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.