Style skipping?

[NikolaiJuno]

At 1st level, 2nd level, and every four levels thereafter, a master of many styles may select a bonus style feat or the Elemental Fist feat. He does not have to meet the prerequisites of that feat, except the Elemental Fist feat. Alternatively, a master of many styles may choose a feat in that style’s feat path (such as Earth Child Topple) as one of these bonus feats if he already has the appropriate style feat (such as Earth Child Style). The master of many styles does not need to meet any other prerequisite of the feat in the style’s feat path.

The way I read this it seems like you can skip the middle feat in a style chain.

[lemeres]

That is the general consensus and interpretation, from what I've seen. If you took snake style at level 1, for example, you could go straight into snake fang at level 2 and skip snake sidewind.

Note: not all styles work well when you use this method. Taking crane riposte without crane wing would mean that you can make a counter attack when you take an action you cannot perform. Double check on those kinds of details first.

[NikolaiJuno]

But it still reduces your defensive fighting penalty to -1

[lemeres]

Yes, that is quite true, and it may well be a good enough justification to take it (as well as skipping the most often complained about feat in these boards until after the GM's toys get iteratives.)

Still, it brings up the fact that the style feats are written from the assumption that you are going to take feats sequentially in the chain. There might be other oddities depending on the style you choose. This is just general advice for anyone interested in using MoMS this way.

[Torbyne]

all of a sudden a MoMS 2/Brawler(archetype) with Wolf Savage and some tripping... seems very potent for such low levels. :)

[Dabbler]

The MoMS is tailor made as a dip class for non-monks to be better than monks at, well, being monks, really. Or to just get the best useful features and forget the rest. It's absolutely awful as a main class, though. I'm not sure if I love or hate it.

[Kazaan]

The only thing you can't ignore is a prereq requiring Elemental Fist (ie. Marid Style, Ifrit Style, etc) since they're based around using Elemental Fist. Though, oddly, you can take Mantis style as a MoMS even if you used another archetype to trade out Stunning Fist...