Smorensky

Sounds like a DW Rogue, Fighter, Barb but without the capability to use life-leech weapons and no escapes and overall less utility.....and has to actually get hit resulting in pointless micro and wasted Priest spells. Monk isn't terrible, but could use some love as he's not really the best at anything. You haven't tried playing monk, did you? Ok I'll do a comparison between monk and barbarian for the sake of argument Barbarians can do massive dmg due to Carnage passive making all of their attacks do slightly less dmg in a small aoe radius (best used with high INT due to aoe range increase and increased duration on all active skills). Their main downside is low deflection (15 base compared to monk's 25) further lowered when using Frenzy. This makes barbarians very fragile early game and requires some hvy investment into defensive talents if you don't plan to hide behind a dedicated tank. Their massive bonus to healt helps out with this issue. Barbarians have several activated abilities and two activated dmg dealing attacks these are: Frenzy - Might and Con +4, deflection -10 for 12 seconds. 1 per encounter Barbarian Yell - AoE fear for 12 seconds. 1 per encounter Barbarian Shout - AoE Terrify for 12 seconds. 1 per encounter Savage Defiance - Self buff providing massive heal over time for 12 seconds (if upgraded also provides +10 deflection and +10 all defences for 15 seconds). 1 per encounter Bloodlust - bonus attack speed for 8 seconds. 1 per encounter Barbaric Blow - massive aoe full attack with bonus crit chane and crit dmg (carnage works with it, offering even greater aoe dmg). 1 per encounter Hearth of Fury - massive aoe attack doing +25% dmg (carnage also works with it). 1 PER REST. Other Barbarian abilities include a variety of passives that can nake a barb dish out more dmg or be slightly more tankier. So in a single combat encounter a barbarian will use Frenzy and Bloodlust, then move into the fray (once dedicated tank engaged most of the enemies). Normally barbarians do most of their dmg by simply autoattacking. If enemies are clustered together (and you have high INT) u can also use Brabaric Blow to deal extra aoe dmg. Since Heart of Fury is usable 1 per rest you will want to save this for more dificult encounters. Savage Defiance will help save you in case your health starts dropping too fast. Now for the monk... Wounds mechanic is monk's greatest weakness and at the same time their strongest weapon. The reason for this is simple you have to take dmg to do dmg effectively. Fortunately monks have excellent base deflection (same as fighters 25) and can take several passives to further enhance their defence without sacrifising their dmg dealing capabilites. How wounds work: for every 10 points of dmg received you get 1 wound. If you take lesser wounds passive you get a wound every 8 dmg received. "Why I think monks are easily the best dmg dealers in the game" The reason is simple, monks have 3 active dmg dealing abilities: 1. Torment's Reach (costs 1 wound) - Full Attack with +50% bonus crush dmg in a line (2m aoe) that also reduces enemy might by -2 for 20 secs. Full Attack means you attack with both weapons (unarmed counts as two wapons) meaning the above mentioned effect strikes twice... 2. Force of Anguish (costs 2 wounds) - deals normal dmg and knocks a target back 7m while also knocking it down for 10 seconds... This means you kick the enemy across the room and out of the fight and also leave it lying there for 10 seconds... Not sure about you ppl but this is easily one of the best CC attacks in the game... 3. Flagelant's Path (costs 3 wounds) - A very fast charge attack doing 20-30dmg to all enemies between you and your target (range 10m). How is this different from a barbarian or a fighter? Easy, THERE IS NO LIMIT TO HOW MANY TIMES PER BATTLE YOU CAN USE THESE ATTACKS. Normally when I engage 2 enemies I generate around 4-5 wounds during the first 2 seconds of a fight. That means I can kick one of them to the other end of the room and use Torment's Reach 3 times in quick succession (monks attack rly, rly fast when unarmed) doing massive aoe dmg if there are more enemies on the field. Not to meniton that I will still be generating wounds every time I get hit, meaning I will constantly spam all of the monks active abilities... The 3rd ability Flagelant's Path is capable of doing ridiculous dmg if enemies are groupd up, being able to use it several times in a row is just totaly crazy, not mentioning that it doubles as an escape ability... All this would be insane on it's own without monk's passive abilities... Here's what some of the passives do: Turning Wheel - for every wound suffered you do +5% bonus fire dmg, capping at +50%. Rooting Pain - every time you suffer a wound you do 10-15 aoe crush dmg (1.25m radius) Conclusion: Monk has a totaly different philosophy compared to barbarian, rouge or fighter. Your HP will constantly go down in a fight, there's no avoiding it, but you will also do extreme dmg for every point of HP lost... The main issue here is ballancing dmg vs tanking as you will need to strike an ideal ballance. You don't want to be too squishy as you won't be able to survive long enough to use all those wounds you accumulated, on the other hand being too tanky means you won't be able to generate wounds fast enough to power your abilities. All in all it is a very fun and powerfull class to play and I heartily recomend everyone to try it out at least once. The enchantments you miss out if you use unarmed only? The loss is almost completely irrelevant, as you will still dish out insane dmg.If you want to max your character out, you can always use fully enchanted weapons in both hands (as all monk abilities work with weapons as well). Well I hope this clarifies a few issues for anyone looking to play a monk

