Are Monk Advanced weapons any good?


Pathfinder Second Edition General Discussion


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I have been looking to build a monk who uses wind and fire wheels but was wondering if they were any good. I need to be human and use all three first level feats to be able to start off with them so I was wondering what other peoples experience with them was.


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The trouble I've seen with Monk weapons is they take multiple feats to catch up to Stances that are good right at 1st level with one feat and keep your hands free. Exceptions for the Bo Staff because of Reach or Monastic Archer because of range.

So are the others good? Sure, but not better.
Are they worth all those feats? Seldom if ever.

Looking at the Wind & Fire Wheel, I'd say not worth it.
Many Stances can give you Agile, Finesse, & Monk.
A shield could give you a better Parry, and you'd still have a free hand.
Twin for a d6 weapon tries to catch up in damage to the Stances at d8 (which might have another circumstance bonus itself).
So what you're getting is your weapon bonus on Disarm (since w/ free hands you can disarm), but disarm's an iffy maneuver. And with both hands full you can't do other maneuvers (nor climb, quickly use expendables, etc.). The wheel gives two types of damage which is legit, yet not worth so much investment.

They do look cool, so there's that.


They're also advanced, meaning they will tend to lag behind the martial weapons in terms of to hit one way or another, which isn't great.

That, and also the big draw for a weapons monk is the versatility. Being able to pick up various kinds of damage and traits is sort of their strong suit when compared to other stances, and given how much investment advanced monk weapons require to be viable right now it seems to cut into that versatility, since you'd naturally want to prefer the weapon you chose.


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Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
Perpdepog wrote:
They're also advanced, meaning they will tend to lag behind the martial weapons in terms of to hit one way or another, which isn't great.

Well, the way I would get access to them would be to take Monastic Weapons, Weapon Proficiency, and Unconventional Weaponry either all at level 1 or by level 5 which would cause the advanced weapon to count as martial so proficiency wouldn't be a problem.

So it sounds like it would just eat up a lot of feats for just looking cool. Maybe if I play a game that uses both Free Archetype and Ancestry Paragon I might use them.


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Short solution is that Monks kind of need a 6th level feat (like the Fighter) that gives proficiency in Advanced Monk weapons.


Reglor wrote:


So it sounds like it would just eat up a lot of feats for just looking cool. Maybe if I play a game that uses both Free Archetype and Ancestry Paragon I might use them.

Yeah, that would probably be the best way.

Though I am still not convinced in terms of mechanics and possibilities, especially comparing them to stances and monk perks.

- Stances already give excellent damage and a wide choice of agile/finesse attacks
- Monk perks give the monk Magic,Silver,ColdIron,Adamantine strikes all in one during your leveling to lvl 20.
-Unarmed also means free hands ( maneuvers, climbing, grab an edge, interact, etc... )

I mean, even if monk weapons had been default choices, I probably wouldn't have choosen them.

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