Stories of success about monks


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion

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I had a monk in one of my old 3.5 games that jumped off a city wall sprinted across an enemy army occupied field, and engaged the BBEG (Wizard) currently assaulting the city. She rocked, kept him busy long enough to keep the city walls intact while the rest of the party sallied forth. She was also wonderful in every combat we had as a drunken monk, and kept up with a (non-optimized) barbarian, and almost kept up with an arcane archer.

Was the wizard not able to 5-foot step ? Or cast defensively an efficient spell ?

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A few adventures I have run have had a lot of poison, monk was immune. Doesn't matter if it is a monster, a trap or a rogue, the monk was immune or if low level, his saves were good enough. :)

Fighter monk falls down a pit and onto spikes. Takes a lot of damage.

Poison (except maybe black lotus) and falling are not a threat beyond 5-6th level. For anyone. And that's not accounting for spells.

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My player's half-orc monk, Vati, managed to solo a rakshasa and a fire giant in my 3.5 Shackled City game. He ran ahead of the party and ended up in melee with both of them. Winning initiative, he used Stunning Fist on the rakshasa while pummeling the fire giant. When the greatsword damage hurt him, he disarmed the giant of his greatsword and tossed it behind him. Then he stopped the giant's overrun attempt on the AoO, scoring a crit and knocking him backwards. By the time the party arrived, the fight was over.

Level ?

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i was playing my tetori monk a few months ago. i was level 14 and we were fighting a gargantuan red dragon that kept strafing us with fire. so my monk had enough of it, DD over the dragon grappled him and we both went plummeting down to the ground. we fell 150 feet and when we landed the dragon and i took full damage from the fall. i had 1 hp left and the dragons turn was coming up. luckily the dragon missed his first attack allowing me to pin him using snapping turtle clutch, then the big dumb fighter coupe de graced the dragon allowing us to win the encounter.

Too bad DD don't allow you to attack right after it. Too bad falling damage are capped at a ridiculously low threshold too (if you had the right feat to attack after a DD).

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My own epic level monk was forced to flee from an advanced blackstone gigant along with her party. Unfortunately the party NPC was grappled in the constructs hand. Taking the spare freedom of movement ring from the pack, she proceeded to climb up the construct to reach him, hand off the ring, and allow them both to escape the gargantuan creature.

At another time, a party member was knocked from the clifftop they were fighting from. On her action, my monk went over the side, speed climbing straight down before activating a Leap of the Heavens class-feature, spanning the chasm in one jump, snatching the PC from mid-air and latching on to the far wall of the canyon.

Too bad you can't do that by the rules.

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I remember a monk sundering the ghost of a pirate captain's cutlass with ki blast. Interrupting the coup de grace about to be performed on the party fighter.

Finally something do-able.

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I had a moment of success with my monk in the last campaign, when I achieved the one-in-a-million shot with stunning fist on a horned devil. it took some setting up, though: I had to get out of sight, drink a potion of invisibility, move back into sight, abundant step behind the devil, and on round three deliver a flurry-of-blows. My stunning fist rolled a 20, the DM's save rolled a '2' (he would have saved on a '3'!). It turned a five-round grinder into a three-round massacre.

There was an earlier run-in with a giant crayfish that attacked our boat where I performed the "kung fu tap-dance of doom" on it's shell. Two successful stuns kept it dropping the PCs it was trying to drown, and let us kill it without sustaining heavy losses.

Ah, good times...and three of the four occasions when stunning fist worked for that character's 14-level career.

I have nothing to add...

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This was a 3.5 game and we were playing with the Book of Exalted Deeds for the first time.

I rolled STUPID good (Seriously, I think I had 4 18s, a 16 and a 15 from rolls alone).
The GM was being kinda stingy with loot and I had taken Vow of Poverty, so I was actually ahead of the "magical" curve.
I had the Saint template.

Yeah... Everything has been said in this one too.