Completely agree on this. Those that played BG1/2 certanly remember some rly horrible attributes on many companions (Jaheira in BG1 or Keldorn and Viconia in BG2). But any issues they had could easily be fixed with a few items. Example 1: Keldorn would be a solid mele fighter if his DEX wasn't disasterously low (9). Solution: Find Gloves of Dexterity (DEX set to 18). Result: A solid and dependable mele fighter (when equipped with Carsomyr he was second only to main char and Sarevok). Example 2: Viconia could easily be the best cleric in game if her CON wasn't horribly low (, combined with disasterous STR (10). This effectively restricted her role to ranged support, regardless of her admirable AC due to high DEX (19). Solution: Find Girdle of Fortitude (CON set to 18 for 8 hours 1/day) and Gauntlets of Ogre Power (STR set to 18/00). Result: Top of the line battle cleric that can both provide support and dish out dmg in mele, while holding her own against any enemy.

Hmm not sure if other ppl noticed this. Monk's Transcendent Suffering ability provides incorrect dmg bonus in combat. Out of combat: the ability information on character screen is correct listing +12 accuracy bonus and +10.1 dmg bonus (+8 base x1.27 from 19 might) for transcendent Suffering lvl4. Once you initiate combat: both ability information and active effects show only the basic bonus of +12 accuracy and +8 dmg I tested this in actual combat to check if it was just a tooltip error and it is not. The added damage bonus of Transcendent Suffering is not affected by Might at all.

I created a monk as my main and so far (lvl 5) I'm having a blast. The monk can dish out some crazy dmg if built right. On the topic of NOT BEING ABLE TO ENCHANT FISTS. It is only a slight handicap since Transcendent Suffering will provide a massive boost to both accuracy and dmg, of +12 accuracy and +8 dmg on max lvl. Keep in mind that this skill only activates in combat, so if you look at your character screen you won't see any bonuses while out of combat. Once you start a fight, checking the character screen will show buffed stats. With unarmed you will loose out on a few enchantments, such as bonus elemental dmg and slaying enchantments, but for most of the game it won't present a mayor issue as the shear dmg buff of Transcendent Suffering mostly balances out the missig enchantments (+12 accuracy and +8 dmg is far better then Superb quality enchantment). Late game however, once you get access to all enchantments and crafting materials, the difference will start to show so switching over to spears or hatchets (both in peasant wpn category) might be more effective.

Well most remarks about companions being "sub-optimal" are right on the money, as most have a rather strange talent/attribute distribution, but TBH it doesn't matter that much, so long as you are not playing on PoTD dif (ironically, the first time I started a game I tried it on PoTD...). I built a fire godlike monk for DPS/off tank role (some tankines is needed since monks have to take dmg to deal dmg) and went with 19 might, 10 con, 13 dex and 16 resolve... I got as far as Temple of Eothas 2nd floor at lvl3 with Edar and Aloth, before asking myself WTF am I doing with my 1st playthrough... So I restarted on hard and that monk I built... Well he steamrolls most encounters, as dmg output is just insane. So far I'm fine with my main being way overpowered compared to other companions, as game would be boring if I had 6 chars built to same standard, therefore I don't use hirelings. However on PoTD, as far as I can tell from that short playthrough, you actually need companions that are optimized, at least to a certain degree, in order to avoid turning most encounters into a nightmarish tactical chore. A mod could certainly fix all companion issues and atm you can do it yourself using cheat console, but I belive some "official" NPC tweaking would be perfectly fine. Some suggestions on my part: 1. let all of them start at lvl1 when recruited and let player lvl them manually 2. for attributes, give them a set but ballanced distribution, so players can choose from several build options when lvling them up. So in the worst case scenario they are slightly sub-optimal compared to the main character, but not OP.