Hello,
RESPECT STUFF
First off, let me say that yes, I do understand that Pathfinder's entire shtick and balance is centered around magic and magic items. Knowing this, I am fully aware of how utterly weak my saves, AC, and other stats will be. If you still cannot accept this and want to non-respectfully tell me how much of a stupid idea you think this is, please leave. Thank you.
UNIMPORTANT STUFF
I have this idea of creating a character completely oblivious to magic. Through a birth defect, curse, or illness, he is unable to see, hear, and feel most magical effects. Those he can feel, he attributes to his alcoholism. Hence, he will not understand the existence of magic items and will, therefore, use none. I imagine him being so utterly sure of himself and self-centered that he does not understand why the shopkeeper gives him thousands of gold for the useless headband he looted off a corpse and believes he's getting away with something.
IMPORTANT STUFF / TL;DR
I am creating a Drunken Master Quinggong Monk who will use no magic items whatsoever and will only take ki abilities that do not look like magic. To your knowledge, are there any feats/traits/multiclassing/etc. options that could help me in this endeavour? The idea of course is to make him useful to the party (not necessarily only in combat) and viable-ish (let's be honest he's gonna die at some point). Any ideas?
I'm already planning on using the Healer's Hands and Signature Skill combo proposed by Artificial20 here to become at least somewhat useful as a healer.
(Edit) Also, thanks a lot for anyone who answers respectfully!
You will definitely want to avoid as much damage as you can without magically upgrading your equipment. A level in Swashbuckler can help with that thanks to Parry & Riposte. You will probably want to take the feats Dodge and Toughness to boost your AC and HP. I'm assuming the Monk archetype doesn't take away the Wis boost to your AC.
You said he can't perceive magic, but does that mean you don't want to use a class that has it at all? Because Hunter will net you a companion that can fight with you. Take 3 levels and the companion automatically shares any Teamwork feat you take.
If I do take levels in a class that has magic, then I will not use any spells or magical abilities that the class provides. So the advantages need to outweigh this.
While the Parry and Riposte of a Swashbuckler is a good way of not getting hit, it would at least require my taking the feat Hamatulatsu to do piercing damage with my fists, and even then I would not have a lot of Charisma considering I need my other stats to be good too (and no dropping intelligence!)
That sounds like an interesting character!
I assume that you know what you're doing if you're choosing to play with a handicap. You'll have to optimize pretty hard to stay competitive, even if the rest of your table aren't well built.
Might I recomend playing a dwarf with Steel Soul and Glory of Old? It may help you keep your saves on-par.
AC and damage will still be pretty weak, though. We need to make up about ten points of armor class . . . or choose not to play the game at all. Snake style? Or have a small sized character with mounted combat ride on your back to deflect attacks.
Still the problem of not having any DPS to speak of . . . I don't know that we can cheese our damage and accuracy high enough to matter without magic items. Is there a way we can avoid playing the to hit and damage game?
Styles! How could I forget styles?? Been a while since I made a monk... Thank you so much Asmodeus' Advocate! And Steel Soul and Glory of Old certainly are good options if I make a Dwarf.
About styles, would the Crane Style be my best bet? Because unless I find a way to attack against touch AC, I don't see how I can reliably hit any creatures past the fifth level.
Combat maneuvers are more dependent on feats & class abilities than gear. Tetori isn't compatible with drunken master but master of many styles is - being able to have a couple of styles up at once might make grappling interesting.
Alternately, this sort of denial of reality (it's not unlike refusing to believe guns exist on a modern battlefield) sounds kind of like a superstitious barbarian to me. Barbarians can do combat maneuvers surprisingly well, and the d12 HD might help you survive.
Just gonna note that healing hands is explicitly channeling magic, so for your concept you may want to ditch that.
I built a character concept around a similar thought in the past. No spell-like abilities or spells. The character was completely incapable of using spells or activating magic items, only able to benefit from passive magic items (such as enhancement bonuses). This enabled his saving throws, armor class, and attack bonus to remain relevant. In fact, he actually excelled at serving as a force multiplier (akin to a Bard) by granting combat bonuses and teamwork feats. Eventually, his confidence manifested itself in the form of a small smattering of supernatural abilities (see the Chevalier prestige class).
So, I am not sure if that will work for you, or if you might be able to make the concept work without using magic items to a certain extent. It was a Brawler (Exemplar) 17 / Chevalier 3 VMC Cavalier (Order of the Eastern Star). I had a focus on defensive fighting in light armor, deflecting blows, and simply avoiding attacks.