The Adventures of Hjolan and Kellicletica

The monastery’s ranks slowly but happily grow, as does its reputation.

One acolyte shows great promise. She’s Hjolan, training in the Shintao unarmed arts. Lately she and my newer single-weapon wielding Ninja Spy, Kellicletica, have teamed up on many adventures as they move from early to mid-level questing.

Pairing light and dark Monks makes for rather rapid questing with good synergy. The Shintao grabs the aggro. Hjolan admits to never being great in stealth and so has often leapt headlong into mobs where even Aasimar fear to tread. But right behind him is Kelli, her Tiefling Assassin’s Blade slicing, dicing, poisoning and slaying with sneak attack, CON stat damage and lots of Ninja Poison.

Despite my recent love of what Falconry does for several Monks, Kelli is pretty stock Ninja Spy so far. Her main skill, which I’m exploiting well enough so far, is that she’s a Halfling. Her healing dragonmark provides useful Heal spells for emergencies or in-combat along with a few Cure Serious and Light options. While not as diverse as going Half-Elf for their Dilettante options as my low-kill stealth master Kiricletica has once done, the Action Points used are far cheaper, too.

Another benefit for defense as a Halfling are Dodge bonuses and increases to Dodge cap, which stack with related enhancements in Ninja Spy. At level 13, rocking gear to give her Adherent of the Mists set bonuses, she’s at 33% Dodge.

Halflings gain extra Sneak Attack dice to add to Kelli’s strikes and Sneak Attack bonuses to hit hard.

To hit fast, Kelli uses only one shortsword and Single Weapon Fighting feats. Ninja Spy requires bulking up on DEX for to-hit and damage but also WIS for ensuring her dark finishers land and stick. Of course, some CON is needed to survive a strike or two, as are items to add Blur or other concealment to go with her 25% Incorporeality miss-chance.

Lastly, to be jack of key ninja trades are some throwing enhancements at the upper end of the Halfling tree to fight off enemies with shuriken at range. Not sure if these stack with the Ninja Spy’s endgame level 18 powers, but it’s likely.

Standard stealth skills raised high to avoid many fights or to flank enemies, although newer quests take this more into account with required stops to speak to NPCs or interact with objects that leave her obviously vulnerable.

That still leaves Kelli with a ton of AP to work in somewhere else, and I’m not yet sure where to go with that.

I’m simply pushing the stock Ninja Spy as far it can go.

One quest chain that I don’t see as popular as it once might have been is the Assault on the Slave Lords.

I don’t blame others playing this one less often. Hjolan and I did parts 1 and 2 of this and my memories of why it’s not as popular came back quickly as we progressed. It’s a taxing chain. Enemies at Elite level are extremely numerous, varied and powerful. Traps are prevalent and require a good Rogue. Shrines are few, hirelings drain themselves of spellpoints rapidly and player death is probable without a proper attack and defense plan. Come light into the domains of the Slave Lords and you will die.

I’d played this one enough, and died enough times, to know where we had to go, trying to recall what to skip. I wanted to save more slaves but frankly the deeper one-way corridors of enemies, bosses and one shrine at the end of all of that just wasn’t worth the trouble in part 1.

Part 2 gave us a small respite as the hobgoblin mobs were numerous but not quite as potent. Still, it was a terrible grind with two hireling clerics which weren’t very discriminating in spellpoint use.

The good news was that bosses were less of a problem because of our high DPS. Between Hjolan’s unarmed strikes and my Ninja Poison-edged blades, the bosses were hardly a threat.

Hjo had been looking forward to the final fight, which has four red-named lords, all being recharged by a central boss. Hoped to poison DoT every one of them to slow and then stop them before they stopped us, which wouldn’t take long seeing how the hirelings we had were as good as dead with little sense to concentrate on healing the player characters.

Putting Slave Lords part 3 at a later date, we entered the lands of Barovia and the domain of the sinister Count Strahd. Thanks to previous characters who have entered the domain, Kelli already had a Borovian shuriken and shortsword, each with Rubies of Ghostbane from the Night Revels.

As noted often, Ninja Spies are best at slaying the living and, unlike the Shintao, are weakest at the undead because the ninja’s destructive use of ki manifests as negative energy effects, which are, best, harmless to the undead. Ninjas use swords rather than bludgeoning weapons as well, making cutting down skeletons slower. So gearing up and striking sure and fast is Kelli’s best offensive act, with avoiding fights altogether a second tactic.

