Celestial Monk: prestige class or style?

[Mistah J]

Hey folks,

One of the character's in my game is a paladin/monk. The player is getting a little frustrated with the multiclassing though and it is only getting worse.

We talked about it and discovered that he wants to play a monk with holy powers rather than a paladin who simply uses his hands. To that end, I asked him what exactly about the paladin he wanted and his answer was

Detect Evil
Smite Evil
Lay on Hands
Immune to Fear.

So I thought about it and told him that the last two I would make into feats he could take. Specifically, a feat that makes him immune to fear and one that would let him use his wholeness of body ability on others.

That was agreeable.

I told him that I would work on a way to get the other two abilities without paladin levels and that is why I am here asking for help.

I'm going to introduce to the character some scrolls that teach a martial art style of a celestial nature but what I am trying to decide if such a 'celestial monk' would work best as a PrC or as a 'style' as found in Ultimate Combat?

In both cases I would add more than just the two paladin abilities in order to make it more interesting, and more flavourful.

I guess I am just asking which way would you go if you were the DM. Which way would you like to go as a player?

Thanks for the input

 

[SteelDraco]

I'd probably make it as a monk archetype that swaps out monk stuff for paladin powers. A Celestial Style feat tree would be cool as well, but I think an archetype fits the.concept better.

 

[paradox42]

I'd probably make it as a monk archetype that swaps out monk stuff for paladin powers. A Celestial Style feat tree would be cool as well, but I think an archetype fits the.concept better.

Agreed. Archetype is obviously what's called for here. I think swap out Flurry of Blows for Detect+Smite, maybe, for a start. Other stuff builds from there. You can maybe even make special abilities unique to the Archetype that no other class gets, like maybe a Smite-based version of the Quivering Palm (I have no idea how this would work, exactly; it's just a vague sort of feeling right now that a cool ability might be based on them).

 

[Mistah J]

huh!

I gotta be honest. I thought of an archetype as well but decided against it. I thought of archetypes as being different versions of the same class - a variant that lets people play a certain type of character right at the beginning.

This scenario is more about a character who suddenly gains access to a new set of skills and abilities that they can learn and master through study and training. To me that seemed more like a PrC or feats.

However, seeing how others immediately thought 'archetype' makes me want to put it back on the table for consideration..

 

[Salthorae]

You might want to consider easing the burden of multiclassing a bit by allowing him to take the 3.5 feat from Complete Adventurer, Ascetic Knight

It is one of the later 3.5 class "blend" feats that helped those who wanted to multiclass in classes with very Class Level dependent abilities.

That alone might do the trick and allow him to keep multiclassing...