Monk Makeover

[rawzon3]

Original concept for my monk was STR based Dwarven tactics 2HF using Staffs. From witnessing what monks do in quest now, I am guessing this will be a sub-standard build. (I rolled this guy the day monks came out and have been muling him since) So, now that I finally have occasion and the interest to play my monk, I would like to know if he can be salvaged, and how I should make him over into something useful. Level 5 banking 6

Starting stats:

STR 18 +1 level up
DEX 14
CON 13
INT 9
WIS 14
CHA 6


Used +1 tomes on everything except CHA


Feats:

Dodge
Evasion
Stunning Fist
Toughness
Two Handed Fighting

Skills balance concentration and jump


So, I would appreciate some help hopefully to give me direction with this build, or if I need to send him to the glue factory, advise me so.

[Carpone]

You are correct: using anything but unarmed attacks as a monk is gimping yourself.

With a base 14 DEX, you won't be able to take GTWF unless you use a +3 DEX tome. If you don't take GTWF, then you're gimping yourself.

[nolaureltree000]

like the poster above said, using anything other than handwraps on a pure monk, will lower your DPS.

if youre looking for a staff-build, id recommend looking at the Big F'n Stick build. ive never played it, but ive heard decent things about it: http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php...ig+f%27n+stick

[Aquoia93]

why is evasion on your feats list? It is granted automatically

[rawzon3]

Evasion is on my feat list because I couldn't remember which feats were which, I thought I remembered selecting it as a monk bonus feat or something (like Stunning Fist was?). Whatever it was a long time ago.

It will be fairly easy to convert to unarmed, so the feats I want will be TWF, ITWF, GTWF, and IC:Bludgeoning. And I can think of a couple of ways to get GTWF without a +3 tome.

Are there any other feats that I should be getting? Was light monk a bad choice for this build? What sort of animal mountain paths do strength based monks favor?

[jmonty]

would go:
16 str [level ups here]
15 dex
16 wis

rest into con

with dwarf tactics you can get your stunning fist pretty high.

feats i'd take are the twf chain, power attack, stunning fist, toughness, and stunning blow. a lot of people would say improved critical bludgeon too, but i'd go for another toughness instead.

personally i prefer ninja spy but that's a choice you'll have to make

[jmonty]

i haven't made a dwarf monk but i'm tempted to because of the lack of penalty to wis and the tactics line, which could give a pretty potent stunning fist dc without putting all the points into wis