| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Make yourself a threat, that usually means dealing enough damage so that the enemies can't ignore you.
Start holding your actions to enable yourself to utilize that high Monk Base Speed and interpose yourself between the enemies and your less-survivable Party members. There is nothing so Wuxia as being in the way of their weapons when they try to attack your friends.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
You must be a big enough threat not to ignore so they continue to attempt to attack you.
Unfortunately, you've done the opposite. Making yourself very little threat, but hard to damage. You've made a turtle. Turtles die last while the rest of their party is slaughtered.
As a GM, I do this same sort of thing all the time. You make a character that's too hard to hit, the enemy takes notice and start to attack someone else unless you can give him good reasons to focus on you.
The Antagonize feat can work to some degree, but it's not particularly effective in my opinion since it leaves the enemy the option to attack you however the like, and only requires them to attack you once, and only work on them once.
Posting your full build along with all the books avaialble to draw from would be helpful. But yeah, super high AC monks generally get ignored. Roleplaying wise, most enemies will ignore you if you're ineffective in harming them. Once you're a credible threat monsters would realistically attack you, but meta game wise it's intelligent to finish off your weaker allies first before focusing on you.
I'll reiterate my "interfere with their tactics" stance. If you start depriving the enemy of the ability to mess with your fellow party members, you will very quickly become their priority.
They're needling your Wizard with arrows? Interpose, deflect, snatch, return the arrows (if you can).
Using reach weapons on your Fighter? Use your superior mobility to get inside their reach and mess with them.
You have the ability to seriously mess with enemy tactics. Use it. There's nothing "wrong" with your character. Just adapt your methods of using it.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
Grapple them.
Trip them.
Disarm them.
Stop buying AC and start buying damage and/or to hit.
You need to make it obnoxious to ignore you, because this game doesn't have an aggro mechanic thankfully. It allows people to play the tactical part of the game intelligently, which means that the MMO tank role doesn't exist, since its only function is to make opponents do stupid things like ignore the people winning the fight.
I don't know what you mean by "interpose" but if the archer has the right feats moving in the way doesn't add any penalties to his attack. Improved Precise Shot is great for that. Deflect and Snatch Arrows only work if they target you, but they're not.
As to the reach weapons...sure you can "get in there". But if you've turtled to hard you can't hit them enough to be a serious threat. Besides which, a 5ft step after the fact will get them a clear attack against your ally again. You haven't really helped.
Messing with them is the plan, but your suggestion don't actually explain how to mess with them. He needs to present a credible offense as well as defense.
There are a lot of options to do this, but we need more specifics about the character to know start. If you can post your feat progression we may be able to look at the character and make better recommendations for what you can do.
|
Going off what Gregory has said, maneuvers can be decent for 'tanking'. I finally got a chance to play my tetori monk, and the fact that a grappled enemy can't make attacks of opportunity or move away from me basically means they're forced to either try attacking my character or escaping, and still losing their ability to hurt an ally that round.
Also, yes, your full build would be helpful.
Going off what Gregory has said, maneuvers can be decent for 'tanking'. I finally got a chance to play my tetori monk, and the fact that a grappled enemy can't make attacks of opportunity or move away from me basically means they're forced to either try attacking my character or escaping, and still losing their ability to hurt an ally that round.
Also, yes, your full build would be helpful.
Grapple always confused me, is the no AoO while grappled a tetori thing or a general grapple thing?
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
MMO suggestion: Stop playing your monk. If you want to provoke aggro, then convince your GM to let you play a 3.5 Knight from Heavy Armor, and they get aggro calls based on Intimidate. You can yell at the enemy all day and they won't attack anyone else. Not much conversion needed, and they get armor optimization so heavy armor becomes more of a bonus as they level up.
Real suggestion: Boost your init via dex buffs from either the party divine or spellcaster, then use your super monk running speed to attack the enemy via stunning fist. This causes the enemy to become vulnerable, and then you can punch and kick and chop at your leisure. Take Scorpion Style and slow their movement down to 5 feet. Ki Throw is a good feat as well to crush your enemies. For reach weapons, sunder the weapon. It's hard to stab someone if you have a broken spear or long stick. Also a classic monk technique. Dirty Trick, greater dirty trick are also awesome for distraction. Last advice: Don't play the game as if it were an MMO like World of Worthless Crap. Play it as an exercise in imagination, and you'll help convince your GM and fellow players to try thinking outside of the box.
I play a Monk with the Flowing Monk archetype who is also hard to hit. At 4th level, he can reposition or trip enemies that attack his friends as an immediate action. He has a few other 'mess with opponents' tricks, but that one is the most useful to him. You might find that useful, too.
