Is a monk / rogue possible?

[Dommius]

Hey, I was considering making a monk with a bit of rogue thrown in for the ability to disable traps, open locks and find secret doors. Was also going to use him for a bit of sneak attack damage. Now, my question for everyone out there is, can this be done effectively? Or am I better off trying to simply go pure rogue. I have the ablity to do 32 point stat builds and was leaning towards playing as a human.

[spifflove]

It can be done effectively starting with 14 intelligence or 12 if human.

1 point per level spot
2 per level search
2 per level disable
1 per level concentration

At level 20 you will want to reconfigure to pure monk to take advantage of epic 10 damage reduction and the capstone.

[Cyr]

Monk/rogue combo's do exist. Some are very good. Others not so much. A very small rogue splash in a otherwise pure monk would be questionable.

[Dommius]

ok, but correct me if i'm wrong don't you need at least one rogue level to be able to search for traps? So switching my rogue level would essentially leave me with wasted skill points would it not? Either way I'm losing on some stuff to gain other things. Which is needed I suppose.

[Dommius]

Hmm... based off what you're saying Cyr I may be better off recreating an old favorite character from my 3.5 PnP days. Human dual wield assassin, not min maxed or anything he was just a very fun character to play in and out of combat =P

[unbongwah]

A monk with a splash of rogue is certainly doable, however you give up the monk capstone which is pretty sweet and you don't have as many skill points to spend as, say, a rogue-splashed ranger (e.g., the Exploiter). Also, monk builds are usually pretty tight on stat points for the four primary monk stats (STR, DEX, CON, WIS); having to add decent INT as well waters them down a bit. Rogues with a splash of monk (for the extra feat & WIS AC boost) are more common, I think (e.g., rogue 19 / monk 1 Assassin).