Thanks! Valk is definitely not Belmont-y (any of them, especially not Gabriel) in personality, but the image is definitely pretty close to what I’m thinking. Give him a big burn scar up the left side of his face and a big, steel shield on his left arm, and that’s pretty much it. Hopefully he’ll be able to give everyone some cover while delivering some divine retribution in the process.
So I had a question come to mind last night. During Character creation, you get a lore skill when you get a background. If you have the ability to train additional skills, can you take a second lore skill?
The reason I ask is Murdoch for a cleric has a lot of skills it seems, with the limited number of chances to increase them past trained, it might make more sense to take a secondary Lore skill for one of the ones that I just took to buy a skill.
Mith
Lore skills are just like any other skill. Any time you can become trained in a skill of your choice or increase your proficiency level in a skill, you can do those things with a Lore of your choice instead of another skill. There are some skill feats around Lores, too.
However, if I understand your concern correctly, I don’t think this alleviates the issue. All classes other than Rogues (and Investigators, now) get a skill feat at each even level and a skill increase at each odd level after first. Rogues get both a skill feat and a skill increase at every level after first. This means non-Rogues get a total of 10 skill feats and 9 skill increases over 20 levels.
Each skill has 5 ranks: Untrained, Trained, Expert, Master, and Legendary. Each skill increase can raise one skill by one rank. Assuming you focus on skills that you start with Trained from the character creation process, non-Rogues only get enough skill increases to raise 3 skills to Legendary while leaving everything else at Trained or Untrained. There are a handful of ways to get more ranks, mainly through the Rogue Dedication and Skill Mastery archetype feat (raises an Expert skill to Master and a Trained skill to Expert each time you take it) and the Pathfinder Dedication (raises a trained skill to Expert), but those cost you class feats (of which you only get 10 after character creation) and aren’t really a good choice unless you desperately need those extra skill ranks.
Lores are somewhat unique in that there are two other ways to get more ranks in them. Gnomes have an ancestry feat called Gnome Obsession that gives you Trained in another Lore AND causes both that Lore and your background Lore to automatically gain ranks as soon as you get access to them. So both Lores become Expert at 2nd level, Master at 7th level, and Legendary at 15th level. Anyone can also take a skill feat called Additional Lore, which does the same thing (gaining trained and each further rank automatically) for a single new Lore, and you can take Additional Lore as many times as you want for further categories.
I hope that helps a little.
yeah that explains it pretty well. I might have to putz around with Murdoch again.
Mith
I’ve been debating again what to do with my skills. I’m planning to raise Int alongside Con as Valk’s secondary stats (partially for a Wizard archetype, partially because studying potential enemies is his thing), which means he will have a natural advantage with Athletics, Arcana, Crafting, Lores, Occultism, and Society. Discounting Lores, I can only plan to raise 3 of those if I want Legendary in them. However, aside from Athletics and Crafting, there aren’t a lot of skill feats I’m interested in for those. I was planning to raise Arcana, Occultism, and Society, but now I’m having second thoughts. So I’m considering a couple things:
- I’ll need Arcana for the archetype, but I don’t know that Occultism and Society will be that important to raise. Occultism is used for identifying some creatures (about the same number as Arcana covers, it looks like to me) and a small number of items Arcana can’t. It has some skill feats that give it bonuses to identifying those items and make your spells harder to identify, but that’s about it. Society covers a huge amount of knowledge checks regarding all Humanoid creatures, history, and… well, society. The only skill feat in it that interests me is Legendary Codebreaker in the last few levels, but it’s so situational I wouldn’t mind skipping it. I’m thinking about just leaving Occultism and Society at Trained because of this.
- I keep forgetting who has Crafting (sorry!), but I’m wondering if it’s something I should pick up. It requires 3 skill increases and at least 2 skill feats (Magical Crafting and Craft Anything), has a few other feats that are a good idea (Inventor, Specialty Crafting, and Impeccable Crafter), and I really need our crafter to have Quick Repair for me to use a shield much. I’ll have skill feats to burn and will be raising Intelligence (the Crafting ability score), so I could easily take that one if you would rather focus on something else.
- I can spend skill feats for auto-scaling Lore categories at a 1-for-1 basis, and they are Intelligence skills. I can probably cover a few of the more interesting and useful Lores for us this way.
- Athletics is a good thing for at least one person to keep maxed even disregarding its skill feats, and it looks like I will be the only Strength-focused character.
With all of that in mind, I’m wondering if I shouldn’t go with Arcana, Athletics, and Crafting as my 3 skills to raise. I’d love to hear what the rest of the party is thinking, especially the person with Crafting. If you’re good with the heavy investment on Crafting, I’ll probably stick with Society instead of that and just pick up some more Lores and Athletics feats.
Also, would everyone want to list their planned skill focuses (what you plan to raise), so we can get an idea if we have a lot of overlap or holes anywhere?
