Monk, pure or multi?

[tenthousand]

Hi everyone,

I really want a fast 2-weapon fighter that can solo well, since my first toon of fighter/rogue is failing miserably at level 6.

I was thinking of a Monk, and most places I've looked said to take Monk all the way to 20. But, is this really necessary? I thought of taking a fighter level for the feats.

My main question is this. If I use Kamas, do all of the unarmed bonuses, quivering palm, etc., work? Or should I be thinking more along the lines of handwraps?

In either scenario I am wanting to go with Weapon Finesse and a high Dex, with robes.

Has anyone been successful with a nice solo high-DPS monk, and can give me a few pointers?

[殺してあげる]

I've had two lives as a fighter/monk, 12/8. Blend of Kensei (for heavy pick/deadly/gooddeath), a dab into Ninja (incorp, dodge, poison, dex for damage), touch of shintao (prr in earth, restoration on positive finisher, earth claw) and some staltward (prr, def stance, weapon damage protect).

It's been fun in pretty much all content: you can openly fight it all, or stealth through for minimal kills, and have 50% less damage from prr. Make sure to take the monk in the middle (after the weapon unlock) and you can finish Grandmastery stances with the final feats.

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Also had nuts amusement with a 14/6 paladin monk.. innate healing, paladin zeal/holysword (only one though since only one slot), good saves, etc.

That said, have ran three monks pure to 20 and they were fine as well. Little more squishy than the fighter blends, but shintao cap Meditations of War can bring it up some.

Note: All the above, just an opinion based on personal play, and not min/max theorycraft forum munchkinism :P Be better builds out there, but I've liked what I've used.

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Quivering Palm USED TO not work with weapons, but they changed it to do so a few updates ago. Stunning FIST though still requires being unarmed.

The +W die steps from monk to unarmed...are only unarmed. The bonus from earth stance though DOES work with weapons.

[tenthousand]

Ah nice, that is very helpful. Thank you! I will try a Fighter/Monk and see how that goes

[Doug]

General rule of thumb from many years of gameplay: if you're thinking about multiclassing, think twice.. especially if you're not experienced with the game. It's very easy to make a toon that works really well at one level range and is terribly gimped at another or one that will be hell on wheels at L20.. if you can manage to get there.

That being said, if you want to multiclass, keep in mind stat and class congruencies. Fighter/rogue has a few problems. Rogue is mostly int/dex and fighter is mostly str/con. There are more ways around that than there used to be, but you have to know them to take advantage of them. In addition, rogue is a light armor only and fighters are generally designed around heavy. Again, a proper build can take these things into account, but it's difficult to do if you don't know the possibilities.

Even though it's not currently being upgraded well, I still recommend Ron's Character Generator from rjcyberware.com as the best tool for planning a multiclass toon (or any toon, for that matter). It will help you avoid obvious pitfalls like trying to take a feat when you haven't planned for the prerequisites.

[tenthousand]

I planned a level 4 Monk (for starting purposes) - Is this feasable for my kind of build?

Character Plan by DDO Character Planner Version 04.25.04
DDO Character Planner Home Page[www.rjcyberware.com]

Level 4 Lawful Good Dwarf Male
(4 Monk) 
Hit Points: 65
Spell Points: 0 
BAB: 3\3
Fortitude: 6
Reflex: 8
Will: 3

                  Starting          Feat/Enhancement
Abilities        Base Stats          Modified Stats
(32 Point)       (Level 1)             (Level 4)
[COLOR=silver]Strength             14                    14
Dexterity            18                    19
Constitution         14                    14
Intelligence         14                    14
Wisdom                8                     8
Charisma              6                     6[/color]

