Hello all. I had an idea for Pathfinder Society where I would try to play a monk that focuses on support instead of damage or combat maneuvers. So far, this is what I've come up with. Critique is welcome (after all, this is why I'm posting it). I can start this guy at level 3.
His personality I envision as sort of an instructor, kind of like a big Yoda (He is a half-orc after all).
The basic concept is he will try to SAD into wisdom, focusing on things that use that such as Stunning Fist and taking the Sensei archetype to get wisdom to attack rolls. He took the Crushing Blow feat for enemies that can't be stunned can still be debuffed.
He is combo-ing Sensei and Ki Mystic for several reasons. First, Ki Mystic gives +2 to all knowledge skills when you have ki left, and Sensei makes all knowledge skills class skills. As well, the extra pool from Ki Mystic will help with his Sensei abilities.
I was planning on taking Barkskin with Qinggong and then using Sensei to spread it around. I might get Scorching Ray as well...I don't know yet.
Down the road, I was thinking about getting Spring Attack so I can deliver stunning fists with my spring attacks and not have to stay in trouble for too long.
I feel the most important item for this character is going to be the ring of ki storing.
Basic Information:
Race: Half-Orc
Alterate Racial Traits Taken:
- Sacred Tattoo (Replaces Orc Ferocity to give +1 luck bonus to all saves)
- City-Raised (Replace weapon familiarity to get proficiency with whips and longswords, and also +2 Knowledge (local))
- Scavenger (Replace intimidating to get +2 Appraise checks and perception for hidden objects and identifying a potion by taste)
Class:
Monk 3 (Sensei / Ki Mystic / Qinggong)
Starting Stats:
Str: 10
Dex: 10
Con: 14
Int: 12
Wis: 20
Cha: 7
Feats:
Monk Bonus: Dodge (+1 Dodge AC)
1: Crushing Blow (Full-round action, stunning fist attempt to lower AC by your wisdom score. Works on basically everything...which is why I'm getting it)
3: Mantis Style (Style that increases your stunning fist DC by 2 and gives you an extra stunning fist attempt)
Traits:
- Fate's Favored (+1 to anything that provides a luck bonus. Meant to combo with Sacred Tattoo so I get +2 to all saves instead of +1)
- Reactionary (+2 initiative...not sure if I want to keep this one)
Various other choices:
Favored class bonus: +1/2 CMD against grapple and +1/2 stunning fist attempts/day.
Class Abilities:
- Stunning Fist (DC 16, or DC 18 w/ Mantis Style, 4/day at this level)
- Advice (Inspire Courage +1, 8 rounds/day)
- Maneuver Training (BAB counts as full for maneuvers)
- Insightful Strike (Use Wisdom for attacks and combat maneuvers with unarmed strikes and monk weapons)
- Ki Pool (5 for now, will increase rapidly with level)
Skill Points:
- 3 points in Heal for Mantis Style
- 1 point in every knowledge skill so I can make a check. All of them are currently +7 with the +2 from Ki Mystic, except Knowledge (Local) which is +9.
- 1 point in perception
- 1 point in sense motive
Various statistics:
- Unarmed Strike: +7, 1d6 damage
- Saves: Fort (+7), Reflex (+5), Will (+10)
- CMB: 8, CMD: 18 (19 vs grapple)
- AC: 16 (Have wand of mage armor for 20), FF: 15 (19), T: 16 (16)
- Hit Points: 24
Let me know if you have any advice for now or for the future!
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Great concept and I like the idea. It is nice to see some originality every once and a while. I also approve of putting points into Knowledge. It will generally make GMs happy and gives you some info on what is going on. I think it isn't an appreciated skill(s) in PFS.
Do you have any idea what to do after this? I have an idea that is totally crazy. Why not take a look at those chain of feats (starting with Scorpion Style) that most people say are terrible. Their reasoning is that the feats don't add damage to your attacks, but since your character is focusing more on debuffing the enemy, it wouldn't hurt. Reducing an enemies speed, staggering them and then getting some free attacks. Not exactly mind blowing, but it could be helpful.
I´m currently playing something similiar through Carrion Crown (played him from lvl 4 to 7 so far) and it´s working great and it is a lot of fun.
I partly built around Bodyguard and Helpful Trait with a reach weapon. He also has Eldritch Heritage to get a familiar (improved at lvl 9, although Crushing Blow seems rather nice, didn´t think about it yet, so thanks).
