Oh, and have your 2nd-level choices made and ready to apply after the next battle. 
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Sitting here bored at work and I was overthinking my character with level 2 coming up. I am planning on taking Battle Medicine for my skill feat at level 2 and started thinking how I am mostly dps (or at least, when I can roll decent) and whether Battle Medicine was the best thing for me to pick up. But I couldn’t really see another skill feat to take at level 2 that would be any better than Battle Medicine and hey, more healing helps right?
I also started re-thinking (overthinking perhaps?) my weapon choice. I picked quarterstaff mainly because of the reach property, but that really doesn’t synergize all that well with my character’s unarmed attacks. I either stay in the 5 foot range and waste the reach on the quarterstaff or get way more tactical. Say I use my first action to move within 10 feet of an enemy, then make a quarterstaff attack with the second action, then I either continue to make quarterstaff attacks with a worse MAP than my unarmed attacks or I use that third action to move 5 more feet to get into unarmed range for my next turn, which kind of feels like a waste of an action. It’s not that bad off if I start a turn within 10 feet of an enemy so I could make the quarterstaff attack, then move 5 feet to unarmed range, then do a flurry of blows or unarmed attack for the third action. I think I am overthinking it because basically the reach property of the quarterstaff is a bit useless, but the quarterstaff still remains as viable as any of the other Monk weapons…except for: FINESSE. My Dexterity is always going to be higher than my Strength and I am wondering if a finesse weapon would be a better choice for me, the problem being that there a scant few Monk weapons with the finesse property and they are on the low damage spectrum. I am thinking of picking up nunchaku to replace quarter staff as it is the only Monk finesse weapon that is above 1d4 damage, and it has couple other good properties being disarm and backswing. I am disappointed that Temple Sword is not a finesse weapon, most monk temple swords I recall seeing in real life rely more on dexterity than overall strength. Wishful thinking I suppose, but Temple Sword is only better than nunchaku because of the damage difference which is just d8 over d6. Thinking I am gonna pick up nunchaku to have the option and try it out over quarterstaff see which works best.
I think the biggest question is how attached are you to using weapons at all? Some stances like Wolf and Tiger give you d8 unarmed attack with various other benefits. To me, the only benefit of going with Monastic Weaponry is getting that reach. But if you are more concerned with making sure later attacks have Agile, you might be better off just discarding weapons entirely. Spending an action to shift 5ft almost every turn is a serious drain on your action economy.
As for the skill feat, most of them are only tangentially useful in combat and don’t contribute to damage (the Intimidation feats are about the only exception), so don’t worry if there aren’t any that make you a better fighter. Having something like Battle Medicine on the fastest character will likely come in handy.
Thanks for chiming in on me getting Battle Medicine, I thought it should stick with it but I wasn’t sure if I was just not seeing some other more beneficial feat to pick up at level 2. Battle Medicine it is.
I am only attached to using weapons because I took the Monastic Weaponry feat at lvl 1. If I quit using weapons that feat becomes a waste. At this point I will look at getting some nunchaku as they will be more on par with my unarmed attacks in both damage and bonuses to hit. I lose a little bit of damage but gain better to hit bonuses which will matter more relating to MAP as well. Right now the MAP for three attacks with the bo staff is +5/0/-5 compared to +7/+3/-1 with unarmed attacks and using nunchaku the MAP would be akin to the unarmed attack MAP. I’m not going to ask our poor DM if I can retcon my weapon of choice in the middle of the dungeon/castle, that seems like too much burden of decision to place on the overtasked keeper of the campaign. The only other retcon I could possibly passive-aggressively ask by not asking 
is to retcon the Monastic Weaponry feat and ditch the bo staff altogether. I should have looked to buy nunchaku before leaving for the castle or picked them at character creation, it’s my own fault for not considering the finesse angle of my character and overlooking nunchaku in favor of the straightforward highest damage monk weapon, being the bo staff. In the possibility of a feat retcon, I would take Tiger Stance or Wolf Stance, I’m divided between which one is better for this character, leaning towards Tiger a bit because the 6th level feat Tiger Slash sounds like it can do some good damage.
But for now I’m stuck with a bo staff so I will keep walloping things with it.
