Taking 20 Podcast - Ep 94 - Class Series - Fighters and Monks

Episode Date: October 10, 2021

This week we return to the class series, focusing on those classes that focus a lot on baddie hit points:  fighters and monks.  Do you want some ideas on how to build a Pathfinder or D&D 5e Fighter or Monk?  Then this episode is for you.

This week on the Taking20 Podcast. I would encourage you to pick an unusual combination, not necessarily a min-maxed one. It makes for a much more interesting character overall. But most importantly, play what sounds fun to you, my friend. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to episode 94 of the Taking20 Podcast. This week, continuing the class series all about fighters and monks. This week's sponsor, taverns. I'm thinking about setting up a drinking establishment for ravens.

I'll call it the Crow Bar. Ladies and gentlemen, please consider donating to the podcast at ko-fi.com slash taking20podcast. Every dime that you give goes directly back to the podcast, and it might make my dad jokes a little bit better. So let's start off talking about the fighter. Fighters are the lead martial characters in the world. They've learned various combat styles, and they have a broad-based combat knowledge to be able to expertly fight in nearly any situation. Except when the dice are against you. Like this plastic piece of shit I'm holding in my hand that completely betrayed me last night.

I'm still deciding what to do with it. The logical part of my brain says it's not the dice's fault. But the deep down lizard emotional part of my brain wants to pay millions of dollars to have this little piece of shit D20 loaded on a rocket and fired into the sun. Jury's still out what I'm going to do, though. Although if this D20 goes, the rest of the seven die set goes as well. Well, I'll think about this while I'm recording.

Fighters are versatile combatants. They are able to use most of the weapons in almost every game system you can name, and they can adjust to use different ones to solve the problem of the big ugly monster in front of the party. Fighters in different game systems come with various names. The fighter, the soldier, the knight, the brawler, the warrior, the street samurai. All of them though are consistently focused on weapon skills and weapon damage. Now don't fall into the trap of thinking every soldier or city militia member that you run across automatically has a level of fighter. The vast majority of them are rank-and-file soldiers that either don't have any class levels at all, or maybe they have levels in an NPC class.

Fighters are specialized. They have a lot of knowledge. It's a broad knowledge about a lot of different types of weapons and how they are best used in combat. In general, fighters are one of the simplest classes in the game system. While they're not purely pointy end-go-into-the-other-guy simple, they start off about that simple, but they grow slightly more complex over time. Fighters can fulfill multiple potential roles in a party. They make great tanks. Does a fighter have a lot of hit points? Check. Can a fighter wear a whole bunch of different types of armor? Yep, they have all of them. You can load up the heaviest armor on the game and

turn your fighter into a walking soup can. Do they have high physical statistics like Constitution? Yeah, they better. Fighters with their high armor class, high hit points, or both Are great at absorbing attacks from monsters on the battlefield Whether the fighter is built to be hard to hit or built to take the pain You draw the attention of the baddies and you stand as a bulwark against the oceans of evil that want to harm your entire party You hurt so your other party members don't have to Fighters get all sorts of abilities that a lot of other classes don't, like maybe attacks of opportunity or the ability to move between attacks. Maybe even the ability to impose penalties on creatures that

don't attack you. Any or all of these abilities make you a great tank for your party. But fighters can also be the damage per round or striker type ability. They get the most attacks of any class in 5th edition and Pathfinder 1st edition outside of the monk. More to come on them in a minute. Weapon proficiencies. Tons of them. You want to wield a large two-handed weapon? You want to be good at ranged weapons? You want a weapon in each hand? You want a, I don't know, weapon in your mouth and the other one attached to your tail? Or maybe it's held in place by your firm, muscly glutes. Sure, why not? Skills? Well, okay, let's face it. They are not here to solve a lot of problems that can't be solved with a sword, spear, bow, laser rifle, shotgun, or muscles.

Fighters can be built to do damage and a lot of it. They can wield the highest damage-dealing weapons in the game in two hands and make it look like a better armored barbarian. They can be built to be critical hit specialists where they precisely strike the weakest spots on a creature, doing double, triple, or maybe even quadruple the damage they normally would do. In short, fighters can be built to really bring the pain to whatever is unfortunate enough to be the focus of your attacks. A fighter can also be a good scout. Now, you may not think of fighters as scouts. Rogues are supposed to do that, right? But dexterity-based fighters that survive with a lighter armor can be great scouts if they spend some of their precious skill points on stealth. They don't have a class-based ability to detect traps or anything, but they can be run as a