                  Starting          Feat/Enhancement
                 Base Skills         Modified Skills
Skills           (Level 1)            (Level 4)
[COLOR=silver]Balance               8                    15
Bluff                -2                    -2
Concentration         2                     2
Diplomacy            -2                    -2
Disable Device        n/a                   n/a
Haggle               -2                    -2
Heal                 -1                    -1
Hide                  8                    10
Intimidate           -2                    -2
Jump                  6                     9
Listen                3                     5
Move Silently         8                    11
Open Lock             n/a                   n/a
Perform              n/a                   n/a
Repair                2                     2
Search                2                     5
Spellcraft            2                     2
Spot                 -1                     2
Swim                  2                     2
Tumble                8                     8
Use Magic Device     n/a                   n/a
[/color]
Level 1 (Monk)
[COLOR=lightblue]Feat: [/color][COLOR=silver](Selected) Dodge[/color]
[COLOR=lightblue]Feat: [/color][COLOR=silver](Monk Bonus) Two Weapon Fighting[/color]


Level 2 (Monk)
[COLOR=lightblue]Feat: [/color][COLOR=silver](Monk Bonus) Weapon Finesse[/color]


Level 3 (Monk)
[COLOR=lightblue]Feat: [/color][COLOR=silver](Monk Path) Path of Harmonious Balance: Fists of Light[/color]
[COLOR=lightblue]Feat: [/color][COLOR=silver](Selected) Power Attack[/color]


Level 4 (Monk)

[tenthousand]

Oops it didn't get my level 4 feats, but you get the idea

[zirune]

Put skill points into Concentration instead of Tumble.

Concentration affects the amount ot ki you can hold. Ki decays over time, and the number it decays to is your Concentration score. If you regenerate ki passively, it will only regenerate up to your Concentration score. Being able to store ki (and passively generate a lot of it) is really useful; you can use your Healing Ki finisher on-demand (including the Lesser Restoration, Remove Curse, Remove Disease, and Remove Blindness effects if you have those enhancements) as well as not having to build up ki in order to use Stunning Fist, Kukan-Do, and other abilities.

Tumble doesn't really add a lot. A single point unlocks the skill, allowing you to use the skill's fall-damage-negation aspect. That's enough for all the small falls you'll need it for; for bigger falls, you'll most likely have a Feather Fall item. The different rolls for higher skills in Tumble don't do a ton.

[tenthousand]

Great - thank you! I'm a little overwhelmed by the number of skills/moves on my quickbars for even early level monks. I'm almost thinking of starting at level 1 so I can learn slowly how to play him.

[Doug]

Originally posted by tenthousand:

Great - thank you! I'm a little overwhelmed by the number of skills/moves on my quickbars for even early level monks. I'm almost thinking of starting at level 1 so I can learn slowly how to play him.

Yes.. Monks are challenging to build and to play. In play, they're click-intensive: to maximize a monk's usefulness, you have to be using skills abilities and feats over and over.

Building: What with Ki (use and generation), stances, light/dark, weapons vs handwraps and a few other things idr atm, the process of building a monk has a lot of room for error.

The points you've invested in Int buy you nothing except skills. If you dropped your Int to 10, you could raise your Con to 16, which would likely be a better idea. Personally, I'd drop the investment in Hide/Move Silently. Sneaky just doesn't happen much in DDO these days.
And even if it did, those skills fit Dark monk better than Light.

I can't tell from this if you've invested skill points into Listen and Search or not, but don't. Spot is occasionally useful to any toon (to see hidden mobs, mostly), but Listen is less so and Search only provides value to trappers (Rogues and Artis). Heal, OTOH, can be useful to a Light monk to boost the self-heal. Boost your Heal skill and your healing Amp and you can become considerably more resilient. And, monks being on the squishy side, Bluff can have value if you know how to use it and have the skill points to invest.

[Doug]

Ah. Forgot. Don't overlook the value of Wisdom to a monk. Aside from its universal value in improving Will saves, for Monks it adds to AC and to the DC of special attacks. A low-Wis monk might as well not bother with any special attacks. Although it's not generally a major issue, it also affects maximum storable Ki (Concentration affects base minimum).