I can really advice you to take Lingering Performance (although I´m not sure about it working with Advice under PFS rules). Before I took it at lvl 7, I had to manage the advice rounds a lot, now I can use it almost always, even for Skillcheck buffs.
Skillchecks: If you take Helpful, enjoy giving someone +11 (+4 Aid Another, +3 Advice, +4 Ki Mystic) ;)
I was worried about not having enough Ki, but after lvl 6 or so it was enough for most of the days. I didn´t even have enough time/opportunity to use Stunning Fist, as a I was busy doing other support stuff.
Thats the thread, maybe you can get some info from there:
http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2qfnr?Halfling-Support-Monk#13
Any possible chance of going for Gnome (or racial heritage gnome) and zen Koan? Locking down enemies (and take drunken master for the ki-refill).
prototype00
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It was a choice between Mayhem the flame oracle or a sensei somewhat like this. I never researched into the bardic performance feats and if they worked with advice. But that is exactly where I was heading and would advise (pun possibly intended) for you to look as well. I conch with Scott that Dirty Trick is a great debuff. My idea was to make a debuff god, grabbing mantis style for stunning fists, the ki ring and related classes and such (ki mystic, favored class bonus, etc), Punishing kick, Touch of Serenity and cranking up the wisdom for high dc's. I then figured that combat patrol, Combat reflexes and a good Dex score would be important. I dumped str as low as I dared and focused entirely on just hitting but not necessarily dealing damage. With rebuffs in mind there are intimidate feats that work off of landing a hit. Shaken opponents are efficiently rebuffed. So if you can land a hit, shaken them, touch of serenity the fighter, position for an aoo and stun the rogue, probably via combat patrol...ah man, some good times ahead.
Add in dirty tricks as suggested and you have plenty of options and secondary stat opportunities to work with. This is about as far as I took the idea before becoming intrigued by the oracle class. Sorry if I can't be of much more help.
PS. If you can ever play this in a home game, Wolf Style is another great choice. The last ability is absolutely brutal. Not legal in pfs, though. It also means no mantis style and wolf style up simultaneously unless you forego sensei. But a wis/Dex/char master of many styles with weapon finesse and an agile amulet can pull it off but without advice and sad wisdom, it is harder and eats up more feats, probably requiring some multiclassing abuse.
Great concept and I like the idea. It is nice to see some originality every once and a while. I also approve of putting points into Knowledge. It will generally make GMs happy and gives you some info on what is going on. I think it isn't an appreciated skill(s) in PFS.
Thanks! I spent a lot of time thinking about this character...I've never made a monk, but I really like the "support" role (I play a lot of oracles and bards).
Do you have any idea what to do after this? I have an idea that is totally crazy. Why not take a look at those chain of feats (starting with Scorpion Style) that most people say are terrible. Their reasoning is that the feats don't add damage to your attacks, but since your character is focusing more on debuffing the enemy, it wouldn't hurt. Reducing an enemies speed, staggering them and then getting some free attacks. Not exactly mind blowing, but it could be helpful.
I thought about Scorpion style. I may still consider it, but it seems a little underwhelming, even for a build like this where's it's basically made for this type of character. I'll keep it in mind.
I´m currently playing something similiar through Carrion Crown (played him from lvl 4 to 7 so far) and it´s working great and it is a lot of fun.
I partly built around Bodyguard and Helpful Trait with a reach weapon. He also has Eldritch Heritage to get a familiar (improved at lvl 9, although Crushing Blow seems rather nice, didn´t think about it yet, so thanks).
I can really advice you to take Lingering Performance (although I´m not sure about it working with Advice under PFS rules). Before I took it at lvl 7, I had to manage the advice rounds a lot, now I can use it almost always, even for Skillcheck buffs.
Skillchecks: If you take Helpful, enjoy giving someone +11 (+4 Aid Another, +3 Advice, +4 Ki Mystic) ;)
I was worried about not having enough Ki, but after lvl 6 or so it was enough for most of the days. I didn´t even have enough time/opportunity to use Stunning Fist, as a I was busy doing other support stuff.
I may be adopted and take helpful. It could help out a lot when I don't have much else to do, and I'm not attached to Reactionary, really.
The song is going to be a problem in the beginning, but I'm not too worried. I have other options in combat I can also do.