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Monk in my group's Monday game has been surprisingly awesome. He threw a stingray at some crabs we were fighting and managed not only to hit but to hit with the pointy end and inflict the ray's poison on the crab. In another fight he tangled up a Druid pretty good, keeping his casting to a minimum while my Witch and the Gunslinger whittled him down.

Yeah, it's a surprise when the monk manage to hit.

For the second part... 5-foot step.

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There was one time when our party had cornered a group of bandits in an abandoned farmhouse. They were using the front hall as a choke point so only the barbarian could engage them in melee. My monk decided to scout around the back to see if he could find another way in when he spied a large window on the first floor where the bandits were massed. With the appropriate tumble checks I was able to dive roll through the window, shattering it in the process, spring attack in, punch someone in the back of the head, and back flip back out the now broken window all in one round. The bandits had a "what the hell just happened" kind of moment, and thinking themselves now surrounded, decided to surrender.

Again a monk that managed to hit. Something so rare it's in the Stories of success from a monk.

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Oddly enough, the monk and the rogue are carrying the team in this campaign.

...

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In the two big encounters with said villain that's come to mind, this villain has been able to completely cripple my character (being a straight Fighter with as much AC as I can pump out of him, somewhere around 60 or 70 AC last I ran the numbers), ripping apart over half my HP in a single Flurry and being downright impossible to hit with any attack other than the one at my highest BAB. Not even the party Gunslinger could reliably touch this guy, as his Touch AC was insane. And we weren't using any homebrew magic items or anything to tip the scale in either direction; if Paizo made it and it was posted on d20PFSRD.com, that's what we had to work with.

What makes it worse is that the character was originally supposed to be a Monk of the Four Winds, which he wanted to test out in a mock session, so we were allowed to create anything we wanted, insisting that we create whatever insanely cheesy and broken thing we could come up with to really see what the character could do. Of the party of 4, two died in the first round of combat to this character and the only reason we "won" was because one of the party members was wielding 2 vorpal weapons and crit on every single hit of his dual-wielding full-attack action (seriously, I can't make that up, it was the best string of dice rolls I've ever seen; we even told him he could stop rolling after the first one, but no...).

Too bad the GM has cheated... Oh wait, pardon me... "interpreting his character with descriptions that he found fun, but not with the rules the players are following".

I'm curious how you got 60-70 AC though.

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According to my sources, all of the stories in this thread are made up.

Made up for part of them. Not following rules for another part. The last part (luck either during the game, or at character creation, if not both) seems legit to me.

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Enlarged Person, Divine Power(w/ something to let it be cast on me), Bulls Strength, Greater Magic Fang, Haste, Cat's Grace; you Name it they cast it on me. So my monk double moves(200 ft IIRC) out onto the lake, a Frost Worm appears and attacks, it misses. Initiative is rolled, everyone else charges in to back me up, I roll middle of initiative.

It takes AT LEAST this to make a decent monk.

__________________________________________

Well, I'm bored already. None of these stories are amazing, except when not following the rules and/or succeeding at your main ability is what you think is amazing.

Hell, the monk is a class so awful that even succeeding at your main role is something from which he deserves a medal.


My husband plays a Flowing Monk/Monk of the Sacred Mountain combo who is an amazing battlefield controller.

In one scenario, he stood with his back to the door and held off 6 bad guys with a battering ram for 4 rounds (Bastion Stance), while the rest of the party smuggled the refugees out through the secret door. The bad guys had to break the door around him to get in. Then he stands in the (double) doorway using Ki throw to keep the bad guys from getting past him for another 3 rounds, all the while politely informing them that he's not allowed to let them in, and if they just surrender or leave he won't have to hurt them.

His main tactic is using Ki throw to deposit bad guys one at a time between the fighter and the rogue, who are now flanking a prone bad guy and still have their full attack available. As soon as they finish that guy off, he presents them with another target.

And I always feel bad for the bad guys who are on top of a tower or platform or ship when the flowing monk comes by..."I'm sorry I had to throw you overboard! You should have surrendered!"

And he's just recently started carrying enlarge person potions....


