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This mini-guide is not here to make judgments on the monk compared to other classes, let alone monks compared to spellcasters. Instead, this guide will try to work out what I think is the definitive, optimal monk (multiclassed into rogue), a build that avoids the minefield of trap options that every class has. As far as I can tell, the monk is supposed to be a mobile striker who moves into flanks and then spams Strikes, offsetting their multiple attack penalty with agile weapons and a flat-footed enemy. Mobility is important for this build, and so is being able to lock down an enemy to keep the flank going. We are not going to bother with anything unreliable like Stunning Fist.
I am not going to bother listing down trained skills or skill increases, because those are mostly a matter of personal preference.
• Ability Score Priorities: Dexterity for attack rolls and AC > Strength for damage > Constitution for hit points and Fortitude > Wisdom for Perception (initiative) and Will > Charisma for resonance > Intelligence for trained skills.
• Ancestry: Human with Half-Elf, for +5 speed and low-light vision. It is no darkvision, but we can carry around a hooded lantern in one hand for illumination in darkness.
• 1st-level Class Feat: Tiger Stance, for a d8, agile, finesse weapon. The persistent bleed damage is terribly unreliable and does not even scale. We are here for the ability to Step 10 feet, which can help extricate ourselves from sticky situations involving enemies with Attack of Opportunity and the grease spell.
• 2nd-level Class Feat: Rogue Dedication. Surprise Attack may be unreliable given our purely middling initiative, but it is certainly better than nothing.
• Bonus Skill Feat from Rogue Dedication: Fleet, which is apparently tagged as a skill feat in the actual entry. Mobility is good, and +5 speed is mobility.
• 2nd-level Skill Feat: Powerful Leap, for general mobility against terrain effects.
• 3rd-level General Feat: Toughness, to avoid going down when monk AC is slightly behind that of a rogue.
• 4th-level Class Feat: Sneak Attacker, for no-nonsense extra damage. It starts at +1d4 and does not scale past +1d6, which is unfortunate, but it is the best we have for raw extra damage.
• 4th-level Skill Feat: Rapid Mantel, to synergize with Powerful Leap for reaching difficult spots.
• 5th-level Ancestry Feat: Nimble, for another +5 speed.
• 6th-level Class Feat: Basic Trickery (Trap Finder), so that we can constantly declare our exploration tactic to be Sneaking while still remaining on the lookout for traps. This should help with initiative, and thus, Surprise Attack.
• 7th-level Path to Perfection: Will, because our Wisdom is looking quite middling, and being mentally influenced is nasty.
• 7th-level General Feat: Kip Up, to avoid being screwed over by being knocked prone.
• 8th-level Class Feat: Tangled Forest Stance, so that we can lock down enemies and thus ensure that they stay in flanking position. This is generally far more useful than Wolf Stance, so we can retrain Wolf Stance into Ki Strike, but that gives so minor a benefit (especially with Wisdom as a low-priority ability score) that it may be worth keeping Wolf Stance for the rare fringe benefit.
• 8th-level Skill Feat: Foil Senses or Swift Sneak, to make the Sneaking exploration tactic a little more convenient.
• 9th-level Ancestry Feat: General Training (Incredible Initiative), for a measly +1 initiative. Better than nothing.
• 10th-level Class Feat: Winding Path, even though we have Kip Up, because being able to Step and then Stride with a single action could very well be useful against enemies with Attack of Opportunity.
• 10th-level Skill Feat: Foil Senses or Swift Sneak, whichever was not selected earlier.
• 11th-level General Feat: Wall Jump, to build upon Powerful Leap and Rapid Mantel.
• 12th-level Class Feat: Advanced Trickery (Gang Up), which should make flanking significantly easier; or Stance Savant, to save an action at the start of combats wherein we could not declare a stance as part of pre-buffing.
• 12th-level Skill Feat: Quick Climb, just in case Leap proves insufficient.
• 13th-level Ancestry Feat: Clever Improviser, Otherworldly Magic, or Skilled. It is all scraping the bottom of the barrel by this point.
• 14th-level Class Feat: Advanced Trickery (Gang Up) or Stance Savant, whichever was not selected earlier. The 14th-level monk class feats are not very good.
• 14th-level Skill Feat: Quick Swim, because... water, I guess.
• 15th-level Third Path to Perfection: Fortitude, just to shore it up and earn the Second Path to Perfection benefit on it.
• 15th-level General Feat: Legendary Sneak, as an improvement on Trap Finder. To this end, Basic Trickery (Trap Finder) gets retrained into Basic Trickery (Mobility) instead.
