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I'm running Rise of the Runelords and one of the characters is playing a Flowing Monk. Even bossfights are now NOTHING to my party because my monsters are always flat on their backs, followed by AOs for standing up, and finishing off with never getting their full round of attacks because they were too busy standing up!
Tripping Monks were broken in 3.0, even more broken in 3.5, and CONTINUE their broken streak here in Pathfinder.
From here on out, I'm gonna give all my monsters Boots of STFU: +100 to resist trip attacks!
Hmmm. Worms and Incorporeal beings to team up for the win! With a swarm of Harpies to finish them off!
I'm running Rise of the Runelords and one of the characters is playing a Flowing Monk. Even bossfights are now NOTHING to my party because my monsters are always flat on their backs, followed by AOs for standing up, and finishing off with never getting their full round of attacks because they were too busy standing up!
Tripping Monks were broken in 3.0, even more broken in 3.5, and CONTINUE their broken streak here in Pathfinder.
From here on out, I'm gonna give all my monsters Boots of STFU: +100 to resist trip attacks!
Monks don't trip any better than a fighter dedicated to doing so. A ranger could add his favored enemy bonus and do it better than both for boss fights.
I could keep going. :)
I always adjust the modules to the players. That does not mean negate their tactics, but making them hard to do, once the higher ups learn what the tactics are is not a bad idea.
Why is the Boss not standing up, and/or disarming the monk of the tripping weapon. With that -2, assuming flurry is in place are you sure it is not just high rolls doing you in?
edit:never seen a flowing monk so I dont know exactly how they work.
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Tripping Monks. Great band name.
edit:never seen a flowing monk so I dont know exactly how they work.
They look a little like this. Note that its once per round because it eats up your immediate action, meaning its not so useful with snake or crane style.
The point of the archetype seems to be turning ones attacks against the user through reposition and trips, and to take advantage of AoO's. Be water friend?
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Hmmm. Worms and Incorporeal beings to team up for the win! With a swarm of Harpies to finish them off!Except I am running Rise of the Runelords and my party will get uppity if snakes and ghosts start showing up every encounter for no apperent reason, lol.
They'd probably get pretty uppity if you threw in that whole reflex save too. At least, one of them would.
Design enemies that are actually much more dangerous on their backs.
Heh heh heh, that sounds dirty out loud. But I mean it. Make another Monk who's a BJJ master or something.
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To the best of my knowledge, you can attack from prone with a -4 penalty. So, even if interrupted, the attack still goes through, it's just less likely to hit, and the enemy doesn't need to get back up if they want to just continue attacking instead.
Not to mention there are a fair few things immune to trip, while anything with more than two legs has a bonus to its CMD against them (I think). I don't really know the enemies someone would find in RotRL, but that might be worth considering (attack dogs or something for example, if the party primarily fights humans/humanoids. Seems like they'd be easy to mix in).
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Design enemies that are actually much more dangerous on their backs.
Heh heh heh, that sounds dirty out loud. But I mean it. Make another Monk who's a BJJ master or something.
Oh, and THIS doesn't sound dirty? :-D
I know. But just pretend the extra J saves it.
I get it's a preset game, but what BBEG doesn't have a fly wand/scroll/caster minion around to immunizing himself from a whole range of ground-based nastiness including trip.
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I have a tripping monk in my game and it really hasn't been an issue. He's pretty useful against humanoids, but larger creatures and quadrupeds+ do give him some issues. +2 to CMD for every pair of legs beyond one and Large +1, Huge +2, Gargantuan +4, Colossal +8. He uses Ki Throw to reposition people too, so it's pretty useful. Again, though, nothing truly broken. If you want to give him a challenge without nerfing him into the ground, have the bad guys start on different elevations. Also remember that when a creature stands up and he tries to trip them again as an AoO, they cannot be tripped because they are still considered prone. Also don't forget that most bonuses that affect your AC also affect your CMD. Specifically circumstance, deflection, dodge, insight, luck, morale, profane, and sacred bonuses. So something to consider. Also, as my players found out yesterday, casters can still cast Color Spray when prone. I swear there was a way to stand up with Acrobatics, but I can't seem to find it. Probably a Rogue Talent. Admittedly in my game, more people have firearms so ranged attacks while prone are less of an issue, except for provoking an attack of opportunity.
Also, I find larger battlefields help lessen this. When people aren't clumped together, it's harder for the monk to trip everyone.
So really, larger creatures, quadrupeds and other creatures with multiple legs, flying creatures, swarms, oozes, and snake-like creatures are good starters and are a great variety of monsters to use. Just don't over do it and make the monk feel useless by adding Reflex saves or making everyone Huge Centipedes. That's the sign of poor GMing there.
Then stop tripping them... Sorry. Couldn't resist.
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You think that's bad? My Black MAgga from the 3rd book was Tetori'd. At level 9, the Magga was perpetually 10 feet in the ground and pinned. The damn monk spends 2 Ki and grapples the 'celestial monster', full-rounds into pin and drags the Magga through earth, repositioning it so that it can't get away.
The monk was a Oread Tetori. 'Nuff said.
"Shape of...a giant centipede!"
"Yeah, you like that? Go on. Trip this, jerk."
TGMaxMaxer....can you post that H-Orc build? I want to throw something like that against my group. He sounds like a good boss for a final fight.
The monk could just go paladin and 1 round death-smite the BBEG. IJS...
I have a decent monk build that's a maneuver master with focus on trip. Love the flurry of trips.
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I'm sorry. Despite having a trip monk in MY Crimson Throne game, the overwhelming amount of threads about how monks suck and are the most broken and useless class in the game (except for Rogues, LG Paladins, Blasting Wizards/Sorcerers and the lowly Fighter who Cant Fly)have quite convinced me.
