Help me help my DM


Advice


So my DM is a oldschool guy, started with first edition dnd, for a long time we played heavily homebrewed versions of 1st and 2nd edition dnd. we made the switch to pathfinder and we like it a lot, but its not a system hes intimate with.

because of this, the character i made is frankly, frustrating him. it requires a fair bit of system mastery to play, so i imagine it takes a fair bit to know how to play against.

Its a Dwarf MoMS/Sacred Mountain/Hungry Ghost/Qinggong monk. its also gestalted with druid, which i multiclass out of and into brawler beginning at level 7. everyones gestalted for this campaign, but further, the issue im having has nothing to do with gestalt or how it interacts with the game. feats are as follows

1-Crane Style/Combat Reflexes
2-Crane Wing
3-Snake Style
5-Natural spell (its gestalt, but its not important for my issue)
6-Snake Fang
7-Crane Riposte/Steel Soul
8-Dragon Style/Dragon ferocity

The character is built around using high AC and crane/snake styles to counter attacks, then dragon style to increase damage (STR based monk)

Im finding im just frustrating the DM to no end. took out his miniboss and two underlings without ever being hit. (he hit 3 times, but each time i deflected with crane wing or used snake styles sense motive to AC ability). I resisted a fear spell by a level 30 cleric (barely) which annoyed him as well.

everything i did involved nothing from the druid side of my character, i basically functioned as a level 8 monk with 2 extra feats (cuz of brawler multiclass).

Just hoping for some tips to help my dm vs my character.


I am no monk expert, but looking over the archtype charts, it would appear that you cannot stack all the archtypes you have on the same character. Once you've given something up for an archtype, you cannot give it up again to gain another archtype.

I also do not believe the concept of gestalt made it into the PF rules, so as a new PF GM I'd definitely nix that as well.

Once that's been done, remind your DM that Crane Wing can only be used once per round. So the key to countering it is to hit you with multiple foes at once, each of which can deliver non-trivial melee attacks. Also, archers.


there is no nixing gestalt, we all leveled up from level 1 as so.

the multiple foes were attacking, i have high AC tho, so its not always easy.

as for the first part where are you having issues? none of the archetypes overlap.


Are you willing to play a less complicated PC?

If not, consider writing a guide for your DM as to how this character operates, especially how and when and how much you can boost your defenses. If your PC is much more effective than the other PCs in the party, your DM may not be the only one feeling frustrated.


i could, but other players dont think i should replace my PC, plus given the current situation in our campaign, it would be very unlikely to be reasoned out logically how it happened.

as for the second part, a guide is a good idea, my character is easily the best defensively, but as far as offense, its really not very impressive when im not getting the uses of crane riposte and snake fang. our alchemist/magus can attend to that lol. (high damage)


Qinggong Monk conflicts with your other archetypes, so your character isn't actually legit. Qinggong and Hungry Ghost both replace the wholeness of body, diamond body, and diamond soul. Qinggong and Sacred Mountain both replace slow fall, high jump, and tongue of sun and moon. You cannot combine archetypes if they both replace a specific class feature.

From the sounds of it, your GM is playing way outside of the parameters of the Pathfinder system if he's bringing 30th level Clerics into the game. There actually isn't a very big difference between a level 20 cleric and a level 30 cleric (mainly because there are no rules for it, and the DC of your spells is unrelated to your character level). Given the excellent will saves a monk has, I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if you could pull off a save against a 30th level character.

I'm getting the feeling that you guys may also have wealth levels well above the recommended amount for your level, and point buys way above the baseline (which is 15, by the way). And you're gestalt on top of that. That makes game balance extremely difficult, as all the guidelines basically go out the window. A party like your's, the GM probably has to flirt with TPK to challenge properly.


U are not using more than 1 style per round correct? Meaning that u have to be in crane style to deflect an attack which means that if u use snake or dragon or not able to use the other styles or abilities under those styles.
So boosting ur dmg with dragon means that u can't deflect or use snake style either unless u activated the style in a previous round and the next round u could as a swift action do another style but lose the benefits and abilities of the previous style.
If u are stacking the styles and benefits and abilities of them with other styles, then there is a problem. If u are switching to snake or dragon and losing the deflect one attack or switching to crane and using the deflecting but losing the boost from dragon etc etc then u are doing it right.

My advice is tell him what styles u have and what abilities u have that are used when u have that style and let him look them up. Then start calling out what u are doing and when u are switching ur styles and such. That will help out him and lwt him know what's going on so he won't be confused.


@ Dasrak-everyone was under the impression that qinggong DOES stack with styles that it replaces, you just dont replace the ability that is replaced by the other archetypes, as qinggongs thing is worded as you "can" meaning you dont have to. you could take qinggong and keep all ki powers the same as a base monk. further, qinggong doesnt even come into play until sometime after level 8 for me, because, i cant replace any of those previous ki ab ilities because they are already replaced by sacred/hungry ghost archetypes. so atm the qinggong isnt doing anything.

the 30th level cleric, we are not really meant to fight him, he wasnt even fighting me, he just feared me for waking him up lol.

i admit we dont use point buy, we roll. but our wealth levels are actually well BELOW average.

@ Redneckdevil, a MoMS monk can combine styles.

also to everyone, the other players dont really hate my character, he doesnt steal the show, but they do say he can make rounds annoyingly long beacuse when the enemy misses me, i can roll attacks to hit them. something i dont think the other players are too used to either as we all were used to playing old dnd rulesets before this.


Eh true. Looking over I didn't think ur setup was legal. But if gm is letting it go, then have a blast. Looking over how u was able to do the setup, as a dm I'm confused as well so I think u just gonna have to get used to the dm being confused.

Grand Lodge

Dasrak wrote:
Qinggong Monk conflicts with your other archetypes, so your character isn't actually legit. Qinggong and Hungry Ghost both replace the wholeness of body, diamond body, and diamond soul. Qinggong and Sacred Mountain both replace slow fall, high jump, and tongue of sun and moon. You cannot combine archetypes if they both replace a specific class feature.

Monk: Can a qinggong monk take a second archetype if the character doesn't swap out abilities the second archetype requires?


Yes. However, the other archetype takes priority over the various abilities granted at each level, and the character can't delay taking an ability that the other archetype replaces—he must allow the second archetype to replace the standard ability at the standard class level.
For example, the monk of the healing hand archetype (APG) replaces
wholeness of body (7th level)
diamond body (11th level)
quivering palm (15th level)
perfect self (20th level).
A qinggong monk who also wants to take the monk of the healing hand archetype has to let the healing hand archetype replace all four of those abilities at those specific class levels. The qinggong monk is still free to replace any standard monk abilities at the other class levels listed in the qinggong monk archetype (slow fall at 4th, high jump at 5th, and so on), so long as selecting those abilities doesn't interfere with acquiring the healing hand abilities at the correct levels.
Note that if the second archetype replaces a standard monk ability, the character cannot select that replaced ability at a later monk level. For example, the qinggong/healing hand monk can never select wholeness of body, even at a level higher than 7th. In effect, the character has selected wholeness of body at 7th and immediately replaced it with a healing hand ability; as the qinggong archetype only lets you select an ability later if the character "selects a different ki power in place of a standard monk ability" (which didn't occur), that option is not available for the character.

—Pathfinder Design Team, 05/23/13

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