For my two weapon fighter/ranger concept, I’m looking at taking Stealth and Athletics to Legendary and Thievery to master.
For my rogue concept, looking at maxing Stealth, Thievery, and Acrobatics. Its harder to say for the rest of it because I would have more skill points than my limited stats could realistically support. If you want to go for crafting that would work great for me as I hadn’t planned on putting points into INT. My other skills then will probably all go to Medicine and then charisma based skills.
Server is up if anyone wants some character fiddling.
I’ll have it up Tues and Thurs also around 6:00ish EDT.
Ok, last redo for me.
Between what Cort has been mentioning and me trying to decide what type of cleric I want to be. I’ve reworked who I am going to play.
Rocky the DawnFollower
Umbral Gnome - Cleric of Sarenrae
Background: Returning Descendant
Skills trained at start:
Crafting - will increase to legendary
Diplomacy - will increase to Legendary
Lore - Dragon Lore - will increase due to Gnome Obsession feat
Lore - Engineering - will increase due to Gnome Obsession feat
Medicine
Perception
Religion - Will increase to legendary
Survival
Thievery
I redid the stats so that if I want to take a level in Champion I can. He is going the cloistered cleric doctrine.
Will be using the scimitar since it is Sarenrae favored weapon. He has no Dex bonus so he is going to be very easy to hit I guess especially with no armor.
Best Picture I could come up with at the moment.
At this point I haven’t planned anything for him beyond this point. I’m way behind on reading the rules and knowing what I can expect and need to do at each level. But my RL situation is such that it will be a long while before I can sit down and read through the rulebook cover to cover. So if you have any advice for me on how to think about his future levels feel free to tell them to me. I will be extremely grateful.
Mith
Promises that this is the last redo /whistle
If you need a hand building out a concept, feel free to call on me. In case it’s not as clear as a neon sign, I love this stuff. 
If you have a general concept in mind, like what you want your role to be in combat and out, I can probably throw together a couple general paths for you to consider. I’d be happy to hop on voice sometime if you have a bit and just talk things over.
One thing I have to very strongly recommend is choosing some way of getting a higher AC. Pathfinder 2e is extremely lethal if your AC dips much below the expected values for your level. I have a Wizard who started with 14 Dex (no armor of course), and he gets slammed with crits all the time. He has some other means of survival like Mirror Images, but it’s still really rough sometimes. Starting at a -2 AC compared to him makes you pretty likely to get killed.
The Champion Dedication is the best way if you want Heavy Armor since you can eventually bump your proficiency up to Expert through it, but that requires an investment in Str. If you’re going Cloistered and don’t want to do Heavy Armor, you really need to boost Dex. 14 is the optimal starting point so you can eventually reach 20 and be just a couple AC behind someone in Heavy Armor.
One other thing I notice is that your primary skills are pretty MAD (multiple attribute dependent). You’ve got Int, Cha, and Wis there. You’ll also need Str if you actually plan to use the sword or armor, Dex otherwise, and Con for HP and Fortitude. Religion is a gimme since it uses your casting stat, but how firm are you on the other two? Crafting I understand is your background skill, but is that something you want to lean into for the character or just have it be your history? Diplomacy depends on Cha, which you also want some of for the Healing Font feature, so that’s a pretty good one to focus, but I definitely wouldn’t start Cha it over 14 at most.
Also, will you be comfortable with the skill feat investment Crafting needs? Quick Repair will also be really important once I can start using Shield Block more often, too.
Sorry if it seems like I’m trying to poke holes or anything; that’s not my intent. I just want to make sure you end up with a character you can enjoy playing (and that won’t get killed quick).
No worries. At this point his stats are this:
Str: 14
Dex: 10
Con: 12
Int: 12
Wis: 16
Chr: 14
Initial weapon: Scimitar - Might have to think of a ranged weapon of some sort as well if I have to hang back until I can get the ability to wear the heavier armor.
Crafting (first personal Choice Skill): well I tend to like crafting. I thought maybe there was a tinker part of it (gnome and tinkering), but if it was there I missed it. I can let this one go if needed. I actually picked this as one of my 3 skills it wasn’t assigned to me.
The background skill was thievery which I wasn’t going to do anything about.
Diplomacy (2nd personal choice skill) I like the thought of, especially since he is big into lore and likes to talk to people.
Religion - Class skill.
Medicine came from my Divine Goddess
Survival (3rd personal choice skill) - picked it as of all the remaining ones it fit him better than any of the rest.
I was thinking Champion dedication at 2 - and then get the best heavy armor I could use with the str he has.
I suppose my first stat increase would be str to 16 to let him go to the heavier ones.
That was as far as my thinking went through the building of him.
the starting Cantrips he has:
Detect magic
Divine lance
Stabalize
The undead atack one
Light
starting First level Spells:
Burning hands (divine goddess given spell)
Heal
Bless
So nothing I really have to be out front with initially.
