[3.5] Monks

[sonofzeal]

What happens if you use Twin Power on psionic lion's charge? What about a well-timed Linked Power?

I'm already far-and-away dominating combat in my group, sheerly through Monkness + Inertial Armor + Lion's Charge. Most of the rest of the group is pretty new, and even the Arcane Hierophant is kind of scared of the damage output I do in a round. It very much helps that the DM throws a lot of masses of low-AC opponents without DR at us.

[Hornstien]

The monk is a class that isn't as powerful as other classes straight off of the bat, however they can be played to great effect by first determining what it is about the monk that you like and want to accentuate.

Monk is actually my favorite core class, and I have to say that I have personally never had a problem not only avoiding being a hindrance to my party, but also being a valued asset. Here I will illustrate a few simple ways (some homebrew) that I have found make the monk a viable class to play.

This is not a level by level build but in general this makes the monk a more viable option. The classic image of the monk is that of being a swift, hardened warrior with no need for weapons in getting his damage done. I like using the Human as the race for the extra feat and skill points, also it's nice and generic. When determining ability scores I always go in this order greatest to least: Wisdom, Dexterity, Constitution, Strength, Intelligence, then Charisma. Both Wisdom and Dexterity effectively raise your AC score. Making AC a priority over Constitution is important because even if you raise your Con in an attempt to gain more hit points your success is going to be limited at best, better to learn not to get hit rather than how to take a hit. Monk gets evasion at second level making him better at dodging those nasty area of effect spells, coupled with perfect saves and a nice Dex score your are on your way to avoiding damage all together.

If you take Weapon Finesse as your third level feat you really won't have to worry overly much about Str, as a monk get used to your damage coming from the sheer number of attacks that you make rather than the Str bonus on top. This already improves your chances of hitting your enemies with your Flurry of Blows ability. Then you can take Two Weapon Fighting which stacks with Flurry of Blows, giving you a -2/-2 full attack and a -4/-4/-4, which may not be all that appealing right now but later on you'll be glad you did.

As your first level monk bonus feat you have the choice of either Improved Grapple or stunning fist. I was always advised by my DM to take stunning fist because its an attack form that scales with your level and works off of your wisdom which works well with this build. While grappling and monks don't get along well because of the monks lack of BAB, and grappling is reliant to Str which is not the focus of this build. Also monsters are going to tend to be larger than medium on average which gives them another advantage against your monk that you really don't wanna contend with in battle. From their take feats like Weapon Focus: Unarmed Strike reducing the penalty to all your attacks, Improved Natural Attack (which will treat your Unarmed Strikes as if you were one size category larger, in an attempt to increase your average dice damage), Combat Reflexes (giving more legitimacy to the fluff of monks being very fast warriors. If you want something really sick watch what I do later with this plus the Stand Still feat.), Power Attack (if you have the Oriental Adventures Guide you will like this feat), if you have access to the Oriental Adventures Handbook I would look into taking Flying Kick which allows you to do double Unarmed Strike damage at the end of a charge (prerequisites: Str 13, Power Attack, Improved Unarmed Strike, and Jump 4 ranks. With a +2 Str bonus magic item this can be really easy.), If you can raise a Str of 15 take Round About Kick from the oriental Adventures Handbook (allows you to make another attack at the same AB if you get a critical. If you particularly like this feat you might think about taking Improved Critical.) If you play Pathfinder RPG their monk is better in a couple of ways including more choices for your monk bonus feats.

Add some magic items like a shirt that has a command word ability to cast Mage Armor a couple of times per day, some gloves that you can put some magic weapon bonuses and element damage on, a amulet that command words Shield spell a couple of times a day, Cloak of Resistance, Ring of Protection, boots of striding and springing, ect. Also keep either pumping Wis or Dex. If you don't like just being Melee oriented you might want to pick up proficiency with a long bow, and if you pump Wis over Dex Zen Archery allows you to use Wis for ranged attack roles instead of Dex.