[Doug]

Which points up another problem with building monks: too many useful stats and not enough stat points. Str, Dex, Con and Wis are the important stats, followed by Int and then (mostly-useless) Cha. Generally, you need to dump Int and Cha to get enough points to do anything useful with the other 4.

If you intend to take Power Attack, you need a minimum of 13 Str and I wouldn't build a toon with less than 12 (so Ray of Enfeeblement and its ilk don't make you helpless). For a Finesse build, you need at least 16 Dex. 14 Con is also a bare minimum for pretty much any toon IMO. And if you intend to use any Monk special attacks, no less than 14 Wis. Obviously more is better for any of them, so you have to decide where you're going to put your focus.

[Doug]

Another little-known fact about monks: If you TWF with handwraps, you get the extra attacks without the to-hit penalties that are otherwise associated with using two weapons (and which the feats reduce). Obviously if you use kamas, you will be subject to the usual TWF effects. Monks using handwraps get damage bonuses (these days as [W] multiples: [W] is base weapon damage). If you use kamas, you do not get those bonuses.

[殺してあげる]

Note: if you use piercing weapons (shuriken, shortswords) and run Ninja tree at least a bit, you can eschew strength in favour of dex. You'll still need (and want) 13 str for powerattack for cleave/greatcleave (and its unlocks in the Epic Destiny Legendary Dreadnaught). It's also useful so Ray of Enfeeble can be taken - in addition to being helpless at zero, monks suffer from 'falling out of stance' if they get burdened AT ALL. You need to be 'unencumbered', otherwise you pretty much lose your monk everything and end up flailing like a drunken hobo.

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As Zirune stated, only put a little into tumble. I LOVE tumble enough that i've mouse keys bounds to tumble to the sides and backflip, even twisting the magister feat to shadowtravel in tumble... and still only have few points in it. All higher tumble gives you is 'further distance travelled... and you still can end up having enough on that to get the advanced flips by the end.

Concentration though powers that Ki that fuels special attacks, which if you choose instead in the end to go into Grandmaster of Flowers...every drop is useful. That base minimum Doug meant: Ki is raised through attacks, through being hit (in earth stance) and by meditating. It will naturally decay to your concentration score, so a high concentration score is needed to keep that ki between fights. Later you can get multipliers to your 'float' (where ki decays to or even starts to naturally rise to) ...but that's all based on your concentration score. Pretty sure you can potentially build it so that your ki float is pretty much your max ki potential.

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Entirely disagree with doug on hide/stealth. Sneak happens if solo, or with a group of non-morons :P Light monks stealth just fine, and a light monk can stil be a ninja (just can't use the left column of enhancements). A monk darting in and out of stealth can easily and quickly run some end quests simply by treating it like an assassination run and finishing quests with a single kill (speed runs of "Through a Mirror Darkly" for instance, or devious runs of "What Goes Up"). They also make effective scouts for say, challenges or Crystal Cove as monk speed coupled with stealth means they can rush through areas and assess without being bogged into fighting.

Plus, makes monks great for eyeball duty[www.royalblackwatch.net] =D

[tenthousand]

Good to know - thanks a lot!

[Doug]

Originally posted by 殺してあげる:

Entirely disagree with doug on hide/stealth. Sneak happens if solo, or with a group of non-morons :P Light monks stealth just fine, and a light monk can stil be a ninja (just can't use the left column of enhancements). A monk darting in and out of stealth can easily and quickly run some end quests simply by treating it like an assassination run and finishing quests with a single kill (speed runs of "Through a Mirror Darkly" for instance, or devious runs of "What Goes Up"). They also make effective scouts for say, challenges or Crystal Cove as monk speed coupled with stealth means they can rush through areas and assess without being bogged into fighting.

Anyone who can manage these things has enough experience they won't be asking us for advice. Few better ways for a newbie to get in over their head than to TRY sneaking and have it fail mid-quest.

[殺してあげる]

But but that's why Yakkity Sax was INVENTED!