I have a player suggesting the following. I'm considering allowing it, but thought I'd get some input from the community first.
Agile Fist: At 1st level, an unarmed monk is allowed to use his Dexterity bonus in place of his Strength bonus for both attack bonus and damage bonus, when using Flurry of Attacks. This replaces Stunning Fist.
My concern is that I don't want Strength to be a 'dump' stat for a Monk, so would personally like a way of including a strength requisite into the rules. Then again, one could just take Weapon Finesse and an Agile Amulet of the Fists and get these benefits anyhows. So I can't tell if it's underpowered, or overpowered, or if I should even be concerned about someone with a potential Strength as low as 5 doing this level of damage in melee... :/
Help please?
Flurry of blows, not flurry of attacks...
An archetype that replaces Stunning Fist with the ability to add Dexterity to attack and damage sounds reasonable. Stunning Fist is strong feat for a monk, so losing it to gain what (in my opinion) is worth a strong feat is a fair trade. However, I'd change it so it works for all unarmed strikes and finesseable monk weapons. Perhaps add a line that the monk gains no benefit from two-handing.
Strength is still valuable for a monk for combat maneuvers and a Dex monk would still want a 13 Strength for Power Attack.
Admittedly, I'm bias because my home games give Weapon Finesse as a bonus feat and allow players to take Deadly Agility from Path of War, which strikes me as the most balanced approach to Dexterity-to-damage.
Ditto what Cyrad said.
Although I would change it so that it's like the Unchained Rogue where they don't get their dex to damage until level 3. If the guy wanted to multi-class Monk and Rogue, I'd let the levels stack so that he would still get it at 3.
Also, you don't need to have str for power attack because you can get Piranha Strike instead.
Also, you don't need to have str for power attack because you can get Piranha Strike instead.
Normally, I don't recommend designing content around powerful feats from old, obscure splat books.
Also, you don't need to have str for power attack because you can get Piranha Strike instead.Normally, I don't recommend designing content around powerful feats from old, obscure splat books.
Because I use the SRD for all of my character creations, Piranha Strike is just as legitimate a feat to me as Bludgeoner.
Because I use the SRD for all of my character creations, Piranha Strike is just as legitimate a feat to me as Bludgeoner.Also, you don't need to have str for power attack because you can get Piranha Strike instead.Normally, I don't recommend designing content around powerful feats from old, obscure splat books.
The feat isn't on the PRD. You mean d20pfsrd, which also has 3rd party material. I don't discredit the site for character creation, but it's not wise to design content around all material you can find on the site.
Wait, Piranha Strike is something you consider powerful? Whoa.
People think the weirdest things are powerful. I once had someone tell me sniping was too powerful because 'if you have a high stealth you can get attacks and they can't find you'.
Piranha strike is up on archives of nethys too, incidentally, which doesn't have any 3rd party and is all in all more reliable than either the SRD or official PRD.
If you want to avoid dump stats, just say 'minimum 10 before racials'. Done.
Wait, Piranha Strike is something you consider powerful? Whoa.
Of course Piranha Strike is powerful. It's basically a modified Power Attack, one of the best feats in the game. I never said Piranha Strike was overpowered. I only said it's a bad idea to design a class or archetype around a feat in an obscure 5-year-old Player Companion book. It's a matter of design practice. *Shrug*
Well, to be fair, the Power Attack feat is only one of the best feats in the game because it lets you add 50%to your strength (and equivalent) bonus for 2-handedness. That makes Piranha Strike noticably weaker than Power Strike. Admittedly, it's still an amazing feat, particularly if you're dependent on both Weapon Finesse and Agile. :P
Well, to be fair, the Power Attack feat is only one of the best feats in the game because it lets you add 50%to your strength (and equivalent) bonus for 2-handedness.
You don't need Power Attack to add 50% of your Strength when two-handing weapons. That's an innate feature. Power Attack increases its damage bonus for two-handed weapons, a feature that Piranha Strike lacks. That's not too much of a big deal because it's still really good and (for most circumstances) you can't two-hand finesse weapons anyway.
You are correct, that's what I meant. Shouldn't post before morning caffeine. :/ I was basically trying to say that -1/+3 vs -1/+2.