I do have to admit though that through the years the monks different problems have made themselves known to me, and my DM. We recently were talking and worked together to come up with a Homebrew fix that made sense as far as the monk theme went. What we came up with was surprisingly simple.

All one needs to do is give the monk a Psychic Warriors Power Point progression and powers. By merely using fluff to explain that the monks ability to manifest these powers as either manifestations of his supernatural usage of chi/ki or that in the monks quest to perfecting his mind as well as his body he developed the ability to manifest Psychic Powers. This does several things for the monk, the biggest is that reduces his multi ability score dependency drastically. With his ability to buff himself and cast these array of powers, which work off of Wis, the monk class becomes not only feasible but a force to be reckoned with.

This also opens up psychic feats like Psionic Body (whenever you take a psychic feat you gain hit points), also the Psychic Feat: Up The Walls (as long as you end your movement on the ground you may move across walls ceilings or other gravity defying objects. Spiderman, Spiderman, does what ever a spider can.), if you take Weapon Proficiency in a reach weapon and combat reflexes then you will love Stand Still (Benefit: When a foe’s movement out of a square you threaten grants you an attack of opportunity, you can give up that attack and instead attempt to stop your foe in his tracks. Make your attack of opportunity normally. If you hit your foe, he must succeed on a Reflex save against a DC of 10 + your damage roll (the opponent does not actually take damage), or immediately halt as if he had used up his move actions for the round.

Since you use the Stand Still feat in place of your attack of opportunity, you can do so only a number of times per round equal to the number of times per round you could make an attack of opportunity (normally just one). sorry just had to copy paste that one.), the original poster mentioned sneaking around so I present Cloak Dance (also copy pasted. Prerequisites: Hide 10 ranks, Perform (dance) 2 ranks. Benefit: You can take a move action to obscure your exact position. Until your next turn, you have concealment. Alternatively, you can take a full-round action to entirely obscure your exact position. Until your next action, you have total concealment.) Because of how the rules for hiding coincide with concealment this allows you to make a hide check whenever cloak dancing, even in front of an enemy!

If you do use Pathfinder I would suggest that you look at several of the feats in the core book or at their reference document at http://www.d20pfsrd.com/. Such as Vital Strike, Throw Anything, Razor Sharp Chair Leg, and several more. Basically this is just a small overview of ways to make your monks kick a little harder. If you want to hear more I would advise that you ask a poster by the name of Ashiel. He is quite knowledgeable about everything that I just went over and probably would do a better job of explaining than I did. Well that is all for this late.

Later guys,

[Savannah]

I do have to ask you though, don't you think a second Rogue wouldn't fare better?

Damage-wise, probably. Fun-wise, no. The rogue and monk are friends, despite being CN and LN. I can't imagine another rogue having the same relationship/role-play experience. (By which I mean the monk smacks the rogue upside the head when the rogue mouths off )

(I should probably mention that, because there's only me and my DM in the area, I actually play both the rogue and the monk, plus two others, but I would not swap the monk for a rogue if I were only playing her.)

[T.G. Oskar]

The monk is a class that isn't as powerful as other classes straight off of the bat, however they can be played to great effect by first determining what it is about the monk that you like and want to accentuate.

Sound advice. Most Monk builds work by focusing into one thing and attempt to work the rest. It also implies not taking much of the class, since the later abilities just don't cut it well.

The usual is either raising your damage to ridiculous levels, or attempting an AoO build AND taking advantage of Decisive Strike. Still, it doesn't work the same way a Psychic Warrior, for example, could achieve.

