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Maerok
2008-08-05, 07:42 PM
Intended for a Dread Necromancer/Monk/Enlightenened Fist...

Dread Fist
The blows you deal carry vile energy.
Prerequisite: Charnel touch ability, improved unarmed strike or flurry of blows ability
Benefit: When you attack with multiple unarmed strikes in a full-attack, you may deal damage with your charnel touch instead.
When you attack with your flurry of blows ability, you may choose to deal damage with your charnel touch ability rather than with your unarmed strike.
You cannot attack yourself in these ways and the required touch attack is replaced by the melee attacks.

JoshuaZ
2008-08-05, 08:28 PM
Intended for a Dread Necromancer/Monk/Enlightenened Fist...

Dread Fist
The blows you deal carry vile energy.
Prerequisite: Charnel touch ability, improved unarmed strike or flurry of blows ability
Benefit: When you attack with multiple unarmed strikes in a full-attack, you may deal damage with your charnel touch instead.
When you attack with your flurry of blows ability, you may choose to deal damage with your charnel touch ability rather than with your unarmed strike.
You cannot attack yourself in these ways and the required touch attack is replaced by the melee attacks.

A few issues:

First, this seems highly specialized given that there is as far as I am aware exactly one class that gives charnel touch (I've seen it added as part of fixes to to a number of weaker PRCs with necromancy themes, such as Tenebrous Apostate and Thrall of Orcus, but that's it).

Second, the wording of the initial fluff text isn't so great since charnel touch does not deal vile damage.

Third, this seems like a really weak since the normal flurry of blows will likely deal about the same or more damage than a series of charnel touches (I presume you are removing the normal rule that charnel touch can be used at most once a round). Moreover, one would generally rather make a touch attack rather than a melee attack. And this still revolves around an otherwise inefficient multiclass combination.

I'd change it so instead to something like "when using flurry of blows you may choose to also deliver your charnel touch with one of the additional attacks granted by flurry of blows in addition to the normal damage dealt."

I'm also a bit unclear on fluff-wise why the heck someone would be a monk and then take levels of Dread Necromancer... Yeah, I was studying the path of enlightenment but that was before I realized how much I liked watching zombies tear people apart.

Maerok
2008-08-05, 08:32 PM
Well you have to make the corpses somehow. :smallbiggrin:

Dread Necro is a spellcaster that wants to be a secondary melee character.

Faithless
2008-08-05, 08:41 PM
You might want to add: You may freely multiclass into the monk class however to continue advancing as a monk you must still remain lawful.

Also get rid of Improved Unarmed Strike or Flurry of Blows. If you just have Improved Unarmed Strike, whats the point of the feat?

Options you might think about are:
Does Charnel Touch scale with your unarmed strike damage?
Do you require a touch attack to hit?
Is it vile damage or negative energy damage?
Will you allow it to do the healing to undead?

Cool idea though :D

JoshuaZ
2008-08-05, 08:44 PM
Well you have to make the corpses somehow. :smallbiggrin:

Rebuke some zombies and have the zombies make corpses for you.



Dread Necro is a spellcaster that wants to be a secondary melee character.

True.

Anyways, I think it would still make sense to let them deal the damage in addition rather than instead of. Otherwise this is pretty weak. Maybe also have monk levels count towards determining your effective DN level for charnel touch?

Maerok
2008-08-05, 09:05 PM
My goal was to use charnel touch in a way to alleviate the monk's problem of not bypassing DR. The guy would use negative energy instead. Maybe it deals negative energy damage equal to unarmed damage + 1/4 levels of monk+DN?

JoshuaZ
2008-08-05, 09:06 PM
My goal was to use charnel touch in a way to alleviate the monk's problem of not bypassing DR. The guy would use negative energy instead. Maybe it deals negative energy damage equal to unarmed damage + 1/4 levels of monk+DN?

Yeah, that sounds good.