Tengu Monk (New Feat Archtype)


Homebrew and House Rules

Grand Lodge

I been considering a Tengu Monk build but have constantly fallen flat when trying to incorporate the Tengus swordmastery with monk levels.

So I though what about developing a Feat/Archtype that I could put towards my GM.

Before I do that however I have decided to post it here for some feedback and balancing.

Heres the ideas

Feat Version: One with the Sword

Requirements: Tengu, Swordtrained Racial Trait, BAB +1
Your Swordtrained Trait counts as Improved Unarmed Strike for the purposes of feats and class abilities, including pre-requisites. You may substitute any unarmed strike with a melee attack with your sword.

Special: If you have monk levels you also treat your sword as a monk special weapon.

Archtype Version: Kendo Master (monk)

Kendo Masters are proficient with light and medium armor.

Sword Mastery (Ex): You treat swords as monk special weapons and gain weapon focus in a sword of your choice. You are considered to have the Improved unarmed strike for the purpose of feats and class abilities, including pre-requisites and may substitute any unarmed strike with a melee attack with your sword. This ability replaces Unarmed Strikes.

Kata (Ex): Kendo Masters learn patterns of movement that, unlike regular monks involve avoidance of the blows, instead rely on attacking and counterattacking with the sword. at 1st level a Kendo Master gains combat expertise but uses his wisdom modifier instead of his dexterity modifier to determine the number of attacks of opportunity he can make in a given round. at 4th level and every 4 levels thereafter a Kendo Master gains an additional attack of opportunity up to +5 at 20th level. This ability replaces a monks AC Bonus.

One with the Sword (Ex): Starting at 5th level, Whenever a Kendo Master
attacks with a sword, he gains a +1 bonus on attack and damage rolls.
Every four levels thereafter (9th, 13th, and 17th), a Kendo Master becomes further trained in swords and increases this bonus by
+1 each. A Kendo Master also adds this bonus to any combat maneuver checks made with swords. This bonus also applies to the Kendo Master’s Combat Maneuver Defense when defending against disarm and sunder attempts made against swords. This ability replaces the monks unarmed damage increase.

Personally I'm leaning towards the Kendo Master over the feat but would appreciate peoples thoughts/input.


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Why not both and say that the Kendo master gains One With the Sword as a bonus feat at first level, replacing unarmed strike.

Grand Lodge

+5 Toaster wrote:
Why not both and say that the Kendo master gains One With the Sword as a bonus feat at first level, replacing unarmed strike.

The feat is more race specific making the option of using swords as monk weapons limited to Tengu's only.

The archtype opens up the idea to any race but in the process limits you to a monk class to obtain the full benefits.

The feat allows you to be a Tengu monk and take other monk archtypes, or you could be a Tengu rogue swordmaster and take monk feats that require unarmed strike (like the style feats) without actually having monk levels.

My preference is to keep such an ability very limited to avoid inadvertently breaking something hence posting it here to see if it could be broken.


Hmm... I'd consider adding a KI ability unique to this archetype you're building that allows the character to spend 1 ki point to allow his weapons from Sword-Trained do the same damage dice as his unarmed strike damage dice. The Zen Archer archetype fot fhe monk from APG already has this ki power, so having the Tengu have a specific training for this particular archetype would be useful. Keeping in mind that spending a Ki point from your Ki pool is generally a swift action (which you only have one per round of anyway), this is a decent ability to give your archetype.

I'd keep the racial feat that you created as a Monk-only feat if you're worried about it becoming broken, though myself I just think it'd be dandy to have a monk archetype that can flurry with a weapon while doing his unarmed damage dice just like a Zen Archer does to be quite useful for a melee focused monk.

However, being a fan of the monk's AC bonuses, I'm leery of your Kata ability replacing the AC bonus that I so enjoy as a monk (envisions self as Agent Smith dodging bullets from Matrix when playing a monk). I'd probably replace the Stunning Fist, Evasion and/or Improved Evasion, Maneuver Training, or Still Mind for your Kata(EX) ability.