Covent wrote:
I had a monk in one of my old 3.5 games that jumped off a city wall sprinted across an enemy army occupied field, and engaged the BBEG (Wizard) currently assaulting the city. She rocked, kept him busy long enough to keep the city walls intact while the rest of the party sallied forth. She was also wonderful in every combat we had as a drunken monk, and kept up with a (non-optimized) barbarian, and almost kept up with an arcane archer.
AVH wrote:
Was the wizard not able to 5-foot step ? Or cast defensively an efficient spell ?

To address your question, the wizard was focused on the monk which kept him from performing other actions such as using his amulet of golem control or AOEing the town.

He cast defensively and played smart but as was shown in my spoiler the monk had amazing stats and basically shrugged off the SoD effects.

In short while I find your tone slightly aggressive, I agree with your message that the core monk needs serious help as it is only successful if it has exceptionally greater stats than the rest of the party, or inflated WBL, or a GM that breaks the rules.


I am not really aggressive, just kind of bored that a whole thread exists in which people write about monks that can do their job once in a time (not even really often), when they have an average of 17 in their abilities (before racials), are saint, advanced or whatever, and/or have 1 or more monk archetypes. And I won't even go with house rules/absence of rules for a bunch of stories.

I mean, usually, a character is supposed to succeed in his main trick more than half the time, isn't it ? I mean, BEFORE optimization of course.

I won't answer in a topic for wizard awesomeness that my wizard managed to cast a spell normally ? I won't answer in a topic for fighter awesomeness that I succeeded at my first and second attack per round ?

So why are people here so excited when the monk succeed its main role ? And what about those relating efficiency 3 or 4 times in a campaign ? Is that awesome ?

So, yeah, I'm not as excited as some other in this topic about "stories of success about monks". In this topic, I have maybe found 1 story slightly interesting...


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Heh, kind of missing the point of the thread aren't you. =)


Recently started a campaign at 11th level with Master of Many Styles/Hungry Ghost/Qinggong. Styles are Dragon, Crane and Shaitan.

He opens combat by activating all 3 styles and charging defensively with Punishing Kick/Elemental Fist. Crane Wing/Riposte into Stunning Fist.

He does somewhat paltry damage but he gets 3 chances per round of crippling or disabling an opponent. So far it's worked out pretty well.


In a 3.5 game I played a Grapply monk. I had a really weird set of scores, 18,17, 16, 11, 10, 9. So I went:

STR 18
DEX 17
CON 11
INT 10
WIS 16
Cha 9

I was human, so I had 2 feats at first level plus my monk bonus feat. I took Improved Grapple (monk feat) and Jotunbrud from races of Faerun (Technically 3.0), and fire heritage from the planar handbook.

This gave me +12 to grapple early on, but did make me rather weak on the defense. My characters role became to literally tie up spellcasters or big creatures, since he was considered large.

The most epic thing he did was when we got dropped in on by a Juvenile red dragon demanding tribute. It was one point of CR above us and we were probably not actually in position to take it out if it had taken flight, so mid conversation I jumped it (Getting a surprise round to initiate a grapple. On the first actual combat round I rolled to pin, with success. This kept him from flying away and forced him to try to escape the pin rather than just tearing me apart. We made quick work of the Dragon.

Admittedly, I was probably less good at this than I would've been as a better class. Still, I made him pretty darn useful.


3 people marked this as a favorite.
Avh wrote:
Stuff correcting people's monk stories...

Thank God you're here! People are trying to play wrong!

Shadow Lodge

2 people marked this as a favorite.

I know right? It's like he thinks the rules are the game.

Silver Crusade

Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Play the game, not the rules.


It's all about the game. And how you play it.

*hits Gorbacz with a sledgehammer*

Anyway...

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber

Time to play The Game...


1 person marked this as a favorite.

While i have plenty of Monk stories(It being one of my favorite classes) my Favorite involves one of my Monk/Gunslingers.

Now you see i had just been challenged to a old fashioned duel in a Fantasy western game we were playing. now nobody, not even the Gm knew my class composition so I thought id have a little fun . The desperado that challenged me and I meet in the middle of the dusty street and size each other up.

