Flurry of Blows (Ex)


Advice


Other than "jumping the gun" a bit, is there any good reason to take the two weapon fighting feat as a monk?

It would be using u a feat slot early on to get the monk bonus earlier than the class would give it to you.

But is it worth it necessarily? Would having taken two weapon fighting and improved two weapon fighting earlier than you get them from the class provide any "extra" bonuses?

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Not really unless you get an archetype that swaps out flurry or you want to TWF with a non-monk weapon.

Flurry gives a monk the TWF feats at the level he could pick them up. You can't get them before the monk gets them in flurry of blows.

What makes flurry of blows good is that it's better than TWF. That's even more true with the unchained monk.


No, it's definitely not worth it.
First of all, you can't get Improved Two-Weapon Fighting or Greater Two-Weapon Fighting any earlier than you get your extra Flurry of Blows attacks, because they require BAB+6 and BAB+11, which you don't get until levels 8 and 15 respectively.
Second of all, even if you could get it a couple of levels early, the feats would become a complete waste as soon as you got the necessary Flurry of Blows attacks, and even before then, two-weapon fighting without Flurry of Blows means your accuracy is awful, because you have 3/4 BAB and the normal two-weapon fighting penalties.

There are a couple of monk archetypes that swap out Flurry of Blows: Maneuver Master, Master of Many Styles, Sensei, and Tetori. It might be a good idea, in a few circumstances, to get the Two-Weapon Fighting line on a monk with one of those archetypes. But I still wouldn't recommend it.


It wouldn't be of much use.

You gain the effects of Two-Weapon Fighting at first level.

At 6th level you gain another iterative attack from FoB, though your real BAB wouldn't normally allow it.

When you hit 8th level (+6 BAB) you qualify for Improved Two-Weapon Fighting, which is when you get another attack from FoB anyway as if using ITWF.

At 11th level you gain another iterative attack from FoB. This is followed up by the Greater TWF form at 15th level (real BAB +11).

At 16th level you gain your last iterative attack from FoB. If you were already a full-BAB class them this would look familiar anyway with TWF.

With Monk, the soonest you can qualify for or use ITWF and GTWF is at 8th and 15th levels anyway. You also lose your extra iterative attack from Flurry if you aren't Flurrying.

There's no good reason I can think of to take TWF, ITWF, or GTWF as a Monk unless you are multiclassing and need to for some prerequisite.


Flurry of blows can also ahve some extreme advantages over traditional TWF.

You can 2 hand a weapon, and then get x1.5 power attack on every hit. That basically adds up to x3 over both 'hands', compared to the x1.5 of normal TWF (x1+x0.5). You also can flurry with only a single weapon... which means you save a lot of money that could go towards buying a better weapon (a small but appreciable bonus to attack/damage...or defenses like AC/saves)

Regular TWF feats can be a big help with brawler's flurry though. Brawler's flurry works similarly to flurry of blows for the 2 handing thing... but it also explicitly works as TWF, and allows you to qualify for TWF feats. So while your progression stops when you stop taking monk for FoB, Brawler's flurry can still continue if you take the feats.

So, if you take 2 levels of brawler, and went ranger/slayer for the rest (TWF feats without the need for dex), you can actually end up with a ton of powerful attacks. Or perhaps go sword and board without the need for using the shield to attack.

But as a single class monk or brawler? Little to no need for actually taking the feats. You get their effects anyway, so why waste time, effort, and stat allocation?

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