As to the One with the Sword (EX) ability, that DEFINITELY should replace and work as the Maneuver Training feature of the monk base class at the least, since your ability works very similarly to that EX ability.


Quijenoth wrote:
+5 Toaster wrote:
Why not both and say that the Kendo master gains One With the Sword as a bonus feat at first level, replacing unarmed strike.

The feat is more race specific making the option of using swords as monk weapons limited to Tengu's only.

The archtype opens up the idea to any race but in the process limits you to a monk class to obtain the full benefits.

The feat allows you to be a Tengu monk and take other monk archtypes, or you could be a Tengu rogue swordmaster and take monk feats that require unarmed strike (like the style feats) without actually having monk levels.

My preference is to keep such an ability very limited to avoid inadvertently breaking something hence posting it here to see if it could be broken.

To be fair leaving it as a bonus feat means the prereqs do not have to be met. This still allows tengus to be swordmaster monks of any variety, and allow other races to be kendo masters. It would certainly make for some interesting elf and half-orc kendo masters.

Grand Lodge

Daniel Turner Zen Archer wrote:

Hmm... I'd consider adding a KI ability unique to this archetype you're building that allows the character to spend 1 ki point to allow his weapons from Sword-Trained do the same damage dice as his unarmed strike damage dice. The Zen Archer archetype fot fhe monk from APG already has this ki power, so having the Tengu have a specific training for this particular archetype would be useful. Keeping in mind that spending a Ki point from your Ki pool is generally a swift action (which you only have one per round of anyway), this is a decent ability to give your archetype.

I'd keep the racial feat that you created as a Monk-only feat if you're worried about it becoming broken, though myself I just think it'd be dandy to have a monk archetype that can flurry with a weapon while doing his unarmed damage dice just like a Zen Archer does to be quite useful for a melee focused monk.

I see where your going with the Ki arrows mimic but my concern for that would be sword choice - I'm envisioning Katanas and they already have a base damage equal to a 4th level monk meaning this ability wont be used till 8th. If you go with a two handed sword then your looking at 12th or even 16th level before this ability has any benefit to you. I would prefer to keep unarmed strike available for this build also, I could imagine a skilled katana user wielding a katana in one hand and using unarmed attacks in conjunction during a flurry to perform stunning fist attacks, trips or other combat maneuvers.

Daniel Turner Zen Archer wrote:
However, being a fan of the monk's AC bonuses, I'm leery of your Kata ability replacing the AC bonus that I so enjoy as a monk (envisions self as Agent Smith dodging bullets from Matrix when playing a monk). I'd probably replace the Stunning Fist, Evasion and/or Improved Evasion, Maneuver Training, or Still Mind for your Kata(EX) ability.

Giving Kendo Masters light and medium armor proficiency was the main reason for replacing monk AC. The Kata then concentrates on defecting blows instead of generating a fixed AC increase. Kendo is more about reaction and defense with the sword and I think combat reflexes mimics this perfectly. I probably need to look at either modifying or removing evasion (thinking they get evasion as a rogue and instead of improved evasion can use evasion in medium armor)

Daniel Turner Zen Archer wrote:
As to the One with the Sword (EX) ability, that DEFINITELY should replace and work as the Maneuver Training feature of the monk base class at the least, since your ability works very similarly to that EX ability.

I see what you mean about one with the sword and TBH I would prefer to keep maneuver training for this archtype (for reasons mentioned earlier). instead I have come up with an alternate to one with the sword...

Feat: One with the Sword (revised)

Requirements: Tengu, Swordtrained Racial Trait, BAB +1
This feat counts as the Improved Unarmed Strike for the purposes of feats and class abilities, including pre-requisites. You may substitute any unarmed strike with a melee attack with your sword (for example during a flurry of blows or making a stunning fist attack).

Special: If you have monk levels you also treat any sword as a monk special weapon.

Kendo Master Archtype (version 2)
Weapon and Armor Proficiency: You are proficient with all swords (including exotic weapons) and with Light and Medium armor.

*Revised* One with the Sword (Ex): You gain the feat One with the sword as a bonus feat at 1st level even if you do not meat the prerequisites. This ability replaces Unarmed Strikes.

