As I typed this I see that I am repeating what has already been said, but I'll post it anyway. I love playing a monk, but I always do so knowing that I will not be great in combat.
Evilbob:
Obviously we have very different ideas of what constitutes mid-level, but I think most of this holds true even at high levels. First, let me address defense. Everyone says that monks have a great AC. This is not necessarily true unless they have both an exceptional Wisdom and Dexterity score. To equal a fighter in chain mail with a 13 Dex requires a +6 bonus to AC. That means the monk's Dex and Wis would have to be a minimum of either 16/16 or 18/14. The token bonus to AC given to them by level will never come as fast as AC bonuses from magic armor, so are IMO irrelevant. Monks must rely on magic items for defense. Magic Items that all use "item slots" that could be used for other things. Magic items should add new capabilities to a character, not just catch him up to the rest of the party. But, of course you deal with this by putting your highest scores in Dex and Wis. OK. Problem solved, or at least minimized, right? Wrong. Because now we talk about offense, particularly damage. You just put your best scores into defense, so now your Str modifier is probably only a +1 or +2. That is of course if you either rolled your stats and got real lucky, or you are using a point buy and all your other stats have suffered. Even the wizard does the same damage as you do with his staff at low level. At fourth level, you finally get to 1d8 base damage. Of course, all the fighters have been dealing at least that much base damage since first level. In fact, at 5th level (judging by the starting money chart on p.43 of the DMG) they probably have a +2 equivalent weapon, most likely +1 and +1d6 of some damage type or another. Now you are behind on base damage again. Keep in mind that the DMG does not have anything to augment your fists (other than Str enhancers). Sure there are other books to pull from, but we are talking about revisions to the core books here. So you get a magic kama. Nice. Unfortunately, its base damage is only 1d6, so the benefit of the magic on it is minimal. Eventually, when you can afford it, some of this goes away with better magic. But you will still always be just a little behind the party fighter. Even with the "tons of attacks", I played in a party up to 15th level, and the party fighter always had a much higher average damage per round than the monk. That is assuming that all attacks hit and all rolls were average for the die type. Attack bonus for the monk is always lower than the fighter too, but that becomes less relevant at higher levels in 3e because BAB always goes up, but AC is typically harder to increase, so I won't argue that point. One last thing about offense: Stunning Attack. A great way to give the party rogue a way to outshine you with his sneak attack. Even though you did the "set-up", you never get credit for the kill.
More in keeping with the topic of the thread:
There's one way to fix all of this: multiclass. Unfortunately, the current core rules nerf that. And while most sensible DMs ignore that rule (even every Dragon article about monks seems to), you still run into a few who don't. That rule, which WotC themselves refer to as a "flavor rule only", needs to go away.
The other thing I would like to see is to give the monk the ability to pick and choose class abilities while sacrificing others by making them feats or "talents" (ala d20 Modern) that can be chosen at different levels, with varying prereqs etc. That way they can maybe get some of the useful stuff eariler at the expense of something else.
Ag_Griffon
