Am I better to leave them unarmed, or will they do well with staves/mace-flail. I'm running a party of 4, so I want the maximum critical strike benefit.

Monks can KO with empty hand as well, so it's hard to say whether Zato or fists are better. Some players even go the close-extended way and use a Staff in the Alternate slot and not a Wrist Rocket.
When i played a comparison game with 3 Monks, Fist/WR had around 2% more kills than Staff/WR, and Fists/Staff around 10% fewer.

Hi, i just built my own monk :D
I would say unarmed is much better! You have 2 attacks (double chance to critical hits) without having to use dual-weapons-skill (not necessary for martial arts). As in chances of crit. strikes, with Zato it would be max. 9% (4% from skill, 5% from Bo) per strike, unarmed only 4% but having 2 attacks making it 8% - don't think you will notice any difference.
Except, well, is there any weapon for monks better than Zatoichi Bo???

My last game had a Monk. As soon as he started getting 3 swings(punches and kicks) AND 3 attacks per round he quickly became my best melee character. I pumped Str and Dex first then went for Spd and Senses. With Stealth plus Reflextion he was hardly touched and dished out really good damage once his strength hit the 80+ mark.

Ok, I've ignoring strength, but I'll put some points in there. They all have Nunchaka in each hand now and they're lvl 8. Should I still go unarmed?

It's really up to you. Level 8 is not too late to change weapon types. Looks like their mace&flail skill may be pretty good but there aren't many of that weapon type that the Monk can equip. Martial Arts or Staff&Wand is the way to go with Monks. I prefer hands&feet myself but the Z-Bo is an impressive weapon. I've tried both but I just like the additional attacks you can get with MA. Eventually, you'll get 3/3/3 with MA. You get 2 swings(punch and kick) as if you're dual-wielding. So, 3 primary and 3 secondary swings plus 3 attacks per round. 9 potential crits in one round. Not too shabby if you ask me.

Oops!! Mis-calculated there. With 3/3/3 it's 18 hits per round. Even more impressive now.

I built my monk (str-spd concentration) to be a martial arts killing machine. I had decided to leave him weaponless. By level 19 he and RFS-81 were dishing out some serious damage. However I managed to get not 1 but 2 z-bos out of Rapax castle. So I gave it a shot. With single digit skill levels they were as effective with the bo as they were with their near maxed out marital arts skill.

The frequency of knock outs and critical hits didn't change much. ( plus now you get paralyze ) And from my observations total damage did increase! ( Though not by that much ) What really though has been pushing it for me is how the extended range benefit is helping the party. Both the Monk and RFS-81 remain in the front position but their range of targets is so much greater. (if the samurai goes light sword lightning strike on the guy in front of him, the monks don't have much difficulty finding a new target)

[ 07-10-2004, 05:37 PM: Message edited by: booklord ]

Ok, I'll go necked for now! Their MA skill is 40's so it's not too bad. I'll work on strenght and senses os already over 80.

[ 07-10-2004, 06:59 PM: Message edited by: Variol (Farseer) Elmwood ]

What's the % chance of K.O. with these gals? They seem to do it fairly often.

It's based on Str, Level, and MA skill, but i don't know the recipe.

I was wondering if there is a list of all the different professions the characters go through?
Like fighters becoming..
and Priests becoming...
I think it changes every 3 lvls?

If you are talking about the Level "Rank" Titles, there's a list of that somewhere, i'm pretty sure at Flamestryke...If you mean, "When can a given Class change to any other Class?" the answer depends upon your Attributes, not level.

i'ma little late i guess, but i had more fun when my monkey was weaponless. she just seemed to get SO many hits in that it shocked me. i guess you can tell i'm not much of a tweaker, trying to get the most out of each class. i base everything on whether i'm having fun with the char and her setup. so, on that scale, i'd haveta recommend going without weapons.

plus i seem to be one of those players who never find any of the really good weapons, anyway. i have no patience to mephisto every loot pile.

altho, booklord's dual z-bo wielding monkeys sound fun too. [img]smile.gif[/img]

V***V

Ok, I left a message there 'cos I couldn't find it. If anybody knows of such a thing I'd really like the link. I thought it would be nice to use in DnD instead of just having lvls.

Original DnD had rank titles, up to the 'teen levels, then they just got numbers added. (like Burglar, Cutpurse, etc for Thives)

Here's the page they're on at Flamestryke:

http://www.flamestryke.com/wizardry8...trykes_w8.html

Just click each Class for its titles.

(EDIT) Sorry, that's not linking to the page i quoted it from, but just goe Character Index and then Professions, pick a Class and see the titles.

[ 07-11-2004, 10:04 PM: Message edited by: Scatter ]

That's what I was looking for, thanks!

Ok, that's about all I can do with the monks! They're lvl 16 now and they've done well for the most part. I never had so much trouble with Nessie though. I just avoided him for now, 'course I was only lvl 15!

I think they really should have made it so that hybrid'ing was optional. Like the monk forgoing Psionics and being a pure fighter but better than the hybrid.

yah, a magic-free Monk wouldn't need so much Int and you'd have more left over to make them stronger.

My thought about this is to have a generic class, where you pick the Skill that gets the Bonus, the special skill (Scouting, Locks and Traps, etc), and have all the Attribute points, after Race and special skill, to distribute as you will. If you take more skills, you raise your XP bracket.

Unless Power Cast is in the monk's forseeable future, I'm not sure there is any reason to raise the monk's Int at all.

Ya' know, they're really not too bad. There are some fights that give them lots o' trouble, but definatly not my worst.

Now it's time for my 3 Mook Rangers to try their hand. I'll kepp y'all posted!