So i have been wondering on how to make Sun Wukong as a character in D&D Pathfinder, and i must admit i am not even sure where to start and how to improve the aspects around the quarterstaff as a weapon.
I have 4 classes i were considering to make the usage effective and yet flavorful, but i list them from ease of build to flavor:
Fighter - For the amount of feats
Ranger - For the amount of feats and maybe some bypassing of requirements
Brawler - A mix of the fighter and the monk in style
Monk - The most fluffy, but i honestly have no idea how to make one proper and how to reap rewards from the monk progression with a weapon.
There is some Quarterstaff feats avaliable, but i dont think they will be that effective by the time you reach it, though rather flavorful. Like the "Whirlwind trip" you can get with quarterstaffs.
Any idea how to make a proper Sun Wukong with the current avaliable material?
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That's a tough one...
Depending on which portrayal you are basing it off of, he has magic, martial arts, immortality, etc.
To do him properly would probably require some Mythic/Gestalt homebrew madness...he is basically a god from Chinese legend.
He is too chaotic to be a traditional monk in game terms.
Which aspect of him are you most interested in showing? Any particular movie or book's version of him?
Well thats what i am not quite sure about either, but i think i would focus on the Combat style and the Monk aspect around his character, the imortality aspect is not important, and adding a spell effect kinda comes with the monk territory, and is only abandoned when you use Fighter or Brawler.
So maybe its better to make a "Mortal Pre-Legend" or "Young" version of him as he started out as before he achieved enlightenment?
Or if we have to pick the simplest of his character: Monkey with Staff
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I would say either Vanara for the race, or Human with the Wilding feat from Ultimate Wilderness to give him monkey-like features and a tail.
Monk makes the most sense...except for the chaotic alignment of the character...
Brawler might be the next best option...Martial Flexibility is AMAZING (if you know your combat feats well enough)
Stats are a tough one...he is always portrayed as insanely agile...but there is no way to add dex to damage to a staff that I know of.
Well to deal with the magic/agility aspect i was thinking Monk, and then just not give much of a thought on the alignment (My personal opinion of alignment is redacted from this thread). However there is two options i can go to simulate godlike agility: Abundant step for Monk and 3 levels of Astral dominance Horizon walker and then pick the dimensional agility tree.
With the abundance of dimension doors it should be easy to class that as "amazingly agile". So you could slip down on dex usage a bit and leave yourself with strenght and wisdom.
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He is often portrayed wearing armor, so a strength base Brawler might be a solid option.
Some of the Japanese portrayals of him show him wielding a Tetsubo instead of a staff, so maybe a Str based monk who focuses on those massive x4 damage crits.
He has been re-imagined in dozens of movies, books, anime, manga, etc. Any monkey themed martial arts flavored character could fit the bill (depending on how true to the original legends you want to go)
I must admit that my details on the legend itself is rather sparse, and i would love to find reading material that involve this character (Read as: Please point me to where i can find this stuff).
Technically we could focus on the mechanical aspect of a Quarterstaff or Tetsubo whielder and what you can get out of that first and then see what we can add to make the legend more...errr... legendary.
Though i like the path of war i have for restrictions always prevented myself from picking 3pp stuff so i can use it in any PF game without having to get an OK from a DM, but i thank you for pointing out some interesting options Fluffy.
I think its easier if we first deconstruct him in multiply builds based on some of the more surface level aspects would be easier.
First we deal with how we can make the Quarterstaff/Tetsubo a effective weapon. Then how to deal with the agility and defensive aspect of the character, and then add the more "fantastical" parts of the character at the end.
The Fighter/Brawler/Ranger would most likely involve horizon walker, and Monk with abundant step to incorperate that agility, though its most likely going to eat minimum 3 feats after level 8 to make that going, unless we find a completely different way of working with the combat part of the concept.
Huh... how about a vanara [regular] Warpriest of Sun Wukong, pretending to be the real one? You receive Weapon Focus as a bonus feat, so your Quarterstaff will benefit from Sacred Weapon, and if you invest on Improved Unarmed Strike and Weapon Focus (Unarmed Strike), you will have 2 Sacred Weapons at your disposal. Furthermore, TWF can be applied to both weapons.
I am not suggesting the Sacred Fist archetype, because you trade Sacred Weapon for Flurry of Blows, so while your unarmed strikes will grow stronger, you... cannot apply it to other weapons.
A green scourge druid solves the problem of making a quarterstaff mechanically effective; a warpriest or staff magus could do so another way. The staff magus will mostly wield the quarterstaff one-handed which might make it look more like a tetsubo.
Well from what i know of Sun Wukong per archtype is that of a Trickster Monkey king, and some of his variants such as Wukong from League, Goku from Dragon Ball Z, and loosely around his concept. The character archtype kinda appealed to me as i dont really play a lot of martials and i would like to see the quarterstaff put to use for once.
As for the mechanics i know its very hard to do the source material justice so thats why i went to the forums to hear if theres any details and alternative ways of starting to make a character out of it.
The easiest way might have been going Gestalt, but not many games allow for that, maybe if i make 2 versions of him like Warpriest and Monk (or brawler) and mix the sheets if gestalt is allowed.
Thanks for the insight so far, and it seems that trying to make a character that fit the bill was just as hard as i expected. And yes picking the Monkey-like race would be the best, unless you take the step and just say its the monkey race (Vanara was it?) and make it Aasimar, but thats pretty meh.
The Staff Magus was actually a thought, but i admit my Magus building is a bit iffy as i despise cookie cutter builds, but i still like to be somewhat combat effective.
Still you could have any of the previously mentioned classes and kinda stick to the theme, but the milage will vary greatly... hmmm, maybe i just make a sheet of every possible class and give it a roll to see how it goes? give a variant to each of my players in a one-shot in a epic tournament to see which pretender is the real deal?
I know him best from The Forbidden Kingdom. (imdb)
/cevah