This is not a level by level build but in general this makes the monk a more viable option. The classic image of the monk is that of being a swift, hardened warrior with no need for weapons in getting his damage done. I like using the Human as the race for the extra feat and skill points, also it's nice and generic. When determining ability scores I always go in this order greatest to least: Wisdom, Dexterity, Constitution, Strength, Intelligence, then Charisma. Both Wisdom and Dexterity effectively raise your AC score. Making AC a priority over Constitution is important because even if you raise your Con in an attempt to gain more hit points your success is going to be limited at best, better to learn not to get hit rather than how to take a hit. Monk gets evasion at second level making him better at dodging those nasty area of effect spells, coupled with perfect saves and a nice Dex score your are on your way to avoiding damage all together.

This is basic advice. The reason why Monks are considered MA dependant is because they make good use of almost all stats. Wisdom grants them AC, Will saves and advances some class features, but the potential of Wisdom reduces at the moment you decide not to go further into Monk, not taking a Psionic class/PrC or disregarding Stunning Fist; in fact, Wisdom is more of a defensive tactic than an offensive tactic, barring Zen Archery and Intuitive Strike which work well with high Wis.

Dex is the second best not only for AC, but because of Reflex, initiative, most of the Monk's skills (which are Dex based) and potentially attack bonus (if you go Weapon Finesse); furthermore, some of the feats a Monk may use key off Dex, including and not limited to TWF. However...you need a very high Dex score (at least Dex 19 before, say, level 15) to take advantage of the full TWF way. Furthermore, the unarmed strike reading is pretty ambiguous, and you need a weapon that can be used for flurry AND that grants you unarmed strike damage which you can use with the unarmed strike in order to eliminate that ambiguity. The one weapon I can think of is Scorpion Kama, and while interesting, it won't be accessible until some time.

Con is important for HP and Fortitude. However, just how much you'll want for HP and Fortitude? That may imply, since Con would be tertiary, that HPs will not be so good and Fort will be less so, even with all good saves.

Strength, thus, is the problem. You need Strength to hit without wasting a feat slot (of which Monks are starving, since their bonus feats are severely restricted) and to do damage, plus a good set of the Monk's skills key off strength (Balance, Climb, Jump, Swim). So you're sacrificing damage potential, which won't be very important if you're going a multiple damage route, but dangerous if you are going for attack multipliers.

If you take Weapon Finesse as your third level feat you really won't have to worry overly much about Str, as a monk get used to your damage coming from the sheer number of attacks that you make rather than the Str bonus on top. This already improves your chances of hitting your enemies with your Flurry of Blows ability. Then you can take Two Weapon Fighting which stacks with Flurry of Blows, giving you a -2/-2 full attack and a -4/-4/-4, which may not be all that appealing right now but later on you'll be glad you did.

I know you mentioned this isn't a guide, but this feat is too strict. You essentially sacrifice two feats to get one extra attack and adding your secondary score to attack rolls instead of your primary (to which you'd like to have Intuitive Attack. You still need a very high Dex roll. Thus...wouldn't you rather have Dex as your primary score, since you're tying feats AND your attack bonus to it, and you gain more if not enough benefits from it? Think about it; as you're suggesting:

Dex: attack rolls, AC, Reflex, TWF line, initiative, Dex feats
Wis: AC, Will, Stunning Fist DC (which has its own problem), Wis skills.

That's 6 benefits against 4, and one of the Wis-based boons is ambiguous. That would make me thing you need more Dex than Wis. Not bashing you, but something important to point out.

As your first level monk bonus feat you have the choice of either Improved Grapple or stunning fist. I was always advised by my DM to take stunning fist because its an attack form that scales with your level and works off of your wisdom which works well with this build. While grappling and monks don't get along well because of the monks lack of BAB, and grappling is reliant to Str which is not the focus of this build. Also monsters are going to tend to be larger than medium on average which gives them another advantage against your monk that you really don't wanna contend with in battle. From their take feats like Weapon Focus: Unarmed Strike reducing the penalty to all your attacks, Improved Natural Attack (which will treat your Unarmed Strikes as if you were one size category larger, in an attempt to increase your average dice damage), Combat Reflexes (giving more legitimacy to the fluff of monks being very fast warriors. If you want something really sick watch what I do later with this plus the Stand Still feat.), Power Attack (if you have the Oriental Adventures Guide you will like this feat), if you have access to the Oriental Adventures Handbook I would look into taking Flying Kick which allows you to do double Unarmed Strike damage at the end of a charge (prerequisites: Str 13, Power Attack, Improved Unarmed Strike, and Jump 4 ranks. With a +2 Str bonus magic item this can be really easy.), If you can raise a Str of 15 take Round About Kick from the oriental Adventures Handbook (allows you to make another attack at the same AB if you get a critical. If you particularly like this feat you might think about taking Improved Critical.) If you play Pathfinder RPG their monk is better in a couple of ways including more choices for your monk bonus feats.