How about Dirty Tricks? I bet your party would consider itself supported if you took Quick, Great Dirty Trick and used Flurry of Blows to make all the opponents Blind.
I actually love this concept. Dirty trick is something great to add to my repertoire. The only thing...I won't be flurrying. My archetypes gave that up.
Any possible chance of going for Gnome (or racial heritage gnome) and zen Koan? Locking down enemies (and take drunken master for the ki-refill).
Don't really want to go this route. I really like the Ki Mystic + Sensei and having all the knowledges.
It was a choice between Mayhem the flame oracle or a sensei somewhat like this. I never researched into the bardic performance feats and if they worked with advice. But that is exactly where I was heading and would advise (pun possibly intended) for you to look as well. I conch with Scott that Dirty Trick is a great debuff. My idea was to make a debuff god, grabbing mantis style for stunning fists, the ki ring and related classes and such (ki mystic, favored class bonus, etc), Punishing kick, Touch of Serenity and cranking up the wisdom for high dc's. I then figured that combat patrol, Combat reflexes and a good Dex score would be important. I dumped str as low as I dared and focused entirely on just hitting but not necessarily dealing damage. With rebuffs in mind there are intimidate feats that work off of landing a hit. Shaken opponents are efficiently rebuffed. So if you can land a hit, shaken them, touch of serenity the fighter, position for an aoo and stun the rogue, probably via combat patrol...ah man, some good times ahead.
Interesting concept...I'm not sure if that's how I want to go or not. Combat patrol is interesting. I'll have to ponder on this one, because it would wildly change my character.
If you go halfling and take Helpful (halfling) feat and the Helpful trait they are likely meant to stack even though the wording doesn't specifically say that. It would bump your Aid another up to +5.
Pathfinder Chronicler also has a similar ability that, again, while the wording leaves a lot to GM interpretation was likely meant to stack with the other two. It would increase your Aid Another by another +2. It also continues your bardic performance ability. It also allows you to store your bardic performances in something like scroll form with Epic Tales. Beyond that the class is pretty terrible, but does lend itself well to these few abilities for this type of build. Well, it does have 2 good saves and a lot of skill points.
Archivist Bard has a lot to offer as well, especially if you are already going Sensei. You get to keep your bardic performance stuff from that class but also pick up the abilities from Archivist. With Lingering Performance you can stack these. Their Loremaster ability at level 2 is nice too if you want that to be part of your schtick.
If you wanted to include a decent spellcaster class in this (I would highly recommend it) I would suggest the Evangelist Cleric. It would allow you to continue your bardic music advancement still. The loss of armor proficiencies do not hurt. You only get one domain and I would highly recommend Luck. If your group is anything like mine they probably aren't too big on 3rd party resources. However, if you can swing it by them the Fate subdomain is only a slight change but probably more in-theme with what you are going for.
Personally, I would go with a halfling with 6 levels of Sensei/Ki Mystic, 1 level of Archivist Bard and the rest with Evangelist. Kirin style feats would be good for this type of build as well.
If you go halfling and take Helpful (halfling) feat and the Helpful trait they are likely meant to stack even though the wording doesn't specifically say that. It would bump your Aid another up to +5.
For purposes of PFS, I would probably say they wouldn't. So probably a no-go there.
Pathfinder Chronicler also has a similar ability that, again, while the wording leaves a lot to GM interpretation was likely meant to stack with the other two. It would increase your Aid Another by another +2. It also continues your bardic performance ability. It also allows you to store your bardic performances in something like scroll form with Epic Tales. Beyond that the class is pretty terrible, but does lend itself well to these few abilities for this type of build. Well, it does have 2 good saves and a lot of skill points.
Don't think that one does either.
Archivist Bard has a lot to offer as well, especially if you are already going Sensei. You get to keep your bardic performance stuff from that class but also pick up the abilities from Archivist. With Lingering Performance you can stack these. Their Loremaster ability at level 2 is nice too if you want that to be part of your schtick.
If you wanted to include a decent spellcaster class in this (I would highly recommend it) I would suggest the Evangelist Cleric. It would allow you to continue your bardic music advancement still. The loss of armor proficiencies do not hurt. You only get one domain and I would highly recommend Luck. If your group is anything like mine they probably aren't too big on 3rd party resources. However, if you can swing it by them the Fate subdomain is only a slight change but probably more in-theme with what you are going for.