stealthy character if they're built for it. For the most part, fighters aren't going to be the face of your party, but there are exceptions. In a campaign that just ended, I played a fighter who plans on being a barrister when the campaign ends. He had lots of ranks in diplomacy and wound up being the one who did all the negotiation for the party. wound up being the one who did all the negotiation for the party. He had decent charisma, so he probably wasn't as good as like a charisma-based class could have been, like a sorcerer, if they had invested the same number of ranks in it, but he was the best our party had. His background was he was part of a nomadic group that had been forced out of traditional tribal lands, if you will, and he was studying law to find legal ways to reclaim that land from those who had took it

from them. He was a fun character to play and I'm going to miss the hell out of him. But like most DMs, I'm sure I'm going to bring him back as an NPC in a future campaign. So let's talk roleplaying hooks. Why is your fighter a fighter? Maybe they're just someone who's looking for a fight. It's right there in the name. They could beat everyone up in their little hometown and they're looking for the person or thing that can finally defeat them. Maybe they're a fighter because they believe they are the protector of the weak. That they go out and they protect those and rescue those who can't help or rescue themselves.

They could be an elite soldier selling their services to the highest bidder. They could be royalty looking to prove themselves. I'll show them that I'm more than the Count Muckety-Muck of Muckety-Muckland. They could be someone trying to prove themselves to someone else, a lover, a family, people in town. Or maybe they're fighting because they're raising money for a medical procedure for their mother, brother, dog, neighbor, loved one, themselves, whatever. Maybe they have cancer and the cancer treatment is 1010 million, so they're off selling their laser sword services to anyone who can eventually help them earn that $10 million. When it comes to backgrounds, you can always follow the fighter tropes. Ask yourself one question. Where did you learn to fight? Were you an elite soldier in the military? That's a common

background and a good background for a fighter. Maybe you were a gladiator or pit fighter or whatever it is in your world that's an honored fighter like an ancient Rome. Or maybe you were a slave that had to fight to earn your freedom like ancient Rome. Maybe you were a bodyguard for a celebrity. Maybe you were a contract killer who is, well, you know what? Zorg from Fifth Element said it best. Tell you what I do like, though. A killer.

A dyed-in-the-wool killer. Cold-blooded, clean, methodical, and thorough. So maybe you're one of those thorough contract killers that Zorg was talking about. Maybe your character was an adventurer once, but have retired, and your skills have gone fallow. But when her village needs her, she dons her armor once more. Which, by the way, since we're talking about females and armor, do not get me wrong, I am a heterosexual male who loves the female form as much as anyone, but can we draw our warrior women maybe without those enormous boob shapes in the breastplate? That would funnel weapon strikes towards the center

of your chest, and you want the opposite. I mean, if my wife wanted to wear a chainmail bikini, I'd be, um, you know, I'd be all about it. But, uh, but... Hey, honey? Put on the chainmail bikini. Well, that was a no. Something about it being degrading, and as she put it, I'm not 22 anymore. So what? Beauty's beauty regardless of body shape. I'll try again later. But how the hell did I get from fighters to my wife in a chainmail bikini? I'm kind of starting to worry about me at this point. Oh, that's right. Backgrounds

that follow trope. You could be a pirate or bandit who learned to fight to take what others have. But you can always go against trope for a fighter. The bartender who worked in a rough part of town and learned to fight that way. The homeless person who's just trying to make ends meet any way they can. A blacksmith or former blacksmith who puts his knowledge of weapons to use when needed. Or a sage or intellectual who studies martial styles as an intellectual hobby and later learns you're not half bad at it. Alright, let's get system specific. Fifth edition, for the fighter.

Grab just about any race that you want. You can be a great fighter no matter what, from Aarakocra to Wante. Grab some benefits for the type of fighter that you want to be, like additions to con or dex or strength. Ability scores, any generic fighter you're going to need constitution. You need those hit points. And then you have to decide if you want to be a big muscly strength type fighter or a nimble dex type fighter. Other ability scores just really aren't that important for your build. Great constitution gives you great saving throws. Then you select a fighting style. Archery is

always strong, but that means you're not going to be on the front lines. You better have somebody else in the party who can tank for you. Dueling is another fun build that gives you the benefits of a shield, but damage pretty close to what you can get with a two-handed weapon. Taking a defensive fighting style can be boring, but man, bonuses to armor class are huge in 5th edition because there aren't a lot of them. It's not very sexy, but man, it's practical. Although if you want to go unusual choice, I'm going to go with a character

I built a long time ago in 3.5. Go with the thrown weapon fighting style that you can find in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything. You show up to a fight with 10 daggers and you slowly disarm yourself. I think the character's name was Mad Dog, at least that's what I called him. He was so much fun to play and I'm gonna have to dig him up again and try to run him back. Action Surge for a fighter is huge and it lets you really pile attacks on foes. Fighters have a ton of martial archetypes as well to customize what your fighter is and does. I love the Battle Master, which gives you maneuvers like ambush, distraction, fainting, etc. By the way, that's fainting as in, like, faking like you're doing one thing and doing another one, not dropping unconscious.