That's...about 8-9 feats you mentioned, right? With Stunning Fist AND Combat Reflexes, you've pretty much exhausted your feat line. Furthermore, some of the feats aren't so good, and some of the feats from OA were updated into Complete Warrior, which reduces their potential. To explain:

Improved Grapple/Stunning Fist: most people would say neither. You've mentioned exactly the troubles that Improved Grapple monks have (unless you're going for the odd Goliath or Half-Giant Monk and make Strength primary), so I don't need to point them out. Stunning Fist, on the other hand, has it's own share of problems. Some say it scales poorly, but I have faith on the SF equation; the problem is that its resisted by Fortitude, which is usually the largest of most (if not nearly all) creatures' Saving Throws. It doesn't work against undead, doesn't work against constructs, doesn't work against plants or oozes, anything with immunity to stun is immune to SF AND Freedom of Movement essentially denies it. It turns better if you specialize in getting Stunning Fist to be awesome, and that usually implies Freezing the Lifeblood and hoping for the best.

Weapon Focus: that alone is a trouble. A +1 modifier won't do much when AC scales at uneven levels. You already have severe penalties, and what you want is to reduce them and gain bonuses at the same time.

INA: usually the recommended way for Monks to get at least some decent damage. Since you're treated as one size larger, you're treated as if a Large Monk, thus you use the progression granted on the list. With an Enlarge Person or similar ability that you can use (Expansion, for example), you can get to Huge Monk and thus get some more damage from it. But that's mostly it...damage. It works wonders if you have methods to maximize that damage, but it won't progress equally; you can hit without much problems, but the Rogue, the Ninja, the Scout and even the Spellthief will out-do your damage even with their limitations. So it's more of a patch than a boon. Not a bad recommendation, tho.

Combat Reflexes: Monks have it bad. You get Combat Reflexes without the Dex requirement, but you still need a huge Dex to take advantage of the feat. Monk's unarmed strikes don't have reach, which is one of the things you want for tripping checks. And other classes can do this better than the Monk. One of the saving graces is replacing Flurry of Blows with Decisive Strike, somehow become Large or Huge, get Snap Kick, Stand Still and either Karmic Strike/Robilar's Gambit, and Improved Trip. Then, you save some face by dealing two double-damage attacks per attack of opportunity (one from the AoO plus one from Snap Kick), plus you get options with your AoOs (either stop them dead in their tracks or tripping them, which activates your Snap Kick feat). Get Knockback and a sure way to deal 10 damage at least, and your attacks of opportunity become nice. This is usually what you seek for an AoO build, and it's still feat intensive (and doesn't work well until very high levels). Also, remember Strength? I...presume you do.

Power Attack: Monks have low BAB. They have even worse things with penalties. They *might* get invisible but not get melee touch attacks. The last thing you want is adding yet another penalty for a meager increase in damage, let alone on a TWF build. That is why Barbarians and 2H weapon users get Power Attack; they get a much better return for what they lose. It does serve for other benefits, but usually the least you want is adding more penalties to the already penalized Monk.

Flying Kick: nerfed in CW to deal only an extra 1d12 damage. So it no longer works nicely.

