Of note as well, Champion dedication gives Lay on Hand at level 4 I believe.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Side Tangent= A Cloistered Cleric who MC into Monk can have a better save to there Ki spells then a Monk could. The Key spell casting ability for Ki spells are Wisdom, something which is a Key stat for Clerics but not for Monks. In addition {and more importantly} a Monk can only gain 'Master' proficiency in the tradition of there Ki spells {Occult or Divine}. However, the Cloistered Cleric gains 'Legendary' proficiency in the Divine Tradition, and combined with the higher Wis, pushes there DC passed that of a Monks.
Now Currently the only Ki Spell which has a save that a can be obtained through MC is 'Ki Blast', but a Ki based Cleric may be interesting none the less.
Did someone mention the Kamehameha Cleric?
That aside, Continual Recovery and Ward Medic enables one to provide a continuous supply of healing to the party out of combat, with Battle Medicine assisting in a pinch.
Beyond that, you don't need much in-combat healing. If you invest in Wisdom and prioritise boosting Medicine, you can serve as the healer without ever spending a spell.
If your monk can live with 14 CHA, a Champion dedication might be worth it for Lay on Hands. You still only get it at lvl 4 but it's a focus spell and scales automatically, unlike spell slot Heals.
I'm not sure how many Champion feats mesh well with monk though. The dedication itself gives the monk nothing really usable.
Yeah the reason I suggested alchemist over looking at champion (or any caster) is I dont like suggesting things that get you a nice benefit eventually after getting not very much for several levels (ie maybe a dozen hours of playtime.)
Yeah true.
One option if you have the downtime in your campaign might be to retrain into a dedication + useful archetype feat at level 4 so that you have what you want instantly in real time (but after weeks in game time). If you GM is okay with it that is.
Monk with Leaf Druid dedication? It gives 2 Cantrips in the feat, the only downside is that you will need to carry a substantial amount of berries.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
My 5th level Monk is a back up healer and main source of HP out of combat (so the spellcasters can save spell slots). This is what I suggest for a non-casting healer monk (as other have already mentioned):
Background - take Field Medic so you can start with Battle Medicine feat which allows you to restore hit points during combat (for a single action)
lvl 2 - for skill feat take Assurance Medicine which really kicks in at level 3 when you auto-succeed at that DC 15 check to heal 2d8
lvl 3 - for skill increase, increased Medicine to Expert which means at level 6 you auto succeed at the DC 20 check to heal 2d8+10), general feat take continual recovery
level 4 - for skill feat take Ward Medic
At level 7 you can increase Medicine to Expert to really boost Ward Medic (but this can be delayed if you need it too)
For RP reasons, I delayed Continual Recovery and took Godless Medicine so I could do Battle Medicine on myself 1/hour instead of 1/day. I also took Wholeness of Body as my level 4 monk feat so I could have a little bit more HP but also so I could counteract disease and poison on myself during combat
Hope this helps.
Balkoth,
Is Cleric multiclassing into Monk off the table?
In effect, trading Flurry of Blows for Divine Font?
What's neat is that, if you focus on certain spells, like healing and status removal, you can build in such a way as to maximize your Divine Font with a secondary emphasis on Unarmed Combat: If you are willing to trade out efficacy with Contested Spells. You can even recover Flurry of Blows at 10th level.
CHA > ST/DX/CON > INT/WIS @ 16/16/14/12/10/10 or somesuch.
Monkish?
Which aspects of Monk are we talking about?
A Champion (likely of Irori) can be all punchy and get a good Focus Spell for in-combat healing, perhaps taking MCD Monk for stances or mobility feats w/ MCD Rogue opening up mobility feats and earlier access to the Medicine skill feats.
A Rogue has many feats for skirmishing, can get by with a light or no armor, and can get the Medicine skill feats early. They can also be punchy w/ gauntlets. An MCD Monk would work too.
And if you meant all zen and peaceful, then a Cloistered Cleric of Irori could work. It definitely moves your fighting down several notches from a Monk, but you could have all the RPing of a little-m monk.
MCD Monk could open up some Monk defenses and mobility (though I wouldn't recommend trying to catch up on martial offense).
