Monk/Ranger or Monk/Fighter

[Mentos]

This is for OC, so we're talkin 17 levels give or take. The character would dual wield Kamas and be a Human. Potentially work up to using whirlwind attack, but I haven't quite gotten that far.

I don't really see anything regarding a Monk/Fighter except a weaponmaster build for lv40. Most people just talk about the Monk/Cleric builds, but I hate spell casting in this game. The only thing that particularly interests me about the Ranger build is the animal companion. I want to get as far into the Monk tree as I can without sacraficing 10 attacks, and if ranger; animal companion, to get speed buffs, immunities etc.

[captainwiseass]

Well, enough levels in Ranger would give you Two-Weapon Fighting and Ambidexterity for free.

[Selphea]

Definitely Fighter then. Ranger needs 9 levels for imp. 2 wep, Fighter can just redirect 4 levels of feats.

Note than neither Monk, Fighter nor Ranger have Uncanny Dodge so you'll lose your dex bonus in many situations including if archers shoot you from far away.

[Bishop]

1 level of ranger is better than 1 lvl of fighter for both dual wield feats. 4 levels of fighter is better than 4 levels of ranger for weapon specializtion (or another bonus feat).

[Shia Luck]

Max (useful) monk levels using 2 wpn fighting and trying to get whirlwind attack in 17 lvls is probably 6 or 9. You'll need quite afew FTR levels for all those feats, tho I suppose F4/R1 gets you the 2 wpn and wpn spec. (still need dosge, mobility spring attack wpn focus, blind fight etc) but no UMD and no uncanny dodge. The main point of using kamas is to be able to cast flame weapon et al. on them so you need a friendly caster or UMD or else fists are as good or better usually so combining ranger and fighter doesnt really help.

I think you need ot make a choice of lots of monk and fists or kamas and much less monk.

(Get alternate combat animations from the vault and use fists and it looks way better than kamas *grin* )

Have fun :)

[Mentos]

Yeah I think i'm dumping WW. I guess it's not great, except in certain situations. Otherwise you get more damage from your base attacks. At least that's what I read. New concepts for me, I always played a Rogue in 3rd. I'm using kama's for RP reasons, I'm not a fan of using fists in this setting, but I just really like what the Monk offers as a class otherwise.