That's probably not a good fighting style. Cavalier is good if you want to be a little small fighter, like a halfling or a gnome that rides a wolf or some other animal into battle. Every style, every archetype, nearly every ability you get resets on a short rest, so fighters are great to keep the party moving. In Pathfinder, the generic and 5th edition recommendations for fighters also apply to Pathfinder fighters as well. You need a good constitution for hit points. Most of them need strength, dex, or both to be effective fighters. Outside of really specialty builds, intelligence and charisma just aren't that important for a fighter, so feel free to dump those. For ancestry, dwarves, humans, half-elves, half-orcs,

even halflings make really, really effective fighters. For skills, knowledge and engineering is good, and intimidate can pay off if you build around it. For feats, focus on things that make you hit things harder and more often, like weapon focus, weapon specialization, power attack, and so forth. Fighters are a ton of fun, and I recommend fighters for players who don't want a lot of complexity in the character they play. They want to be someone who can show up, show immediate benefit to the rest of the party. Show the team you're a team player by wading in as a big plate-mail-wearing, long-sword-wielding, shield-bearing warrior,

walk up to the vanguard of the party, draw all the attacks from the monsters, and save your fellow characters' lives. Your character will be covered in the innards of whatever monster you're fighting, and the rest of your party will love you for it. Let's move on to Monk. I love Pathfinder's introduction to the Monk. For the truly exemplary, martial skill transcends the battlefield. It is a lifestyle, a doctrine, a state of mind.

These warrior artists search out multiple methods of battle beyond swords and shields, finding weapons within themselves just as capable of crippling or killing as any blade. Monks, so-called since they adhere to ancient philosophies and strict martial disciplines, elevate their bodies to become weapons of war, from battle-minded ascetics to self-taught brawlers. Monks tread the path of discipline, and those with the will to endure that path discover within themselves not what they are, but what they're meant to be. Fuck, I wish I could write that well. Instead, you're stuck with my dick jokes, and dad jokes,

and this series of ellipses that just goes nowhere, until it ends with an out-of-place word like, I don't know, obelisk. Monks spend their entire lives honing their minds and bodies to become the living embodiments of perfection, or at least as close to perfect as they can get. Examples include Kane from Kung Fu,

Beauregard from Critical Role, Gyatso from Avatar The Last Airbender, The Ancient One in Doctor Strange, and so many others. While many game systems have weapons a monk can use, they're most commonly associated with hand-to-hand combat. They are the iconic martial artists and have a blend of abilities from fighter and rogue.

In 5th edition and Pathfinder, monks have a pool of points called Key Points. Monks can spend these Key Points to do special maneuvers, gain additional attacks, and make them better at monkeying around the battlefield. One issue, monk damage doesn't scale well with level, so they may run into creatures with a ton of damage resistance that can negate much of their combat effectiveness. so they may run into creatures with a ton of damage resistance that can negate much of their combat effectiveness. It's not like monks have the usual adventurer experience, where they find magical weapons to replace their mundane or lesser enchanted weapons.

There aren't magical fists lying around in caves to replace your mundane fists. Sorry. So when it comes to party rolls, monks are usually strikers. In early levels, they do great damage, and that's probably their most common party role. Later on, you may run into something that has a high amount of damage resistance and may negate some of their damage, but still, striker is probably their best role. They can also be tanks, though. You can be a decent tank if you're thrust into that role. Even with no armor, monks can drive their armor class up pretty high. They have good hit points, maybe not as good as some fighters, but they'll occupy the baddies on the battlefield for a while. Occasionally,

monks can be your scout. We just finished a campaign where our party didn't have a rogue, so our monk was our sneaky, sneaky trap finder. And by trap finder, I mean that he found every trap. He blundered into nearly every single one of them in the dungeon, but his evasion and high reflex saves kept him alive. The cleric was always there waiting in the wings to heal him when he got damaged by the swinging side, the pressure plate, the explosive rune, or whatever craziness he stumbled into. But mostly, striker and tank is probably what you're going to be. For roleplaying hooks, hey hey, you're a monkey, why do you monkey around? Maybe you're a representative of monastic order sent to fix a world-ending event that's happening.