Your monk's 21 is a joke AC compared to what a lvl 3 in my homebrew pulls off. Mage armor prior to combat and when total defense she hit 28 AC.
I can hardly design any encounter in their APL cr that'll even hit that, unless it's a TPK.
Your monk's 21 is a joke AC compared to what a lvl 3 in my homebrew pulls off. Mage armor prior to combat and when total defense she hit 28 AC.
"AC 21 - 26"
I'm assuming the 26 is for going total defense, which means if his monk got a Mage Armor before combat he'd have a 30 AC.
|
Certainly. Here is the level progression:
Barb = urban barbarian, monk = moms/ kata master, fight = brawler
1 barb - wpn finesse
2 barb - scent, uncanny dodge
3 monk - snake style, snake fang
4 fight - combat reflexes
5 monk - stand still, crane style, evasion
6 fight - two weapon fighting
7 fight - Impr TWF, close training
Right now I'm level 5. Key items:
Agile AoMF
Kyoketsu Shoge, tekko kage, dan bong (tengu trait to use)
Ring of 7 lovely colors (transform into tiny song bird)
Sword master flair: blue scarf (add 5' to reach)
Normal Size
AC 21-32
UAS +6, 1d6+4
CMB +3, +6 with light wpn
Tiny Size 31-40
UAS +12, 1d3+8
CMB +12
The Antagonize feat is THE aggro feat in PF. Take it, invest in Intimidate.
|
|
Grapple always confused me, is the no AoO while grappled a tetori thing or a general grapple thing?Going off what Gregory has said, maneuvers can be decent for 'tanking'. I finally got a chance to play my tetori monk, and the fact that a grappled enemy can't make attacks of opportunity or move away from me basically means they're forced to either try attacking my character or escaping, and still losing their ability to hurt an ally that round.
Also, yes, your full build would be helpful.
Grappled creatures cannot make attacks of opportunity. At higher levels however a tetori does not have this condition inflicted on them when they grapple an opponent.
|
|
Thank you all for your suggestions. I really like the idea of looking like a board a sword fighter, then surprising the enemy with snake style. I believe I read about decoy armor for spell casters that would help there and not sacrifice wis and dex bonuses.
I think that you have highlighted the most important thing I'm missing, being in the right place at the right time.
For combat manouvers, I find that once I disarm an enemy, their next move is to pick it up, which is funny the first two times, but not as reliable. What are your opinions on the following? This would be for a tiny creature with strength ten (light load 16lbs):
Round 1
Standard - disarm (provokes for moving into enemy square and disarm, but most likely misses)
Move - pick up enemy weapon
Round 2
Move - move to favorable position (near dmg dealer, away from vulnerable allies, etc)
Free - drop enemy weapon
Move - move to next target
I'm thinking its name would be magpie style. Thoughts?
Having an AC of 21 at level 5 is pretty low - not high. What are the ACs for the rest of your party?
How is this? I have two mid-level PFS characters with LESS armor class than Oli, so I'd like to know how this is low?
AC= 10 + 1(armor) + 4(dex) + 0(size) + 2(natural) + 1(dodge) = 18
Haramaki for armor, Dodge Feat
AC= 10 + 6(armor) + 3(dex) + 0(size) = 19
Masterwork Agile Breastplate for armor
|
|
Thank you Scott W!! That last line in disarm changes everything, automatically pick up the disarmed weapon. So cool. I played to lvl 5 not knowing that. (I did crunch the numbers on the armor and MAD bastard sword and shield, but on my build it loses out to mage armor and agile AOMF with Improved TWF at lvl 7).
Now the number crunching concerns me on high and low AC and also the impression it leaves on players. I really thought that 21 was too low, so I beefed it up (to 30 and even 40), but it didn't do what I wanted. So here it is.
My current thinking (thank you all again) is that hit-ability needs to scale with threat: The goal is to appear high threat/low AC (a foaming at the mouth barbarian) until opponents have made their decision to attack me.
Then, once battle positions are settled, I adjust up AC to increase snake fang damage so far as opponents will still want to keep attacking me and provoking, but not (and this seems key) to trade their full Atk on me to go and target someone else with a charge.
So at the end of the dungeon, and with all front line ACs being equal, maybe 21 AC isnt too high for a boss, but might be enough to convince its minions to ignore me.
Things to think about. (and also how I can now honestly role play a wild eyed, blood drinking, obscenity screaming monster of a man/bird but still remain the calm and calculating monk inside!) thank you everyone for a chance to go over this with you.
Oli