Ultimate Monk (3.5e Optimized Character Build)/Emulating Legendary Martial Arts Techniques

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Introduction[edit]

The martial artist of cinema and legend has a variety of incredibile abilities that do not immediately and intuitively translate into D&D game mechanics. Partly this is a function of game balance; a low- or mid-level character that could emulate the moves of the typical Jackie Chan or Michelle Yeoh character would be overpowered. With time and care, however, your (usually monk) PC can do virtually anything a legendary martial artist can do.

Source[edit]

See the main page for references.

Emulating Legendary Martial Arts Techniques[edit]

1. The Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique[edit]

Many martial artist legends feature great masters who can disable or kill their opponents with a light touch. D&D rules emulate this with feats like Stunning Fist, Pain Touch, and Falling Star Strike, and with class features like Quivering Palm. In the opinion of the author, however, these are weak options for your D&D martial artists. They have limited uses. They can be resisted with saving throws. And the effects, when these abilities are successful, are often underwhelming. Suppose you successfully stun an opponent using Stunning Fist. He isn't helpless. He is disabled only until just before your next turn. Now, there's a help. What are you to do on your next turn? Stun him again?

Even worse, stunning attacks do not work on constructs, the undead, very large creatures, etc. You end up having spent 2-3 precious feat slots on abilities that work a fraction of the time, on a fraction of the foes you will face, and quite possibly only for a fraction of the time you will be fighting them.

A better option for PCs is to use the nonlethal damage rules. As discussed extensively on the Ultimate Monk main page, the high-level monk (ECL 12+, depending on the variant) can typically do 100+hp of damage per unarmed strike. As a monk, you can chose to do nonlethal damage with an unarmed strike at no penalty. When your foe's nonlethal damage exceeds their hit point total, they fall unconscious and become helpless.

In such an event, invoking a pressure point attack is a matter of roleplaying. If you kill an opponent with lethal damage, it is a humorless DM who would deny you the roleplaying option of saying you dealt the damage with a light touch. If you knock out a foe with subdual damage, you can say the same thing; your subdual damage is a "nerve attack" that has rendered your enemy unconscious.

At the DM's option, you might be allowed to paralyze your opponent rather than render them unconscious; this is a restriction on the subdual ability, since paralyzed (but not unconscious) creatures can take purely mental actions. Paralyzing rather than knocking out a foe might give the player the option of leaving a guard in an upright position apparently still at his post; or the freedom to monologue with a paralyzed foe who cannot react. Overall, it is a pretty fair exchange for the risk that your opponent will have purely mental powers they can use against you.

2. Dancing up walls[edit]

The two major options for this are the DC 50 tumble check to bounce up two vertical surfaces within twenty feet of one another, and the Up the Walls feat. The former is clearly a skill use inspired directly by Hong Kong cinema, and it speaks to the purpose splendidly. The only problem is waiting until you have a reasonable chance of making a DC 50 tumble check. Fortunately, there are shortcuts.

One is simply to jump to the top of the wall; a ten-foot jump is a DC 40 check, and twenty feet is DC 80. This may seem worse than the Tumble check, but there are many more ways to buff your Jump skill than there are to buff your Tumble skill; most notably, a +4 bonus for every 10 feet land speed above thirty. Racial bonuses can help too; Thri-kreen PCs, for example, roll out of bed with a +30 on their Jump checks.

The most potent option is the feat Up the Walls, which allows you to transverse walls and even ceilings as part of a normal move action as if moving across a flat surface. See the feat entry for details and restrictions.

There are a number of other ways to acquire more limited versions of this ability. One is the class feature variant Wall Walker (Dungeonscape, pg 12) in which the monk gives up the slow fall ability in exchange for being able to run up a similar distance of wall. Haztaratain, the Adarian monk prestige class from Secrets of Sarlona, gains the Earth Walk ability, whose only major drawback is that is it limited to stone surfaces, while the Cloud Anchorite (Frostburn, 53), while he or she cannot run up walls, acquires a rapid climbing ability.