Personally, I would go with a halfling with 6 levels of Sensei/Ki Mystic, 1 level of Archivist Bard and the rest with Evangelist. Kirin style feats would be good for this type of build as well.
I don't think inspire courage stacks with the different classes...they are all different abilities.
This is for PFS, so I can't ask the GM. It is how it's written.
Ah yes. Forgot it was for PFS. Anyway there is still a lot of table varience at PFS. *shrug*
I didn't say that inspire courage would stack. It would continue to give you more uses/day. Archivist's ability WOULD stack with bardic performance, though but only with Lingering Performance.
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I made several spelling errors in my last post, apparently. I use a tablet. I apologize for sounding like a moron. Rebuff=debuff. Conch=concur. *sigh*
You could also try foregoing mantis style and just taking the e+1 DC to stunning fist feat and everything else mentioned. Scorpion style and its ilk was also on my list but you will quickly see that the character, if optimized, is feat starved. Next, you will begin looking into multiclassing madness as I did. I never went much further than where we have discussed now, though. I am really interested in seeing where you take this. I might post a build soon just to see where the options really are, though. Good luck!
Update now that this character is level 7.
I have having a blast with this character. So much so that I decided to take him to the upper levels of PFS (We are doing 3 adventure paths in PFS mode so all our characters will get to 20 at the end with Race for the Runecarved Key). Being able to true strike someone with the combination of Qinggong and Sensei is absolutely fantastic. We had a great moment where I true striked our wizard and he used pilfering hand on an Erinyes.
Stunning fist is a great trick, but what I'm finding is there are so many things for this character to do already. When I get to higher levels, I may in fact retrain Stunning Fist and Crushing blow to Extra Ki or Extra Music or something, because the things I can do with ki at level 12/13 will be amazing (true strike the whole party, barkskin the whole party, restoration (!!!) the whole party, abundant step the whole party as a move (!!!) action, give various feats as a free (!!!) action), but for now stunning fist is serving its purpose. We also may be getting a Rogue/Shadowdancer soon, and she probably would appreciate my stunning fists more than other party members.
Don't think I'm ever gonna multiclass. More Ki and more qinggong abilities are way too powerful for this character.
This character really shows me that you can make a support character from a monk and have tons to do, and be very useful!
For your next feat, consider Deific Obedience (assuming you worship Irori). It's not a hard obedience to do, and it gives +4 to all Knowledge skills.
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Perfect timing. I just reached 8th level in pfs with mine (yes, I did eventually make it) and you're right, it works. I went with tanking without dealing damage. Scorpion style, stunning fist and bewildering koan are my bread and butter but the domain powers are an immense help as well. I did a good bit of multiclassing but am eager to settle down on my monk roots. I'm still budgeting stunning fists, Ki, Rounds of advice, etc. Every level of monk is a boon. Still, I have more dipping to do before I can return. I envy you a good bit for having more monk levels than me but the brawler levels help substantially alleviate issues with things like stunning fist. I don't support as well, and have another level or two of monk to go before my advice is strong (still only +1) but in groups without a bard it definitely helps. I don't have my immediate action rerolls yet either, but see that as quite prohibitive in cost without the Ki ring.
Looking at this thread again, I -sorely- wish I could find a way to get scorpion style off on a spring attack. It would be a great way to start off a fight. All I've got is martial flexibility into Lunge but still need 5 more feet of reach.
Either way, glad you are having fun. I know I am.
For your next feat, consider Deific Obedience (assuming you worship Irori). It's not a hard obedience to do, and it gives +4 to all Knowledge skills.
I may do this. Since we now have a more set party since we are doing the AP paths, we have a wizard, but it's always nice to have more than one person being able to make knowledge checks. It will push all of my knowledge bonuses into double digits, which is pretty cool!
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For your next feat, consider Deific Obedience (assuming you worship Irori). It's not a hard obedience to do, and it gives +4 to all Knowledge skills.I may do this. Since we now have a more set party since we are doing the AP paths, we have a wizard, but it's always nice to have more than one person being able to make knowledge checks. It will push all of my knowledge bonuses into double digits, which is pretty cool!
Sometimes the wizard rolls low - so someone extra is usually good
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In our group the fighter and inquisitor make most of the knowledge checks with the oracle (a rogue-blaster) making the awkward engineering, arcana and dungeoneering checks and the cleric as backup on religion. In short, we all have a couple of knowledge's spread out between us. I actually like it this way.