• 16th-level Class Feat: Advanced Trickery (Sidestep), to get some mileage from reactions, even if it is a little situational. The 16th-level monk class feats are not very good.
• 16th-level Skill Feat: Legendary Climber, for more three-dimensional mobility.
• 17th-level Ancestry Feat: Clever Improviser, Otherworldly Magic, or Skilled. It is still scraping the bottom of the barrel.
• 18th-level Class Feat: Diamond Fists, for a bit of extra damage.
• 18th-level Skill Feat: Legendary Contortionist, in case tight spaces come up.
• 19th-level General Feat: Legendary Swimmer, in case water comes up by this point.
• 20th-level Class Feat: Enduring Quickness or Impossible Technique, because either is not that bad, really.
• 20th-level Skill Feat: Legendary Survivalist, so that you can retire without food or water and think about just how barren the bottom of the barrel is.
As a variant, the 12th, 14th, and 16th level class feats can be swapped with Fighter Dedication, Opportunist, and Basic Maneuver (Combat Grab), although you are still very much scraping the bottom of the barrel.
I think that this the absolute best that can be done for a monk. It is boring, and the upgrades are marginal, but that is 2e for you. I really had to scrape the bottom of the barrel for many of these options, and it did not feel satisfying to piece this together at all, for it was more akin to picking which was the least terrible of any given option. What do people think of this build?
lol it really isn't
there's plenty ways to make a good Monk, all of them with high as DEX, mind you, but plenty ways past ability scores.
i don't see any need to take this tone when you know for a fact there's nothing in this build that makes it amazingly better than others, beyond access to Master Reflex saves, which may be overkill on a massive DEX class.
Secret Wizard wrote: i don't see any need to take this tone when you know for a fact there's nothing in this build that makes it amazingly better than others You are actually correct here, mostly because the vast majority of options are so weak and marginal that it barely makes much of a difference one way or another.
Secret Wizard wrote: beyond access to Master Reflex saves, which may be overkill on a massive DEX class. I did not even bother with those for this build.
So I might be missing something, but how are you getting Sneak and Survival as signature skills?
I ask because I was looking at a monk multiclassing rogue solely to pick up Skill Mastery to get Stealth as a signature skill. It's kind of ridiculous this costs 2 feats, but signature skills seem absurdly hard to get.
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Colette Brunel wrote: Secret Wizard wrote: i don't see any need to take this tone when you know for a fact there's nothing in this build that makes it amazingly better than others You are actually correct here, mostly because the vast majority of options are so weak and marginal that it barely makes much of a difference one way or another. This is a Point to make. Go make that point.
Going around saying "this is the best definitive build" says to me "there are options that are so powerful that no other option matters". In that case, your previous point cannot be simultaneously true.
Either everything is around the same level, and that level is weak; or there are things that are wildly ahead in power, even if it's weak vs. mega weak.
I've gotten to a point where I can recognize your threads because they have titles that makes it sound like the world is falling down and it's just you exaggerating about one aspect of the game.
Sometimes you are absolutely right, and I share a lot of your concerns for the game and I believe 2E needs A LOT of work to be in shape, but all of the other times it's just hyperbole makes me almost instinctively skip your threads.
Just a note that feat tags are 100% wrong (different in list and individually)
Id go with the feat list instead of individual feat tags because those seem to be the correct ones.
Fleet and tough as an example most certainly are General feats and not skill feats (they have nothing to do with skills) and etc.
PossibleCabbage wrote: So I might be missing something, but how are you getting Sneak and Survival as signature skills?
I ask because I was looking at a monk multiclassing rogue solely to pick up Skill Mastery to get Stealth as a signature skill. It's kind of ridiculous this costs 2 feats, but signature skills seem absurdly hard to get.
You are correct on this. The build would need to have the skill feats revised... although the skill feats are the least important part, here.
Secret Wizard wrote: Going around saying "this is the best definitive build" says to me "there are options that are so powerful that no other option matters". In that case, your previous point cannot be simultaneously true.
Either everything is around the same level, and that level is weak; or there are things that are wildly ahead in power, even if it's weak vs. mega weak.
I said, "the vast majority of options are so weak and marginal that it barely makes much of a difference one way or another." That does not mean that there is no difference. For example, Tangled Forest Stance at 8th is actually quite good for lockdown; it is head and shoulders above other options. Likewise, Wind Step at 10th is the winner, since it compresses mobility options into a single flexible package.
Conversely, the monk, like every other class, is chock full of trap options. The ki powers, for example, are of exceedingly dubious balance.
Thus, there can be an optimized build, even if the floor and the ceiling are closer together than before.
Colette Brunel wrote:
Thus, there can be an optimized build, even if the floor and the ceiling are closer together than before.