Mith
So my first thought is a question: Do you want to be a caster Cleric or a warpriest Cleric? I think that’s where we have to start. Now you can definitely do a Cloistered Cleric and play them as a warpriest or a Warpriest and play them as a caster. The main differences are Cloistered gets better spell DC growth and a domain spell for free, while Warpriest gets martial weapons (sorta; still better with the favored one), faster growth in favored weapon proficiency, and light/medium armor proficiencies along with the Shield Block reaction.
If you’re thinking caster, my suggestion would be just dropping Str and putting that into Dex. The 2 important things about starting stats are that you need an 18 if you want to hit the highest possible (22) in that ability someday, at least 14 if you want to hit 20, and 10 if you want to hit 18. So you could have an array something like this:
Str: 8
Dex: 14
Con: 14
Int: 12
Wis: 18
Cha: 12
Also, don’t forget that each ability score boost you get later on (every 5th level) lets you apply a boost to 4 different abilities.
Being a Gnome, you have easy access to a Primal cantrip via First World Magic that can be your generic damage action. Electric Arc is the standout as long as you are pretty close (like sticking near me so I can help protect you), but you could grab Ray of Frost (ridiculous range) or Produce Flame (some utility and a neat crit effect) if you prefer. It will key off your Cha, which won’t be amazing for a while, but it’s just a replacement for the sword. A caster Cleric has better things to do than damage cantrips most of the time.
If you instead want to go more warpriest-y, I suggest actually doing Warpriest. Otherwise, you will need to find ways to both get good armor (Champion dedication can handle this at 2nd level) and deal with slower weapon progression hurting your chances to hit.
Regarding AC, starting with 14 Dex will let you cap out at 20, which puts your AC only 1 point behind if you instead got Heavy armor through Champion Dedication and later the upgrade. Probably not worth it unless you are wanting to smash people with a weapon.
So this is what I am planning on at this point for overall build. I was thinking Ki Warrior, but I was not going by the book sample for Ki Warrior. Planned on taking all Ki related feats like Ki Strike, Ki Blast etc, but now I am thinking differently. I am going to mix up the feats more for a mix of dps and control with a splash of utility, instead of going just pretty much all dps with a Ki Warrior build.
Huulm , Male Half-Orc Monk
Alignment: Neutral Good
Perfection Seeker background
Starting attributes I think were
Str 14 Dex 18 Con 12 Int 10 Wis 14 Cha 10
Starting trained skills:
Acrobatics (will increase, Athletics (Legendary), Lore - Warfare, Nature(Increase?), Medicine(increase?), Perception, Survival (will increase)
Looking at this feat progression (some of my choice are based on the assumption that one can choose lower level feats at higher levels (i.e. at lvl 9 I can pick a lvl 5 feat and so forth)
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Thinking of taking the 1st lvl Human Ancestry feat Natual Ambition to gain an additional lvl 1 class feat so
Ki Strike or Ki Rush (Class) Not sure here yet, bonus to hit and extra unarmed dmg or movement?
Wolf Stance - (Class) was thinking Dragon Stance, but Wolf gets more control options)
Cat’s Fall (Bckgrnd skill feat) -
Stunning Fist (class), Battle Medicine (class) or Titan Wrestler (class, this is conditional on me taking a certain class feat at lvl 6)
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Toughness (General) or Fleet if I don’t take Ki Rush at lvl 1 as it seems redundant if I do
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Powerful Leap (general - or Battle Medicine if I didn’t get it earlier) For class feat either Flurry of Maneuvers of Wholeness of Body, but WoB feels a bit underwhelming. Or I pick up an earlier lvl fate like Elemental Fist or something from lvl 1 I didn’t get.
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Orc Ferocity (ancestry - DM’d tryin’to kill me y’all!)
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Ugh so many good class feat choices…If I take Wolf Stance at lvl 1 I should take Wolf Drag at this point. If I take Titan Wrestler at lvl 2 I would take Whirling Throw here for tossing stuff around. Of not then Ki Blast.
Skill feat - not quite sure…Powerful Leap if I didn’t get it previously or if so then Robust Recover?) -
Fast Recovery (skill feat)
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Tangled Forest Stance (class), Natural Medicine (skill)
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Victorious Vigor (ancestry)
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Class skill - if Titan Wrestler/Whirling Throw then Sleeper Hold or WInding Flow or perhaps earlier feat?
Wall Jump (skill) -
Incredible Initiative (general)
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Disrupt Ki (class), Kip Up (skill)
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Incredible Ferocity (ancestry, DM’s tryin’ to kill me y’all, remember?)