When attempting any of the acrobatics for which the cinematic martial artist is known, it helps to be able to take 10 on Jump, Balance and Tumble checks. If you are using the Oriental Adventure rules, you can do this by taking a level of Blade Dancer. It's harder in 3.5E, but if you can swallow the indignity of taking the weak Combat Expertise feat, you can take a level of Dervish, which gives you take 10 on Jump and Tumble (see the cinematic progression, below). Another option is the aforementioned Cloud Anchorite prestige class (Frostburn, 53), which grants the "Wisdom of the Mountain" ability at 1st level; he or she can take 10 on Balance, Climb, and Jump checks, and receives his or her Wisdom bonus to those skills in mountainous terrain.

Another way to take 10 in 3.5E is to take a level of Exemplar (Complete Adventurer, pg 44). This allows the player to designate Int bonus +1 skills as "take 10" skills ever after. This would be a strong choice for a high-intelligence character who could take the uncertain out of not only Balance, Jump, and Tumble checks, but other critical monkish skills like Concentration and Spot.

Epic Dancing Up Walls; Dancing Up Avalanches[edit]

If you have the Up the Walls feat, or an extremely high Climb skill, it is remotely possible to pull off the free-fall climbing feat of the most agile masters, in which the martial artist, caught among an avalanche of falling objects, jumps from object to object and climbs with such alacrity as to gain altitude while using as handholds and footholds objects that are falling (as seen, for example, in Ti Lung's escape from prison in the recent Kung Fu Panda). This is not for the faint of heart. Falling objects continue to gain velocity until they reach terminal velocity (about 120mph for a creature, about 200mph for a dense object like a rock or a bullet). 200mph = 1,800 feet per round. That's bad enough, but you cannot use the Run action either when using accelerated climbing or the Up the Walls feat. You are limited (in both cases) to move actions, of which there is a practical limit of 3 per round (using the Hustle power). To make it work, with objects at terminal velocity, would require a base move of 600 feet per round -- a tall order even for the Ultimate Monk.

Fortunately, objects do not instantly reach terminal velocity. An object that has been in free fall for only a few seconds (discounting drag) has the velocity shown on the following table:

Seconds in free-fall

Seconds falling Speed (feet per round)
1 192
2 384
3 576
4 768

This is more doable. If an object has been falling for 2 seconds (which would place it 120 feet above the character's head at the start of its fall) one need cover a mere 400 feet per round to gain on it. Three move actions at 140 feet per round or better should do the trick (the Up the Walls feat requires an intervening horizontal surface between Move actions, or the character falls prone; but of course the character is already falling, and can recover from a prone position as a free action with a DC 35 Tumble check.) As you climb, the going gets easier; objects higher in the air (assuming they started from the same position) have been falling for less time and are consequently not falling as fast.

To recap, to run up an avalanche of boulders or similar objects, you need to start within a short amount of time after the objects begin to fall, you need a high base move (at least 140 feet per second if the objects have been falling for 2 seconds), the Hustle power, and a sky-high Climb skill, or the Up the Walls feat and a high Tumble skill. Not an endeavour for first-level characters, but possible.

Of course, it is much easier to gain the ability to levitate or even to fly, psionically or magically. Easier, but less interesting and less dramatic. (Which is why these guidelines are in a section on "emulation" as distinct from progressions dedicated to "optimization.")

Optimizing note: Changing Feats[edit]

At very high levels, when it becomes possible to succeed on epic skill checks, the player may regret taking the Up the Walls feat. This is one example of a problem that bedevils most optimized progressions; the feats, skills and powers (or spells) that provide the greatest fun and survivability at lower levels may limit your options for epic power later on. Fortunately, the psion/wilder power Psychic Reformation addresses just such an eventuality. With the help of a friendly (or compensated) manifester, or under his or her own steam via the Expanded Knowledge feat, the martial artist can later return and change the feats, skills, and powers or spells chosen at earlier levels, continuing thereafter at if he or she had made the different choices at the earlier level. Up the Walls is only one example of a feat one might wish to "retire" at the upper levels, to make way for more useful feats (the substitution of Improved Natural Attack (claws) for Flying Kick (whose +1d12 damage to a charge is highly significant at ECL 1, less so as the character progresses) would be another example.)

3. Everyone Falls the First Time[edit]

For some reason, leaping from rooftop to rooftop is a universal motif in martial arts cinema, sci fi, fantasy fiction, and the comics. The basic skill, of course, is Jump, but remember that when jumping to a lower point (a lower roof, for example) you can use your Tumble skill to advert fall damage and justly claim additional distance for your long jump based on the laws of motion -- an object with foward velocity in free fall during a jump will travel father the further it has to fall.