But then it's not the definitive Monk, because it only has specific advantages.
You mention Tangled Forest stance as the best for lockdown, but if you go STR (which is relatively easy to do), you can go with Dragon/Mountain stance dancing, which allow you to 15-foot cone fear or 20-foot radius prone enemies, while going back to Mountain Root gives you massive resistances.
The main difference in this playstyle and another will be apparent with play and experience – for example, if enemy Acro/Athletics is usually better than their Reflex, the Mountain strategy will be better, and the inverse is true.
So this cannot be the most optimized build because there's not enough trap options for one to fully know which one is best, and it's not definitive because the power level of the options is not that far enough from each other.
Secret Wizard wrote: Strength monk Being a Strength monk lowers your AC, and you run into the problem of Dragon and Mountain not handing out agile attacks, which is poor for the multiple attack penalties monks tend to accumulate.
"Stance dancing" takes actions short of Mastery of Many Styles at 16th.
Dragon Roar keys off your Intimidation DC. It is not going to be great as a monk, and the benefits are marginal on anything but a critical success. It is also a limited-use class feat.
Mountain Root's "massive resistances" are resist 2, which is merely "okay" as an 8th-level character. The lockdown from Tangled Forest is more important by that point, and it enables agile attacks.
I do think it is optimized and definitive because, relative to 2e's power level for monks and taking into consideration actual trap options like ki powers, this is the best I can try to piece together for a monk.
It's important to weigh the options against each other, have you looked into Double Slice builds to compare getting 4 attacks?
Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber
I think it takes a certain degree of... something... to say "This is the best I, personally, can do, therefore it is optimal."
MaxAstro wrote: I think it takes a certain degree of... something... to say "This is the best I, personally, can do, therefore it is optimal." What purpose does this post have other than to insult/ defame/ offend the OP?
Look into what he's saying, see if there are other builds that function equally well, or better in certain respects. I'm curious about fighter dedication and seeing what options mix together.
So when I was looking at multiclassing monk with rogue my objectives were:
- Grab Skill Mastery so I can be legendary at stealth
- Grab Evasiveness so I can have all three saves at master with evasion.
- Maybe Sneak Attack for some extra damage.
My concern is which monk feats are skippable. I kind of want to take wolf or tiger stance, ki strike, and wholeness of body with my first 3 class feats, so I'm not sure how to fit those in. 6, 8, and 12 seem like fairly skippable in terms of monk feats so that would let me get the dedication and my 1st 2 objectives.
master_marshmallow wrote: It's important to weigh the options against each other, have you looked into Double Slice builds to compare getting 4 attacks? Using Double Slice and Flurry of Blows denies a monk the ability to actually move, unfortunately. Besides that, are monks considered to be wielding two melee weapons with their stances? Can a monk in Tiger Stance, for example, use Basic Maneuver (Double Slice)?
Colette Brunel wrote: master_marshmallow wrote: It's important to weigh the options against each other, have you looked into Double Slice builds to compare getting 4 attacks? Using Double Slice and Flurry of Blows denies a monk the ability to actually move, unfortunately. Besides that, are monks considered to be wielding two melee weapons with their stances? Can a monk in Tiger Stance, for example, use Basic Maneuver (Double Slice)? depends which part of the book you are reading.
like, seriously.
on unarmed section it briefly mentions that unarmed is a simple weapon
on unarmed trait it mentions it is not a weapon but it's listed on the weapons table has weapon traits and etc
on fighter feat section, the followup feat of double slice specifically mentions that it works if your second weapon attack of the double slice was with unarmed. while double slice itself says that you need 2 wielded melee weapons.
and it continues like that in the rest of the book. In some cases it is implied that they are, in others it flat out needs to be weapon, etc
so... take your pick (or wait for errata)
as an example:
Quote:
UNARMED ATTACKS
You can Strike with your fist or another body part,
calculating your attack and damage rolls in the same way
you would with a weapon. This counts as a simple weapon,
so almost all characters start out trained in unarmed
attacks. Use the statistics for a fist even if you’re kicking,
kneeing, or attacking with another part of your body.
Some ancestry feats, class features, class feats, and spells
give access to special, more powerful unarmed attacks.
Quote: Unarmed
An unarmed attack uses your body rather than a
manufactured weapon. An unarmed attack isn’t a weapon,
though it’s categorized with weapons for weapon tables and
weapon groups, and it might have weapon traits. Because it’s
a part of your body, an unarmed attack can’t be Disarmed. It
also doesn’t take up a hand, though a fist or other grasping
appendage follows the same rules as a free-hand weapon.
I suppose the monastic weaponry feat would be necessary, might be an interesting build.
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