There is a monk-rogue in my regular game that has the Catch Off-Guard feat. He carries around part of a chair and a beer mug as his primary, yet "improvised" weapons. By rogue level 3, he's doing more damage than the standard fighter, as well as hitting more consistently at the lower flat-footed DCs.
Is this correct? If so, it's a great build, with the standard rogue dagger replaced with the suddenly significantly better and cheaper fist-sized rock. If not, why?
Just how many unarmed opponents are you fighting?
I shouldn't think you're going to get a whole lot of mileage out of the flat-footed part. You never catch animals, beasts, magical beasts, dragons, undead, aberrations, or most outsiders "unarmed". It pretty much only applies to humanoids who have no natural attacks of their own and thus are forced to rely on weapons.
So how many unarmed humanoids do you fight? And how long does it take them to draw a weapon if they survive the first flat-footed attack?
For everything else, all he's really doing is smacking someone with a chair leg (1d6 damage), with normal attack and damage bonuses. The fighter probably has a better weapon, you know, like a masterwork or even magical sword that probably does quite a bit more damage, especially if he has Weapon Training, Weapon Focus, and Weapon Specialization with it. Sure, during the sneak attack the rogue gets a couple extra d6 for damage and might out-damage the fighter on that round - if he's fighting an unarmed humanoid.
All the rest of the time the fighter should have no trouble at all out-damaging this monk-rogue.
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There is a monk-rogue in my regular game that has the Catch Off-Guard feat. He carries around part of a chair and a beer mug as his primary, yet "improvised" weapons. By rogue level 3, he's doing more damage than the standard fighter, as well as hitting more consistently at the lower flat-footed DCs.
Is this correct? If so, it's a great build, with the standard rogue dagger replaced with the suddenly significantly better and cheaper fist-sized rock. If not, why?
I assume he's using Catch off Guard to catch his opponents flat footed, and then sneak attack them. The combination works, BUT pay attention to the requirements of Catch off Guard. The opponent must be UNARMED for the your friend to get the flat footed bonus. SO unless the monk/rogue is spending an action disarming all his foes first, he should not be gaining the flat footed benefit granted by the Catch off Guard Feat.
Also remember, a shield is a weapon, armor spikes are weapons, gauntlets are weapons, so just disarming the opponent of his sword, does not necessarily leave him unarmed.
And of course the catch off guard feat doesn't work at all against opponents with natural weaponry or improved unarmed strike.
Apparently, the English major needs to learn to read.. Somehow I missed the unarmed part, though the monk part does mean a lot of disarmed opponents. Thanks, all.