Monks are terrible, even the tripping high CMB ones who work.
And by the way, its obvious that the AP writers were horribly biased towards Monks for that AP, because your players Monk works, and that is the only conclusion.
Even though your AP is different than mine, and that was the one conclusion they came up with about my players Monk.
Oh, and at higher levels in the AP, he will definitely begin to suck harder, even though you say he wont.
Yep.
Monks suck.
There, now other posters won't have to come in here and start another 10000 post thread.
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Bomanz YOU never convinced us because you refused to post a build, despite claiming you had builds that could proved us wrong, but I did start a thread, where others did post some decent monks. It took a lot of system mastery, but things are better than we thought they were so the "monks need help" brigade is not pushing as hard as we were before. I for one won't be saying a monk can't contribute. No I am not still not a fan either since I will have to still guide new players, but I am happy for what I have been shown.
PS: I remember you saying you posted such builds, and people making excuses, but even after searching for them I never found one.
That reminds me I need to check that thread out now to see how the is fairing on day 2. :)
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I'm running Rise of the Runelords and one of the characters is playing a Flowing Monk. Even bossfights are now NOTHING to my party because my monsters are always flat on their backs, followed by AOs for standing up, and finishing off with never getting their full round of attacks because they were too busy standing up!
Tripping Monks were broken in 3.0, even more broken in 3.5, and CONTINUE their broken streak here in Pathfinder.
From here on out, I'm gonna give all my monsters Boots of STFU: +100 to resist trip attacks!
It's obvious that what you need is snakes with crossbows and the prone shooter feat.
Also you make it sound as if this monk is using redirection all the time. It does have a use per day limit as well as only being usable once per round. Avoid the 15 minute adventuring day and you can wear him out and ruin his brief moment in the spotlight as a monk.
I'm running Rise of the Runelords and one of the characters is playing a Flowing Monk. Even bossfights are now NOTHING to my party because my monsters are always flat on their backs, followed by AOs for standing up, and finishing off with never getting their full round of attacks because they were too busy standing up!
Tripping Monks were broken in 3.0, even more broken in 3.5, and CONTINUE their broken streak here in Pathfinder.
From here on out, I'm gonna give all my monsters Boots of STFU: +100 to resist trip attacks!
Oh, let the monk have his fun! Before long the monsters will get too big to trip so easily anyway, and frankly the monk is nowhere near as good at maneuvers as...well, every other class, basically. For example a fighter with a reach weapon is way nastier, for example, because he has reach, the enhancement bonus from the weapon, the bonus from weapon training, Weapon Focus, Greater Weapon Focus etc. all added in.
Also remember, monsters can use maneuvers too - like grapple, bull rush, and overrun - that make them very unpleasant for the party to face.
Lastly, you could get creative and use the tactic against the party rather than nerfing trip by DM fiat and rendering a PC completely ineffective...
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I'm sorry. Despite having a trip monk in MY Crimson Throne game...
The one where you only went through the first three urban-based modules and missed on the following ones that introduced all the hard-to-trip monsters? The one where your experience of half the adventure somehow invalidated my experience of the entire adventure path with a tripping monk that found it hard to contribute after 8th level and almost ineffective after 10th due to all the flying, swimming, legless/multi-legged, enemies you encounter later on?
All of which is in accordance with the statement about monks that they are not too bad at low levels when facing humanoids (sweet spot around 2nd to 6th level), but at higher levels, facing non-humanoids, and fighting higher-than-level CRs they struggle more than other classes with little to make up for it.
With Ki Throw, they can break the normal size limitations on trip by spending ki.
I too played all the way through CotCT. Was a very enjoyable Adventure Path. Though, there are several humanoid enemies in Book 6.
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Man... he'd really hate my H-Orc fig/rog too. At 8th level, he has +24 trip, +25 Dirty trick, +22 Steal, +20 Drag, +20 reposition. (although drag and reposition provoke).
With a 22 str and Felling smash, Gr trip, and quick dirty trick, they're prone and blind, and I already did damage with a 2h weapon to boot.
I'd also like to see that build. I'm very interested in 'boss fights' that aren't with spellcasters, which generally involves stuff like dread wight monks or awakened construct barbarians or whatever.
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From here on out, I'm gonna give all my monsters Boots of STFU: +100 to resist trip attacks!
Why don't you just use the rules? Your players will feel less butthurt then.
KK... For GoldEdition 42... I don't have Herolabs or such, so I can't do the great linky thing most ppls do. But, I'll spoiler it for you to keep the wall o'text down.
** spoiler omitted **...
Thanks for the build! He will be sure to kill someone alongside my gnome sorcerer sidekick.
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OP, who's side are you on?
It seems like your complaint is that one of the people you are running the game for has a character that is actually doing what it is designed to do.
How is that a bad thing?
Solution 1: Have them fight birds.
Solution 2: The boss can just full attack the monk from the ground with -4 to hit until the monk is dead, then stand up and fight the party.
Solution 3: Don't make up rules to f$!* your players, select foes that are better built or equipped to handle them. There are enough rules as it is.
I'm also not really sure what the problem is here, as long as the group is having fun. There are only two possible problems I can see.
A) I could understand some frustration if the monk is totally overshadowing everyone else, but if the party's amused, what's the issue?
B) You do want to make sure they all still feel challenged. But as others have pointed out, there are easier ways of doing that then using weird nerfing houserules or cheating with magic items. In particular, keep note of the fact that the redirection ability is only 1/day per monk level. That'll run out real quick if he's using it all day. Other than that...so he trips people. So what? They can hit him anyway, and there are so many things that simply cannot be tripped that you may as well let him have fun when he can. If it flies, has no legs, or has too many legs, his ability - in fact, probably the majority of his build - becomes totally useless. So when it works, I say let him shine.