| Saldiven |
My play group is running an interesting little DIY campaign. The theme is that we're the last four members of a monk temple sect that was destroyed by surrounding rival sects. The trauma of the attack and subsequent desire for revenge has turned us all pretty much evil; we've all decided to exact revenge by any means possible and destroy all the other temples. Each party member was entrusted with a lesser artifact item (it's effectively a magic item that scales as we get higher levels without having to pay for it), but have to find the six other that were stolen to salvage our temple's honor.
One aspect of this world is that from a PC and NPC standpoint, Arcane and Divine magic do not exist in this world, but Psionics does. To keep things simple all normal magic items are available, but their effects and such are reclassified as being Psionic in origin rather than Magic. The in game effect is that we cannot have any character class that is capable of either Divine or Arcane casting, but Psionic classes are available, but there are no meaningful restrictions on magic items. Because we were all temple monks, at least 1/2 of all of our character levels at any given moment must be Monk levels.
I've played with this group for several years now, and I knew going in that the other three characters were going to be fairly optimized to mash face, but otherwise be pretty useless. So, I bit the bullet to make more of a utility character with decent communication skills. After reading through some various options, I decided on a Dhampyr Hungry Ghost Monk with some Ninja levels. I kinda liked the idea of a sneaky Vampire Ninja-Monk who sucked the life force from his enemies (he'll have a high Acrobatics, too, so he can actually hop...dunno if you get the joke or not). Honestly, not the most optimum of builds, but the back story was fluffy as heck, and I was really interested in role-playing him. Unfortunately, to get my theme in place, I won't have everything done skill- and feat-wise until 9th level, at which point, my combat effectiveness will be lagging behind the rest of the party fairly badly. That's balanced out by the fact that I'm the only useful character in any sort of social setting, but I don't want that gap to continue to get ever wider as we go higher in levels.
So, here's the deal. I need to find the most optimum way to improve damage output (or at least, support ability) in combat after 9th level.
At 9th lvl, stats will be the following based on the magic items I have now at 5th (though I have money to buy some when we get to the next large city).
S: 10, D: 16, C: 10, W: 18, I: 15, Ch: 16
My "artifact" currently grants +2 Int and a limited number of psionic abilities daily.
Feats will be:
Improved Feint
Greater Feint
Snake Style
Snake Sidewind
Snake Fang (I think that's the name)
Combat Expertise
Combat Reflexes
Dodge
Mobility
Skills have maxed Acrobatics, Bluff, Perception, and Sense Motive. Decent in Diplomacy, Disable Device, Use Magic(Psionic) Device, and a couple of others.
{PS: I had to get permission to take those Feats. For a couple of them, when I got the Feat, I didn't have the pre-reqs, so was allowed to sit on the available Feat until the following level. The DM was fine with this because it meant my character was actually limited for a level, and allowed me to reach towards my character concept. One of the Feats was from a Ninja Trick.}
So, after this wall of text, my request is this:
What Feats and Magic Items should I be looking towards to improve my combat effectiveness, either as a damage dealer or supporter of my party? My plan is to get to Lvl 13 Monk (to get all the Hungry Ghost Monk abilities) and the other 7 in Ninja (to get the 4d6 precision damage). Oh, and at 9th lvl, it will be Monk 5/Ninja 4. My plan from there was to focus on Monk until 13.
| The Dragon |
Erhm. Why don't you have weapon finesse? That seems like thing #1 to fix. What was the concept that needed those feats? They're really kind of bad, and don't improve your social skills.
| Saldiven |
Wanted the Improved Feint for the backstabs from the Ninja levels. He's kind of weedy, not the face mashing type fighter. He fights by misdirection, confusion, and sleight of hand.
Also, the idea was to combine the Greater Feint with the Snake Fang. After making the Feint, if the opponent attacks and misses, for each miss I get an attack of opportunity that will deal the extra backstab damage, and Combat Reflexes will allow me to do that at least 3 times per round from that opponent.
Weapon Finesse is definitely on the table, as is Vital Strike. Looking for where to go from there, or if there were even better ideas.
| boring7 |
The Feint feats are mediocre, and they don't scale well at all. As soon as you get multiple attacks per round you're wasting them, and if you were ever planning on using flurry...yeah. Extra AoO's sound good but with your AC most enemy attacks are going to hit.
Vital strike is terrible, burn it from your memory*.
You're riding Hungry Ghost until you get Ki feeding, I can dig that, but after that you need to pick up and decide to either go all monk or all ninja, because hungry ghost is all about them ki points and the good ki abilities are all higher level. Well I guess you could dip a few levels of ninja for extra skill points and class skills, but as far as most "opposed" skills go (disable device, perception, most of the charisma skills) you want max ranks all the time. To be honest, going straight ninja might make the most sense, you can't replenish ki but you get decent ninja abilities and as long as you have a flank buddy you'll be doing damage. All the more if you use weapons which can be buffed a lot easier than unarmed strikes.
Strictly speaking your skill points vastly outweigh your charisma mod, because charisma gets up to the mid-twenties (+7 or 8) while your skill points are equal to your level. Not to mention getting a +5 to all 5 skills you care about is around the same price as a +6 to your charisma.
Skills: Bluff and Diplomacy become class skills (and get +1) from the right traits, Disable device and Use Psionic device are options, but unless you're planning on maxing them out or turning them into "hail mary" skills you use when you're out of ideas, you're better off making someone else take 'em. I mean, you're already playing the party face, why should you also have to be the freakin' trapsmith?
Now then, weapon finesse is obvious, but other options include the flanking-based feats that let you make attacks of opportunity on dudes who get hit by your flanking buddy. If you throw monk to the wind you can also get decent ranged weapons and attack things that know how to fly.
And in terms of party balance, have you considered a psychic class? I don't know 'em that well but I bet there's a "psychic support" class in there that can just play buff and heal specialist. Those are nice to have.
*What do you mean "exaggeration" and "sense of proportion"?