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The monk is the most powerful class in the game except for maybe a Ken/Mage. He starts weaker, but when hits 10th he starts to become effective, and buy 14th he is broke. At 16th and a girdle of hill giant str. I had him fight ALL three of the elemental portals in the underdark by himself with one lay-of-hands. If you want to see true abuse delivered from your main character and magic bouncing off him like faerie dust, start one now! You will be glad you did, lots of fun.

This is really a major flaw in BGII. I mean, if the game is too easy for ONE character, imagine the yawn it gives when playing 4, much less 6.

I have given up playing with my 4 becuase the game was too easy. I would only play again soloing, was considering a Monk actually. Are the early levels a challenge still? Or is it whack whack whack all the way?

Is there any point to it after the Monk is past level 12-13?

Why oh why didn't BGII make some sort of AI that could gauge how much punishment a given party was dealing out and increase/decrease the difficulty level as a result of this? For example time spent killing a standard beast (dragon). If it's 2 rounds, make the game super hard. If it's 10, medium, 20 easier, etc.

Um, you probably already know this, but just in case...

Have you altered the difficulty of the game at all? I know that under "Options" on one of the menus, you can choose to have opponents deal more damage or something.

Monk is definately broken.

I just solo-ed a Monk through as far as I could stand before boredom set in (the underwater city).

It is amazing how quickly a single character jumps up levels! Just a simple quest like giving acorns to the dryads (or whatever) is enough for a new level, or at least a fair portion.

The only trouble I had was early on with the Monk, getting enough money to pay for belt of 19 strength. After that much easier. I did Nalia's hold too soon though, Trolls are tough and the last 3 trolls wicked. I managed to kill them, I should have waited 2 levels though then it would have been easy.

The best quest for experience was definately the Beholder eye thing! I think I gained 3 levels in about 30 min. Stay stealthy, use the rod on the eye, hit it once its dead. Don't try to take on the Gauths, just sneak around them. Later kill them when you are above 14th level or so, or have magic robe.

Besides gnarly magic resistance, nobody mentioned that when you get to level 20 or 21 you are immune to non-magic weapons. Actually, it's hardest getting to level 10 or so, after that levels just fly. At max. level 21 lots and lots of monsters can't hit you, no magic weapon. The entire underwater city, in fact, excepting the king I think. Boring as hell. Ditto with quivering palm. Up strength. Run in. Quiver. Hit dragon 1-8 times in 2 rounds. If it manages to save vs. death each time run away and rest. Repeat. Firekrag went down in 1 try. Yawn.

Monk definately broken. With exp. cap removed magic resistance over 100% disgusting damage ever-increasing hit points/decreasing AC its silly. Saving throws are well negative. When hands hit as +4 weapons nothing is safe. Period.

Yes broken, because even at a higher level or difficulty its like, way easy. I didn't even have to use cheese tactics, no stealing from shops for money. Unless you count quivering palm cheesy...but hey that's the Monk specialty.

When the hands of a monk hits as +4 weapons??

I don't know exactly, but at some point I could hit Liches and anything else I came across. It's possible quivering palm killed a few liches and the hit did not "damage" the lich, it just failed a save. But I think you have to be able to hit them to quiver them.

But around level 21, even with lame equipment (I am not patient enough, all I had was a +2 ring of protection and cloak of sewers) it was all over.

Can somebody clarify the monk +4 hands? All I know is that I could smack greater mummies, etc. at will.

Originally posted by two:

Can somebody clarify the monk +4 hands? All I know is that I could smack greater mummies, etc. at will.

It is like the fire elements when they hit/pound it is considerate as a +4 weapon and the same with the monk. Try this on the demi-lich and you will see that you are able to hit. The spell Melf's m.m. is also considerate a +4 weapon.

so, on level 21 i can hit the demilich?
and the resistance to magic from the monk protects from imrisionement?

High level monk (20-21 level):

I was not ever imprisoned. I think magic resistance does cover imprisonment; heck, it covers nearly everything, from magic-based fire of a fireball to charms/confusion. It does not cover some non-specific area effects like time stop (or web I think), but when a lich time-stops it just casts a bunch of offensive spells on you that MR resists anyway, so it's no big deal. Gives your mouse-wrist a chance to rest.

Who cares anyway? With a high level monk just quivering palm the damn lich in one shot, or if you like use stunning blow and just smack it around for a few rounds doing around 80-100 pts./dam on average. Wade through the contingencies with continued smacking and smack some more. I prefer quivering palm/stunning blow because it's faster, not because it's less dangerous. Both ways are equally safe (100%).

I think magic resistance is under-rated in the game, if you can get a character up to around 80% it is brutal. Mages? yawn. Spells have to go through MR plus saving throw, and by that time you are hacking and slashing merrily. My Monk at level 21 with a few +5% MR amulets/robes and stuff I beleive I was over 90% MR. If I really cared/maxed out on items that added to magic resistance, I suspect it would be easy to get it over 100%. I have not looked at this though. 90% was good enough. As I said before, I was kinda lazy with items for my Monk, no crushing gauntlets or things like that.