I spit out my cigar and tell him "Just to let ya know you're not really important enough to make me use my revolver, so ill just use this ol thing" (patting my starting Flintlock)."Hell i don't even much ammo for this thing anymore.

The Desperado laughs and jokes about how the Dwarf doesn't even have enough cash to afford ammo and he'll just have to take my revolver when i'm dead. Its then that the town clock tower starts ringing. He drops into the classic quick-draw stance and i...just stand there nonchalantly waiting. The Clock slowly continues ringing as the whole town waits. My Gm asks me to roll initiative. I win it and spend my Round still standing there. The Gm gets confused asking me if i was sure i wanted to pass. I told him I was good, Let the bandit go. He stares at me in disbelief and says ok then, The bandit draws his Rusty Flintlock and fires.
Its at that point my Dwarves hand strikes faster than a viper as i reach out and literally snatch the bullet out of the air. The bandit stares in terror as my dwarf calmly takes the bullet starts to load my gun.Its at this point the bandit takes off running down the street. I then finish loading, take aim and kill him with a single shot to the back.

After that the campaign really got underway as i meet with the other pcs and got to the meat of the game but nobody ever challenged my dwarf to a duel after that.

Liberty's Edge

"Hi. My name is Bob. I'm a Drunken Master. It's been eight days since my last drink."


Gorbacz wrote:
Play the game, not the rules.

It may be surprising for you, but a game is defined by its rules.

If you want to do RP without rules, theater is for you.
If you want to make up a good story, writing a book is for you.
If you want to live a good story, reading a book or watching a 3D movie is for you.
If you're only interested in numbers and rules, video games are for you.

I prefer myself tabletop RPGs, where I can make up (and live) very good stories AND play a game. You know, with rules.

Anyone can make good stories. What is sad is not many of those are even slightly above average... without even considering the rule aspect, for that matter.


2 people marked this as a favorite.
Avh wrote:
Gorbacz wrote:
Play the game, not the rules.

It may be surprising for you, but a game is defined by its its players defining it.

If you want to do RP without rules, tabletop RPGs are for you.
If you want to make up a good story, tabletop RPGs are for you.
If you want to live a good story, tabletop RPGs are for you.
If you're only interested in numbers and rules, tabletop RPGs are for you.

Fixed for you.

Also, bro, you're the only one in this thread not having a good time. Might I suggest badminton, collage making or the art of mime?


Vamptastic wrote:
Avh wrote:
Gorbacz wrote:
Play the game, not the rules.

It may be surprising for you, but a game is defined by its its players defining it.

If you want to do RP without rules, tabletop RPGs are for you.
If you want to make up a good story, tabletop RPGs are for you.
If you want to live a good story, tabletop RPGs are for you.
If you're only interested in numbers and rules, tabletop RPGs are for you.

Fixed for you.

Also, bro, you're the only one in this thread not having a good time. Might I suggest badminton, collage making or the art of mime?

[facepalm]


Avh wrote:
Vamptastic wrote:
Avh wrote:
Gorbacz wrote:
Play the game, not the rules.

It may be surprising for you, but a game is defined by its its players defining it.

If you want to do RP without rules, tabletop RPGs are for you.
If you want to make up a good story, tabletop RPGs are for you.
If you want to live a good story, tabletop RPGs are for you.
If you're only interested in numbers and rules, tabletop RPGs are for you.

Fixed for you.

Also, bro, you're the only one in this thread not having a good time. Might I suggest badminton, collage making or the art of mime?

[facepalm]

Hey, don't feel bad. We all make mistakes.

Anyway, back to cool Monk stories.

This happened in 3.5, and the DM was a completely insane religious sociopath, and was also a completely killer DM who happened to love when people made overpowered characters(I think for the challenge.). His games were great.

Anyway, my buddy ended up making a Vampire Monk whose signature weapon was a giant Maul, who later shed the Vampire business and became an Angel. His character was the most absurd thing in existence, until he played in my Star Wars campaign. Dear god...

Shadow Lodge

Avh wrote:
[facepalm]

Hey, at least we're all on the same page with one thing...


