I have been looking all over for a comprehensive list of prestige classes either specifically meant for the monks or ones that synergize extremely well with them. Does such a list exist or do I literally have to find every prestige class and analyze them to determine this?
[RPG] find a list of Monk Prestige Classes
dnd-3.5emonkprestige-class
Related Solutions
It's the Mental Damage
Drink Like a Demon has two problems. The first is that it's an uneven trade; you're losing 4 points of ability score and only getting 2 back. This does a few things to your Drunken Master that are bad:
- Lowers AC
- Lowers vital Wisdom-based skills (such as Spot and Listen)
- Lowers your Will saves
- Lowers your save DCs for your special abilities
- Makes you more vulnerable to monsters and spells that deal mental ability damage
While you can run Fist of the Forest to mitigate the AC problem, all you ever end up doing is breaking even - and that's if you take the Con, and not the Strength. If you want a melee benefit out of Drink Like a Demon you've gotta burn AC point after AC point while simultaneously making yourself increasingly weak to save-or-suck and save-or-lose spells like charm person, hold person, and anything else that requires a Will save. The end result is that you turn yourself into a glass cannon that, at any moment, could be pointed at your party by a monster.
Sadly, not even the common "fix" of going Kung-Fu Genius works; Drink Like a Demon lowers your Intelligence.
Additionally, as Tridus mentioned in the comments, each drink you take is burning a move action, meaning that every round you take a drink is a round you cannot move, use Flurry of Blows, or make a full attack. Essentially, drinking makes you worse at doing your job (delivering damage to targets of opportunity) while also making you more vulnerable.
A bloodline level grants no increase in base attack bonus or base save bonuses, no hit points or skill points, and no class features. It counts as a normal class level (with no class skills) for the purpose of determining maximum skill ranks. Levels of bloodline never result in XP penalties for multiclass characters.
Include the character’s bloodline level when calculating any character ability based on his class levels (such as caster level for spellcasting characters, or save DCs for characters with special abilities whose DCs are based on class level). The character doesn’t gain any abilities, spells known, or spells per day from the addition of his bloodline levels, though—only the calculations of his level-based abilities are affected.
If a character has levels in two or more classes in addition to his bloodline levels, each class gains the benefit of adding the bloodline levels when calculating abilities. (19)
The extra levels/spells the prestige classes provide are class features, so would not proc with the levels of bloodline. As far as In know, only the primary class counts towards the caster level unless the class features of the prestige class explicitly add to it.
Unless I'm missing something...
While bloodline levels grant no class features, the bloodline levels do still exist. This answer would be more useful if added to it were a more detailed explanation as to why a character should not "[i]nclude the character’s bloodline level when calculating... caster level" if the prestige class grants caster levels. (Note that were they to have any impact, the bloodline levels would only improve effective caster (or initiator or manifester or soulbindermanifester or whatever) level, not, for example, spells known or spells per day.) – Hey I Can Chan
Let's say Wizard is your primary spellcasting class. Prestige levels have no effect on your caster level. Some prestige classes have class features that improve your Wizard's caster level and adds some spells, etc. However, since bloodline levels do not grant these features, they do not effect the Wizard's caster level. The bloodline levels would increase the caster level for the Wizard though as the caster level is calculated by the number of levels the character has in Wizard. In any prestige classes in the official rules I can find, it explicitly states a prestige class adds CL. Take Eldritch Knight as an example:
Spells per day: From 2nd level on, when a new eldritch knight level is gained; the character gains new spells per day as if she had also gained a level in whatever arcane spellcasting class she belonged to before she added the prestige class. She does not, however, gain any other benefit a character of that class would have gained (bonus metamagic or item creation feats, bard or assassin abilities, and so on). This essentially means that she adds the level of eldritch knight to the level of whatever other arcane spellcasting class the character has, then determines spells per day and caster level accordingly.
(emphasis on the last line mine) The above is a class feature, so would not be affected by bloodlines. Meaning that a level 2 Eldritch knight would only add 1 level of spells and caster levels as the class only has 1 stack of this class feature at level 2 and doesn't gain another stack through bloodlines.
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Best Answer
Chet Eretz’s Prestige Class Index lists almost all prestige classes up to February 2008; this wouldn’t be too helpful on its own, as more complete lists exist, but, the index also categorizes the prestige classes. For examples:
Weapon Specialists — Unarmed Strike
Prestige Classes related to Base Classes — Monk
The index is very good for covering Dragon and Dungeon, and gets most non-setting-specific books up to the last time it was updated, but is missing several setting-specific books (it has both the campaign setting and players’ guides for both Eberron and Faerûn, plus Magic of Faerûn and Races of Faerûn) as well as later books (obviously). It also explicitly does not cover psionics for some reason, which is a shame since psionics does good things with monks.
Major missing books include Expanded Psionics Handbook, Tome of Battle, the “second-wave” Complete books (Champion, Mage, Psionics, Scoundrel), the “Outside” books (Cityscape, Dungeonscape, Frostburn, Sandstorm, and Stormwrack), and Races of the Dragon.