By the way, an under-rated item I found useful: boots of XX (can't remember the name), which give -5 to AC vs. missles. This plus the Monk's innate negative to missle attacks made him pretty immune to arrows and the like. I kept them instead of boots of speed, the Monk is already fast enough. Allows you to wade in kill the fighters and casually smack the archers later.

i really don't know why some guys says that kensai/mages are better than monks, iplayed with a monk and now any class looks weak, i dont think kensai/mages are strongers than monks

I'll have to agree with Ripper about Monks being stronger than kensai/mages, mainly becos of the immunities and magic resistance of a monk and ofcourse stunning blow and quivering palm. It would be a tough fight but I think the monk using stunning blow and quivering palm would have a chance almost every round to stun or insta-death the kensai/mage...and as those of us that have played monks know...everyone will eventually fail a save and drop. Even with stoneskin

Well its about bloody time!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I've been saying this same thing for a couple of months now.Having to argue my point with idiots who are trying to convince me that DRUIDS ! or FIGHTER/MAGES are better.
Pah!!!!!!! I spit on their poncey tree hugging,wand waving,dress wearing excuses for a an out and out Hard Bastard!!!!!!!!!
AND..If you think he makes the game to easy:
UP THE BLOODY DIFFICULTY YA WINGEING GITS!!!


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I am....Kane

yeah, monks are the bests , i really dont know if my monk can lost to any1, i just put him to kill bodhi and her bunch of vampires alone and he does it well just with an amulet of power, and if the enemy if stronger you can always run and hide in shadows

Also the game was'nt written to be played Solo.So when your Chr. advances to a high level very early on what do you expect!!!
When played in single player with a full complement of NPC's he balances quite well and it takes ages to reach those high levels.
So once again,"be quiet!"



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I am....Kane

Originally posted by Kane:
Also the game was'nt written to be played Solo.So when your Chr. advances to a high level very early on what do you expect!!!
When played in single player with a full complement of NPC's he balances quite well and it takes ages to reach those high levels.
So once again,"be quiet!"

I don't buy this. After all even with 5 NPC's along most characters will max. out on experience before or in the underdark if you do most of the quests in chapters 2 and 3. So you will have a 21 level monk running around the underdark (who can kill everything on its own) plus a sorcerer level 17 plus etc. etc. It's silly, obviously BGII is underpowered, or the Monk and some other classes overpowered.

It does not take that long to hit maximum experience with single class characters.

Also, regarding a previous post, even on the hardest setting BGII is extremely beatable with a solo monk. My experience with the hardest setting is that it slowed down battles somewhat, but did not change the outcome at all (I won). After all, the toughest of the tough guys usually go down via quivering palm and difficulty does not factor into that at all. Ditto with magic resistance and immunities, it does not matter if they do more damage if you are immune/can't be hit.

Monks do rock, but just to clarify a couple earlier posts. They are NOT immune to Imprisonment...in fact, magic resistance does NOTHING against Imprisonment (or Maze). I had had my Level 21 - dual ring of Gaxx, amulet of magical resistance, Sword of Balduran, 104%+ magical resistance - monk Imprisoned by a Lich.

Sure, you can quivering palm or whatever, but you do have to rest once in a while to recharge those (;

Boots of Deflection are much better for a monk than Boots of Speed because Boots of Speed don't do ANYTHING on a monk...they're immune to haste effects. On the other hand, archers pretty much needed crits to hit my monk with missiles anyway so I used Boots of Stealth.

As far as hitting greater mummies go, I'm fairly sure you only need +3 for them since I've never had trouble with Celestial Fury and the monk is only supposed to have +3 unless he's using the Gauntlets of Crushing. If he can hit Kangaxx, that's interesting. Melfs MM's are +5 weapons. Fire elementals hit Kangaxx because of the fire damage.

Still, in a one-on-one fight at the exp cap the monk will lose to a Berzerker or Barbarian...or Kensai or any other fighter for that matter. Quivering Palm and Stunning Blow don't help any because at that level the saves are made automatically. Most monsters will fail eventually, but they aren't level 19 with +5 or more (Gaxx, ROP, Helm) to their saves.

Someone mentioned wiping out all the elemental portals single-handedly without stopping -- ANY well equipped fighter can do that. As far as the magic resistance goes, the monk really isn't any better than an enraged Berzerker with the Cloak of Mirroring. In fact, because he can get hit by Imprison he's worse.

When it comes to it, ANY level 21 character is brutally powerful. Level 40 in the expansion is going to be insane. It's going to be hard to find any monsters that would be a challenge...multiple dragons at once? Demon Lords complete with their hordes? Lloth? Bhaal himself returned?

Of course, I've seen people playing on-line games of BG1 with the cap off and parties of characters in the upper 30's...go figure.

what the hell1!?!?!??!
he is saying that the monk is the best class in the game and i think he can beat any warrior in the game!

One of the battles I enjoyed most with my monk (who I took to silly exp levels) was in the Elven city. I'd send him golem-hunting. There he was, whaling away on an Admantium Golem, just kicking the crud out of it. The reason for this? Insane numbers of attacks per round.

Monk: <thunk>
Monk: <thunk>
Golem: <tries to atta...>
Monk: <thunk>
Golem: <tries to atta...>
Monk: <thunk>

Since he was only doing 2-4 damage a hit, this went on for a while... <snicker> But it was fun.

Bah, a 23rd level Assassin would woop a monk any day of the week and twice on Sunday!

Game over! Simple as that.

Yeah, if the monk was level 7