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I really want to get Tongue of Sun and Moon just to understand every language, but think I am going to go with Tangled Forest Rake (class), Quick Climb (skill feat)
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Die Hard (general)
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Quivering Palm (class), Cloud Jump (skill feat)
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Orc Superstition(ancestry) or General Training to get Ancestral Paragon to pick up Dwarf Mountain Stoutness feat
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Diamond Fists (class) unsure of skill feat yet
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not sure about General feat yet.
That’s what I’m looking at so far, there are some gray areas I have to narrow down yet. Any thoughts, advice, recommendations?
2 Likes
I haven’t done a deep dive theorycrafting Monk yet, but I do have a couple things (surprise!):
- First off, yes you can pick feats from lower levels than yours. They probably ought to revise the text somewhere to make that clear, because it’s a really common question I see.
- I’m not sure what you mean by “Athletics (Legendary)” in your starting skills. I don’t think I’ve seen anything that lets someone start with a skill above Trained. Are you planning to raise it to Legendary?
- You can use a shield as a Monk with no downsides. Don’t look at me, I didn’t make the rules. Anyway, having a wooden shield so you can spend an action to gain +2 AC for a turn isn’t a bad idea. You can’t Shield Block, so no need to ever upgrade that.
- If you can, I would recommend considering whether there is any way to get your Con to 14. More HP and better Fort saves are always good, and I figure you’ll be the one out of reach of my protective options more often than anyone else in combat, given Monk’s general zoominess.
- If you want to go in more heavily on maneuvers, most of them are Athletics checks using Strength. This makes Mountain Stance pretty appealing since it lets you mostly ignore Dex (just need to eventually get it to 14) and focus on Str. The downside is you would be stuck with this stance (so no Tangled Forest stance), but it does get some nice upgrades down the line
- On the flipside, backing off of maneuvers (at least the ones using Athletics) would let you mostly ignore Str since at that point it would just be giving you a bit of extra damage.
- Worth noting that when you are in Wolf Stance and flanking an enemy, you can Trip using Athletics with Dex instead of Str if you want.
- While Ki powers mostly use Wis as the ability modifier on their DCs and such, Monk doesn’t need it for anything else anymore.
- Fleet and Ki Rush stack with each other just fine. Fleet just raises your speed, while Ki Rush spends a Focus point to Stride or Step twice.
- Ki Strike with Flurry of Blows looks like a very solid damage option. The status bonus to attack rolls stacks with runes and flanking (though not with Bless or most other spell enhancements, but those are harder to come by now), the damage stacks with everything and even scales all the way to +3d6 over time, and being able to change the damage type lets you bypass resistances and hit some weaknesses.
- Battle Medicine is awesome if you plan to raise Medicine, and you will be both one of the most durable members (probably just a bit behind Valk), and you will have the speed to get to whomever needs it. 2 caveats: It doesn’t technically require Healer’s Tools to use (subject to GM fiat), but it doesn’t remove Wounded condition like normal Treat Wounds does.
- Wholeness of Body might be better than you’re thinking. It increases by 8 every 2 levels, so 16 at 3rd, 24 at 5th, etc up to 80 at 19th. It’s nice to have for emergencies (not an uncommon thing in PF2e), but it also lets you quickly heal yourself out of combat since you can use it every 10min, refocusing in between.
- Wolf Drag is pretty sweet since it combines an upgraded Strike and a Trip with no MAP hit. However, knocking them Prone doesn’t do much if you already have them flat-footed, such as by flanking them. Combining it with someone in reach having an Attack of Opportunity is nasty, but none of us will get it naturally, and I’m planning to skip that option in Champion.
- Just a reminder, any action with the Attack trait A) takes the MAP hit, and B) contributes to the MAP. This includes Trip, Shove, Disarm, etc.
- It looks like Monks don’t have a lot of uses for their Reaction. It might be worth looking to see if you can fit in 2 class feats for Fighter Dedication and Opportunist. Attacks of Opportunity are sweet to have, but I know Monk is already crammed full of nice feat options.
- Whirling Throw definitely requires investing in Str to make the Athletics checks involved, but it’s also really good for the combination of damage and repositioning the enemy (like tossing them next to me and the Rogue, or just off a cliff).
I’ll leave off there. Monks definitely have a lot of neat options and routes to take. Ki powers and maneuvers will make you a little Mad between Dex, Str, and Wis, and more CON will always help your survivability.
Overall, it looks like you’ve got a pretty good grasp of the class. Just need to decide whether your main focus will be hammering the enemy or putting them in bad situations. I will note that we aren’t going to have much in the way of ranged attacks, so you building more for damage and using your Monk speed to get behind enemy lines to hit things like casters could be really helpful. But in the end, I think getting an image in mind and building toward that is best.
Figured I should elaborate on my build plans a bit:
Human (Half-Elf)
Champion (Liberator)
Haunting Visions background
Str - 18 -> 22
Dex - 10
Con - 14 -> 20
Int - 14 -> 20
Wis - 12 -> 18
Cha - 10 -> 12
I plan to raise Str, Con, Int, and Wis at each boost, except for the last Wis one will go to Cha.