According to the Jump skill description, the maximum height of your jump is one-fourth the horizontal distance travelled. That means, for example, that a 16-foot broad jump has a maximum height of 4 feet and a hang time of one second (the math, for those who are interested, is (1/2) * (32 feet per second) * (1/2 second (the latter half of the jump) squared) = 4 feet (the distance "fallen" in the latter half of the jump). Hang time = twice the time of the last half of the jump.) If you also fell 12 feet because the end point of your jump was lower (DC 30 Tumble check to avoid damage, assuming we are too far from a wall to use the monk's slow fall ability), you would gain another half-second of hang time and travel another 15 feet.

In general (avoiding the need for a lot of math) if you fall ¾ of the horizontal distance of your jump, you can (assuming no strong headwinds) add 50% to the distance traveled. To jump to a higher landing site as part of a long jump, simply divide the horizontal distance by four. That is the highest elevation you can reach. Now cut the horizontal distance in half. That is the point in your jump when you are at the apex of your arc; it is the furthest distance you can go (on that jump check) and still finish at a point 1/4 higher than the total distance.

For example, suppose Lu, an Ultimate Monk with a Jump skill (after modifiers) of 46, wants to jump from the roof he is on to an adjacent roof 30 feet away from the edge of the roof he is on and 10 feet higher. To go 10 feet up, he needs to make a 40-foot jump, but with a 40-foot jump, Lu would reach the apex of his trajectory at 20 feet -- less than the 30 feet that separates the roofs. So he would have been descending for the final 10 feet of his jump, missing the roof. If he makes a 60-foot jump, on the other hand, he will be 15 feet in the air at a distance of 30 feet, clearing the edge of the roof easily. If Lu's player were not afraid of a little algebra, he could determine the minimum horizontal jump (and hence the easiest Jump check) that would take him to the next roof: (Jump DC) = (2 * horizontal distance) + ((vertical distance) - (DC/4)) * 2).

On second thought, it's probably less taxing to take the higher of (vertical height * 4) or (horizontal distance *2) and overshoot a little (at the cost of a slightly harder-to-make Jump check), unless the jump is over the Bottomless Pit of Doom.

4. Eight Flying Fists[edit]

The D&D rules use flurry of blows and an improved multiple attack progression to emulate the cinematic martial artist's lighting fists. To buff attacks still more, get the Psychic Warrior power Claws of the Beast (or bring your own, via a racial feature) and take the Multiattack feat, adding two claw attacks to your attack progression at a -2 penalty to the claw attacks and no penalty to the unarmed strikes (unfortunately, you do lose the option to flurry when you combine unarmed strikes and natural attacks) Combining Monk strikes with claw and bite attacks may seems like black magic, but it is all laid out in a Wizards of the Coast article on unarmed fighting [[1]].

At higher levels, where the penalties will not necessarily hurt you, Two-Weapon Fighting and its successors are to be considered. Unlike combining monk strikes with separate natural attacks, the Two-Weapon Fighting tree stacks with fury of blows. The goal here is Perfect Two-Weapon Fighting, which gives you your full run of unarmed attacks (including flurries) on both hands.

For those with truly Olympian patience in pursuit of a character who can truly claim to function in "bullet time," 10(!) levels of the dervish prestige class will double the attack routine above (note that to combine your unarmed strikes with a dervish dance, you need the Versatile Unarmed Strike feat, which allows you to treat your unarmed strikes as slashing weapons). At a BAB of +32 at ECL 40 (the soonest you are likely to be able to put 10 levels of dervish together without sacrificing more important things), your attack routine during a dervish dance would be +32/+32/+32/+27/+22/+17/+12/+7/+2 (right hand), +32/+32/+32/+27/+22/+17/+12/+7/+2 (left hand, via Perfect Two-Weapon Fighting), +32/+32/+32/+27/+22/+17/+12/+7/+2 (right hand again, for dervish thousand cuts ability), and +32/+32/+32/+27/+22/+17/+12/+7/+2 (left hand, for dervish thousand cuts ability).* Thirty-six attacks attacks per round; six attacks per second.** Bullet time.

