[RPG] Where is the information for Vampire hybrids

There exist many acceptable options as a Minotaur Battlemind multiclassed into Monk. While it's not a full hybrid, it's possible to strongly evoke monastic traditions in your action descriptions, your utility powers, your skills, and your paragon path. This makes you a charge-focused damage-dealing defender who can hold their own with most characters.

A bit of a discursive deconstruction here, riffing off my paper.

First: literature reserach. Do there exist any battlemind or monk hybrids?

No.

Do there exist any published multiclass builds that use either?

No, not really.

Now we... must be creative.

In general, when doing a risky combo like this, you can't afford to slip up too badly. Read both class guides battlemind monk to get a sense of appropriate powers. In all cases, take the mechanics of the powers and choose your description for yourself, starting with their name. Steal all names from ancient martial arts moves and be unusually aware of the environment and ways to perform acrobatic manoeuvres while establishing your battlemind as the centre of attention.

Narrative requirement: we must have a minotaur, involve the idea of "monk" and the idea of "battlemind."

Mechanical-functional requirement: we must function as a character.

Primus, there exist no mechanical options for hybrid stats, save for a joint (and unimportant secondary.) Monks are Dex/Wis or Dex/Str, Battleminds are Con/Wis or Con/Cha. Minotaurs are Str Con/Wis.

Monks have a huge reliance on their secondaries. Battleminds have less.

Therefore, is it possible to make a Con/X? battlemind that is heavily invested in monkishness?

Minotaurs are chargers, and there are a number of battlemind charge options that are ... not bad. Momentum Swing as a 3rd level give us an augment 2 charge, which really ties in nicely with a charge chassis (to be a striker) and the minotaur's natural gifts.

There are a number of excellent statless stances from the monk. Most notable being centered defense (utility/6) or other utilities. The monk's positioning utilities synergize wonderfully with the Battlemind's interrupts, especially if flavoured as monastic training rather than psionic power.

At 7, we'll choose forceful reversal as an indication of a judo or akido like form of literally turning the force of the enemy's attack on them, and focus a little more on forced movement.

While we won't choose a daily or encounter multiclass, the utility flavouring as well as the ki-focus should be a nice start. There's even a perfect monk paragon path: Soaring blade. Its abilities are constitution focused, and it gets bonus damage... equal to con... on all melee attacks at 16. Its bonus to acrobatics means that you can even pretend to be a monk somtimes when doing dexy stuff.

Conclusions

So, in heroic, we have a minotaur charger, focused on the augment 2 charger. Your weapon is the sword, echoing your paragon path. (Theme this as your monastic weapon) First feat is Monastic Disciple, to get your iron soul flurry of blows. Choose an appropriately monky theme. You'll want a very high strength to power your basic attacks, which... isn't very good from a theoretical perspective, but survivable.

Equipment is generally the charge chassis, which must be reflavoured not as ubermagicitems, but as monastic tricks to make your damage more interesting. I urge you to grab a book on aikido and Kenjutsu and theme all your attacks appropriatly. Throw in a hint of tai-chi, just becuase it's appropriate to explain your elemental effects.

You'll want to grab the utility multiclass into monk, and the monk PP.

That provides a solid defender who is focused on doing damage and is themed around being a "monk." Your heavy armor focus is a touch unfortunate, but my recommendation is to accept it, and just call it unusually heavy robes.

I would recommend using the Monster Vault maths, found summarized on Blog of Holding; or, Monster Maker is a handy app that helps create monster cards, and will work out the maths if desired.

Set out which roles you wish the monsters to take - from the sounds of things it seems like you'll have a mix of Lurkers and Skirmishers, with Soldiers and Brutes making up the majority of the rest. Adding some of the other roles (artillery and controller) will help build variety.

Essentially you will be making sets of 'monsters' to form into encounters. From memory approximately the same number of same-level enemies makes a relatively balanced encounter, depending on the level of optimization and experience of the players. Mix and match some monster types, replacing 1 monster with 4 minions of the same level, and nudge up or down to taste.

For example, for 5 level 1 PCs you could then have 2 'Tough Monks' (level 1 Soldiers), 2 Ninja (level 1 Lurker), 4 mook monks (level 1 skirmisher minions) and 4 ninja mooks (4 level 1 artillery minions).

The DMG 2 has a section on making monster 'themes' - in essence by putting together sets of additional abilities that are thematically linked - such as the Goblins' ability to shift. For instance, you could add an ability to the Monks that acts in a manner similar to the Monk PCs flurry of blows - maybe on a successful attack they deal a small amount of damage to an additional adjacent enemy, maybe 2 damage for a level 1 monster.

One of the easiest tricks for 4e is to simply 'reskin' a monster - presenting for example, a goblin or a kobold as a ninja is just a question of description. Find a monster which has the relevant ability (such as shifting on a miss, those pesky goblins!) and you're good to go.

Generally a 4e encounter is much better with some environmental factors, so I'd recommend adding in some interesting terrain features or traps to spice things up a little. Broadly speaking, avoid adding in higher level Soldiers or Brutes too much, because they can become hard to hit leading encounters to bog down. Lots of minions is useful in making an encounter feel exciting and allowing the PCs to feel capable heroes - it all comes down to description when using minions - you can make the heroes feel awesome or like they wasted their attack depending on how you invoke their sense of adventure.

The monks could have the ability to spread some splash damage as a flurry of blows, the ninja should be tricky to pin down, maybe with a teleport style ability or a jump. They could climb walls with normal movement for a more HK film feel. The tattoos sound like a great idea, possibly you could borrow from Legend of the 5 Rings and each style of tattoo grants an ability - so the monks with flame or dragon tattoos can breath fire. Monsters that spawn other monsters are fairly tough - the Wraith in 4e does something similar I think. Make sure that whatever comes afterwards can't spawn more monsters - maybe it generates a minion when killed that lacks the respawn ability. Alternatively, you could describe them as crumbling and rising once they hit Bloodied, with some new abilities?