Starting skills are Arcana, Athletics, Crafting, Deception, Lore (Dahak), Occultism, Religion, and Society.
I plan to raise Arcana, but my other two are still in flux at the moment. Maybe Athletics depending on whether Huulm covers that enough to make it redundant. I can easily handle Crafting (few other needs for my skill feats) unless someone wants that. Society and Occultism (in that order) are probably what I fall back on if I don’t need to push Athletics and/or Crafting.
My class, general, and ancestry (ignoring skill since that’s still in the air) feat progression will look like this:
- Unimpeded Step (c; just nothing really worth taking here), Unconventional Weaponry (a), and the Liberating Step (uses my reaction to give one of you within 15ft who is attacked by something also within 15ft damage reduction of 2 + my level, and you can immediately Step if you want)
- Wizard Dedication (c; not a fan of Divine Grace or any of the Oaths, though Dragonslayer might be cool for this AP with Dahak involved)
- Fleet (g; gotta offset that Heavy armor speed penalty), and my shield gets harder
- Basic Wizard Spellcasting (c; the other options are really situational)
- Nimble Elf (a; because it stacks with Fleet and your tank being able to position more easily is a good thing), and my weapon gets smashier
- Shield Warden (c; now I can Shield Block to protect any of you who are adjacent to me; lv6, bane of martials because there are so many good options), but I might go with Attack of Opportunity if it seems Shield Warden won’t often help
- Incredible Initiative (g; getting into position quicker is good), and I finally get the armor proficiency upgrade Champions should have gotten earlier
- Quick Block (c; I can Shield Block an extra time every round for free)
- Ageless Patience (a; if I’m doing Crafting, this is handy), or Multitalented (a; to get Enigma Bard, maybe? not sure)
- Shield of Reckoning (c; now I can give you Liberating Step and Shield Block at the same time, as long as you are next to me)
- Toughness (g; more HP is more HP), and when I use Liberating Step, all of our party within 15ft of me can Step
- Expert Wizard Spellcasting (c; there are a lot of feats I’d love to get, but I think ramping up my spell options will help more)
- undecided (a) feat, and both my weapon and armor proficiencies step up to Master
- Divine Reflexes (c; now I can use Liberating Step an extra time every round, completing my ability to provide maximal protection to everyone around me)
- Canny Acumen (g; bump my Perception up for better initiative)
- Arcane Breadth (c; not a lot of options up here for some reason, and I still think more spell slots is the best option for me)
- undecided (a) feat, and armor proficiency hits Legendary
- Master Wizard Spellcasting (c; same as at 16, except more)
- undecided (g) feat
- Shield Paragon (c; no longer need to use the Raise Shield action, my shields get tougher, and my shields can no longer be truly destroyed)
So my general plan is to focus on protecting whomever is nearby (probably the Rogue and Cleric) with half my class feats, spend the other half picking up some Wizard spellcasting to turn my nerdiness into magical utility (most offensive spells will be a waste since my DCs will be 2-6 below a real Wizard’s), and rely on my smashy weapon for modest damage output.
Geez Cort you want to make my character for me? 
OK I keeeeeeed I keeeeeeeed…seriously, I appreciate all your input as, you know, I asked for it at the end of my thread and you are the only one with any real Pathfinder experience. You bring up some good points and have provided me with some useful info that I was unaware of.
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Athletics at Legendary: WHAT?! I can’t start with a skill at legendary…ok well I knew that hehe yes that was just to indicate I would be training Athletics up to Legendary.
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Hmmm, wooden shield eh? I was under that assumption that handling a shield was far more intensive. Perhaps I will carry a wooden shield for that, especially since I am unlikely to take the arrow deflection/snatching feats so more AC would be handy. The image of a monk running around with a shield is just hard to get out of my head as weird though hehe.
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I was wondering about Wisdom and how important it is for Monks in Pathfinder. I think I will switch it up so I have Con 14 and Wis 12. Wisdom will get boosted at lvl 5 along with Str, Dex and Con again.
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I’m gonna pass on Mountain Stance. My Dex will be 18 starting off and my AC will be 19 starting off. (DM’s tryin’ to kill me, remember?) Mountain Stance reduces my movement and nullifies my AC Dex bonus, all I really get out of it would be a minor circumstantial AC bonus, the 1d8 attacks and loss of some movement. The upgrades to Mountain Stance are ok, but not what I’m looking at for this build really.
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Now you got me torn on Manuevers/Stances over Ki attacks. I am focusing on Dex over Str to start with to give me more AC and better chance to hit. I will be boosting Str at lvl 5 and 10. I think I may skip Wolf Stance and go with some Ki attacks/abilities and the Tangled stances.