*NEW* Sword Mastery (Ex): Your knowledge of the sword and its use for offence and defence grants you +1 to hit and +1 AC while you are wielding a sword. In addition at the beginning of every round you may apply your swords magical plus '+' to either your AC, CMD, CMB, to hit or damage. at 8th level you may add the swords bonus to any two (for example you can add the +3 bonus of your +3 sword to AC and CMD or CMB and damage), at 14th level you may apply it to any three. At 20th level your perfection of the sword applies to all of them. Since the draw of this ability is from the weapons magical enhancement if the item is rendered non-magical, or the kendo master is subject to a dispel or anti magic field this ability ceases to function, the Kendo master still retains the base +1 to hit and +1 AC from Sword Mastery however. This ability replaces Monk Unarmed Damage progression, a Kendo Masters unarmed damage does not improve like a regular monks.

*Unchanged* Kata (Ex): Kendo Masters learn patterns of movement that, unlike regular monks involve avoidance of the blows, instead rely on attacking and counterattacking with the sword. at 1st level a Kendo Master gains combat expertise but uses his wisdom modifier instead of his dexterity modifier to determine the number of attacks of opportunity he can make in a given round. at 4th level and every 4 levels thereafter a Kendo Master gains an additional attack of opportunity up to +5 at 20th level. This ability replaces a monks AC Bonus.

*New* Way of the Sword(Ex): At 2nd level, a Kendo Master gains Weapon Focus as a bonus feat with one type of Sword. At 6th level, the monk gains Weapon Specialization with the same weapon as a bonus feat, even if he does not meet the prerequisites. This ability replaces evasion.

*New* Evasion (Ex): At 4th level and higher, a Kendo Master can avoid even magical and unusual attacks with great agility. If she makes a successful Reflex saving throw against an attack that normally deals half damage on a successful save, she instead takes no damage. Evasion can be used only if the Kendo Master is wearing light armor or no armor. A helpless Kendo Master does not gain the benefit of evasion. This Ability replaces Slow Fall.

*New* Armored Evasion (Ex): at 9th level and higher, a kendo Masters training grants the use of Evasion while in Medium armor. This ability replaces Improved Evasion.


I definitely love this.


I think the Feat should require Weapon Focus, and only apply to the weapon that you have a Weapon Focus with. Should also clarify that it only applies to a sword and probably only a sword that is a Light Weapon. Same with the Special. This would, admittedly, move it to 2nd level instead of 1st, and Weapon Focus could be a 1st level freebie...


Normally for a Tengu Monk, I think you'd probably just use a temple sword or trade out swordtrained for the alternate racial trait that gives you a choice of exotic weapon proficiencies and take some monk ones...

This stuff is cool, but seems maybe a tad generous.


I like your changes to the Kendo Master archetype, and the only thing I would change is to give this archetype the ability to make an AoO in order to deflect the incoming attack as the PrC Duelist does.

Quote:

Parry (EX)

At 2nd level, a duelist learns to parry the attacks of other creatures, causing them to miss. Whenever the duelist takes a full attack action with a light or one-handed piercing weapon, she can elect not to take one of her attacks. At any time before her next turn, she can attempt to parry an attack against her or an adjacent ally as an immediate action. To parry the attack, the duelist makes an attack roll, using the same bonuses as the attack she chose to forego during her previous action. If her attack roll is greater than the roll of the attacking creature, the attack automatically misses. For each size category that the attacking creature is larger than the duelist, the duelist takes a –4 penalty on her attack roll. The duelist also takes a –4 penalty when attempting to parry an attack made against an adjacent ally. The duelist must declare the use of this ability after the attack is announced, but before the roll is made.

Also this might be useful for you to grant this archetype, given it's penchant for being more on deflection that simple evasion.

Quote:

Riposte (EX)

Starting at 5th level, a duelist can make an attack of opportunity against any creature whose attack she successfully parries, so long as the creature she is attacking is within reach.

These two abilities seem like they would go along with your idea for the archetype you're going for, so I copied and pasted their abilities here for your consideration.

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