Roundhouse/Roundabout Kick: the last thing you want is forcing Improved Critical on your unarmed strikes. However, if you get the Scorpion Kama, you can make it keen and attempt to get this feat. It's far too feat-intensive, and it requires having the right weapon, but you can get a reliable 17-20 threat range which means at least a 20% chance to activate the feat, instead of a 5% or a 10%. And that is further penalized when you need to actually confirm the crit for the feat to activate; if you have lots of penalties, you can figure out the feat's actual chances reduce to, say...less than 12% perhaps.

Now, there are some nice recommendations for feats, but you need to focus on a feat chain almost exclusively for it to work. If you dabble in Power Attack AND Combat Reflexes, you'll eventually have to decide whether you want to focus on dealing more hits (and stronger hits) or going into counterattack. Mix TWF into that, and you'll suddenly realize it's not a very good idea when you only get 3 bonus feats, and at least two of the options are feats you've selected, which entirely disregard the rest. It's still too feat intensive, and the Monk doesn't have enough feats to cover that build, which is one of its fatal flaws.

Add some magic items like a shirt that has a command word ability to cast Mage Armor a couple of times per day, some gloves that you can put some magic weapon bonuses and element damage on, a amulet that command words Shield spell a couple of times a day, Cloak of Resistance, Ring of Protection, boots of striding and springing, ect. Also keep either pumping Wis or Dex. If you don't like just being Melee oriented you might want to pick up proficiency with a long bow, and if you pump Wis over Dex Zen Archery allows you to use Wis for ranged attack roles instead of Dex.

Here you hit another of the troubles with Monk; severe magic item dependency. It's great that Mage Armor can be used with the Monk; bracers of armor work just as fine. Amulet of Natural Attacks (Savage Species) works better for what you want, although I also favor the Scorpion Kama for mixing unarmed strike damage with enhancement bonus AND a decent crit range. Add the Cloak, the Ring for deflection bonus, and you'll notice that most of what it does is patching the mechanical problems of the Monk.

Of course, magic items are necessary. They are provided to the DM and the players for a reason. However, you have to think that you may never get those magic items during a campaign, and perhaps you won't have enough money to buy those items. A few classes can effectively ignore having any magical item and still work out; a smaller few can work fine despite the lack of magic items but still gain a huge benefit from them. Monks are neither of the above. To effect, they are treated as if they had a monk's belt (although the idea is that the Monk's Belt emulates the benefits of a monk), a Periapt of Health (and not to full strength), a Periapt of Proof against Poison, a Mantle of Spell Resistance, triple-strength Sandals of Springing, a permanent Tongues spell, and...perhaps one or two things I'm forgetting. Consider which of those items I've mentioned is probably useful, and consider which items they need to complete being a successful character. They lack flying, energy resistances, a proper magic weapon (not an adamantine weapon that is merely treated as a magic and lawful weapon); and those are mostly the basics.

I might be already sounding a bit despondent against the Monk, but it's mostly retelling what anyone here might tell you. I certainly don't have the intention to sound despondent, and I'm one of the few who would attempt something with the Monk and make it work, which is why I'm providing alternative ideas and pointing the weaknesses.

I do have to admit though that through the years the monks different problems have made themselves known to me, and my DM. We recently were talking and worked together to come up with a Homebrew fix that made sense as far as the monk theme went. What we came up with was surprisingly simple.

All one needs to do is give the monk a Psychic Warriors Power Point progression and powers. By merely using fluff to explain that the monks ability to manifest these powers as either manifestations of his supernatural usage of chi/ki or that in the monks quest to perfecting his mind as well as his body he developed the ability to manifest Psychic Powers. This does several things for the monk, the biggest is that reduces his multi ability score dependency drastically. With his ability to buff himself and cast these array of powers, which work off of Wis, the monk class becomes not only feasible but a force to be reckoned with.

