Various House Rules for Monks

[Brother Sapo]

Random thoughts:

1. A monk (other than Zen Archer) can spend a Ki point to increase the range increment of shuriken. At 4th level, the RI becomes 20', at 8th level, 30' and at 12th level, 40'.

2. An 8th level Qinggong power: Bypass DR
For a cost of 2 Ki points, the monk's unarmed strikes bypass one type of DR (silver, cold iron, piercing, slashing, good, evil) until the end of the monk's turn. The monk must specify which DR he wants to bypass.
(I deliberately excluded magic, law and adamantine because the monk gets them anyway. I excluded chaos because it just didn't seem right that a lawful character should be able to do so. I excluded DR/-- on general principles.)

3. I would allow the monk to flurry with a single weapon, but not to use "2-handed flurry" to get 1.5x power attack bonus.

4. A 16th level Qinggong power: Bypass All DR
4 Ki points, any and all DR for one round
The "Bypass DR" ability would be a prerequisite for this.

[cranewings]

I think they can already flurry with the temple sword in two hands.

[proftobe]

They used to be able to but SKR nerfed that. Have to wait for official post, if official posts alter the way you game that is.

[cranewings]

Not me. Errata is useless. The game has to many structure problems for me to care what they think about single random things.

[Brother Sapo]

cranewings wrote:

I think they can already flurry with the temple sword in two hands.

Exactly. Per RAW they can. I think that is wrong. Even before the current FoB flap, I thought the reference to THF in the FoB description was not accidental. One could not wield two weapons and a weapon in both hands simultaneously. That is why I think it ("2-handed flurry") should be disallowed.

[cranewings]

Brother, I actually like it. I never thought of the monks flurry as two weapon fighting. I thought of it as him moving faster.

As my personal house rule fix for the monk, I've been letting them use medium armor and wield any martial weapon, for years. I've never thought them flurrying with a glaive was unfair and it always cooked about right in my head.

[Brother Sapo]

cranewings wrote:

Brother, I actually like it. I never thought of the monks flurry as two weapon fighting. I thought of it as him moving faster.

As my personal house rule fix for the monk, I've been letting them use medium armor and wield any martial weapon, for years. I've never thought them flurrying with a glaive was unfair and it always cooked about right in my head.

That's what I like best about this game. The published rules are really just a starting point.

[TriOmegaZero]

I allow clothing to be enchanted as a +0 armor bonus armor that does not interfere with monk abilities. I also allow monks to enchant wrist wraps as weapons, effectively enchanting their fists. They can also flurry with any weapon they are proficient with.

[Revan]

I've toyed around with the idea of allowing monks to wear padded armor, quilted cloth armor, and silken ceremonial robes without interfering with their class abilities. I've also thought it might be appropriate to make them spontaneous divine casters with 6 levels of spells drawn from self-buffs, healing, and any spell the Qingong Monk can get as a ki power. (Or make them psionic and give them the Psychic Warrior's power list if you're using Dreamscarred Press.)

And of course, I let monks directly enchant their unarmed strike, and have no intention of ever implementing SKR's retcon-nerf to Flurry of Blows.