Monk of the Sacred Mountain and Adamantine Monk

[wolfen]

So my friend is looking at running an Epic level campaign starting at lvl 20 and on from there. I was wanting to make a character that was very difficult to hurt and I found out about the Invulnerable Barbarian, but as I was looking I also found MoSM. So the ability Adamantine Monk states "At 9th level, a monk of the sacred mountain has muscles so strong and skin so resilient that he gains DR 1/—. This DR increases by 1 for every three levels thereafter. As a swift action, the monk can spend 1 ki point to double his DR until the beginning of his next turn. This ability replaces improved evasion."

So from reading this would I be able to take my DR from all stacking sources (Monk 1/-, Barbarian 11/- and Crane Style/Imp Stalwart 8/-) and double it?

Also I talked to the DM and he thinks the monks and barbs would stack so that is not an issue.

[Jeff Clem]

Barbarian's Alignment: Any non-lawful Monk's Alignment: Any lawful Can't be both.

[Claxon]

Normally different sources of DR don't stack, so your DM is a bit off in that one compared to normal game rules. Such as, if you have medium adamantine armor it gives 2/-. A barbarian get DR/- from levels, but the two different soucres don't stack. You take whichever is higher. Also, you only get to apply whatever DR is highest vs an attack, so if you have DR 10/good and DR 5/- vs a non-good aligned attack you would reduce damage by 10, not 15. Different sources of DR/- wont stack. Also as noted above you can't be a monk and a barbarian at the same time unless you take the one monk archetype that lets you play a non-lawful alignment, which isn't this one you're interested in.

[Majuba]

Regardless of any stacking issues - I don't see the Adamantine Monk ability doubling any DR except the one that it grants. It's a rare enough ability that writing it to specify "*this* DR" is a little silly.

[Gobo Horde]

I dissagree with Majuba. It would be quite feasable to get stalwart with the MotSM so that should be effected at least. Also note that the monk gets less DR than if he went straight barbarian. 5 at level 10, 1 for the monk at 9 compared to a flat 10 at level 20 barbarian. Spending ki to double it simply makes it even, or slightly better if your gm houserules it to stack.

Something you might want to consider is increased DR power for 3 more points and the dragon totem line of powers for 6 more. With these you would get bar (5) monk (1) stalwart (8) imp DR (3) D totem (6) for a total of 23, doubled to 46! Then adamitine monk would be worth it! If you can try and get some armor bonuses to that. Also note that with dodge you should be able to hit the cap on stalwart quite easily, so add 2(4) to that total. Just be aware that you are spending 2 limited resources (rage and ki) to do this and you get limited ammounts of both due to multiclassing. Also your base DR would only be about 6 if you are surprised or whatnot :p

[Claxon]

SRD wrote:

Damage Reduction

Some magic creatures have the supernatural ability to instantly heal damage from weapons or ignore blows altogether as though they were invulnerable.

The numerical part of a creature's damage reduction (or DR) is the amount of damage the creature ignores from normal attacks. Usually, a certain type of weapon can overcome this reduction (see Overcoming DR). This information is separated from the damage reduction number by a slash. For example, DR 5/magic means that a creature takes 5 less points of damage from all weapons that are not magic. If a dash follows the slash, then the damage reduction is effective against any attack that does not ignore damage reduction.

Whenever damage reduction completely negates the damage from an attack, it also negates most special effects that accompany the attack, such as injury poison, a monk's stunning, and injury-based disease. Damage reduction does not negate touch attacks, energy damage dealt along with an attack, or energy drains. Nor does it affect poisons or diseases delivered by inhalation, ingestion, or contact.

Attacks that deal no damage because of the target's damage reduction do not disrupt spells.

Spells, spell-like abilities, and energy attacks (even nonmagical fire) ignore damage reduction.

Sometimes damage reduction represents instant healing. Sometimes it represents the creature's tough hide or body. In either case, other characters can see that conventional attacks won't work.

If a creature has damage reduction from more than one source, the two forms of damage reduction do not stack. Instead, the creature gets the benefit of the best damage reduction in a given situation.

http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/glossary.html#_appendix-1-spec ial-abilities

Damage reduction would not stack in the way you want it to. Your DM is incorrect with what the rule system establishes, but he could rule that it funcitons differently. Of course, this would be overpowered as you could negate 50 points of damage a limited number of times a day. It's something that shouldn't be done and goes against the rules.

Also, as something should be noted seperately, when class abilities refer to a level they are refering to the level of that class, not character level. This means you wouldn't get the ability of Adamantine Monk unless you had 9 levels in monk.

[Kazaan]

Jeff Clem wrote:

Barbarian's Alignment: Any non-lawful Monk's Alignment: Any lawful Can't be both.

Not quite. You just can't take more levels in the Monk class if you're not lawful; you still retain any and all Monk abilities if you slip into non-lawful. Barbarians, on the other hand, can't take levels and they can't Rage. Furthermore, the Martial Artist Monk archetype removes the lawful restriction and Aasimar have the Enlightened Warrior race trait that allows them to take levels in Monk even when they're NG or TN.