Hjo and I had little worries in “Death House” (such a series of tragedies in this storyline). Hjo has blended in some Rogueish search and disarm skills, but on Elite they aren’t especially great. I opted to bring in Fira, a capable halfling Rogue to keep us a little safer.

Likewise, the hags at Old Bonegrinder and the hordes of wolves in “Fresh-Baked Dreams” weren’t nearly as much a problem as I’ve had with light Monks or my archers. Kelli could slaughter well out there, with Ninja Poison very effective against the pie-making witches since, as a melee fighter, she’s used to fights in close quarters.

Then, dinner time with the Count. Numerous encounters in the enormous Castle Ravenloft in “An Invitation to Dinner” have left me overly cautious even on my self-healing Monks. Thankfully, the synergy of our two Monks made completion relatively easy. The starting fight with the cursespewing Shadows of Hate thankfully resulted in no fatalities with even the hirelings, thanks to Hjo’s spamming of Healing Ki with lesser-restoration buffing. From there I was optimistic in our reaching objectives, even taking on Strahd a second time for another chest. The ghostbane-enabled Borovian Shortsword did wonders.

A running joke between Hjo and I involves her tendency to take excessive damage. On a whim I asked how much fortification she had after leaving Ravenloft. Well, it was not 100% or greater, which was horrifying and surprising. Hjolan had survived much to-date that should’ve killed her twice over, especially Slave Lords.

I strongly suggested a detour from Ravenloft to a duergar mine, in “A Relic of a Sovereign Past.” There, Hjo could gather adamantine ore there and quickly whip up a Nightforge Gorget necklace for 100% fortification to live a lot longer.

Duergar, or dark dwarves, can’t be paralyzed. But Kelli easily nauseated many, leaving them completely unable to spellcast or fight, saving us a lot of trouble against many casters and fighters.

By the quest’s end, we opted to fully piss off the duergar king, at which point I poisoned him to the point where he was bleeding green in seconds. As his personal blackguard appeared, rather than concentrating on one enemy, Kelli ran around the crowd, hacking away and delivering Ninja Poison to collectively hurt the enemies and generating ki before settling on eliminating each one as Hjo kept aggro and punched many of the guys into oblivion.

With a gorget equipped (Kelli opted to make one for herself while there with some spare ore she brought along), Hjolan and Kelli continue their work to cleanse the realms. More to come; it’s been historically rare for me to run with other Monks so continually.

Magekiller

The Assassin from “Diablo II,” trained to slay mages with style. (c) Blizzard Entertainment

After reading my own review of finishing moves in my last post, my right hand moved on its own and began to slap me across the face every so often for a few odd minutes.

“What is the sound of a stupid gamer crying?” the hand said.

I’ve always touted the Monk class as an anti-mage or “magekiller“; a class designed to resist or deflect magical attacks and to slay powerful spellcasters that could debilitate other classes who fail to evade or save from such attacks.

Old Diablo II fans may recall the Assassin class, a martial-arts melee class that used items and attacks that emulated magic to destroy corrupted mages.

I miss that game. It was the original Neverwinter Nights RPG that pulled me away from that one, and DDO then pulled me here. I haven’t touched Diablo III out of fear it will ruin my life.

DDO’s Monks aren’t much different from the Diablo Assassin, from their martial arts, using ki rather than magic for attacks and spell-like abilities, inheriting high spell resistances and armored with saves that thwart many a spell caster.

After some four years of play, I’ve still many things to learn. I’ve surprised myself by what I haven’t used.

I’ve documented how much I love the power of Freezing the Lifeblood, a long-lasting Dark paralysis finisher that allows me to hold almost any Orange-Named or lesser enemy for very long periods (from a battle perspective). Now, I’ve found a second joy: Pain Touch.

Pain Touch will nauseate an enemy. This finisher and the Stinking Cloud spell are the only abilities in the game that cause the Nauseated effect. When something is nauseated, they cannot cast spells or attack. The only thing they can do is walk around. My DC ensures they aren’t casting or fighting for a full minute.

My bet, however, is that Stinking Cloud’s fortitude save is low and easy for enemies to beat. Else, I’d see more allied spellcasters using it to stop enemy counterparts. Or, because the effect also generates a greenish cloud that also gives Concealment, perhaps it’s a spell that few add to their spell book as clouding spells are often frowned on by party members.

Pain Touch has the usual Monk DC formula to save from this Fortitude attack: 10 + Monk level + WIS modifier, which are boosted by many enhancements such as the Henshin Mystic’s Mystical Training ability.