  • Why isn't this ability in the main progression? In brief, it takes too long, it requires too many feats, and it's unnecessary. No character that does 100+ points of damage per attack needs to be able to do that damage thirty-six times a round. It's overkill. Once you reach that level of offensive prowess (which the Ultimate Monk does, relatively quickly) the optimal progression involves better defense, protection against surprise, better mobility, protection against powerful magic, and the like. The only reason to maximize attacks to the limit of the rules is a roleplaying reason; a cinematic reason. Hence the discussion here.
    • Some might argue that Perfect Two-Weapon Fighting is a "doubling" effect, and Dance of a Thousand Cuts is a "doubling" effect, and so they should add (1+1+1= triple attacks) not multiply ((1+1) * 2 = 4). But Perfect Two-Weapon Fighting is not a doubling effect; the two-weapon feat tree gradually increases the number of attacks on your off hand, until you have twice as many. If you treated it as a doubling effect, it would lead to the illogical result of a character with Greater Two-Weapon Fighting (granting normal attacks +3) getting three more extra attacks from the Dance of a Thousand Cuts ability as compared to the same character with Perfect Two-Weapon Fighting.

5. Float Like a Butterfly, Sting Like a Bee[edit]

Cinematic martial arts typically display prenatural defensive skills (when they aren't demonstrating a superhuman ability to absorb punishment). In the D&D game, this mostly boils down to AC. The monk's Wisdom bonus to AC, Dodge bonuses, and the like, are all very helpful in emulating the blind Shaolin monk holding off a dozen attackers.

In general, I should stress, the D&D game is tilted towards offense, and spending feat slots on simply not getting hit is a fairly weak option. That said, such feats abound. Expeditious Dodge works as Dodge for the purposes of satisfying prerequisites (including the Cobra Strike monk's required feat progression). It gives +2 to AC instead of +1, and applies to everyone instead of only one opponent (I would recommend to DMs to require the monk to designate an opponent anyway, if necessary, for purposes of determining the effects of feats that work on your dodge opponent -- having those apply to everyone makes this feat overpowered). The one requirement is that you move at least 40 feet in a round, which the Ultimate Monk can do in his sleep.

A permanent (Incarnated) Ubiquitous Vision power allows the martial arts to fight in a swarm of enemies without worrying about flanking bonuses and the like.

A defense-oriented monk with Deflect Arrows and Combat Reflexes can take Deft Opportunist (+4 to attacks of opportunity), Defensive Opportunist (no penalties to attacks of opportunity when fighting defensively), Spinning Defense (better defensive fighting AC bonuses with polearm), Spinning Deflection (deflect infinite arrows while holding a polearm and taking the total defense action), as well as feats that give more attacks of opportunity like Hold the Line, Canny Opportunist, and/or Improved Combat Reflexes (non-epic) (which gives two strikes for each opportunity, the second at -5).

As you can see, though, this is less of a player option, and more of a 20-level feat tree. This "Defensive Monk" (who will appear in the Optimizations section presently) can emulate great cinematic defense, but probably won't be able to use very many other strategies, owing to a lack of feat slots.

For a typical martial arts PC, I recommend picking up Deflect Arrows and Combat Reflexes, waiting until you reach epic level, and picking up feats like Infinite Deflection, Exceptional Deflection, and Improved Combat Reflexes. Li Mu-bai's ability (seen in the climatic battle of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) to deflect dozens of missiles effortlessly is relegated to epic characters, where it probably belongs.

6. I Find Your Lack of Faith . . . Disturbing[edit]

Many martial arts myths involve masters who have refined the channeling of their ki to the point that they can affect objects at a distance. This may be as comestic as blowing out a candle from twenty feet away with an empathic hand strike motion, or as deadly as Darth Vader's invisible choke hold.

A certain amount of this can be emulated through simple roleplaying. When a martial artist throws an object, it costs nothing for the DM to say it was set in motion by a punch or a kick as opposed to scooping it up and hurling it through the air. This is an especially effective strategy for the Drunken Master, whose improvised weapons (including thrown weapons) do unarmed strike damage +1d4.

