reach weapon doubles that?

As for the Lunge Feat, it increases the reach of your attacks by 5 feet. This temporary advantage does not increase your Natural Reach (as far as I can tell). That would mean that your unarmed attacks would be at up to 10 (5+5) feet and Polearm attacks up to 15 (10+5) feet (if medium) and 15 and 25 feet, respectively, if large.

Reach Weapons:

Spoiler:

From the Equipment Section: Glaives, guisarmes, lances, longspears, ranseurs, and whips are reach weapons. A reach weapon is a melee weapon that allows its wielder to strike at targets that aren't adjacent to him. Most reach weapons double the wielder's natural reach, meaning that a typical Small or Medium wielder of such a weapon can attack a creature 10 feet away, but not a creature in an adjacent square. A typical Large character wielding a reach weapon of the appropriate size can attack a creature 15 or 20 feet away, but not adjacent creatures or creatures up to 10 feet away.
[...]
From the Combat Section: Large or larger creatures using reach weapons can strike up to double their natural reach but can't strike at their natural reach or less.

[Gignere]

A fighter can do the same thing if he just adds spikes to his armor while wielding a reach weapon.

Edit: Did not see the above post, he beat me to it.

[Josh M Foster]

Whirlwind Attack wrote:

When you use the full-attack action, you can give up your regular attacks and instead make one melee attack at your highest base attack bonus against each opponent within reach. You must make a separate attack roll against each opponent.

It does not mention that the attacks have to be with the same weapon. This strategy seems to work by the RAW, as far as I can see. I suppose the moral of the story is not to take up fireball formation on a giant unarmored guy wielding a guisarme (or whatever polearm he has.)

Also, given a Monk's improved evasion (likely by the time he has this feat) dropping a fireball after all of them have been hit and having the monk dodge it entirely seems like even more fun.

Fireball formation is never a good idea.

[Gignere]

Alorha wrote:

Whirlwind Attack wrote:

When you use the full-attack action, you can give up your regular attacks and instead make one melee attack at your highest base attack bonus against each opponent within reach. You must make a separate attack roll against each opponent.

It does not mention that the attacks have to be with the same weapon. This strategy seems to work by the RAW, as far as I can see. I suppose the moral of the story is not to take up fireball formation on a giant unarmored guy wielding a guisarme (or whatever polearm he has.)

Also, given a Monk's improved evasion (likely by the time he has this feat) dropping a fireball after all of them have been hit and having the monk dodge it entirely seems like even more fun.

Fireball formation is never a good idea.

Since most encounters happen in about 35 x 35 "rooms", certainly not many are more than 50 x 50, it will be very hard to position mobs such that all but one mob will be hit by whirlwind attack with an Enlarged monk/fighter with a reach weapon and lunge.

[Josh M Foster]

Gignere wrote:

Since most encounters happens in about a 35 x 35 "rooms", certainly not many are more than 50 x 50, it will be very hard to position mobs such that all but one mob will be hit by whirlwind attack with an Enlarged monk/fighter with a reach weapon and lunge.

True, but if you're just hitting everyone you're leaving most up to gang up on you the following round. Unless it's mooks, but non-caster classes having the ability to sweep up mooks isn't game-breaking. Besides, you've devoted a lot of resources to this as a monk, and unless you've gained proficiency with the polearm, a lot of the far attacks will miss.

It can be done, but I wouldn't want to do it. Whirlwind is great for greater invis rogues, but usually reducing the numbers of things that can hit back is a better strategy that makes for happy clerics... usually.

There will be times when your awesome tornado of death is amazing. Every build has those moments. They're a good time when they happen, as long as they don't happen every round. Then they're boring, and who wants boring awesome moments?

[Josh M Foster]

Now if you want to take this to the extreme? Greater Trip. Combat Reflexes. This takes 3 more feats though. Also you're splitting your stats between STR and DEX even moreso than a standard monk, since you'll need a ton of AoOs to really make this work. You could add Agile Manuevers into the mix, but you still need STR to hit with the guisarme (we're tripping, so that's the way to go).

If it does go down, you trip everyone, and each of them suffer an AoO for being tripped, then they suffer one if they want to get back up. Hence the need for all that DEX.

Even with this thing barrelling down on my baddies I could deal, as a GM, and the payoff for the resources spent strikes me as fair.

[Gignere]

Alorha wrote:

True, but if you're just hitting everyone you're leaving most up to gang up on you the following round.

If the fighter/monk in question is the only tank, this might be a desirable outcome.

[Josh M Foster]

Gignere wrote:

If the fighter/monk in question is the only tank, this might be a desirable outcome.

Absolutely right, but I still don't see it as game breaking, and it's legit by the RAW.

[Quantum Steve]

This a very common tactic in tripper builds. The weakness of the tactic is when fighting one large opponent that can't be easily tripped such as a Dragon. In this case half a dozen of you feats are more or less unusable. It not a bad tactic in any case. In fact, in many cases it is quite good, but hardly unbalanced.

[grasshopper_ea]

Hehehe you think this is bad on the monk. Try it on the phalanx fighter with a spiked heavy shield of bashing or a shielded fighter with a scorpion whip!