Psh, we’ve got people swapping out classes and even entire characters. I don’t think asking to fix a feat on your first character is too terrible. XD
Tiger can be strong against anything that bleeds (so not undead, oozes, or constructs), but it swings a lot on whether you can get those crits. Tiger Slash is great for when you can burn all 3 actions attacking since you get ~1.5x strike damage without increasing MAP twice (like Power Attack does), the bleed is killer on the rare occasions it lands against a healthy enemy, and the shove is occasionally useful. It’s not clear whether “as if you had successfully Shoved them” means you can also move after them like Shove allows.
Wolf is great if you can flank a lot and like knocking things down. Considering you plan to get AoO, knocking things down is a good idea. Standing up provokes AoOs. Wolf Drag isn’t as damaging as Tiger Slash of course, but it doesn’t need to flank to trip them and Fatal d12 is probably stronger than the bleed most of the time. Again, getting the Trip without increasing MAP a second time is pretty sweet.
Assuming you want to stick with DEX primary, those two are your best bets, I think. Tangled Forest comes much later and probably isn’t what you’re looking for (kind of a tank stance for Monk; good for forcing enemies to stay near you).
Well, I’m left still torn on whether I would take Tiger Stance or Wolf Stance. When you mention burning all three actions to attack with Tiger Slash, does Tiger Slash take up all three actions? or is it something I could use for each attack, as in make three separate Tiger Slashes?
I looked at Tangled Forest stance and Wild Winds stance, but as per our earlier discussions about stances I don’t think either of really go with my character.
I’m still not sure if I would switch feats or just switch weapons. I like the sound of nunchaku given they have some useful properties like backswing and disarm. Also, if I can retcon the Monastic Weapon feat in favor of a stance I am left having to decide which class feat in my build I have to give up for the second stance feat. I would also want to pickup the Stance Savant feat and would have to get rid of another feat in my build to get Stance Savant.
Decisions decisions.
Tiger Slash is a 2-action activity in which you make a single Tiger Claw Strike. The benefit is adding 2 extra damage dice (or 3 once you reach 14th level), you can push the target 5ft (and possibly move to follow them, but that’s unclear like I noted above), and a critical hit also adds your STR mod to the Tiger Claw bleed damage (which increases the average bleed damage by around 100-200%, depending on your STR).
What makes it useful for when you have 3 actions to attack with is, even though you spend 2 actions on it, Tiger Slash only makes 1 attack, so it only increases your MAP 1 level. So you can make an attack with your 3rd action at only the first level of MAP instead of full MAP. Compared to attacking 4 times, using Tiger Slash and attacking twice (with flurry) is going to do a little better damage and offer both the push effect and potential of much greater bleed. However, the bleed is hard to count on since it still requires a crit, and there will be plenty of times you crit on something that is almost dead anyway and waste the bleed.
Personally, I like Wolf more: it trades away the potential for extra bleed damage, but it does a bit of extra damage when you attacking flat-footed targets (honestly, that extra damage will probably average around the same as Tiger’s bleed in the long run), and you can add your weapon potency bonus (you would be putting runes on handwraps that work for unarmed) to Trips on flanked enemies. Wolf Drag also uses 2 actions and doesn’t do nearly as much damage as Tiger Slash, but it gains Fatal d12 (on a crit, the Wolf Jaw damage dice become d12s before damage is doubled and add an extra d12 after the doubling), and you automatically Trip the enemy if you hit them. It’s a handy way to give enemies Flat-Footed that doesn’t depend on positioning.
Thinking of the stances as requiring those extra feats might not be the right way to think about it. The attack ones are extra combat options that you don’t have to take and the weapons don’t have any analogue for them. The instant stance one honestly feels too expensive for just saving you 1 action at the beginning of combats, and the upgrade to it only really matters to Mountain Style.
In the end, it’s really just up to what you prefer. Do keep in mind that Disarm is mostly useless, and the Backswing benefit doesn’t stack with the one from flanking or other sources of flat-footed. I’m honestly surprised how few Monk weapons have Finesse, too.
Thanks for all the info, now I have even more food for thought to keep me indecisive still hehe. Firstly, depends on if Mr. Rando will allow me to retcon this feat dilemma.
