Monk Variant that helps fix the class

[atemu1234]

Combat Prowess
Replaces: Slow Fall and improvements thereof.
Benefit: Monks with this variant gain full base attack bonus. They also qualify for feats that require a fighter level as a fighter of their monk level.

What do you think?

[NeoSeraphi]

Granting a small boost to their accuracy doesn't help that much. Here's the problems that 3.5 monks face:

1) Unarmed strikes have low damage
2) Unarmed strikes are hard to get enhancement bonuses for, and expensive
3) You can't really add enchantments to unarmed strikes outside of a few prestige classes
4) Unarmed strikes do not overcome damage reduction easily
5) Monks require Wis, Dex, Con and Str, and Str is usually the one that gets dumped, resulting in low damage
6) Monks have terrible AC past level 8 or so
7) Like barbarians, fighters and paladins, monks have a hard time dealing with any sort of anti-melee characters, but unlike those classes a monk also has terrible damage. (Flying, invisible, spellcaster)


A monk is basically like a tank/anti-mage/mystic sort of class that most people want to play as a scrappy unarmed brawler. It's just not worth it. If you want to play an unarmed fighter, just play an unarmed fighter. You get nice bonus feats to help, and you can max your Strength for plenty of guaranteed damage even though you only have 1d3 damage dice.

[atemu1234]

Granting a small boost to their accuracy doesn't help that much. Here's the problems that 3.5 monks face:

1) Unarmed strikes have low damage
2) Unarmed strikes are hard to get enhancement bonuses for, and expensive
3) You can't really add enchantments to unarmed strikes outside of a few prestige classes
4) Unarmed strikes do not overcome damage reduction easily
5) Monks require Wis, Dex, Con and Str, and Str is usually the one that gets dumped, resulting in low damage
6) Monks have terrible AC past level 8 or so
7) Like barbarians, fighters and paladins, monks have a hard time dealing with any sort of anti-melee characters, but unlike those classes a monk also has terrible damage. (Flying, invisible, spellcaster)


A monk is basically like a tank/anti-mage/mystic sort of class that most people want to play as a scrappy unarmed brawler. It's just not worth it. If you want to play an unarmed fighter, just play an unarmed fighter. You get nice bonus feats to help, and you can max your Strength for plenty of guaranteed damage even though you only have 1d3 damage dice.

Don't forget Superior Unarmed Strike.

[nonsi]

Granting a small boost to their accuracy doesn't help that much. Here's the problems that 3.5 monks face:

1) Unarmed strikes have low damage
2) Unarmed strikes are hard to get enhancement bonuses for, and expensive
3) You can't really add enchantments to unarmed strikes outside of a few prestige classes
4) Unarmed strikes do not overcome damage reduction easily
5) Monks require Wis, Dex, Con and Str, and Str is usually the one that gets dumped, resulting in low damage
6) Monks have terrible AC past level 8 or so
7) Like barbarians, fighters and paladins, monks have a hard time dealing with any sort of anti-melee characters, but unlike those classes a monk also has terrible damage. (Flying, invisible, spellcaster)


A monk is basically like a tank/anti-mage/mystic sort of class that most people want to play as a scrappy unarmed brawler. It's just not worth it. If you want to play an unarmed fighter, just play an unarmed fighter. You get nice bonus feats to help, and you can max your Strength for plenty of guaranteed damage even though you only have 1d3 damage dice.

Which is why my Monk looks like this.

[togapika]

Granting a small boost to their accuracy doesn't help that much. Here's the problems that 3.5 monks face:
1-7

You forgot 8. Flurry requires a Full-Attack Action.

[NeoSeraphi]

You forgot 8. Flurry requires a Full-Attack Action.

That's a problem with melee in general. Everyone needs full attack actions, and only barbarians can pounce.

[Andion Isurand]

So that they aren't outmaneuvered by spellcasters, one could consider giving monks more supernatural abilities based on things like balancing lorecall, water walk, air walk, false gravity and other things that can be chalked up to wuxia style Ki use.

One could also give monks more divinations in the style of meditative transcendence and being one with the universe. Possible supernatural abilities could be based on augury, divination and vision.

You could also give meditating monk the ability to appear in another's dream, giving them a supernatural dream ability.

You could also give monks a supernatural form of astral projection, provided the spell itself is rewritten to so that characters suffer a lost level as if resurrected (or something), if their astral form or second body is slain.

