Knight v. Monk

[Avonu]

If you want to know more about these two classes you should read these topics:

Some aspects of gameplay: Recovery Time, Dual Weapons

MM7: Knight vs Monk

[Macros the Black]

So, not only is the Monk weaker than the Thief in combat, he also has no miscelanious skills, which the Thief is master of. This is a quite unfair imbalance. How should the Monk be improved in both combat skills and miscelanious skills so that he would be on par with the Thief?

[Jymbob]

If we are comparing monk to thief now, I would take thief anyday surely.
Thieves get better: Merchant, disarm trap, stealing, ID item, alchemy and perception, all skills I find very usefull.
Monks are slightly better in Learning and Body building, yeah
Daggers are as fast as unarmed and can have elemental dmg on aswell..
Monks going Light can get Expert Body/Spirit/Mind magic though, thats a huge help compared to the thieves ability to cast Touch Light or a crappy Wizards Eye..

[Sure Valla]

Monk is way better, Merchant, disarm trap, stealing, ID item, alchemy and perception is all useless. You only need them in mm6 or mm8.

But Thief is harder, and a other playing style. So its both fun!

[Macros the Black]

If we are comparing monk to thief now, I would take thief anyday surely.
Thieves get better: Merchant, disarm trap, stealing, ID item, alchemy and perception, all skills I find very usefull.
Monks are slightly better in Learning and Body building, yeah
Daggers are as fast as unarmed and can have elemental dmg on aswell..
Monks going Light can get Expert Body/Spirit/Mind magic though, thats a huge help compared to the thieves ability to cast Touch Light or a crappy Wizards Eye..

Monk is way better, Merchant, disarm trap, stealing, ID item, alchemy and perception is all useless. You only need them in mm6 or mm8.

But Thief is harder, and a other playing style. So its both fun!

Interesting, these are very different views. Personally I find the Thief almost overpowered and the Monk very underpowered.

The Monk can live a little longer than the Thief, but a Knight or Paladin would survive even longer. In fact, there's no reason to choose a Monk over a Paladin except very late-game damage differences, but before that time they're equal in damage and the Paladin gets better magic.

Whereas the Thief does almost as much damage as the Knight the whole game long AND gets skills no one else has access to. I do agree that these skills aren't exactly needed... However, neither is the Learning skill. I notice no actual difference with my Monk who got learning skill up to 10 ASAP versus any other character with no learning skill at all. Even in endgame, they differ maybe 1 or 2 levels and I'm not even sure if that's thanks to learning.

As for magic skills, the Monk and Thief both suck. The expert skills of the Light path monk are wasted imo, because if you're still casting expert skills at that point in the game you're doing something wrong. If the Monk is your sole healer, first of all good luck with that, but second you might as well leave his skills at basic and just put alot of points in it. There's only a 10 hit point difference between casting a level 10 rank basic heal versus a level 10 rank expert heal. Although I guess you can get access to Heroism if you expert spirit.. Assuming you have noone with good enough alchemy skill to do the same. So I guess this really only ever makes a difference if you're playing a party of all monks.

[Jymbob]

Monk is way better, Merchant, disarm trap, stealing, ID item, alchemy and perception is all useless. You only need them in mm6 or mm8.

But Thief is harder, and a other playing style. So its both fun!

I guess it depends on playstyle, if you multiloot a couple of dragons you dont need merchant, disarm trap, stealing. If you know the game you dont need perception.

So it all boils down to the player.

I like hard games and I dont multiloot, sometimes I simply need stealing to get the cube, and I remember my 4xrangers with no merchant skills couldnt afford to level up several times.

If you have a pally or cleric in your team and dont use the monks magic, the thief will be better and easier to play in every aspect IMO.
Still monks are fun to me simply because you only have to put points in so few skills.