The existence of magical fistwraps makes weapons nothing really special for monks, unless you want something like the parry, reach, and trip traits like from your bo staff.
Swapping out a feat would not be a problem. If you really wanted to be 100% rules legit you could even train out of the feat during downtime activity (in the future.)
Speaking of swapping out feats/characters, I found this wonderful inspiration for Emilie’s back story (mild swearing in the linked video). The babies are evil… 
Okay just kidding, haha!
Thanks Rando, that cinches the decision for me. I will train out of Monastic Weaponry when the time is appropriate and pick up a stance, just have to decide between Tiger or Wolf. I’m leaning towards Wolf because it gets the trip ability if flanking which goes well with Opportunist and Wolf stance has finesse which goes well with my Dex focus. I originally imagined Huulm as a body-as-the-weapon monk to begin with so this will good to get back to my initial theme for the character. Being a Half-Orc he has that mentality of relying on his natural physical tools for attack and defense. I’m really looking forward to level three when I get the first +10 movement speed and my unarmed attacks become magical. I’m surprised monk gets the magical attacks at level three, the 5e monk doesn’t get that until level six.
Just to be clear, I’m saying you can go ahead and switch out the feat right now; we’ll chalk it up to learning the new system. But if you wait you could do it “legit” by training out of it during downtime.
In other news, I’m the proud owner of:
- Starfinder Core Rulebook (PDF)
- Starfinder Armory (PDF)
- Starfinder Character Operations Guide (PDF)
- Starfinder Pact Worlds (PDF)
Barely skimmed through any of the crunchy rule bits (what little I saw, it looks very much like Pathfinder 1, with the exceptions of the separate ACs, and the stamina/hp separation, and the addition of resolve pts.)
I have, however, devoured the setting chapter (12) in the CRB and will be diving into the Pact Worlds book for even more background lore stuff. I love the translation of so many Pathfinder factions, races, gods, etc, into their new Starfinder equivalents.
I’ve got about 5 or 6 character concepts already (all of them female humans of course), until I found out about the “baby Groot” race (Raxilites) in Alien Archive 3. Oh. Em. Gee.
Yes. That’s a human sized pistol on it’s back (which it’s able to use thanks to those biotech tendrils).
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Interesting note about the Champion reaction that I missed: Attacks that do multiple types of damage (like a dragon bite that does piercing and fire damage) apply the damage resistance to each type separately. So it would reduce the piercing damage by X and the fire damage by X.
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Cort sat down with me for a few hours last night and we went over Rockie and the initial plan to turn him into a druid/rogue build. Eventually we went back to Him keeping cloistered cleric and dipping into Druid still. Just reworking him a bit so that he gets thievery and Nature. Which means he is dropping Diplomacy. I also decided to retcon him in who he worships and am going back to Sarenrae since it really fits him a better in the rework. I will need to modify his stats a bit also.
Mith
Sounds good Mith.
I’m wondering if the PF2 ruleset in Fantasy Grounds will apply the DR: 3 all to each type of damage as applicable. Will have to test for science.
[Edit] Good news and bad news. Fantasy Grounds does not apply the DR to multiple types of dmg. However, I’ve discovered the correct format for the Champion’s Retributive Strike effect:
RESIST: 2 [LVL] all
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Hmm… If you have some time whenever (I’ve only got 2 hours left before I’m busy the rest of today, but I’m usually around as you know), I’d love to get on and mess with it. I have a couple things I’d like to try. However, there is also one other aspect of the Champion reaction that is hard to deal with: It actually triggers after the damage roll. Technically, this means I can wait and see how much damage the ally will take before deciding to use it (avoiding things like happened last night where I used it and Shine still hit the dirt), which can’t really be done via an effect. Of course, if FG isn’t applying the DR correctly, it sounds like we may be better off just doing it by hand anyway.
When did Shine hit the dirt? Was that near the end of the session?
I was amazed by how much damage she did against that bat 
.
I think the only thing I am disappointed with so far in her build is the trap finder feat. But if I retrain it I just know a trap will be the first thing we run into 
Unknown Gobinoid with a rusty Bastard sword (I think) - both Shine and Rockie took a dirt nap from it.
Mith
Yep. Hits for twenty-something damage will do that.
I am not convinced that goblinoid wasn’t juiced up on something.