In the small tavern were few travelers. A few humans, wet and miserable, huddling by the fireplace to dry out from the storm. Another hooded figure sat right up by the counter, and an elven bard sat in the corner, her mandolin singing sad tunes as she told a forgotten story in an ancient tongue. Lightning crashed outside, and the few inside seemed to move rapidly with the oscillation of bright light coming in through the small windows.
BANG! The front door crashed open, and where the door had been stood a large half-orc. The few people inside froze in terror, or perhaps in utter calm.
"Give me money, or die!" cried the vigilante.
"Close the door, friend, and keep out the cold."
The half-orc looked around in confusion, trying to find the source of the calm voice.
"Down here."
Standing in front of the half-orc was the hooded figure. He came up only to his waste.
"Close the door, please."
"Grrrrahhhh!"
The half-orc, numb with rage, swung down his fist at the diminutive figure.
He hit. The figure did not flinch. He did not budge.
"I will only ask once more."
The half-orc swung again, but instead of getting the satisfying feeling of knuckle on flesh, he found himself on his feet. And there was pain. The figure now stood on his chest. Before the half-orc could think to grab him, he found himself thrown outside, back into the cold.
Looking up he saw the hooded figure standing in the doorway to the tavern.
"Leave now, with your life."
The half-orc charged.
He closed on the dwarf.
The corpse dropped at the feet of the dwarf.
The door to the tavern closed, and again the few huddled within the tavern took up their activities as before.



Resilient Flurry
Monk 18, Dwarven Defender 22

PvM, playable 1-40

Race: Dwarf (pretty much has to be )
Alignment: lawful good or lawful netural (for role-playing reasons)

STR 16/30
DEX 14
CON 16
INT 10
WIS 14/16
CHA 6

All abilities points into Strength

Level-ups:

1 ) M1, Dodge
2 ) M2
3 ) M3, Toughness
4 ) M4
5 ) M5
6 ) M6, Weapon Focus: Unarmed Strike
7 ) M7
8 ) M8
9 ) M9, Blind Fight
10) M10
11) D1
12) D2, Improved Critical: Unarmed
13) D3
14) D4
15) M11, Iron Will
16) D5
17) D6
18) D7, Lightning Reflexes
19) D8
20) M12
21) D9, Great Strength I
22) D10
23) M13
24) D11, Great Strength II
25) D12
26) D13
27) M14, Great Strength III
28) D14, Epic Weapon Focus: Unarmed
29) D15
30) D16, Great Strength IV
31) D17
32) M15
33) D18, Epic Prowess, Great Wisdom I
34) D19
35) D20
36) M16, Improved Spell Resistance I
37) D21
38) M17
39) D22, Armor Skin, Great Wisdom II
40) M18

Max HP: 528
Naked AC: 26
Base Attack: 27
AB: 41/38/35/32/29/26
Damage: 1-20 + 10 (19-20/x2)

Skills:
Tumble: 40
Discipline: 43
Heal: 40
rest into Concentration

Basically he has empty body, which is a non-dispellable 50% concealment, and he has 15/- damage reduction, which reduces most attacks to nothing. His decent HP, usually in the mid 400's, is enough to take a few hits. He dishes out really nice damage without any weapons, at a rate that warriors without monk levels cannot replicate without haste. Even then he has flurry of blows, which can easily reduce a crowd to nothing by speeding up the damage to each. Cleave is a nice perk.
He does need something to boost his AC, so some nice monk robes are a must. Amulets of Wisdom add to AC and increase the DC of quivering palm and stunning fist. Improved Knockdown has most opponents stumped. Improved Evasion, with his decent saves, should help reduce incoming spell damage, as should his natural spell resistance of 30. Top it off with his monk speed, and he should be able to run away from anyone he can't defeat.
Obviously, with only a +3 (from Ki strike) to bypass damage reduction, he will need some good gloves to blast through spells such as stoneskin.
Mind protection should not be a problem, but something to boost his saves in general would be of help against spell casters.
Well, whaddya think? Also my first attempt at a little story. Don't be too harsh on my poor attempts at background , but any critcisim on the build is more than welcome.

-C


griphook...Typo Corrected

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Do not meddle in the affairs of Dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.

Edited By griphook on 07/28/05 15:48

I think you meant your stats to look like this:

STR 16/30
DEX 14
CON 16
INT 10
WIS 14/16
CHA 6

Griphook can fix that for you if you ask.

I like it. It's simple but effective. And going for 18 monk and 22 DD are good breakpoints in terms of class feats, bonus feats, and damage reduction. It's sort of like an enhanced "pure" monk.

Steve

Edited By Stravinsky00 on 07/20/05 09:00

I would consider pushing the con a bit more and getting epic dr3. A DR of 15 will be very small at high epic, and will just take the bite out of the hits.

But outside of that.. I do like the build. Quite right. I meant to put WIS 14/16. I realized it only when it was too late. Nice Catch Stravinsky00! I will have to ask griphook to change that for me.
I was thinking about adding more DR, but i couldn't without dropping the AB, which I didn't want. Not a bad idea though, Khandahr, and probably worth it for an absorbtion-based melee build.
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Et Earello Endorenna utulien.
Sinome maruvan ar Hildinyar tenn' Ambar-metta. I really like this build. I'm sure it is very strong, and I particularly like the way the levels are staggered (I'm a big fan of building both classes gradually but equally rather than 10 levels of each at a stretch).

However, I did notice one thing: As a dwarf, doesn't the open hand damage max out one die lower than tall races? My understanding was that dwarves, gnomes, and halflings all max out at d12 for open hand damage. I've never played a dwarven monk (perhaps for this very reason), so correct me if I'm wrong here. Dwarves are Medium afaik; so the damage should be identical to elves.
Gnomes/halflings/etc are small.
Quote: Posted 07/21/05 15:46:08 (GMT) -- chsmi

I really like this build. I'm sure it is very strong, and I particularly like the way the levels are staggered (I'm a big fan of building both classes gradually but equally rather than 10 levels of each at a stretch).

However, I did notice one thing: As a dwarf, doesn't the open hand damage max out one die lower than tall races? My understanding was that dwarves, gnomes, and halflings all max out at d12 for open hand damage. I've never played a dwarven monk (perhaps for this very reason), so correct me if I'm wrong here.

Khandahr is correct. Dwarves may look a little smaller than humans and the like, but the only small races are halfling and gnome. All the other player races, including dwarves, are medium races.

Steve