@TOZ

I disagree : Monks can't even facepalm...

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Hey, don't feel bad. We all make mistakes.

I didn't make a mistake. But you...

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Anyway, my buddy ended up making a Vampire Monk whose signature weapon was a giant Maul, who later shed the Vampire business and became an Angel. His character was the most absurd thing in existence, until he played in my Star Wars campaign. Dear god...

... Seriously ?


2 people marked this as a favorite.

Take your negativity to the other monk threads, citizen.


Avh wrote:

@TOZ

I disagree : Monks can't even facepalm...

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Hey, don't feel bad. We all make mistakes.

I didn't make a mistake. But you...

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Anyway, my buddy ended up making a Vampire Monk whose signature weapon was a giant Maul, who later shed the Vampire business and became an Angel. His character was the most absurd thing in existence, until he played in my Star Wars campaign. Dear god...
... Seriously ?

I'm sorry, I meant to say happy little accident.

And yes, we did seriously have fun playing a tabletop RPG, the same as you've probably had fun playing a tabletop RPG. It was very magical.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Vamptastic wrote:


This happened in 3.5, and the DM was a completely insane religious sociopath, and was also a completely killer DM who happened to love when people made overpowered characters(I think for the challenge.). His games were great.

Anyway, my buddy ended up making a Vampire Monk whose signature weapon was a giant Maul, who later shed the Vampire business and became an Angel. His character was the most absurd thing in existence, until he played in my Star Wars campaign. Dear god...

Oh I completely forgot I had a fairly fun semi-lethal dwarven battle-judge of a flowing monk npc who wielded a two-handed hammer.

One of the npcs I'd really enjoy bringing into a new campaign as a player.

Shadow Lodge

My bad, I missed that you actually asked some questions.

Avh wrote:
Quote:
My player's half-orc monk, Vati, managed to solo a rakshasa and a fire giant in my 3.5 Shackled City game. He ran ahead of the party and ended up in melee with both of them. Winning initiative, he used Stunning Fist on the rakshasa while pummeling the fire giant. When the greatsword damage hurt him, he disarmed the giant of his greatsword and tossed it behind him. Then he stopped the giant's overrun attempt on the AoO, scoring a crit and knocking him backwards. By the time the party arrived, the fight was over.
Level ?

Lets see, Test of the Smoking Eye was written for 10-11th, so roughly in that range.

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My own epic level monk was forced to flee from an advanced blackstone gigant along with her party. Unfortunately the party NPC was grappled in the constructs hand. Taking the spare freedom of movement ring from the pack, she proceeded to climb up the construct to reach him, hand off the ring, and allow them both to escape the gargantuan creature.

At another time, a party member was knocked from the clifftop they were fighting from. On her action, my monk went over the side, speed climbing straight down before activating a Leap of the Heavens class-feature, spanning the chasm in one jump, snatching the PC from mid-air and latching on to the far wall of the canyon.

Avh wrote:
Too bad you can't do that by the rules.

Do what? Climb the construct? That was easy.

"Hey, I want to climb the gigant."
"Okay, make a Tumble to avoid the AoO."
"Auto succeed with my bonus."
"Okay, make the Climb check."
"I have a racial Climb speed and take 10."
"You're there."

Now, if you're talking about the Leap of the Heavens, you'd be right that in core I couldn't. But I was using a 3PP that allowed me to do it.


Ashiel wrote:
Does this mean that we can declare monk threads true then?

That pretty much has gone without saying since Paizo themselves said that the monk is underpowered.

Ataraxias wrote:

Recently started a campaign at 11th level with Master of Many Styles/Hungry Ghost/Qinggong. Styles are Dragon, Crane and Shaitan.

He opens combat by activating all 3 styles and charging defensively with Punishing Kick/Elemental Fist. Crane Wing/Riposte into Stunning Fist.

He does somewhat paltry damage but he gets 3 chances per round of crippling or disabling an opponent. So far it's worked out pretty well.

Does he have anything that isn't this pony-trick, though?

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