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But then you bring me back around to Wolf Stance, as I’ll be first and foremost Dex based and most likely gonna be flanking a lot. Wolf Drag doesn’t sound quite as useful and once again, the prone status seems to be as underwhelming as it is in D&D 5e. I’m probably going to skip Wolf Stance.
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Sounds like Wisdom is not as important with Pathfinder Monks as in contrast to D&D 5e Monks, or at least certain Pathfinder Monk builds.
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I assumed Fleet and Ki Rush would stack, was just wondering if Fleet would be that necessary for a whole extra step of movement when I should probably get Toughness, Fast Recovery and Die Hard over Fleet. And every time I get a General Feat I get the equivalent of Fleet with the Incredible Movement upgrades.
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Yeah I’m gonna get Ki Strike to start off. I was not thinking about the heightened thing and it is versatile.
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I’m going to Train Medicine at least to Expert. I will be getting a healer’s kit if not having one to start off with. So I’ll get Battle Medicine early on.
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I was not even aware that Wholeness of Body scaled like that, the description for it under Focus Spells for Monks just mentions “heightened” giving it an additional 8 points of healing. I will definitely be picking up Wholeness of Body.
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Wolf Drag sounds iffy. Also I have no idea what MAP stands for. I’m probably goinig to skip Wolf Stance and get the Tangled Stance later. Or I may just skip stances altogether.
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I was actually thinking of picking up the fighter multiclass stuff to get to Opportunist in that archetype. Gotta figure out when to take the multiclass feats and what to give up.
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I don’t know about Whirling Throw now, I was going to take it with Titan Wrestler to be able to grapple and throw around stuff even up to larger creatures, but I think I am going to forego that to focus on other stuff.
Hah, sorry if it sounds pushy. I’m just trying to push info so everyone can make informed decisions. 
I won’t be hurt at all if you decide you like something more than I do.
Just a couple of quick responses:
- Mountain Stance would leave your AC the same as it is otherwise with 18 Dex. Each of the other two Mountain feats (Stronghold and Quake) raise the Dex cap of Mountain Stance by 1, so you end up with a total +6 to your AC, the same as with uncapped Dex. Except for 2 things: Explorer’s Clothing is non-armor (works with all Monk things) that can still have Potency (+1-3 AC) and Resilience (+1-3 to saves) runes. It also caps your Dex mod to AC at 5. So the comparison actually ends up being +9 AC for Mountain Stance versus +8 AC for normal Monk. And Mountain Stance gets to it’s core +6 at lv14, whereas normal Monk won’t reach +6 until lv20. Mountain Stance starts off about the same as normal for AC, but it’s the winner from lv6 or so on. Some people have complained that it’s OP.
- Mountain is definitely a style choice, though, so I totally get that a lot of people won’t care for it. It has an annoying weakness, too: Anything that removes your feet from the ground breaks your stance. Get tripped, thrown, levitated, or even just jump, and you have to spend an action to reset your stance. And the two upgrade feats are pretty meh aside from raising the Dex cap. Stronghold is literally just “I have a shield without having a shield”, and Quake is party-unfriendly.
- Using a shield has two parts: Anyone can carry one (which does nothing) and use the Raise Shield action (1 action to gain the shield’s AC bonus; 2 for most shields, 1 for bucklers). Shield Block (taking a hit on your shield to reduce the damage to you) requires a feat.
- Wisdom is so meh (unless you’re throwing around a lot of ki powers that have DCs) for Monks they originally forgot to mention it in the CRB. Seriously, they had to include it in the errata. Will saves and Perception (which is usually your initiative, too) are still really nice to have, though.
- Given the Monk’s overall speed, you can probably take fleet late-if-ever.
- Wholeness of Body’s scaling (and that of anything else with that “Heightened (+X)” format) works like this: Focus spells are still spells and have the same sort of spell levels as normal spellcasting. WoB says “Focus 2”, so it starts as a 2nd-level focus spell. Starting from that, every X spell levels the focus spell is heightened above its starting spell level, it gains the heightening effect. Focus spells are automatically heightened to half your level, rounded up. So if you are 9th level, it is heightened to 5th-level, so it gains that “Heightened (+1)” effect 3 times. Also note I was off since I mistakenly assumed it started as a 1st-level focus spell. Since it starts as a 2nd, it’ll be 8 HP below what I mentioned previously. Still really good and surpasses Champion’s Lay on Hands when you are only 7th level.
- Pay attention to which feats say they increase your Focus pool. If you plan to use powers a lot, you’ll want to eventually get that up to the max of 3 Focus points. There is also Meditative Focus at lv12 to restore 2 Focus points at a time. Note that you can only Refocus if you have used a Focus point since the last time, so once you spend all your points and don’t have Meditative Focus, you are stuck at only 1 point no matter what your max is. At 18, there is Meditative Wellspring to let you regain all 3.