The advantage of Pain Touch is that it works on many enemies that may resist paralysis or won’t qualify for the Freezing attack, such as aberrations such as driders, duergar, monstrous humanoids, giants, and vermin such as spiders.

Kiricletica, anti-mage of Eberron and the Forgotten Realms.

You need a strong DC to pull this off.

At level 25 and buffed in Grandmaster of Flowers training at present (where I’ve taken all WIS upgrades to-date at tier 4 for a 46 WIS), Kiricletica’s DC is at least 12 + 25 + 18 = 55. Since mages aren’t normally packed with CON and therefore have a lower Fortitude, Pain Touch works quite well to shut them up. Like Freezing, the enemy rarely escapes the nausea before the one-minute timer expires.

I first tried this on a solo run into “Jungles of Khyber” on Epic Normal. The Drow mages sometimes saved against it, but a Freezing attack held them tight.

The real challenge presented itself with the beholders. I sneaked up to near point-blank range to launch a Pain Touch finisher. My results were inconclusive. They still threw out an antimagic cone and some Enervation, suggesting that they either saved against Pain Touch or are immune. They still died from my other attacks and removing a couple of negative levels left me none the worst for wear.

Silencing the Mages

To express my joy in this (belated) discovery, I ventured out into the wilds of the Underdark, where plenty of nasty spellcasters lurked about to test the finisher: Drow Priestesses, illithids, Yuan-Ti, Drow Necromancers. A successful Pain Touch attack left them mute. They were still moving about but they were out of the fighting picture while I tended to other business.

The only obstacle to using these finishers are in charging them up. Each ki attack used takes 3 seconds, which can overlap with another. I can charge either finisher up in about 6 seconds, applying one while attacking and charging it for another mage. But since I don’t move around while fighting, other enemies often aren’t aware I’m there, allowing time to charge finishers again and set up Freezes or Pain Touch strikes.

Of course, easier but more ki-expensive attacks to take the mage out of the picture immediately, such as Quivering Palm, aren’t off the table. I mixed these attacks up with finishers since Quivering Palm’s use won’t affect a finisher chain.

In the epic Gianthold wilderness, where even a high Sneak skill is good only if you’re about a quarter-mile away from the eyes of a giant, Pain Touch proved remarkably helpful in stopping some giants from doing anything. Stone and Storm Giants could be halted but Fire Giants and Hill Giants were often more resistant, likely since they are often spellcasters with some innate spell resistance and/or maybe a higher buffed Fortitude.

Spiders, as you know, are quite the pain for a stealth player since they’ll detect you with tremor-sense. But using Pain Touch stops their attacks. Their lower Fortitude guaranteed a successful finisher during one visit to epic-level “Trial by Fire” in Gianthold where the arachnids were quite numerous. Trolls, being what they are, are immune from muting or my type of paralysis. But that’s where the usual flame weapons work just fine.

The hallmark of Pain Touch’s power revealed itself on meeting a Devil Battlefield rare encounter, Lysson, an orange-named horned devil. I sneaked behind him and launched a Pain Touch finisher against him, leaving him unable to do anything while I cleaned up his minions and then redirected my attacks to him. This horned devil, one of the game’s more resistant/immune-laden enemies, couldn’t attack me once.

But it got better.

I suspended my solo play rules and teamed up with the guild leaders for an Epic Hard “Trial by Fury.” Without a dedicated healer, the Bard, Arcane Archer and I were doing pretty well. The spiders in one test of might are, if you pardon the pun, very bugged. One pack of yugoloths appeared and gave the team a challenge, but my spell resistance and saves kept the mutts from damaging me as I whittled them down. These guys are arguably some of the nastiest casters in the game as they were punching holes in my party member’s defenses.

The last yugoloth mages, two orange names, needed some care, seeing what ordinary ones almost did to the party. I asked to go down and apply a bit of Pain Touch to each–which I did, putting them both out of the spellcasting picture while we removed their guard spiders with ease.

Blizzard…eat your heart out.

The Mystery of the Finishing Move

(Credit: Claudio Pozas)

I am not surprised, in my travels, on what monastic abilities are used more often than others.

By far, the most popular ability for most players is the feat, Stunning Fist, and for good reason.

But is that all there is to being a Monk? To stun things.

I say, “Nay, nay!”

