So I've been wanting to make a strength/wisdom hybrid monk with lots of power and some ki spells for support. I want to take ki blast and wholeness of the body. Now both feats require I already have a ki pool before I take them, which I can only get by taking ki rush or ki strike. My question is this: Could I take ki strike, the wholeness of body, and ki blast, THEN, swap out ki strike via retraining to something more useful like a stunning fist. As far as I can read, I should be able to since both remaining ki spells requirements are met by each other. Can some rule lawyers help me out here? thanks.
I don’t think so. Both abilities require you to have an ability that gives you a Focus pool before you can take them. This is predicated on Ki Strike/Rush from the Monk Feats. While you could try and claim it that way, I don’t believe it would work. Also, Ki Strike isn’t exactly a terrible Feat to begin with, Positive, Negative, or Force damage for Monks is actually pretty hard to come by, and that’s on top of the +1 to hit that isn’t negated by your Handwraps. The extra damage is just gravy.
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Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber
You can only retrain into choices you would have met the prerequisites for at the level they wold have been taken . You can't use retraining to end up with a set of feats that you couldn't select without retraining.
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Why would you not want ki strike? It's awesome.
But no you can't retrain out of it and keep the other ki feats as it's the one granting the pool and ki ability access
"Why would you not want ki strike?" Because it is a demonstrably worse use of your very limited focus pool than literally anything else you can get at higher level, my dude. Possibly the only Ki ability worse than Ki Strike is Ki Rush, the literal only other legal option to take a Ki spell that would be worth actually using past 3rd level.
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I dunno, ki strike might be better against solo threats than ki blast. Depends on what else you want to do with a turn, but ki blast costs actions that ki strike effectively doesn't. Ki blast can't combine with flurry, grapple, and whirling throw in the same turn and ki strike can, for example.
And having more options to adapt to the situation at hand is never a bad thing.
Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
Ki rush gives concealment for a round on top of letting you move twice in one action. It might not be used every combat, but it will see use more often than you think and against bosses, concealment not tied to something like darkness (which lots of things see through) is a great thing to get for free with extra movement.
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Honestly, of all the Focus abilities in the game, the Monk doesn’t have a single bad one, they’re all pretty frigging good.
Hida_Dragonbane wrote: "Why would you not want ki strike?" Because it is a demonstrably worse use of your very limited focus pool than literally anything else you can get at higher level, my dude. Possibly the only Ki ability worse than Ki Strike is Ki Rush, the literal only other legal option to take a Ki spell that would be worth actually using past 3rd level. An extra 1d6+ (it goes up to 3d6 per strike on higher levels) and a +1 Status bonus on your Flurry of Blows isn't that bad of a deal. It's straight up extra RAW damage that you don't get often, it can also help exploit weaknesses. Other Focus spells are way more situational, so it has its uses and the benefits aren't bad.
For the complicated variation you could go sorcerer -> dragon bloodline of your choice -> basic bloodline magic
you got your basic focus point at level 4 and can for one minute reduce your phyisical dice to d4 in exchange for elemental damage + resistance
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