[jiriku]

Granting a small boost to their accuracy doesn't help that much. Here's the problems that 3.5 monks face:

1) Unarmed strikes have low damage
2) Unarmed strikes are hard to get enhancement bonuses for, and expensive
3) You can't really add enchantments to unarmed strikes outside of a few prestige classes
4) Unarmed strikes do not overcome damage reduction easily
5) Monks require Wis, Dex, Con and Str, and Str is usually the one that gets dumped, resulting in low damage
6) Monks have terrible AC past level 8 or so
7) Like barbarians, fighters and paladins, monks have a hard time dealing with any sort of anti-melee characters, but unlike those classes a monk also has terrible damage. (Flying, invisible, spellcaster)

QFT. Monks suffer from an interlocking series of small problems, rather than a single big problem. I'd also add:

8) Insufficient skill points
9) Poor performance in special combat maneuvers like disarm, grapple, and trip where you'd expect them to be good

[bekeleven]

Granting a small boost to their accuracy doesn't help that much. Here's the problems that 3.5 monks face:

1) Unarmed strikes have low damage

Unarmed strikes have high base damage but low power attack multipliers. Even still, a monk with a quarterstaff is competitive damage-wise.

2) Unarmed strikes are hard to get enhancement bonuses for, and expensive
3) You can't really add enchantments to unarmed strikes outside of a few prestige classes
4) Unarmed strikes do not overcome damage reduction easily

Now that we have your base fist, You can put enchantments on that. Your necklace of natural attacks adds WSAs to that, so make sure whatever you select for the two can stack. You can get bracers of striking, but they are expensive. Still, they stack WSAs on your fists. Also, you can get battle gauntlets or ward cestus for your hands. I recommend battle gauntlets. Why?

Because battle gauntlets don’t do anything. They do the exact same damage as your base unarmed attack. So, we can make the battle gauntlets out of some other material, enchant them with WSAs, and everything will stack. Please keep in mind your hands at 16th level are like adamantine. Also, battle gauntlets are one-handed, so you can two hand wield them when fighting. Still, Ward Cestus is a light weapon and has some perks as well. Try this:

So get gold knuckles. Then you get Gold Ward Cestus. Now your hands are two size classes bigger then normal. Hey, they don’t stack! Same Source! Okay, one is gold and one is platinum. Same effect. But But But… Hey! This is RAW, baby. Optimization at it’s finest! You really can’t do this with anyone else and get away with it effectively. Plus we are talking two feats (One for your hand, one for the gold battle gauntlets) just to pull this off, or extra enchantment. This all isn’t cheap. It’s going to cost you. So the knee jerk response to say “no”, is wrong because that’s what happens with monks.

So you can get 4 different sourced of WSAs on the same attack. Some fun combos are: Taking everything that adds energy damage (I figured out how to get 15d6+1 fire or electrical damage) or a whole slew of other interesting WSAs. I happen to have a handbook about that. It’s in my sig file. Go take a look. It’s fairly cheap to get say +15 bonuses on your fists, as compared to the cost for anyone else to get a +15 weapon.

(part 8 of CaptnQ's monk op guide)

5) Monks require Wis, Dex, Con and Str, and Str is usually the one that gets dumped, resulting in low damage

I always dumped wis.

6) Monks have terrible AC past level 8 or so
7) Like barbarians, fighters and paladins, monks have a hard time dealing with any sort of anti-melee characters, but unlike those classes a monk also has terrible damage. (Flying, invisible, spellcaster)

I tend to agree with these. CaptnQ has ways around them, but they're pretty silly. My favorite one was a combo that lets monks fly 30 feet per round as a nonaction, or maybe the one that lets monks full-attack anyone within a couple hundred feet at no penalty.

A monk is basically like a tank/anti-mage/mystic sort of class that most people want to play as a scrappy unarmed brawler. It's just not worth it. If you want to play an unarmed fighter, just play an unarmed fighter. You get nice bonus feats to help, and you can max your Strength for plenty of guaranteed damage even though you only have 1d3 damage dice.

Yep, I discuss this in the Monkday Guide linked in my sig. Monk is a class that has a ton of problems.

But those problems don't include lack of fist enchantments or dumping strength, is all I'm saying. In fact, full BAB helps a ton of monk issues, from them not really having more attacks per round, to them losing to unspecced fighters in grapples. It's a good first step.