My adventures with Kiricletica have allowed me to acquaint myself to the mystical powers inherent in the finishing moves available to all Monks. Since she plays completely alone, the solitude forced me to review and utilize anything I could do to gain an advantage against the hordes. Kiri may be a ninja, but the Conservation of Ninjutsu only goes so far.

A Primer on Finishing Moves

For those newer to Monks than others, a finishing move is a spell-like ability made by combining three ki attacks, often the elemental attacks from your training based on earth, wind, fire and water, which activates a specific attack or defense. Despite the name, a finishing move isn’t necessarily a “Finish him!” killing strike.

Once a chain is charged up, a special attack feat, Finishing Moves, changes its appearance to reflect the charged finisher, where then the Monk can activate it.

The Book of Syncletica lists all finishing moves for your technical review. Here, I’m going to highlight each finisher’s merits and why each should be used more often.

For those with some knowledge of the monastic arts, ask yourself: How many of these finishers have I used? How many did I forget existed, or what they did?

Foundational Finishers

All Monks can perform these four finishing moves, which are generated by using the same elemental ki attack three times in a row.

The Trembling Earth:  Long before any Monk can train in Improved Critical feats, this attack will raise an Monk’s critical hit multiplier. For unarmed attacks, this greatly increases potential damage. It’s also a great first-strike attack against mages since it inhibits their ability to cast spells for 30 seconds. Think of this move as your personal anti-magic cone. In fact, use it against a beholder to effectively make it powerless to hurt you.

The Gathering Storm: This finisher gives you, in effect, a concealment-like effect that is applied to the attacker rather than to yourself. By reducing the enemy’s chance to land attacks for 30 seconds, you are effectively using a Concealment ability. Combine this with true Concealment effects such as Blur (available for Shintao Monks through a later finisher) and you may increase your ability to attack more safely.

Breath of the Fire Dragon: This is an attack that emulates the spell, Burning Hands. It’s often good to destroy objects that require a fire attack when you might lack the STR to knock something down, such as a door. Unfortunately, the effect can be inconsistent in some locations where you should be able to use fire to complete a task but cannot (setting the tents on fire in “Undermine” “Siegebreaker” comes to mind). Great against trolls and icy creatures.

The Raging Sea: Enemy attacks are slowed by this finisher. Use it whenever you have a high attack speed enemy to cut down the damage rate to you and your party.

Light Finishers

Those that train in the Harmonious Balance philosophy will become Shintao Monks in principle. The Fists of Light, a new ki attack, is the keystone to these finishers, which create helpful buffs for you and your party. Of all the finishing moves, these five finishers certainly are most popular to others in a party.

These finishers only last 1 minute, but their effects (like Bard songs) cannot be dispelled, not even by a beholder.

Grasp the Earth Dragon: This finisher is popular in quests such as “The Dreaming Dark” and the raid “Tower of Despair” as it is the only anti-stun protection in the game.

Dance of Clouds: An easy way for a Monk to keep himself and his party with Blur at all times. Ki is regenerative, saving spell points from others.

Walk of the Sun: A great way to boost the saving throws of any in your party by 2. Stacks with everything. Rogues and trap-prone members of your party adore this move.

Aligning the Heavens: Arguably the most popular finisher, this one should be activated before a party begins mass buffs, as it reduces spell costs for all by 25% for 1 minute. I try to use this while in battle, especially when shrines are few and far between fights.

Healing Ki: This finisher is why Shintao Monks are extremely durable. This finisher is a mass-healing effect. It also activates any selected Elemental Curatives, which will remove blindness, curses, disease, or provide a Lesser Restoration to any party member in range. Healing amplification can amplify Healing Ki (and the Healing Curse vampiric effect  that a single Fists of Light attack generates) to the power of a Heal spell and beyond. A light Monk should be spamming this attack in raid battles to supplement healing and take a little work off the healers in the party.

Dark Finishers

Those that train in the Inevitable Dominion philosophy become Ninja Spies in principle. The Fists of Darkness is a keystone to these five finishers, all of which are attacking finishers. I’ve seen few ninjas I could identify that use any of these finishers, which is disappointing. Those players gravitate all too often to the ninja’s negative energy attack, Touch of Death, and a later ki assassination attack, Quivering Palm.

They underestimate these abilities. All of these require a Fortitude save equal to 10 + Monk level + WIS modifier. Finishers such as these is why experienced Monks know to pump WIS as high as they can to ensure that their attacks and finishers stick.

