What do you do with a monk?

[Spiff]

Hey all,
I've a question about monks. Has anybody really found them to be very useful characters? I've had a pure class deep gnome monk in my party for the entire game so far and he doesn't seem as useful as the other characters of the party. He doesn't seem to be able to hit nearly as hard or often as my fighter and cleric, in fact I've never gotten his stunning blow to do anything. He used to be good at distracting and leading enemies in circles with his fast move and bonus to dex and wisdom, but I'm in severed hand now and the only thing keeping him alive recently is mirror image/blur/invis.

Is he just too low level, he is only 8 (11 with a 3 level penalty)? Can I expect him to start pulling a little more weight in the party when he levels up? or is he destined to stay in the role of training dummy for the bad guys?

[Bozos of Bones]

You're in Severed Hand with a level 12 party!? My condolences.

[Black Baron]

How did you manage to be in severed hand with 11-12 level party? I am sorry, but as it looks IMHO the last battle will be a sure failure.
With 6 chars, you should be able to be there when you are level 15. You finish the game when you are level 16.


Now to monk-what stats does he have? A monk should have high strength or high dex, provided you have some mod that gives you the ability to use "weapopn finisse" feat. Spells that damage saving throws ( foe: greater malison, if it exists there) + stunning blow=dead enemies.

[Spiff]

The party is only low level because I havn't leveled them in a while. At first I though it would be a good idea to keep them a level or two lower than what they should be for some exta exp, but then I realized the extra challenge made the game a lot more fun [img]smile.gif[/img]

The last battle is pretty hard so far, maybe 10 tries so far and I've only gotten them to run to the fountain 3 times. The one time they did run and I still had everyone alive the stupid monks killed my sorc since she was dominated :\ Been switching some gear and spells around though and I think I'll probably get it soon.

My monk went for dex and wisdom though, not as much str. I was expecting the weapon finesse to work on fists untill I tried picking it at level 3 I think...
Is there some way to get it to work with unarmed combat? Also, is the DC on the stunning blow's save work by the level of the monk or the damage he does? Maybe that's why I've never seen it work, he usually does pretty weak damage.