This also opens up psychic feats like Psionic Body (whenever you take a psychic feat you gain hit points), also the Psychic Feat: Up The Walls (as long as you end your movement on the ground you may move across walls ceilings or other gravity defying objects. Spiderman, Spiderman, does what ever a spider can.), if you take Weapon Proficiency in a reach weapon and combat reflexes then you will love Stand Still (Benefit: When a foe’s movement out of a square you threaten grants you an attack of opportunity, you can give up that attack and instead attempt to stop your foe in his tracks. Make your attack of opportunity normally. If you hit your foe, he must succeed on a Reflex save against a DC of 10 + your damage roll (the opponent does not actually take damage), or immediately halt as if he had used up his move actions for the round.

Since you use the Stand Still feat in place of your attack of opportunity, you can do so only a number of times per round equal to the number of times per round you could make an attack of opportunity (normally just one). sorry just had to copy paste that one.), the original poster mentioned sneaking around so I present Cloak Dance (also copy pasted. Prerequisites: Hide 10 ranks, Perform (dance) 2 ranks. Benefit: You can take a move action to obscure your exact position. Until your next turn, you have concealment. Alternatively, you can take a full-round action to entirely obscure your exact position. Until your next action, you have total concealment.) Because of how the rules for hiding coincide with concealment this allows you to make a hide check whenever cloak dancing, even in front of an enemy!

I know that this'll sound a bit weird, but there's already a fix for it! It's called Tashalatora, which is probably a word you've heard a lot. Believe me, I'm one of the people that state Psionics does wonders with the Monk, and I heartily suggest you look for Secrets of Sarlona and realize just how good this feat really is. It can even give a run for its money to the Unarmed Swordsage, although in the end you're more of a Psychic Warrior with Monk benefits than an actual Monk with Psionics.

There's no need to mention Stand Still. Most of the tripper builds know the requisites and the benefit by memory, and can do a great lot better with it. Cloaked Dance, on the other hand, may not work as intended; you wish to get concealment by other means, not by sacrificing a Move action and taking advantage of the Hide rules but sacrificing an effective combat ability for it. It doesn't stack with Flurry, or with Decisive Strike, and it still forces you to remain standing in one place.

If you do use Pathfinder I would suggest that you look at several of the feats in the core book or at their reference document at http://www.d20pfsrd.com/. Such as Vital Strike, Throw Anything, Razor Sharp Chair Leg, and several more. Basically this is just a small overview of ways to make your monks kick a little harder.

I'd say something of Pathfinder, but I would defer that to someone else. Pathfinder Monks can't get INA for their fists, though (or as far as I've heard).

As a final note; while it is a build and not an explanation on how the class is good or not (which is your intention), the build itself still has a few flaws. I think I mentioned where are those apparent flaws, but the biggest one is the feat expenditure and how long it takes for the feat combos to work; a TWF Monk would require high Dex, a secondary weapon that takes advantage of your unarmed strike damage to work, a method of reducing penalties and ways of getting extra attacks for it to work, and you still need a lot of magic items to make it useful by level 6 (Scorpion Kama, perhaps Gloves of the Balanced Hand, a method of becoming Invisible). Grapple Monks require a more specific build (high Str, Goliath or Half-Giant, Improved Grapple, a way to become large), Counter Monks are almost nonexistent until very high levels (level 15, to be precise) and require doing something more than just using AoOs (which is why the combo of Decisive Strike, Improved Trip, Snap Kick, Stand Still, and eventually Karmic Strike/Robilar's Gambit, plus a method of gaining range is necessary) and then you're dabbling on being a tripper. Power Attack is a bad option for Monks unless somehow you can mix both treating your fists as a two-handed weapon, and it would require a lot of Strength to pull it off. Stunning Fist is a feat that requires far too much attention, and doesn't make good returns. And that's mentioning some of the most common options; that's without mentioning that this is mostly based off feats and not class abilities, which have their own series of problems (from being nearly useless, to completely useless).