Or you're searching for a lost blank, family member, leader, member of your order, what have you. Maybe you are a monk to get a better life for yourself. Maybe you became a monk as punishment for a crime. You get a choice of either you can be condemned to this monastery or you'll be beheaded. So they said, monk it is, and they went off to study. Or perhaps your monk is seeking inner peace in some other way. As far as monk tropes, so many people play monks as these stoic people who live a simple life and are working towards personal enlightenment. There's nothing wrong with that at all, but there's other tropes you can embrace or reject. Maybe you are starting a monastery of your own and you need followers, and the best way to get them is to travel from place to place. Maybe the monk believes they can

fulfill a prophecy that they're the chosen one, the warrior of light, and they will be crowned Count Kick-Ass after they find the scroll of ultimate badassery, which is shortened to scrub. Maybe your monk wants to bring honor back to a family because it was lost or given up or stolen by someone. They want to retrieve lost texts related to their monastic traditions. Ooh, ooh, maybe they're the only sect that knows the 16-fingered punch of incontinence

that makes opponents shit themselves. And someone not in your sect has been demonstrating this ability. Who taught them? Where'd they learn that? It's your job to go find out. So as far as backgrounds that follow these tropes, you could be a former boxer or brawler.

You can be an adept, an acolyte, or a member of a monastic society, a former criminal, or maybe a hermit that learned from a relative, spouse, or a god or goddess. But you can always go against trope. And I've been doing a lot of thinking about this, and you can make any background fit any character. Doctor Strange was a surgeon before he became the Sorcerer Supreme. Tony Stark was a, to use his words, billionaire playboy philanthropist before becoming Iron Man. Daredevil was a trial lawyer. I would encourage you to pick an unusual combination, not necessarily a min-maxed one. It makes for a much more interesting character overall.

But most importantly, play what sounds fun to you, my friend. So, monk backgrounds. What if they were like a fighter or a gladiator who fought for money, but now they're enlightened and they fight for something more? You're a failed member of your religious sect. While you were there, the lessons just didn't sink in and you were eventually kicked out of the monastery. But now, months later, as you're traveling the world, the lessons are starting to make sense and you're starting to learn how to fight.

Or they were a sewer worker who stumbled upon four intelligent turtles who love pizza and the rat teacher who... That's stupid. That makes no sense. So for 5th edition, monks should have good constitution and a wisdom score. Dexterity is the next most important, and you can dump stat most of the rest. Maybe don't drop strength completely, but you won't need it much as a monk. When it comes to races in 5th edition, I love dragonborn monks, but hill dwarves, both gith races, the deep gnomes, dragonborn monks, but hill dwarves, both gith

races, the deep gnomes, goblins, goliaths, humans... Oh, Tabaxi have claws. So now you're slashing with your unarmed attacks. Flurry of slashes! That is, uh... That's a lot of blood. Yeah, I'm gonna step back here and... Oh, yep, that's a lot of blood. Yeah, I'm gonna step back here and... Oop, yep, that's a vein.

You'll have to pick a monastic tradition. It's key to your monk build, and honestly, there's a ton of good choices here. The Way of the Open Hand, the Way of the Long Death if you want to tank, the Way of the Drunken Master is great for damage per round. Astral Self and Shadow expands your capabilities as a monk to beyond just punching stuff really hard. Scooting over to Pathfinder. For races, half-orcs and humans are great and dwarves aren't bad either. Abilities are the same as 5th edition. Con, Dex, Wiz are probably going to be very very important. You'll need to pick a combat style instead of a monastic tradition. And my recommendation is

you pick one to two styles and just stick with those. Just level those abilities up. Dragon style is amazing. Mantis style gives you a bonus to your Stunning Fist DC, which is frankly your biggest weakness as a monk. Panther style lets you become much more mobile in combat. Shaitan style is great as well. When it comes to feats that I would recommend, Hammer the Gap and Pumummelling Strikes are great. Monks are all about multiple attacks, and Hammer the Gap gets you additional damage for every attack. Pummelling Strikes lets you total the damage from all hits before you apply the damage reduction, which takes away one of the monk's biggest weaknesses. Huge help at higher levels. In a previous campaign, one player described a monk's flurry of blows as the opportunity to hit

with four attacks and do no damage. But those feats will help. I recommend monks for people who like playing not very complicated classes. If you're someone who loves having lots of actions and lots of attacks in combat, you love the thought of being the wise member of the party, or if you've watched too damn many martial arts movies like I have, you'd probably love playing a monk. Fighters and monks are fun martial characters that aren't complicated and can show easy and immediate benefit to your party. Rare is the campaign that wouldn't benefit from having someone who can kill things cleanly and efficiently. So if you want a character that you can just drop into any campaign and probably be a good fit for it, consider fighter or monk. Hopefully, you'll have fun doing it.

I ran a little long this week, so thanks for listening. Please tune in next week where we'll talk about familiars and summoned creatures. Once again, I want to thank our sponsor, Taverns. I'm thinking about starting my next campaign in a tavern that's run by the Catholic Church. I'll call it Bar None. This has been Episode 94, The Class Series,

this time all about the fighter and the monk. My name is Jeremy Shelley, and I hope that your next game is your best game. The Taking 20 Podcast is a Publishing Cube media production. Copyright 2021. References to game system content are copyright of their respective publishers.