Debating on which of these to take to complement my MoMS/Sacred Mountain Monk (3 levels of Brawler dipped). Basically boils down to a few questions:
1.) How does Punishing Kick compare to Stunning Fist? Better or worse?
2.) If PK is worse than SF, do the other benefits outweigh the cost?
3.) For both, are the abilities worth losing Poison/Disease resistance? Diseases have come up fairly often in my campaign so far, but Poison not so much yet (level 8 in Serpent's Skull).
Still curious. Ki Mystic's stuff does look pretty nice, especially for the flavor I'm going for (Sun Xiao goes off to train and comes back alchohol-free and a little more enlightened), but I could see Hungry Ghost still working if I decided to keep him evil and just make him shed all possible weakness by dropping his alcoholic ways and finding a "better" way to restore Ki.
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Personally, I think Stunning Fist is better then Punishing Kick. What punishing kick has in its favour is that you can always choose to move the opponent back 5' and they don't get to save.
If you have tactically minded allies you can use this to your advantage, buts its overall effectiveness is limited (in my mind at least) because there is no way that I'm aware of to get that movement to provoke.
Alternatively PK has its defensive perks, especially if you fight with a reach weapon.
No reach weapon here.
It seems nice, but definitely inferior to Stunning Fist. Any input on whether the loss of SF is worth the other bonuses gained?
And any input on how good Ki Mystic is?
I'm a big fan of Hungry Ghost Monk for anyone with a large threat range. Are you planning to wield a temple sword, by chance?
Purely fisting, actually.
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As much as I would like to play a Ki Mystic I've avoided it due to the lack of clarity on how it works.
Ki mystic can be anywhere from meh (arguably worse then a Vanilla Monk), to excellent. It all depends on how you and your GM read he RAW.
- Does Ki mystic (Su) class feature replace the Ki Pool (Su) class feature even though it does not say it does?
- Does Ki mystic (Su) enhance Ki Pool (Su) even though it does not say it does?
- Or does Ki Mystic (Su) do exactly what it says it does and give you an extra pool of Ki points in place of Still Mind (Ex)?
If its the latter does this extra pool of Ki stack with Ki Pool (Su), giving the Ki Mystic a very, very, very generous amount of Ki? Or does it give you two separate & distinct Ki Pools that can be used for different purposes and whose Ki points can't be used to fuel the other pools abilities? And at what rate do the Ki Mystic (Su) Ki points replenish themselves?
If you're playing a home game it's just a matter of working out how it should play with the GM. Effectively house ruling it. But for Society Play I would expect there to be significant table variation based on the ambiguity of the text and the fact that it does not rest easily with the rules specific to how archetypes are supposed to work.
I'm patiently waiting for some official word. YMMV.
Holy s##% I hadn't even thought of that. I figured he just traded Still Mind for getting Ki a level early.
I'm asking my GM now, double Ki would make me so very happy.
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Holy s&&% I hadn't even thought of that. I figured he just traded Still Mind for getting Ki a level early.
I'm asking my GM now, double Ki would make me so very happy.
No doubt! I kind of think the intent of the archetype is to either do what you thought; that is trade still mind for access to Ki Pool 1 level sooner and give +2 Ki points. Or, give 2 Ki pools with different uses that are independent from one another (which is pretty much how it's written).
I have no real idea of how the designers determine "balance", but giving an archetype almost as twice as many Ki points and additional uses of said points does seem a lot more powerful then what is granted by most other the other archetypes.
But who knows - I'm making a lot of assumptions to arrive at that conclusion.
Double Ki would be awesome!
He got back to me and said no. In that case, Ki Mystic may not be worth it. Half our party is buffers/debuffers, we need a stainless steel guy who won't be dropped by diseases and such.