Another Returning Player

[Isillion]

Hi All

I have a light Halfling monk with weapon finesse, power attack, twf, itwf, ic: bludgeon, dodge, mobility and toughness. He has high dex and wis and level ups into wis. He's very survivable but with a base STR of 12 + items he hits like a wet paper bag! I want to respect him but not entirely sure to what. Think I want to stick with the high WIS for monk finishers but other than that i'm open to suggestions. I'm a fan of the Halfling DM too if possible but not a problem to go without

Many thanks in advance for constructive help

[inspiredunease]

Some questions for you: Is it pure monk? What is the goal of the build? How many build points? What end-game gear do you have? What tomes do you have?

Answering these questions will get you better, more informed advice. Quick suggestions though would be:

TR into something else - Monks with splashes are very popular, try looking round the forum for 16/2/2, 16/3/1, or 15/3/2 splits, bladeforged is a very nice (if tome-dependent for dex) race (google "munkenmo woodfist" for a good bladeforged build), as are dwarf, human and horc (try googling "some kinda fyng" for my horc build), and all will probably get better DCs and DPS than a halfling.

Go dex-based/sneak damage heavy - 7d6 sneak, lots of improved deception, take full ninja tree, try and get dual celestias. I have seen people run this and it is actually reasonably effective.

Try and make the best of a bad situation - Get +5 strength tome, sink two level ups in strength, then go full ****** cleave/great cleave/overwhelming crit shintao unarmed.

[Isillion]

Good points, thanks

- staying as halfling
- I'm open to all suggestions about pure and splashing classes but would like to stick with something WIS based if possible. Not absolutely set in stone though. 12 monk at the mo so that's the minimum investment in monk.
- I'm FTP, Just bought shadowfell conspiracy & MOTU so now have access to iconics and druid
- End game gear / tomes: None. I've played the game on and off almost since inception but so much has changed in the last 2 years when i've hardly looked at the game.... so much change but good change I think
- I will most likely TR once I get to 20 and accumulate some gear so not thinking of epics
- Character has +2 DEX tome and +1 STR tome (don't think anything else but I'm at work so can't check)

[Thrudh]

Hi All

I have a light Halfling monk with weapon finesse, power attack, twf, itwf, ic: bludgeon, dodge, mobility and toughness. He has high dex and wis and level ups into wis. He's very survivable but with a base STR of 12 + items he hits like a wet paper bag! I want to respect him but not entirely sure to what. Think I want to stick with the high WIS for monk finishers but other than that i'm open to suggestions. I'm a fan of the Halfling DM too if possible but not a problem to go without

Many thanks in advance for constructive help

Stay wis focused, and get the stunning fist feat. Stunning your opponents means they can't hit you plus you do 50% damage. Very very useful. Halfling dragonmarks are also very useful, especially in the 1-20 game. You might want to think about 4 levels of paladin... That will give you access to Empower Healing which will boost your Halfling dragonmarks. Or 6 levels of ranger (will give you access to the Maximize and a bunch of free feats, TWF, ITWF, Rapid Shot, Manyshot)

Or just stay pure monk. That's very solid too.

[Isillion]

oops missed stunning fist which I already have. Thinking about this I'm not sure my Ki generation is up to snuff so need to look for better concentration item and maybe switch to crane rather than tortoise.

[TeacherSyn]

Some thoughts:

It wasn't clear which philosophy you chose. If you go the Dark Monk and specifically the Ninja Spy route, your Dexterity determines greater damage as well--an excellent way to fix your damage issues. Also, remove Weapon Finesse in any case; it's the reason why you had a low attack, and with the DEX to Damage mode for ninjas, it's outmoded.

I'm for building "pure" Monks but, with the new enhancement system, you can add so much from many other trees that keeps your pure Monk advantages but adds a lot of diversity (a Shintao with invisibility and incorporeality and shortsword proficiency, for example). Others can get into multiclassing builds, but I think you'll find much of what you need in the three Monk trees.

[Isillion]

Some thoughts:

It wasn't clear which philosophy you chose. If you go the Dark Monk and specifically the Ninja Spy route, your Dexterity determines greater damage as well--an excellent way to fix your damage issues. Also, remove Weapon Finesse in any case; it's the reason why you had a low attack, and with the DEX to Damage mode for ninjas, it's outmoded.

I'm for building "pure" Monks but, with the new enhancement system, you can add so much from many other trees that keeps your pure Monk advantages but adds a lot of diversity (a Shintao with invisibility and incorporeality and shortsword proficiency, for example). Others can get into multiclassing builds, but I think you'll find much of what you need in the three Monk trees.


I'm light monk at present.

The underlying problem with my current build is that I can't get dex to damage as an unarmed pure monk. I did see the shortsword option but figured drow to have better synergy. I can see a drow rogue/monk with short swords and poisons being nasty. Hadn't realised poisons had got so nasty until recently!

[inspiredunease]

If you're just running 1 - 20 on a first life without many tomes, I wouldn't sweat it too much. Have fun, try out different stuff, you can always TR. Having said that, here's the spec I would suggest for you if you want to do a bit more DPS:

18/2 monk/fighter - the two fighter levels will shore up your feats, and gives you a much needed + 3 tactics boost at level 15.

Stats: 15/15/15/8/14/8 level ups in strength. This will give you 23 strength at level 24 if you can find a + 2 strength tome if you do decide to do some epics, allowing you to take overwhelming critical, which will up your DPS significantly. Personally, I would suggest you do level up to 28 as you will build a lot of wealth, you can grab all the good early epic items: http://ddowiki.com/page/Commendation:_Villagers_of_Eveningstar and see how you like to play a monk towards end game allowing you to TR with more of an idea later.

Feats: TWF line, Improved crit: bludgeon, power attack, cleave, great cleave (take these even if you do not intend to take overwhelming crit at epic, as they are the best AOE DPS you can get, and you can sometimes get tactics like stunning fist to proc on the AoE if you spam it after hitting great cleave). Then take whatever, dodge and mobility are nice for additional survivability. Toughess is a bit meh now it doesn't unlock enhancements. If you take epic levels, take vorpal strikes first, then overwhelming critical if you can, then improved martial arts or blinding speed. As and when you get epic destiny feats I'm sure you can work them out yourself :P

Enhancements: Take all tier 5 shintao and the innates up to argent fist. Take Ninja spy innates to shadow veil and tier 4 to no mercy. Just take Way of the patient tortoise from Henshin. at 14 take fighter haste boost and extra action boosts, at 15 take kensei tactics, plus the dodge line if you can afford it, sink any additional points after that into racial dragonmark enhancements, sneak attack or saves depending on what you feel you need.

To gear up and make life a lot easier, I would strongly recommend that you pick up the Lordsmarch plaza chain: http://ddowiki.com/page/Attack_on_Stormreach. This has several amazing items that will make getting to 20 a lot easier, including:

http://ddowiki.com/page/Item:Vampiric_Stonedust_Wraps - These are the ultimate easy button, they'll shore up your stunning fist DC, occasionally stone mobs and while in earth stance (which is a good choice if you're finding survivability tough) it will occasionally proc additional DR on you. Awesome.

http://ddowiki.com/page/Garments_of_Equilibrium - These will sort out your Ki issues, and gives you +.5 w damage, what's not to like?

And finally this: http://ddowiki.com/page/Named_item_sets#Wrath_of_Sora_Kell It fills out a lot of holes on your character, and is not tooooo grindy to get.

Once you've picked up these basic items, the rest of the way to 20 shouldn't be too hard.