Shadow Warrior

I have always loved Blue Oyster Cult and always enjoyed reading Eric Van Lustbader so the song Shadow Warrior has a special place for me and thus it sort of fits for me to talk about my monk Grousehopper. And I am sure there are people of a certain age who sniggered when they got the reference in the toon name. So today I want to talk about one of my monks which I get from being a VIP, however you can purchase the monk class from the ddo store but be warned it is pricey.

All I need is just one more festival short sword, easier said than done though

Grousehopper has focused on the Ninja Spy Prestige Enhancement and although the song suggests empty handed combat Hopper actually focuses on the use of short swords. The concept for monks is fast unencumbered attacks and the ability to avoid damage rather than being armoured to stop attacks. The thing that I find really fun is how many feats a monk gets for free, one of my favourites is wholeness of body which allows me to self heal for the simple expenditure of 10 ki. Obviously not something you can do mid combat and you sit like meditating but sometimes you and  your healer get separated so the self heal can be a real bonus.

They don't make this easy

The Ninja Spy enhancements offer some interesting options like the core ability Poison Darts where you spit a cone of darts at nearby enemies giving between 1 and 4 stacks of poison. Now Hopper is only level 11 at the moment but rank 60 as I power level him, meaning this is an ability I will have in the near future. Target takes 1d4 points of Poison damage every 3 seconds for 15 seconds per stack of poison. Now that to me is fun as the enhancement sting of the ninja allows any piercing or slashing melee or thrown weapon to dose an enemy with 1 stack of Ninja Poison on a critical hit. I intend to run Hopper as a Drow in the next 2 lives so he can have the ability to use venomed blades.

One thing that I do need to clarify for anyone starting a monk for the first time, the different stances can make a big difference to how you perform. Out of preference I go either Air or Earth stances as they have dexterity or strength bonus for your character which makes a big difference in your damage. At the moment I am running mountain stance because of the bonus to strength and hence the bonus to damage.

Stances can make a difference

Now here is the strange thing to me as a former PnP player I had the issue with my dungeon masters over the use of poisons and poisoned weapons. Certainly Lawful Good characters could never wield any weapon that had poison nor could they use poisons which meant the first time my pencil and paper paladin found an exquisite long sword I was disqualified from using it as it had poison on the blade. So the chance to use poison whilst being lawful good is great fun if a little strange in my very lopsided view of the world.

Hopper is running his first life right now but as I write this I am already to level him to 12 and push him further. The issue is I have two characters already on multi lives that will be reincarnating and 3 toons parked at level 20 ready for new lives. The demand for tokens of the twelve is going to go through the roof for me and I will not be rushing Hopper into his second or third lives yet. But I will say monks are superb fun to play and I have already played all the different options in terms of prestige but now the use of drow and their racial enhancement fitting so well into monk are calling me, they may just take a little time for me to explore.

The rice paper walking GrouseHopper.