Pain Touch: Enemy is nauseated for up to 60 seconds. The Nauseated quality means that an enemy can’t do anything but move around: no attacks, defense, actions or spell casting. Only the Stinking Cloud spell shares this property. Nauseated is different from Sickened (what Troglodyte Stench does). Only a Heal or Panacea spell will remove this effect. This should be a common fight tactic against paralysis-immune enemies such as the Duergar.

Falling Star Strike: Enemy is blinded for up to 60 seconds. While ninjas later gain Flash Bang to daze and blind enemies for about 6 seconds, this finisher will blind for much longer. Against a single enemy, it’s a good way to flank and strike at them while they flail about in vain trying to hit you.

Karmic Strike: Produces a hit with critical threat at the expense of 20 hit points to the Monk, which cannot be reduced by effects such as damage resistance. Given that other training to improve critical threat are available, this might be a less than desirable move. Against tough named enemies that are resistant or immune, this finisher is better than nothing in trying to generate more damage. But it steals your own HP, so I would understand if most Monks skipped this finisher.

Freezing the Lifeblood: This move is, by far, the most under-utilized finisher that a ninja can make. You paralyze an enemy for up to 60 seconds. Now, unlike the Paralysis effect, which lasts only 6 or so seconds and has a low Will save to avoid or escape it, this move’s DC is as high as the Monk’s level and WIS modifier. This likely means that what you paralyze will stay paralyzed for the full minute, unable to move. Kiricletica uses this move a great deal. In stealth, behind a group of enemies all looking the other way, I use this finisher on every one I can. Often that means most or all of the entire mob is frozen; I slay them without a single counterattack. Freezing can be done at level 3, so even a low-level Monk can dominate the dungeon. It’s only condition is that the target must be humanoid. Aside from the obvious (humans, elves, halflings), the effect works on gnolls, orcs, kobolds, and lizardmen, but not monstrous humanoids or giants. Outsiders that look human (such as the Eladrin) are also immune. Red-named enemies are immune, but not others.

Touch of Despair: This move debilitates a target’s negative energy and fortification protections by 25%. A common finisher for ninjas, who follow it up with a Touch of Death attack that benefits from the negative energy vulnerability. But this finisher also activates one of the selected Ninjutsu moves, which will give a negative-level to all nearby enemies, inject or forcibly remove stacks of Ninja Poison, or suck a small amount of HP and ki from an enemy.

Special Finishers

With the proper prerequisites, any Monk can also perform four additional finishing moves in their highest levels of training. With Update 19, however, some finishers once restricted to a specific philosophy have now become effectively exclusive to one class tree.

Curse of the Void: Once a personal favorite attack for ninjas, this attack charmed enemies for up to 2 minutes. But since lesser Void Strike attacks disappeared with Update 19 for any Monk, only a Level 12 Henshin Mystic that trains the only Void Strike in the game, a tier 5 ability, can pull this off–and far slower than any past ninja.

Moment of Clarity: A finisher that I used in “The Shroud” to give brief Insight bonuses to attack and damage. But, like Curse of the Void, only a Mystic can perform this finisher.

Shining Star: The best named finisher (a pun on the song by the 70’s group, “Earth Wind and Fire”), this finisher uses (wait for it) the Earth, Wind and Fire ki attacks to form a finisher that (you guessed it) causes the target to dance: Your personal Otto’s Irresistible Dance. Unlike all other finishers, this move uses CHA (10 + Monk level + CHA modifier) as the DC. CHA is normally a complete dump stat for Monks, so wearing a Charismatic item or using a free tome if you find one is better to use this move.

The Henshin Mystic is All Masterful

With Update 19’s introduction of the Henshin Mystic, the game changed quite a bit on finishing moves. Before this update, no Monk could utilize more than 11 finishing moves (four Foundational, five Philosophical, 1 Void-based, and Shining Star).

But the Mystic gains the ability to add one special ki attack at level 12–a ki attack that’s opposite of the philosophy they chose at level 3. A Light-aligned Mystic can add a Dark attack, and a Dark Mystic adds a Light attack. These attacks then enable Mystics to complete the 5 additional finishers of their opposite philosophy, including Touch of Despair and Healing Ki.

Since the Mystic is the only class with Void Strike as well, this allows the Mystic to perform both Void based finishers.

As such, the Mystic can perform all 17 finishing moves.

The question you should ask yourself (be a ninja, Shintao or Mystic) is whether you’re going to push beyond your mere mastery of one or two finishers, and know what and when to use at the given time.

A Monk that uses only a few finishers is like a Wizard that casts only a Wall of Fire.