I think alchemest may be exactly what you are looking for, it gives you healing and buff options and also crafting wile being a bad@ss martal arts master. Take combat healing and medicine as well and you should be fine.
Alchemist Dedication has a few issues, the main one being that you'll heal 1d6 per action from level 2 to 9. Clearly, you'll very quickly stop feeling you are healing anything.
Champion Dedication is fine. At least, it automatically scales with your levels. But it may compete with your uses of Focus Points.
Another possibility is item healing, either through Wands or Scrolls (Wands are better in this case). You only need a Dedication which can cast Heal (Cleric, Druid or Sorcerer). And then, you buy a few Wands/Scrolls during the adventure. It gives you combat healing. And you don't lose the Wands when leveling up as you can still use them for out of combat healing. And Heal spell is clearly the best source of healing in the game, casting a version one or 2 levels lower than dedicated healers will still net you a lot of healing.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Consumables get a lot of hate, but a monk with the medicine feat chains, battle medicine, and is willing to spend their wealth on carrying healing potions is going to be a fine back up healer without any multi-classing at all. Eventually you could MC into a divine/occult/primal class just to get access to wands (eventually low level wands become pretty cheap and can be enough to get a player on their feat in a pinch, useable each day.
In combat healing is usually about keeping other characters on their feet rather than at full hit points and is much more of a primary healer need than a back up healer. So you don't go around using your potions as a first response to damage, but you have the ability to get the primary healer back on their feet when you really need it.
Alchemist Dedication has a few issues, the main one being that you'll heal 1d6 per action from level 2 to 9. Clearly, you'll very quickly stop feeling you are healing anything.
Champion Dedication is fine. At least, it automatically scales with your levels. But it may compete with your uses of Focus Points.
Another possibility is item healing, either through Wands or Scrolls (Wands are better in this case). You only need a Dedication which can cast Heal (Cleric, Druid or Sorcerer). And then, you buy a few Wands/Scrolls during the adventure. It gives you combat healing. And you don't lose the Wands when leveling up as you can still use them for out of combat healing. And Heal spell is clearly the best source of healing in the game, casting a version one or 2 levels lower than dedicated healers will still net you a lot of healing.
Alchemest dedication still makes you good at crafting which will allow you to make ether higher lvl alchemical items or with magic crafting feat just about anything. You are only limited in what "free" stuff you can make so at 4th you will be able to craft lesser elixer of life for 3d6+6. Most GM's will even give you a break on cost (unless you are Pathfinder society who use their own rules). At 9th you can craft moderate elixers for 5d6+12 and this is beside the fact with magic crafting you can make potions healing and other. It makes for good utility.
Timeshadow,
I'm trying to figure out how alchemist dedication allows you to make lesser elixir of life at level 4. I get the feeling I'm missing something obvious but I can't figure out what.
I've tried to make a character like this before. Ended up going monk with high wis, focusing on medicine and focus spells, taking cleric archetype and casting where there wasn't an awesome ki spell to take. Flavoured him as a mystical warrior of irori.
Good out of combat healing, good burst with ki stuff, but in combat isn't that good. But even having level 1 heal can save parties if you have a couple people dieing. Plus you get stabilize, which is super huge.
A while back I put together a few charts showing the progression of your alchemy abilities if you take the main Alchemist Multiclass feats at the earliest possible levels. Thought they might be useful here.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Timeshadow,
I'm trying to figure out how alchemist dedication allows you to make lesser elixir of life at level 4. I get the feeling I'm missing something obvious but I can't figure out what.
Timeshadow is talking about using the crafting rules (CRB, p. 244). They use your character level, not your Advanced Alchemy level.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I'm worried the current route (cleric -> monk) is going to be too heavy on spellcasting for his tastes.
He can just make all his spells heal and refluff them into ki healing: it's only one spell to remember. He can have the healing numbers already written down and just cross off uses.
Other than that are cantrips and he doesn't need to use them much. In fact, he could take shield and refluff it into a ki block that'd help out with his ac a bit. Detect magic, know direction, and read aura can be refluffed into a mystical mantra to open his third eye and stabilize can be an extension of his ki healing.