- MAP is Multiple Attack Penalty, because that’s a mouthful. It’s the -5 penalty to your second attack in a turn, and -10 to the third. This is why making a 3rd attack is almost never a good use of your last action. Agile weapons (a lot of Monk attacks count as Agile) suffer only -4 and -8, and a couple other class features can reduce it as well (Ranger’s Flurry Edge and Fighter’s Agile Grace are the two I know of; I’m not sure if Monk gets anything like that, oddly).
Updated Monk build
Str 14 (->19 @lvl 15) Dex 18 (-> 21 @lvl 15) Con 14 (->19 @lvl 15) Int 10 Wis 12 (->18 @lvl 15) Cha 10
Starting trained skills:
Acrobatics (train to Master), Athletics (train to Legendary), Lore - Warfare, Nature, Medicine (train to Expert ), Perception, Survival
FEATS
a=ancestry, cf=class, g=general, s=skill
- Natural Ambition (af) to gain an additional lvl 1 class feat, Ki Strike (cf)
Monastic Weaponry (cf) – Changing this out to Wolf Stance, Quick Leap (Background skill feat) - Fighter Dedication (multiclass feat)
Train Society skill from Fighter Dedication (already trained in Acrobatics and Athletics, also just took
some Fighter stuff so to seek perfection one must balance oneself)
Battle Medicine (sf) - Fast Recovery (gf), Athletics to Expert
- Powerful Leap (sf), Opportunist (multiclass feat)
- Orc Ferocity (af) - DM’d tryin’to kill me y’all!
Stealth to Expert - Time to catch up on feats from previously levels skipped by taking those two multiclass feats
Wholeness of Body (cf), Quiet Allies (sf) - Incredible Initiative (gf), Athletics to Master
- Quick Climb (sf), Brawling Focus (cf) or Wolf Drag?
- Victorious Vigor (af), Acrobatics to Expert
- Ki Blast (cf)? Or Brawling Focus if (8), Multilingual? (sf)
- Toughness (gf), Acrobatics to Master
- Meditative Focus (cf), Kip Up (sf)
- Incredible Ferocity (af), DM’s tryin’ to kill me y’all, remember?
Stealth to Master - Timeless Body (cf), Cat Fall -or Foil Sense or Swift Sneak(sf)
- Ancestral Paragon (gf) to get Natural Ambition to get Ki Rush (sf), Athletics to Legendary
- Quivering Palm (cf), Cloud Jump (sf)
- Orc Superstition(af), Stealth to Legendary
- Diamond Fists (cf), Legendary Sneak (sf)
- Die Hard (gf), Medicine to Expert
[/quote]
- I’m a little confused by your stat plans. I only count 8 boosts for what you’ve got written, which you will have at level 10, not 15. At every 5th level, you get 4 boosts that each raise a stat by 2 (or by 1 if it is 18 or higher). Each of the 4 have to go into a different stat, but you can apply one boost from each time you get them (5th, 10th, 15th, and 20th levels) to the same stat. So you can put a total of 4 boosts into a given stat over your career, and you get a total of 16 boosts.
- Note that neither Ki Strike nor Ki Rush grant an extra focus point. So you will still only have a pool of 1 point with both of those. I just have a hard time justifying Rush with how good Strike is since they use the same resource.
- What are your plans for Tangled Forest? It and Rake are purely about controlling enemies within the 8 squares around you, which can be useful if you have a plan for it, but otherwise probably isn’t worth it. Also note that both the stance benefit (stopping enemies from moving away from you, which I kinda doubt they will do much anyway) and Ki Blast rely on your Wisdom for their DCs.
- Speaking of Ki Blast, it’s honestly quite good. The action choice gives it some nice flexibility, and the 2- and 3-action versions have pretty good damage (not far behind the prime damage AoE spells of the same level).
- Disrupt Ki is nasty. Bit of a gamble on both the strike landing and the enemy not wiping out the persistent damage on their next turn (it’s a DC15 flat check to stop most persistent damage effects), but brutal if it sits on them for more than 2 turns.
- Stunning Fist is really good against anything our level or lower (Incapacitation means anything more than your level treats its save as one degree better). For reference, a fight against just 3 things our level will be very rough, and against 4 is at least even odds of a TPK, so the things Stunning Fist doesn’t work on are basically bosses.
- You’re making a Human (Half-Orc), right? Ancestral Paragon doesn’t let you take any ancestry’s feat (Dwarf’s Mountain Stoutness); it still has to be an ancestry feat you normally have access to. It’s possible to get around this with Adopted Ancestry, though.
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My counting was definitely off. I adjusted them accordingly I think in my updated build post.
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Well darn I was hoping I got a focus point for each. Definitely going with Ki Strike. Not taking Ki Rush opens up a bunch of new options. If I take Natural Ambition I could get Monastic Weaponry to open up more attack options and maybe pick up Brawling Focus early on at some point, but this might not allow me to get Elemental Fist because of feat choice limitations, so I dunno. Or instead of Natural Ambition (a) I could take General Training (a) to pick up say Incredible Initiative (s) at lvl 1 giving me +6 to Initiative at lvl 1. Or I could pick up Orc Ferocity (a) early on.
