A wholly different approach, this time with less “Monk” and more “monk.” You will have everything notable about the monk class, but you won’t actually have levels in any class called “monk.”
This relies on a feat from Secrets of Sarlona called Tashalatora. Tashalatora requires Monastic Training, a feat in Eberron Campaign Setting that has you choose some non-monk class, and then allows you to multiclass that class freely with monk (since monks, for no good reason, have a rule that if you are a monk and then multiclass to another class, you cannot return to the monk class—as if you would want to). Tashalatora says that if you chose a psionic class with Monastic Training, your levels in that class stack with monk levels for determining your AC bonus, flurry of blows, and unarmed strike damage—read, everything remotely good about monk (well, other than the bonus feats and evasion).
Tashalatora means that psionics is far easier to mix with monk class features than any other subsystem in the game. But psionics, you may have noticed, is not meldshaping. The solution to that is soul manifester, a psionics–incarnum “theurge” prestige class. Soul manifester can advance both your psionic powers and your meldshaping, which is very nice. So you take 10 levels of that, and choose it for Tashalatora, and you have the AC bonus, flurry of blows, and unarmed strike of a 10th-level monk.
Because, oh yeah, Monastic Training and Tashalatora? They don’t actually require you to be a monk at any point. Monks can take those feats as bonus feats, but you can take them as regular feats without being a monk. (I would call this cheesy, but honestly two feats for those benefits is pretty steep—really, it’s just a sign of how weak the monk class is that it can be almost-entirely replaced by two feats and that’s a kind of dubious trade. And you’re taking Vow of Poverty, so all the cheese in the world isn’t going to save you.)
Now then, the question becomes, what psionic class do we want to progress with soul manifester? Psychic warriors are very nice—Wisdom-based, bonus feats, very nice combat-oriented powers—but they take 4 levels to get the 2nd-level powers that soul manifester requires. Thus, I suggest the ardent class from Complete Psionic. The ardent is also Wisdom-based, and while it does miss out on bonus feats and some of the combat powers of psychic warriors, it gets much better manifesting (including 2nd-level powers at 3rd level instead of 4th), and it does get a fair bit of combat power. It is also a rather philosophical class, taking on “mantles” which are vaguely similar to cleric domains—great fit for a monk (in fact, ardents are a very common suggestion for replacing monks).
Ardents don’t have the same alignment requirements that monks do, so you could do a good incarnate here, but totemist synergizes far better. Plus, you need two levels of either incarnate or totemist to qualify for soul manifester, and incarnate 2nd gets the crown chakra—which soul manifester redundantly offers at 3rd—while totemist gets the excellent and exclusive totem chakra. So I go with the totemist here.
Again, azurin is the top choice for race.
| Level | Class | Special | Feat |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | Totemist | Sacred Vow, Vow of Poverty,¹ Azure Talent,² Monastic Training² (soul manifester), Nymph’s Kiss³ | |
| 2nd | Totem Chakra bind (+1 capacity) | Intuitive Attack³ | |
| 3rd | Ardent | Assume psionic mantle (2) | Practiced Manifester (ardent) |
| 4th | Assume psionic mantle | Touch of Golden Ice³ | |
| 5th | |||
| 6th | Soul Manifester | Psionic investment 1, AC bonus (Wisdom), flurry of blows −2, unarmed strike 1d6 | Tashalatora, Knight of Tyr’s Holy Judgment |
| 7th | |||
| 8th | Chakra binds (crown, feet, hands) | any exalted feat³ | |
| 9th | Unarmed strike 1d8 | Bonus Essentia | |
| 10th | AC bonus (Wisdom + 1), flurry of blows −1 | any exalted feat³ | |
| 11th | |||
| 12th | Psionic investment 2 | Double Chakra, any exalted feat³ | |
| 13th | Chakra binds (arms, shoulders, shoulders), unarmed strike 1d10 | ||
| 14th | Flurry of blows −0 | any exalted feat³ | |
| 15th | AC bonus (Wisdom + 2), psionic distillation | Track | |
| 16th | Slayer | Favored psionic enemy +2, enemy sense | Nemesis³ |
| 17th | Brain nausea | ||
| 18th | Lucid buffer | Open Greater Chakra, any exalted feat³ | |
| 19th | |||
| 20th | Favored psionic enemy +4 | any exalted feat³ |
- Bonus feat from race
- Bonus feat from flaw
- Bonus feat from Vow of Poverty
With this, at 15th you have the AC bonus, flurry of blows, and unarmed strike damage of a 10th-level monk, the meldshaping of a 12th-level totemist, and the manifesting of a 13th-level ardent (with manifester level 15th, allowing you to choose 8th-level powers). After 15th, things kind of drop off—you stop gaining monk or meldshaping features—but you can still take Open Greater Chakra at 18th to get your throat or waist. And you wind up with 19 psionic powers at manifester level 20th, including up to four 9th-level powers. That’s a pretty big win. I go with slayer over continued ardent levels since we already have Practiced Manifester and assuming a fourth mantle isn’t exactly incredible, but if you want to save the feat on Track and do something else, that’s valid. Slayers get favored enemy, which means you can actually do something useful with that bonus exalted feat and get Nemesis—but slayer favored enemies are pretty limited, unlike the stalker of Kharash’s phenomenal favored enemy—evil.
If you really really want to, you could take a single level of monk instead a third level of ardent. Practiced Manifester will allow you to choose 2nd-level powers as a 2nd-level ardent (as long as you have it before you take your second level of ardent). That monk level can get Monastic Training as a bonus feat, which means you can get Beast Strike. It also means you end up with the features of an 11th-level monk, i.e. greater flurry. This costs you a power known, which is a big deal, as well as 30 power points, which hurts as well. I don’t think it’s worth it—but it could be worth it if your DM doesn’t like a monk-less Tashalatora.
This approach probably plays pretty similarly to the stalker of Kharash monk version, in that it is still fundamentally an exotic übercharger. But psionic powers can be as good or better than totemist soulmelds for pulling out tons of natural attacks (see king of smack builds), plus they offer a great deal of utility—this is a far more well-rounded build.
The drawback is that you lack the incredible detection abilities offered by Nemesis (or maybe have them but only for a single select psionic creature rather than all evil creatures ever), and you do not have thunderstep boots, Power Attack, and Favored Power Attackbut to really pile on the damage bonuses. You could swap Bonus Essentia—or Track and thus slayer—for Shape Soulmeld (thunderstep boots), but those are kind of late in the game for it, plus your essentia is rather tight since you only wind up with 12th-level totemist meldshaping. And slayer is pretty important after ten levels of poor BAB on soul manifester. You actually may end up wanting Multiattack to improve your attack bonuses more than you want Beast Strike.
Fair warning, though: you will have basically zero combat ability at 1st level, since you’ll have BAB +0, only simple weapon proficiency, and don’t have any combat feats. This is a problem with totemists generally, but dumping Strength and then not having Intuitive Attack until 2nd makes it a lot worse because your accuracy will really suffer. Things get a lot better at 2nd, and then much better again at 6th with Tashalatora, but you should be aware.