So I think you can keep the monk flavor with a bit of refluffing.
The problem with going the cleric main and only use heal route is he is mo longer a backup healer warrior. He is a full healer backup warrior.
Well if he didn't feel warrior enough he could take a god that grants true strike and take those for his 1st level spells. Heroism for 3rd level spells can do the same.
I just don't see it working the other way around until much higher level. At 4th, it's a single 1st level heal a day. At 6th you get a second level spell and it isn't until 8th you get substantial spells, a 1st and 2nd and 2 3rd. [this all assumes putting every class feat into multiclass casting] Until 6th, taking battle medicine would make them a better off healer.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
The Champion is the class designed to fill the roll of martial, backup healer, and damage mitigation starting at level 1. It also ends up with Legendary unarmored proficiency, so a dex build can certainly work.
Going champion of Irori gets you a d6 fist attack. Another option is to be Iruxi ancestry, which gets you access to bite, claw, and/or tail attacks with ancestry feats. Grabbing Monk archetype after that gives you access to FoB and the ability to take some ki abilities to boost the amount of focus you can use. You can take the blade ally with handwraps of mighty blows. You could also go the captain america route with a shield ally.
I just wanted to point out the option that brings everything together from level 1.
Level 1 Trained Medicine, Background Feat Battle medicine
Level 2 Skill Feat Assurance Medicine
Level 3 Expert Medicine, General Feat Continual Recovery
Level 4 Skill Feat Ward Medic
No matter what your wisdom is, with this set up by level 4 you are guaranteed to succeed at a Treat Wounds check, and can treat 2 people at the same time every 10 minutes and can do a one action heal in combat once per target per day. By level 6, your treat wounds is a guaranteed 2d8+10. At 7, you can treat the whole party simultaneously every 10 minutes.
This set up doesn't require any Wisdom and can be done by any class and Ancestry combo. A rogue can get this up and running by level 2.
If you and your GM are willing to bend rules, create new multi class dedication feats to increase the proficiencies for unarmored and unarmed attacks that are available when the monk gets those proficiency increases. Sure you need to blow a feat on it... but that seems to be a decent tax to pay to get the best of both worlds right?
Heck, the easiest thing to do is dual class!
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The monk in my AoA campaign has spent just 3 skill increases in Medicine and just a few skill feats into Battle Medicine, Continual Recovery and Ward Medic. The only other healing is from the bard with non-signature Soothe and a rapidly obsoleting level 1 Heal wand. With only that, I know from experience he can bring the party from the brink of death to full health in under an hour. Battle Medicine is good enough for emergencies, but in general is best left unused (so that in case of emergencies it's still available); making sure combat ends quickly so Exploration healing can be used
If that's good enough for a primary healer, it can definitely work for a backup
|
The Champion is the class designed to fill the roll of martial, backup healer, and damage mitigation starting at level 1. It also ends up with Legendary unarmored proficiency, so a dex build can certainly work.
Going champion of Irori gets you a d6 fist attack. Another option is to be Iruxi ancestry, which gets you access to bite, claw, and/or tail attacks with ancestry feats. Grabbing Monk archetype after that gives you access to FoB and the ability to take some ki abilities to boost the amount of focus you can use. You can take the blade ally with handwraps of mighty blows. You could also go the captain america route with a shield ally.
I just wanted to point out the option that brings everything together from level 1.
This. All of this, except I might suggest the empyreal lord Korada over Irori, as he offers the healing domain as well - healer's blessing isn't super exciting, but rebuke death can be a literal lifesaver.
You're missing 2 hp per level, lower saving throws, speed increases and a few automatic bonuses (like going through some damage reductions).
If he wants to make a monk character, going Cleric won't work at all. Warpriests already struggle to be valid melee characters. Cloistered Clerics are dedicated healers, you'll have hard time getting anything else out of it.
Trying to build Mr. Miyagi. Cool.
I'll throw my $.02 in for Monk multiclassed to Champion with medicine skills. It makes decent backup healing even for in-combat healing. Battle medicine for one per character. Lay on hands for an extra healing per combat. Both options scale reasonably well, so they won't feel useless at higher levels. And it leaves Monk as the primary class.