It's a good attempt, but it's not enough to convince that Monks are viable. A good optimizer could make a Monk viable somehow while attempting to limit itself to prevent using easy ways out (Tashalatora, for example), but it won't make a Monk always useful.

[sonofzeal]

I know that this'll sound a bit weird, but there's already a fix for it! It's called Tashalatora, which is probably a word you've heard a lot. Believe me, I'm one of the people that state Psionics does wonders with the Monk, and I heartily suggest you look for Secrets of Sarlona and realize just how good this feat really is. It can even give a run for its money to the Unarmed Swordsage, although in the end you're more of a Psychic Warrior with Monk benefits than an actual Monk with Psionics.

Small quibble, but that's actually the opposite of what I've found. I mean, looking at the character sheet yeah, but I've been playing one for months now and in actual play I almost tend to forget he's more PsiWar than Monk. His approach to combat (unarmed and unarmored; move in fast and flurry or grapple as situation demands) is pure Monk. The only times he's overtly PsiWar is when he uses Expansion, but even that isn't very often and he does just fine without it. I stack monk levels with Monk's Belt and Improved Natural Attack, gained two extra secondary attacks through various means, and blast away. It's the psiwar powers that make it work (especially Inertial Armor for defence and Lion's Charge for offence), but I really feel like I'm playing a monk.

[T.G. Oskar]

Small quibble, but that's actually the opposite of what I've found. I mean, looking at the character sheet yeah, but I've been playing one for months now and in actual play I almost tend to forget he's more PsiWar than Monk. His approach to combat (unarmed and unarmored; move in fast and flurry or grapple as situation demands) is pure Monk. The only times he's overtly PsiWar is when he uses Expansion, but even that isn't very often and he does just fine without it. I stack monk levels with Monk's Belt and Improved Natural Attack, gained two extra secondary attacks through various means, and blast away. It's the psiwar powers that make it work (especially Inertial Armor for defence and Lion's Charge for offence), but I really feel like I'm playing a monk.

Well, that's part of why I like mingling Monk with Psionics. I'd say that, although the actual method was using Psionic Fist, Psionics really serve as a potent complement to the Monk (which is why I'd rather say "use PsyWar/Ardent with Tashalatora" than suggest Unarmed Swordsage).

However, it mostly depends on how you work it out. Basically, you do use some of the concepts of the Monk (unarmed strike, unarmored combat, perhaps flurry, enhanced movement) and use the psionic powers that enhance that (Metaphysical Weapon, Hustle, Expansion, Inertial Armor, Thicken Skin). It does show the Psychic Warrior vibe when you separate from those aspects; for example, when you use Claws of the Beast, or Vampiric Blade, or Exhalation of the Black Dragon. A Monk/PsyWar is also better when using Expanded Knowledge, which tends to give a similar idea.

I can understand your point; in essence, what you're doing is basically expanding the options you'd gain through Psionic Fist/of Zuoken, by adding more PP, more powers, more feats and 6th level powers, while opening Expanded Knowledge to 5th level powers (and thus, to marvels such as Metamorphosis, Psionic True Seeing, Metaconcert, Psionic Teleport and Fiery Discorporation; I'd also make a case for Ectoplasmic Shambler).

In fact, most of the potential builds that the Monk can use benefit from Psionics. For example, Grapple Builds can take advantage of Expansion, Animal Affinity and Strength of My Enemy (which is just sickeningly brutal); multi-hit builds benefit just from Hustle (but they can also benefit from Form of Doom, Vampiric Blade and I'd dare say Weapon of Energy); counter-tripper builds take a hit from lower BAB but more feats, Expansion and Animal Affinity still work wonders. Heck, with Hammer Strike, even Power Attack becomes effective.

In the end, though, the more you use from the Monk the more it will resemble a working Monk. Still doesn't imply that you can effectively get Improved Unarmed Strike, Superior Unarmed Strike, a Monk's Belt and call a Psychic Warrior a Monk without spending a single level...