I don't often play a Monk but I have a party of 3 of them right now. Are they best bare handed or with weapons. I do have flamestrykes mod installed and I'm in Arnika. I did do 8 lvls of Psionic so it will be slow leveling.

Haven't played with any mods, but my vote is to stick to unarmed: if you use weapons, you lose the skill bonus. Also, if I remember right (haven't played for a while), at higher skill levels unarmed monks start stunning their opponents; don't think that works if they're using weapons.

With my monks, I'd use unarmed and missile weapons at low levels. Once they leveled up and had some useful spells, I'd switch to unarmed and an extended range weapon and use Psionics for offense, defense, healing, etc. when opponents were further away.

[ 05-06-2006, 10:12 PM: Message edited by: DinkumThinkum ]

Yeah, it just seems best to go with unarmed.

However they are the most deadly with the Zatachi bo you find in the rapax castle it's not even close. If you can have one do staff it will pay off. The staff of doom is great but I don't know if a monk can use it and the ebon staff you make is pretty good too.

They can use the staff of Doom. I always give that to a monk and build up psionics on ranged targets, then switch them to the Z-bo later in the game.

I have 2 monks in current party, one with a polearm and one with a staff (Staff of Doom). Although monks do fine later with unarmed skill, the HP damage is limited. Looking forward to the Zat Bo in this game. P.S. The Ebon Staff is limited to pure casters.

With an extended weapon, you get the knockout if it is part of the weapon attributes. It seems it gets more freqent as you progress but I have been misled by faux stats before so I don't know for sure. They are deadly either way. A knocked out opponent is a soon to be dead one.

Dinkum, were those mods for Oblivion? I'm getting that soon. It will be fun mainly for the graphics and exploration. I will miss the party of misfits in Wiz. And the leveling with monsters that don't level exactly as you do (Wiz has a certain range of levs for monsters in each reagion, Ob does not, they always lev with you). And the integrated story. And...

Since this post is not too old...

I'll throw my current analysis of the monk's weapon options in:

It all depends on the type of monk you build and who is traveling with him/her. My idea is to focus on what the monk does best and that is martial arts for close encounters and psionics for long range. There is also the extended range to think about, so I'm now training with the Shillelah in the secondary hand to get ready for the Staff of Doom -- the monk doesn't need the dual skill doing this. I'm going to use the Zatoichi Bo for my samurai's extended weapon (simply because its lighter and the Staff of Doom is heavier - the samurai has much heavier armor [the monk's stealth means that the samurai gets targeted more, thus must keep the samurai armored to the teeth.]

Mind you that my samurai is going to focus on dual swords for a long time before putting a Shillelah in the offhand for training staff skill!


Final Weapons:
Monk:
Alternate Primary: Staff of Doom
Primary: Hand
Secondary: Winterwand
Alternate Secondary: None

Samurai:
Alternate Primary: Zatoichi Bo
Primary: Muramasa Blade
Secondary: Enchanted Wakizashi
Alternate Secondary: None
Spells take care of long range for both.

My other party members are:
Ranger
Gadgeteer
Bishop x 2

Here is my monk build chart:
L16 DEX 100
L19 SPD 100
L29 INT 100
L38 SEN 100
L40 STR 100
L50 PIE 84
L50 VIT 90
Note that I don't start building my STR / PIE / VIT seriously until after level 19 -- although I put in some points to get this until then:
STR 58
PIE 50
VIT 55
before I start building STR a bit at level 20!

And samurai chart:
L14 DEX 100
L19 SPD 100
L27 INT 100
L38 SEN 100
L40 STR 100
L50 PIE 84
L50 VIT 90

Although it might be tempting to build PIE to 100 - I opt for items and their own realm builds [monk and samurai only] to protect them from spells. My other 4 are going to build PIE to 100 ; )

In terms of Monk equipment, the Assassin's Cap will give a 20% bonus to critical. Is there anything else a Monk can wear that gives a critical bonus so that you could get a Monk's critical up to 125? That with the Staff of Doom 15% kill, a Monk would be a real killing machine.

Come to think of it, how does the game handle something like 100 Critical Strike (4% kill) coupled with the Assassin's Cap to make it 120 Critical Strike? Does it round up to give you 5% kill?

Extended range weapons reconsidered...I'm currently playing with a Hayai Bo for both my Monk and Samurai and I love the ease at which they exchange short range for extended weapons, so I'm going with the Zatoichi Bo for both. It can't kill like the Staff of Doom, but I'd rather have convenience –- no curse to deal with. The 2nd Z. Bo is a random from the RQC, but I want what I want ; )

You get 5% kill from each player (100 critical strike: 1% at start plus 1% per 25 points of CS = 5%) plus the 5% kill from the Z. Bo, so I'll just take the 10% kill and be happy. And it looks like I'm not the only one that did a mad search for an item to along with that Assassin's Cap! All you need is another 5 points CS to get another 1% kill, but alas I couldn't find a single item...makes one wonder if % to kill uses a decimal such as the hat could give: 5.8%!

I've changed my build chart - putting STR ahead of INT [STR is cool since it gives three benefits in one] and PIE ahead of VIT [more spell power for the hybrids - Monk has built in damage resistance anyway and they'll both be hard to hit at a certain point of skill development] I'm not sure how SEN has influence over critical strike {except adding skill points to it and making it easier to hit enemies}, but I'm going to let it get to 100 eventually just in case:

Monk:
L16 DEX 100
L19 SPD 100
L32 STR 100
L36 INT 100
L42 SEN 100
L50 PIE 90
L50 VIT 84

Sammy:
L14 DEX 100
L19 SPD 100
L33 STR 100
L33 INT 100
L44 SEN 100
L50 PIE 90
L50 VIT 84

[ 09-08-2006, 06:27 PM: Message edited by: Roboghost ]

Roboghost: "You get 5% kill from each player (100 critical strike: 1% at start plus 1% per 25 points of CS = 5%)"

Didn't know you get one point at the start. Excellent!