I'm trying to pick a trait for my Monk, and I can't decide which one I want. I've already picked Martial Manuscript as the first trait. The others I'm considering are Heirloom Weapon or Signature Moves. Any advice on which one I should pick? Or does anyone have any other suggestions for traits?
Common suggestions are the Fate's Favored (Faith) trait to bump up any Luck bonus you gain, or Reactionary (Combat) or the like to add +2 to your Initiative. Alternatively the +1 bonuses to your saving throws are also solid choices, with Will and Fort being the two most important.
Quain Martial Artist (region): +1 damage to Unarmed Strike.
Monk Weapon Skill (combat): +1 damage to any one Monk weapon other than Unarmed Strike.
Those are interesting. I'll take a closer look at them.
I have a gnome bard that I gave the Prehensile Whip trait. No skill boosts, but she doesn't have to carry a heavy grappling hook around and can use the whip as a weapon as well. Even though it's nonlethal. I know a grappling hook is only 4 pounds, but when your character's max load is 45 pounds, you gotta travel light.
The skill traits can also open up a significant amount of options for characters that otherwise wouldn't consider investing into a particular skill.
For example, if I've got a Barbarian that dumped Charisma but put 13 into Intelligence for Combat Expertise, then at level 8, I can put my +1 stat into Intelligence and gain retroactive skill points. Taking the Additional Traits feat at 9th level lets me pick up Pragmatic Activator (Magic) and Underlying Principles (Religion) to gain Use Magic Device as a class skill, add Intelligence instead of Charisma to the skill, and apply a +1 trait bonus. Presto, you're now rocking 9 ranks, 1 trait, 3 class and 2 Int modifier to your check, meaning you've got a 75% chance to activate a wand, and you're at a level you can actually afford to buy a few more useful spells too. Barbarian with Lead Blades, anyone?
DON'T take Heirloom Weapon or anything else that just gives you something at the start that can be taken away or consumed and then not give you any further benefit. These are traps. (Heirloom Weapon: If you lose it, you have a dead trait. Rich Parents: Once you spend the money, you have a dead trait. Other examples exist.)
OK, so Heirloom Weapon is definitely out. I'm leaning towards the Monk Weapon skill. If I lose or break my kama, I can always buy another one. UMD? What's that?
^Use Magic Device. For when you want to use a spell trigger or spell completion item (usually a Scroll or Wand) that has a spell not on your list (or you don't have a spell list in the first place). Can save the life of the party if your only healer goes down. Also useful for some other situations in which you need to use a magic item that wants a user that is NOT YOU.
Use Magic Device has one very particular niche: Personal Range spells.
A spell with a range of Personal can't be put into a potion and can't be cast on you by a team-member. They're also typically extremely powerful spells.
For example, here's a good list of 1st level Personal spells:
Blend
Divine Favor
Heightened Awareness
Lead Blades
Long Arm
Longstrider
Shield
True Strike
Wrath
Ordinarily none of these could be cast on you or made as a potion. Aside from Use Magic Device, there's very few ways to gain access to the effects of these spells.
In fact, that's why the Ring of Spell Storing is so expensive. It lets you access these spells without Use Magic Device. As another alternative, consider grabbing a Cracked Vibrant Purple Prism Ioun Stone for a similar, albeit much cheaper, spell storing item.
Potions of Mage Armor cost 50 gp and last an hour.
UMD is also great for getting mage armor onto a monk into a party without an arcane caster.
...Or divine caster...Or psychic caster...
Yeah, but it depends on your stat distribution. Monks typically don't have a heap of skill ranks since they're pumping Str, Dex, Con and Wis. Most dump stat Int or Cha (or both).
That's not to say you can't get good mileage from UMD on a Monk. It's like any character really. Most would benefit from the skill and the access to consumables it provides. Of course it also depends on your character wealth. I don't usually consider UMD a viable investment until after about level 8, when you can actually afford a handful of wands out of your spare change.
As for niche, it's no more niche than any other strategy or bonus type. It can save you money on potions if you use wands instead, it can grant you access to powers you otherwise normally couldn't use, and it's a fun little minigame to see how many tries it takes to coax that wand to give up the goods whilst crossing your fingers and hoping you don't roll a natural 1 on your check.
Scaled Fist archetype if you need CHA instead of WIS
I don't really have any gold to spare for a wand right now. After buying my monk's kit, kama, nunchaku, and crossbow, I'm broke. My stats are as follows: Str 15, Dex 13, Con 12, Int 13, Wis 11, Cha 6. I suppose I can always switch Wis with Cha.
I didn't do a point buy since I'm not sure how it works. I rolled instead. I took the bonus feat of Combat Reflexes for extra AoO. The non-bonus feat I took was Bleeding Attack for extra damage. Man, half-elf monks have a lot of bonus feats. This is the link to my monk's character sheet. https://www.myth-weavers.com/sheet.html#id=1252973
I didn't do a point buy since I'm not sure how it works. I rolled instead. I took the bonus feat of Combat Reflexes for extra AoO. The non-bonus feat I took was Bleeding Attack for extra damage. Man, half-elf monks have a lot of bonus feats. This is the link to my monk's character sheet. https://www.myth-weavers.com/sheet.html#id=1252973
Ok, how did you do that?
Ok, how did you do that?
The coding rules are shown near the bottom of the page where it says "How to format your text," but the simpler way to see the code that I used is to hit "reply" to my earlier post. You will see something like this...
[foo=https://www.myth-weavers.com/sheet.html#id=1252973]Link[/foo]
except that 'foo' will actually be 'url.' The 'url' tags tell the computer that the text 'Link' is a hyperlink and the part after the '=' specifies the linked location.
Ok, thanks.
I'm not actually using my monk in a game yet. My party got ravaged by a 4-armed thing last week, and my character -a gnome bard- was the only one to make it out. So I'm creating a backup character just in case that happens again. But since my character did make it out, she'll be able to 'warn' the new characters about it so it won't be able to surprise attack again. Since we rolled for stats in that game, I rolled for my monk.
Plus, I just like making characters, it's fun. I'm writing a fantasy novel and plan to have my gnome make an appearance in it. She might not be a gnome, but everything else about her will be the same as my game character.
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Personally I think you are dumping your wisdom to far (or CHR if you do scaled fist) remember monks do a lot with their wisdom, like adding it to their AC and CMD as well as many other abilities. While dex is great your wisdom is going to be more useful IMO. Lastly Id consider you GM check your stats over, your stats are very low. That is certainly possible but at say a 20pt buy your stats would be Str 17 Dex14 Con 14 Int 12 Wis 14 Chr 7 even at a 15pt buy, which is pretty low for pathfinder, would really only have to drop your Str to 16 and Dex to 12.
Again if your character would have similar stats to the others than that is fine but playing a PC with low stats can be arduous for both you and your compatriots.
^Heather 540 said rolled stats, not point buy . . . and the above sounds about like what I would get if I rolled instead of point buying. (And I am used to seeing people posting with ridiculously high rolled stats, supposedly done with the standard 4d6 drop lowest.)
lol I just realized that I forgot to add the half-elf's +2 to an ability score. Guess I'll up that Cha a bit.
I made my decision, I have taken the Monk Weapon trait and applied it to my kama.