RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32
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I've got a PFS character that is more fragile than I would like. He was conceived as nimble support character, passing crits with Butterfly Sting and paired wakizashis to a two handed bruiser.
I started with two levels of Lore Warden Fighter, to get extra feats, then I was planning on continuing with Ninja for the skills, sneak attack, and ninja tricks.
Here's his current stats
Half-Elf Lore Warden 2/Ninja 1
Str 10
Dex 16
Con 14
Int 14
Wis 10
Cha 14
My question is, would adding a level or two of (Master of Many Styles) Monk for Kirin Style and Crane Style improve my survivability or hurt it?
I know the AC bonus, flurry, and fast movement wouldn't apply while I was wearing light armor...
Retrain your hit points to maximum. That will increase your survivability quite a bit.
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Crane style will help your survivability, and master of many styles doesn't get flurry, so you aren't giving up much to wear armor with a wis 10. I'd skip Kirin style though. If you want to add more styles, snake style will let you use a sense motive check in p,ace of ac, which may be an increase. It will also add more counter attacks.
You can find it in Ultimate Campaign.
Note that nothing in Ultimate Campaign is currently legal for use in PFS. They're going to make parts of it legal at the start of season 5 in August, but they haven't stated which parts.
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RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32
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Ravingdork- I should have specified this is a PFS character, and has the same HP as any other character given the same HD and Con. I'll edit my original post.
Imbicatus- Snake Style and its subsequent feats use Sense Motive, which is at best just shy of what I got for Armor, and unarmed strike, which this character would not use except in the most dire of emergencies.
Also, storywise, I just played 'Way of the Kirin' and had a near-death experience, so monastic training in the Kirin Style is thematic, and fairly decent given his intelligence modifier.
I would focus on getting as many crane style feats as possible with a MoMS dip, rather than gaining branching styles. Crane wing alone would make it impossible for most humanoid opponents to hit you without using TWF until level 6 or so, and even then it would be at -5 BAB. Also, add the Monk of the Sacred Mountain archetype if you want, since it gives you +1 natural armor and the toughness feat at level 2. More AC and hp is typically helpful for survival, no?
I have been a bit shaky on this, but can you take the initial style feat through your level up feat and then take later feats in the style with the bonus feat? This is particularly troublesome for me to discern since some of the prereqs would be satisfied by the class (Improved unarmed strike). My basic premise is this: if you have dodge already, can you take crane style as your level up feat, and then still use that to qualify for crane wing as the bonus feat for the same level? If so, then you could theorically get all three feats in two levels, which is huge. Am I entirely off base with this?
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Take Toughness.
Make sure you put you favored class bonus into additional hit points.
Save up for a Jingasa of the Fortunate Soldier. It can help keep you from being one shotted with crits or sneak attacks.
Pick up Vanishing Trick and/or Shadow Clone from the Ninja.
Be a small race. It will improve both you AC and Attack rolls and weapon damage is mostly irrelavent to you.
There was a topic about this just a few days ago; the general consensus is "No", as the leveling up section states that you apply regular Feats last when levelling up your character. Whereas Bonus Feats are a class feature and therefore get applied prior.
That being said, I doubt most GM's would enforce it - I know I wouldn't. You wanna master a style tree by level two, then more power to you. I'll just hit you with ranged attacks and magic instead. :p
Well darn. Oh well, just having the ability to cancel out a melee attack is nice. You can take Crane Riposte as a regular feat later then. And Mortalis...that is why you take Deflect Arrows at level 3. Plus, with all those dodge bonuses, my touch AC would be great. Plus monk levels would help shore up some saves.
There are many way to survive better in combat. Knowing your enemies is the first step, but preparing against enemies ahead would be better if you don't know what you will encounter.
Example, my fighter is good at one hit kill anything with low hp. So he was good at surviving against ankle bitters like ghouls or low level NPCs. However, he knew there are many things he can not hit, so we gathered some spices, a wooden club and a boar spear as soon as he hard a chance. Then his team encountered a bull, which his boar spear was useful against. Although he didn't use it because they got attack by bulettes at the same time, his chance of survival was higher because he was well prepared.
Right after the bulettes, the team encounters sleeping flowers with army ants swamps. His weapon was useless, but he did gather some spice that drive ants away and had oil on him. He was unconscious by the end of that battle, but he is still alive because how carefully he plans his preparation.
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RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32
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Whelp, Ryoshi Cho's schticks have been Errata'd. Crane Wing has been reduced in usefulness, and Butterfly Sting is now reserved for followers of Desna only, and there is no reason Cho would do so, being strictly in the "Lawful" camp.
Half-Elf Fighter (Lore Warden) 2/Monk (Master of Many Styles, Sohei) 1/Ninja 2
Str 10
Dex 16
Con 16
Int 14
Wis 10
Cha 14
Feats
Racial- Skill Focus (Acrobatics)
Level 1- Weapon Finesse
Fighter Bonus1- Quick Draw
Fighter Bonus2- Butterfly Sting
Lore Warden2- Combat Expertise
Level 3- Two-Weapon Fighting
Monk Bonus- Improved Unarmed Strike, Crane Style
Level 5- Dodge
Ninja Trick- shadow clone
I was going to go the Crane Wing/Riposte route, but the errata requires him to turtle, and when his flanking partner is the raging barbarian, no enemy in their right mind wants to attack the weak, hard-to-hit foe when the easy to hit one is doing all the damage. So I took another level in Ninja and picked up shadow clone.
My question is how can I best aid my raging 2d4 x4 flanking partner? Try to focus on combat maneuvers like trip and reposition, perhaps with a reach weapon like the Kusarigama (If only it was finessable!) Take Extra Ninja Trick and pick up Distracting Attack or Slow Reactions?
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Adding to hit is for the most part a larger increase in DPR than adding damage for most builds. I would recommend going for the feint route personally, with maybe additional traits->adopted->Helpful(Halfling) for when feinting doesn't seem realistic or helpful. Tripping would be more useful in general, but particularly with the two monk levels that are not specialized in trip, that seems difficult. 4 legged opponents, larger creatures, and creatures immune to trip through other means, along with situations in which tripping will be difficult, may become plentiful in your future. However tripping is very powerful when you can do it. But the meteoric rise of CMD as you level makes me loathe to recommend trip or dirty trick, though I love both.
Teamwork feats are always an option if you are your battle partner have ever discussed doing so.
Retraining options include going from Ninja to Thug and pumping intimidate with the Sap lines, but that does not appear to be in line with the flavor of the character. Rebuilding MoMS into Flowing Monk can be useful for a more trip/reposition-centric build. Continuing to go into Lore Warden after this, with dueling gloves later, a trip weapon, and the Lore Warden bonus to CMB and feats would allow you to competently trip even while losing out on 2 BAB. Agile Maneuvers will probably be necessary. At this rate your build doesn't mesh as well as it used to though, so I would recommend dropping the monk level personally. Flowing Monk has some really cool features, but if you don't commit to it you might not get as much out of it as the MoMS dip previously.