Quote Originally Posted by Xenogears View Post
Okay I get the first two. The third one. Well I never thought they did low damage. By the end of it they are doing 1d20 without any alterations. Most melee weapons don't do half that. My monks usually have a fairly high AC actually... Better than any other class I've done unless I went full out on Full Plate and even then sometimes.
1d20 + weak Str bonus VS 1d10 + 1.5 x huge Str bonus + massive PA. Then you factor in the fact that the monk's AB is at least 5 points lower by level 20 (more, with a lack of magic weapons and a worse Str), and the actual average damage per round is way lower.

The 1d20 is an illusion. It's never been good - not even with just the PHB. A Power Attacking Fighter with a two-handed weapon beats monk damage. (Just using the level-based difference in ABs for PA, he's dealing 1d10+10 against the Monk's 1d20, before any other bonuses. With modest Strengths of, say, 24 both, that's 1d10+20 vs. 1d20+7, or 25.5 vs. 17.5)


How high can a monk's AC get, anyway? You can easily make a WBL-legal Duelist with AC in the high 70s by level 20. I suppose a lot of the same tricks would work, admittedly (but the Swashbuckler/Fighter/Something/Duelist has the advantage of Int synergizing for damage and AC, and a bucketload of feats for stuff like Robilar's Gambit, and good magic weapons).


As for AMF... yeah, the last time I dropped my PCs in an AMF (epic-level druid and monk), against a bone ooze, the monk died first, the druid made it out alive. About half of the monk's abilities are (Su).