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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Doctor Shaft" data-source="post: 2001862" data-attributes="member: 25737">Here's what I think about the monk (since I play them all the time).The great thing about them is, as others have just said, it has NO weaknesses.  However, the biggest crutch is that it isn't really good at anything either.  The monk is the king of mediocrity, and that's it's greatest power. When you get to higher level, all the traps, bombs, area affect spells, and even just spells themselves, all the annoying stuff on a battle mat that every other class in D&D has to worry about, is completely ignored by the monk (well, almost).  And that's why I always play the class. If you avoid approaching the class as a "Gotta max out my AC and AB" kind of character, and go for the all-around abilities, the monk really really shines.  Of course, the monk also horribly fails in any other area besides kicking clerics and wizards butts (and I tend to think it's more just wizards... clerics have buff spells, and they have the power to prepare themselves for a melee fight with a wizard... wizards less so, but a canny, crafty caster that doesn't focus solely on blasting people with magic can do a few things).  In terms of actually hitting targets in combat... yes, a monk naturally can't hit much, which is the greatest blow to the class.  However, even in core D&D, getting your hands on a monks belt practically negates this weakness. Followed by an amulet of some kind, and you're rocking.  However... not all campaigns are simply "Magicks R U$" games, so you might not get that.At the end of the day, I think the monk class is all about special abilities.  While I like the martial artist class variants that fans and 3rd party sources have come up with, I think the monk should serve as the class with the most "special unarmed combat" abilities.  Unfortunately, very few of the Core feats support that at all. They support the fighter all the time, which is great. And the metamagic feats are made just for the spellcasters. But the monk gets... well, he gets stunning fist, and then the lame ability to use stunning fist more (which is great if everyone was a low fortitude, first level wizard). I think sources like Oriental Adventures, and others, got it right when they introduced cool feats that didn't boost AC or increase AB for the monk, but allowed him to make tactical attacks. If you ever play a game, and if you could convince your DM to allow some of those feats, even if you don't hit as often or hurt as much, you can at least stand a chance at disabling more than just the corny Wizard (hey, it's cool monks can kill them, but it's like the cleric that just heals people - it's boring).  I'll leave it at that.  The 3rd Party sources that provide alternative unarmed strike abilities (Complete Warrior only has 3 specific ones, not all of them, although Defensive Strike, another OA feat, is in there, and it's still good if you happen to be a monk).  Monks are like pseud-spellcasters. If you get feats that let you use your stunning fist pool for stuff other than "try to stun a guy with his fort save... even though 80% of them will have one you can't beat very reliably", then the low AC and AB thing is hardly a hinderance.</blockquote>

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