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I think I will skip Tangled Stance stuff altogether. Probably going to go with Elemental Fist instead at this point (lvl 8)
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I will get Ki Blast at some point by the time my Wisdom is at least 16.
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Disrupt Ki seems like it would be worth the gamble and feels like it would fit this build. I’m gonna be hitting stuff liek crazy, or at least trying to. I need more info about Disrupt Ki, Does it proc whenever I hit something and do damage, or is it limited use during, I know it is only for unarmed strikes. If I don’t take Disrupt Ki I think perhaps Meditative focus would be good, at this point I would have 2 focus points and it would recover both points during a refocus.
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I wouldn’t be taking Stunning Fist until lvl 14, is it not worth it at that point? I could take Tongue of Sun and Moons for flair or get Meditative Focus or Disrupt Ki at this point depending on which one I don’t have.
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I goofed, I was thinking Adoptive Ancestry to get Dwarf Mountain Stoutness, but I put down Ancestral Paragon by accident. Changed in in the update build.
Is the bullet points format easier to read than a wall of paragraphs? I feel like it is, but I’m not sure.
- Stats look good except that your Dex will be 21 at lv15. I would also say that if your focus shifts from maneuvers more to ki powers, consider whether you should swap Str’s 14 with Wis’s 12. Only one of the two can ever hit 20, so it’s a tradeoff of +1 damage on your strikes and +1 to Athletics checks versus +1 to Perception (including initiative most of the time), Medicine, Nature, and the DCs of your ki powers.
- If you haven’t already gotten PathBuilder 2 and have an Android device, I can’t recommend it enough. The number of times it’s caught my mistakes for me is probably approaching quadruple digits in just the few months I’ve been using it. You can plan out a whole build (or as much of one as you care to), and then set the current level to see what you would have (stats, HP, abilities, everything) at that level.
- You get 1 focus point the first time you gain a focus spell, no matter whether it says anything about it. But after that, you only gain another point if the feat specifically says so. The has been much gnashing of Druid teeth over this because one of their lower-level feats grants an extra point, but no others do. Typically, you get your second point somewhere in the 5-10 range, depending on class. Just remember the extra points can only be used once per day until you get one of the Meditative feats.
- Elemental Fist doesn’t add any damage, and your Ki Strike can already do Force damage to ignore most resistances. What it does add is a way to take advantage of elemental weaknesses. 5e has precious few of those, but Pathfinder has a decent number. I’d say Elemental Fist will only benefit you about 20-30% of the time (and you have to know what element to use), but it will really hurt things it works on and help with things like a Troll’s regeneration. All in all, not amazing, but not bad either.
- Check out this link to Easytool: http://pf2.easytool.es/index.php?id=814&name=Disrupt%20Ki Disrupt Ki is a special “activity” (a term the book uses sometimes to distinguish things that take more than one action) that costs 2 actions to use (check the glyph next to the name; that indicates the number of actions it uses, if any). When you use it, you make a single Strike (normal attack) as part of that activity. So it doesn’t apply to all of your Strikes or anytime you do a Flurry of Blows (like Stunning Fist does). So the gamble is that you spend 2 actions to make a single strike, and Disrupt Ki only takes effect if that Strike hits and deals damage. The benefit is pretty sweet, though, and there’s no save to avoid it; an affected enemy just makes a DC15 flat check (d20 roll with no modifiers, so a 30% chance) to end the persistent damage (and therefore Enfeebled 1) at the end of each turn after they take the damage.
So the power of Disrupt Ki really depends on how long the enemy will likely last as well as how confident you are you can land the hit. Something that dies next turn will be a waste, but a boss or something that will still be fighting for 2 or 3 more turns can end up taking a lot of damage from this and have that penalty to Str-based rolls and DCs the whole time. I’d rate it as worth taking, but something like the Meditative feats (if you focus on ki powers) will probably help you more. - Stunning Fist doesn’t ever get better or worse by itself. It will usually be just a bit behind the enemy’s save (though some enemies might have weaker Fortitude saves), probably averaging 40-45% success chance. It’s mainly just a rider that makes your Ki Strike + Flurry combo even more dangerous to bosses and stronger minions. Stunned 1 on a boss is really powerful considering you have just stolen 33% of their next turn, and if you get the full Focus pool and the Meditative feats, you can attempt this multiple times every battle if you want. It’s not as silly OP as Stunning Strike in 5e, but it’s still quite good.
- Just to make sure it’s clear, Adopted Ancestry doesn’t give you an ancestry feat or anything. It just lets you choose feats from the selected Ancestry the next time you get an Ancestry feat (and each time thereafter).