Similarly, a Bull Rush attack simply means you push your opponent back -- whether by brute force or mystical ki focus none can say. (The Shock Trooper feat from Complete Warrior, which allows you to fling people into other people, throw people sideways as well as backwards, and take Power Attack penalties to AC instead of attack, is a fantastic choice for the bull-rushing monk.) The disadvantage of this method is that you must travel with the target in order to keep moving them backwards. But this disadvantage can be overcome.

Using the Expanded Knowledge feat (which is taken by every variant of the Ultimate Monk at least once, to get access to the psion's Metamorphosis power) you can get access psion/wilder powers like Telekinetic Maneuver, which allows you to roleplay to the fullest extent a Jedi-like martial artist that can push foes around with his mind.

Telekinetic Maneuver allows you to perform a bull rush, a disarm, a grapple (including a pin), or a trip attack from distances of over 150 feet (see power description for details).

If you really enjoy Telekinetic Maneuver, and want to expand upon it, or if you want a power with less subtly and more potential for direct damage, use an Expanded Knowledge feat to gain access to Telekinetic Thrust. This also allows you to hurl foes or objects (the chief disadvantage of this power is that the targets get a Will save.)

7. Qīnggōng (T: 輕功 S: 轻功)[edit]

Qīnggōng (literally, "light body skill") encompasses the jumping and wall-scaling abilities discussed above, as well as the monk's superhuman speed. It is used in this context to refer more narrowly to the martial artist's ability to navigate surfaces that would not normally support a person's weight; water, the tops of trees, the blade of an opponent's sword. This can be emulated with the Balance skill, but this is less than practical, as what we want, to travel across liquids or, as the description says "any other surface that couldn’t support the character’s weight, such as a fragile branch," requires a DC 90 check. Even for the Epic Ultimate Monk with 35 levels of Balance and a +20 Dex bonus, this is out of reach.

There are a number of alternatives. One is to take a level of the elocater prestige class, which grants "Scorn the Earth," which is described as follows: "From now on, she can float a foot above the ground. Instead of walking she glides along, unconcerned with the hard earth or difficult terrain. While she remains within 1 foot of a flat surface of any solid or liquid, she can take normal actions and make normal attacks, and can move at her normal speed (she can even “run” at four times her normal speed)."

Another is Body Equilibrium, which does basically the same thing. The disadvantages of this are the disadvantages of any power -- it has to be manifested, it costs power points, etc. But if you can look past these shortcomings, you can "adjust your body’s equilibrium to correspond with any solid or liquid that you stand on. Thus, you can walk on water, quicksand, or even a spider’s web without sinking or breaking through."

Another option for "built in" Qīnggōng is the Cloud Anchorite prestige class (Frostburn, 53) mentioned above. At 5th level, this grants the "Empty Stride" ability, which functions as follows: "She gains a +4 bonus on all Balance checks. More impressively, she can walk on the surface of any material into which she would normally sink, such as powdery snow, thin ice, and even water. She may continue to walk on this surface as long as she makes a DC 15 Concentration check." Concentration checks are no longer required at 9th level; see Frostburn for details.

The 5th-level Shadow Hand stance Step of the Dancing Moth (Tome of Battle) is similar, allowing your character to "Ignore terrain, walk over liquid" per the summary. As a stance, it avoids the shortcomings of solutions like Body Equilibrium, being unlimited in duration and unlimited in uses.

Each of these sound a lot like classic Qīnggōng, without the DC 90 Balance check or indeed a check of any kind. To combine this with classic wire-fighting moves, simply ignore the ability of the surface to support the character's weight, and make a balance check (if needed) as if the surface traveled were of the same dimensions, but completely stable. Dancing down an opponent's outstretched sword to kick them in the face, for example, would be a Jump (probably a "hop up," unless your opponent is big) and a Balance check for a surface 1-2 inches wide (which would be DC 20), again, depending on the sword of the person you are fighting.

The Scorn the Earth power is a rather whimsical addition to the Ultimate Monk (it's hard to say what the above maneuver would gain you in D&D combat), which is why it is in none of the main progressions. A level of elocater pulls its weight, however; the monk can then charge over any sort of terrain, gains a manifester level (which improves all your psionic powers), and gains the useful Sidestep Charge feat. For Cobra Strike stylists and Ultimate Monks, who have the requisite feats (Mobility and Spring Attack) it's a strong choice, and for fans of Hong Kong cinema-style wire fighting, it's essential.

