Shattered Kingdoms

Build name: The kip up monk.

Build overview: An tanking character that can recover from being prone and can sit in a neutral stance and still be an effective tanking character.

Build Pros:
1. Can recover from being prone and still defend well while in a neutral stance.
2. Decent damage done.
3. Can disarm opponents quite easily.
4. Can disrupt formations.
5. A decent way to improve survivability with heckle.
6. can cause people to stay and fight with taunt.

Build cons:
1. You have to join the fist of the white swan which forces you to RP a certain way.
2. Swashbucklers of course wear light armor.
3. Fairly stat dependent so you have to get your stats a certain way, so enchanting and answering creation questions.
4. Reliant on buffs to really bring out the full potential of the build.
5. you'll burn through mental energy and physical energy

Character creation:
1. Race/class/alignment: For this build I actually recommend Sprite, human, or half-elf. The reason I list these is because of the high dexterity of the three races when played as a swashbuckler. Higher dexterity means better accuracy and better dodge which means you can block, parry, dodge better. Sprite of course is the better selection if you're not to worried about your damage output. Human has no weakness to to things like iron and half-elves have a better charisma than humans which affects your heckle and taunt.

Stats: You'll want to prioritize dex and con for main stats with charisma, str and wisdom as secondary stats though I recommend maxing dex, con, and str by apprentice 3 and then focusing all your stat points on HP until champion 2 and switching over to charisma. You'll also want a clever wisdom at least without modding to help for when you use your monk abilities and you'll have to mod int so you can fight multiple enemies and still taunt/heckle.

Alignment: Principled or scrupulous so you can join the Fist of the White Swan.

Tribunal choices: you can go with Keeper, Guardian and even Talon depending on the RP you set out for this character choice.

cabal choices: Fist of the White Swan. The monk abilities don't really go hand and hand (pun not intended) with the swashbuckler abilities but some of them do, kip up is one that allows you to come back from being prone and quickly use your monk abilities to punch people from the room and ki straps give you a boost to the monks already nice accuracy to block attacks with their hands and to land abilities. Also the monks first available ability (not the cipher or siege craft) improves your kicks damage and accuracy which I don't recommend using in PvP unless you know you don't need to do anything else to win and want to win more quickly.

Leveling up: I'll give you the routine I normally tend to follow for leveling up which normally allows me to avoid going to places like the ToM.

1. You want to hit the exile and nerina training grounds, you can also hit the sith'a'niel training grounds for their equipment, but you don't have to. Now I tend to stay in the training grounds, staying at amateur 5 and I build up money and I tend to leave once I have an obsidian because this normally allows me to completely by pass novice status and go to initiate 2 or 3. This also allows you to train all your amateur abilities which are all you really need until you can get second attack. Don't train other skills until you're a status higher then you can learn them unless they are ABSOLUTELY needed. You don't "need" dirt kick while leveling since most attacks bounce off armor starting out, you don't "need" heckle, you don't "need" trip or heckle and so on, only get the things that will increase damage output.

2. now if you did the same I did and just went to initiate 2 or 3 go to nerina, buy brass armor and go to the training outpost between taslamar and ayamao. stay there until you know the place like the back of your hand and do the tentacle quest as much as you can while still killing the better opponents. This will put you up to about apprentice 2 or 3

3. At this stage you can either go to the skybolt encampment and fight the giants or you can go to the undead halfling village in the north, either one are great places to train.

4. At journeyman you can go to Mortoon or the bakemono caves. If you go to mortoon I recommend having other people with you, one or two since the undead there can be fairly painful....so make some friends and go have fun there, priest should love that place.

5. you should be veteran status before reach garazul and if you want to avoid training there as much as possible, go out and discover every place you can on the area list, this takes a little bit of time but cuts down a lot on the training in garazul.

6. at expert it's always recommended to go to the chancel, but I say if you can find some other place to train, go there instead and try to saving the experience you can get in the chancel until later, for this, I would recommend the cloud realm and even the valley of ashe to try and avoid it.

7. If you used the chancel at expert, go to the valley and if you used the valley at expert go to the torrum for mentor and at this point in time you should be in the Fist of the White Swan.

8. If you used the valley, you should get to about mentor 5 before it really really slows down to much, so go to the torrum, if you used the torrum, head to Red Stag Lake, a'van keep with someone to pull single NPCs into the room and lower morea.

9. when you get to master 5/champ 1 if you didn't use the chancel.....go to the chancel with a priest and one other person, you should be able to tank very well with ki straps, armor and sanctuary and kill the guardians there...they give great experience and at champ 4 turn in the quest for a good XP buff. If you did use the chancel I would good to a'van, lower morea and red stag lake. You can also use the ToM if you so wish.

for equipment, you want the brass until veteran or expert and then you want to try and find some mithril. if you join a religion try and join a religion that has energy armor to wear and if you can't, light armor works as well. if you don't join a religion you can get the added tanking bonus of spirit aura to cut down on damage and if you can do the spirit guide quest, you can possibly get that armor if it's available.

PK advice: Also try to walk around with armor and bless or ways to get them, there are herbs, items and potions that give armor and the same with bless, you can also aquire bless by killing the chancel guardians and visiting the priestess down there. You also want a way to aquire sanctuary if you're going with a group and won't start the fight or are defending a city. If you don't join a religion having a way to get spirit aura will greatly increase your survivability which gives you a greater chance to punch people/pets from the room and mess up formations. It also gives you a better chance to disarm people and break equipment. I recommend always having a pair of ki-straps on and sitting in a defensive stance at all times. You want your ki straps on your hands and you want to enchant/consecrate them with as much accuracy as they can take since monk's punch really really hard anyways. You DO NOT get the benefit of hedgehog or wolverine stance so while it doesn't hurt to master them in case your relic is stolen, if you have your relic, don't bother standing in those stances.

Now then you want to focus on heckling melee opponents to lower their accuracy and their dodge and for the casters of any kind, taunt them. if you're facing multiple enemies, taunt the caster and punch the front from the room. Don't spam abilities either, that way if you get bashed/tripped you can just kip up and start punching people from the room again while they are lagged from ability useage. this gives you time to quaff potions to heal if need be.

Now for tactics and combos, this build is great for any second row fighter type, specially mercs spec'd in a ranged weapon, if you two are coordinated enough the merc never has to worry about leaving beind a front row because they are bashed, also the merc can shoot at people punched from the room and rally to better damage and better accuracy. Priest are a great addition to this build for the added bonus of someone who can cast armor and bless, but what you want to find are priest/priestess' of aludra or sadal. Aludra because compassion is amazing and cuts down on damage and you shouldn't be getting hit much anyways and sadal because luck adds onto bless and armor making you even harder to hit but more accurate. adding a priest into the formation also allows for holy word, healing, ways to remove debuffs and such. Shaman are also a good addition and if you're not in a religion they can brew you spirit aura.

Another tactic to use....wear insanely light armor, you always want to be way below half your carrying capacity for your full dodge bonus, easy way to do this is to wear energy armor since you won't be hit very often and add magical protection to it to help fend off magical attacks which will be your only true weakness besides an MR barbar.

I'm a newb of course but I thought I would share this with anyone who was interested and maybe someone better can think of a better way to utilize this build.

Thank you for reading.