DM Entry: Martial Monk (DM Ruling)

Martial Monk (Class Mod, Dragon 310)

DM Ruling: The text in the Player’s Handbook that says, “A monk need not have any of the prerequisites normally required for these feats to select them,” is referring to the specific feats listed for monk bonus feats in the Player’s Handbook only—Improved Grapple or Stunning Fist at 1^st level, Combat Reflexes or Deflect Arrows at 2^nd level, and Improved Disarm or Improved Trip at 6^th level. 

If you choose to be a Martial Monk rather than a normal Monk, you may choose a Fighter bonus feat in place of the normal monk bonus feats, but you must still meet all of the Fighter bonus feat prerequisites and your effective Fighter level is equal to your Martial Monk level for meeting these prerequisites.

This avoids the abuse of taking a 1-level dip in Martial Monk to gain a high level Fighter feat. How nice it would be to have a 6^th-level character with 5 levels or anything and a 1 level splash of Martial Monk to grab the Weapon Supremacy feat and ignore this rather impressive package of prerequisites:

“Proficiency  with  selected weapon, Greater Weapon Focus with selected weapon, Greater Weapon Specialization with selected weapon, Weapon Focus with selected weapon, Weapon Specialization with selected weapon, Weapon Mastery with damage type of selected weapon, fighter level 18^th”

and grab this huge list of benefits: “When fighting with the weapon that you choose for this feat, you gain a number of additional advantages. You gain a +4 bonus on all checks made to resist being disarmed. You can wield your weapon against a foe that grapples you without penalty and without first making a grapple check. In this situation, you can take a standard action or a full attack action as normal. When you take a full attack action, you can apply a +5 bonus to any single attack after your first strike. Once per round before making an attack roll, you can instead choose to treat your d20 result as a 10. You gain a +1 bonus to AC.”