Optimizing Note: Getting More Powers[edit]

What do you do if you get to a point in your character's development where you want to add a power like Body Equilibrium, but have no more levels to gain in Psionic Fist? Or what if you are hot to get a psion power like Telekinetic Maneuver, but can't or won't spend a feat slot or Expanded Knowledge? One solution, discussed above, is to pay a psion to manifest Psychic Reformation and re-chose your powers. But what if you don't want to give any powers up? If you need to have it all, you can shell out the extra gold for Psychic Chirurgery, which allows the (PC or well-compensated NPC) psion to teach you one of his or her powers, putting it on your list permanently, and essentially giving you the benefit of an Expanded Knowledge feat. (If you've already taken Expanded Knowledge, you can combine this approach with the one recommended above to nab an extra feat: un-select Expanded Knowledge via Psychic Reformation and chose another feat; then, use Psychic Chirurgery to get your psion list power back.)

8. Kamehameha![edit]

Martial arts masters in fiction often channel their superhuman fighting prowess into visable emenations of destructive power. Certain feats, like Fiery Fist and Ki Blast (both from PH2) try to imitate this, but it is rather a weak effort (Ki Blast does a measly (by the Ultimate Monk's standards) 3d6 of force damage).

We can do better. Using the same method of taking Expanded Knowledge or using Psychic Chirurgery to gain access to the psion/wilder power list, the Ultimate Monk (or another martial artist with at least 7 levels in Psionic Fist or Psychic Warrior) can select Energy Bolt or Energy Burst (the psion equivalents of Lighting Bolt and Fireball,) which allows the Ultimate Monk to emulate the powerful bursts of ki energy unleashed by martial artists in Dragon Ball-Z and other anime sources.

Conclusion[edit]

For general ideas as to how to incorporate these elements into a player character, see the Ultimate Monk main page. Note that you will likely be best served, both in terms of game mechanics and as well as in terms of roleplaying, if you chose key elements of the cinematic martial artist's abilities you wish to emulate. The D&D game mechanic tends to reward character progressions that focus and specialize to the point of overwhelming mastery. That said, if you want to build a character that can emulate all the abilities described above, you would be best served by starting with the Drunken Monk variant and adding levels of elocater and dervish. A sample progression is given below.

Cinematic Monk[edit]

ECL Class/HD/LA Feats Special Dmg (charge) (other modifiers) Move (focused)
1st Fighter 1 Improved Initiative, Powerful Charge, Able Learner, Great Fortitude, Run By weapon (+1d8 Powerful Charge) 40 (40)
2nd Fighter 2 Combat Reflexes By weapon (+2d6 charge) 40 (40)
3rd Fighter 2/Psychic Warrior 1 Wild Talent, Overchannel Expansion power available By weapon (+ 3d6) 50 (50)
4th Fighter 2/Psychic Warrior 1/Monk 1 Improved Unarmed Strike, Dodge Monk abilities By weapon (+ 3d6) 50 (50)
5th Fighter 2/Psychic Warrior 1/Monk 2 Mobility Claws of the Beast available By weapon (+ 3d6) 50 (60)
6th Fighter 2/Psychic Warrior 1/Monk 2/Drunken Master 1 Improved Natural Attack (unarmed strike) Improvised Weapons do (1d4+unarmed strike) 50 (60)
7th Fighter 2/Psychic Warrior 1/Monk 2/Drunken Master 2 Need not travel in a straight line to charge By weapon (+3d6) 50 (60)
8th Fighter 2/Psychic Warrior 1/Monk 3/Drunken Master 2 Still Mind By weapon or unarmed + Claws of the beast (1d8 + 2d6) (+3d6) 60 (70)
9th Fighter 2/Psychic Warrior 1/Monk 4/Drunken Master 2 Two-Weapon Fighting Ki strike, slow fall By weapon or unarmed + Claws of the beast (2d6 + 3d6) (+3d6) 70 (80)
10th Fighter 2/Psychic Warrior 1/Monk 5/Drunken Master 2 Purity of body By weapon or unarmed + Claws of the beast (2d6 + 3d6) (+3d6) 70 (80)
11th Fighter 2/Psychic Warrior 1/Monk 6/Drunken Master 2 Spring Attack By weapon or unarmed + Claws of the beast (2d6 + 3d6) (+3d6) 70 (80)
12th Fighter 2/Psychic Warrior 1/Monk 6/Drunken Master 2/Psionic Fist 1 Quicken Power By weapon or unarmed + Claws of the beast (2d6 + 3d6) (+3d6) 80 (90)
13th Fighter 2/Psychic Warrior 1/Monk 6/Drunken Master 2/Psionic Fist 2 By weapon or unarmed + Claws of the beast (2d8 + 3d8) (+3d6) 80 (90)
14th Fighter 2/Psychic Warrior 1/Monk 6/Drunken Master 2/Psionic Fist 3 Still Mind By weapon or unarmed + Claws of the beast (2d8 + 3d8) 80 (90)
15th Fighter 2/Psychic Warrior 1/Monk 6/Drunken Master 2/Psionic Fist 4 Deflect Arrows By weapon or unarmed + Claws of the beast (2d8 + 3d8)
16th Fighter 2/Psychic Warrior 1/Monk 6/Drunken Master 2/Psionic Fist 5 Up the Walls By weapon or unarmed + Claws of the beast (2d8 + 3d8)
17th Fighter 2/Psychic Warrior 1/Monk 6/Drunken Master 2/Psionic Fist 6 By weapon or unarmed + Claws of the beast (3d6 + 6d6)
18th Fighter 2/Psychic Warrior 1/Monk 6/Drunken Master 2/Psionic Fist 7 Expanded Knowledge Enhanced Expansion available: +2 size categories; Telekinetic Maneuver By weapon or unarmed + Claws of the beast (3d6 + 6d6) 100 (110)
19th Fighter 2/Psychic Warrior 1/Monk 6/Drunken Master 2/Psionic Fist 8 By weapon or unarmed + Claws of the beast (3d6 + 6d6)
20th Fighter 2/Psychic Warrior 1/Monk 6/Drunken Master 2/Psionic Fist 9 Metamorphosis power available By weapon or unarmed + Claws of the beast (3d6 + 6d6)
21th Fighter 2/Psychic Warrior 1/Monk 7/Drunken Master 2/Psionic Fist 9 Infinite Deflection By weapon or unarmed + Claws of the beast (3d8 + 6d6)
22th Fighter 2/Psychic Warrior 1/Monk 8/Drunken Master 2/Psionic Fist 9 By weapon or unarmed + Claws of the beast (3d8 + 6d6)
23rd Fighter 2/Psychic Warrior 1/Monk 9/Drunken Master 2/Psionic Fist 8 By weapon or unarmed + Claws of the beast (3d8 + 6d6)
24th Fighter 2/Psychic Warrior 1/Monk 10/Drunken Master 2/Psionic Fist 9 Epic Speed By weapon or unarmed + Claws of the beast (3d8 + 6d6)
25th Fighter 2/Psychic Warrior 1/Monk 11/Drunken Master 2/Psionic Fist 9 By weapon or unarmed + Claws of the beast (4d8 + 6d6)
26th Fighter 2/Psychic Warrior 1/Monk 11/Drunken Master 2/Psionic Fist 10 Expanded Knowledge Greater Flurry; Energy Bolt or Energy Burst By weapon or unarmed + Claws of the beast (6d6 + 6d6)
27th Fighter 2/Psychic Warrior 1/Monk 12/Drunken Master 2/Psionic Fist 10 Combat Expertise By weapon or unarmed + Claws of the beast (4d8 + 6d6)
28th Fighter 2/Psychic Warrior 1/Monk 13/Drunken Master 2/Psionic Fist 10 SR 23 By weapon or unarmed + Claws of the beast (4d8 + 6d6)
29th Fighter 2/Psychic Warrior 1/Monk 13/Drunken Master 2/Psionic Fist 10/Elocater 1 Scorn the Earth ability; Sidestep Charge feat By weapon or unarmed + Claws of the beast (4d8 + 6d6)
30th Fighter 2/Psychic Warrior 1/Monk 13/Drunken Master 2/Psionic Fist 10/Elocater 1/Dervish 1 Versatile Unarmed Strike Take 10 on all Jump, Tumble checks; Dervish dance with unarmed strikes By weapon or unarmed + Claws of the beast (4d8 + 6d6)



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