Monks

[Eldariel]

What's this talk about 1d20? Level 20 Monk-damage in 3.5 is 2d10...

Anyways, as has already been said, a straight Monk sucks for the mentioned reasons. However, Monk does have one redeeming quality: It's an incredible two-level dip! You get high saves, decent HD, 3 feats, evasion increased unarmed damage, Flurry of Blows, Wis to AC, etc. all from one-two levels. So Monk is even better than Fighter as a dip class.

Outside that, Monk really needs Prestige Classes to work. Sacred Fist is a great class for example - Cleric casting - 3 suddenly means the Monk is a competent combatant and Tashalatora allows any Psionic class to "multiclass" in Monk. Also, Unarmed Swordsage/Shadow Sun Ninja both kick ass, as does Shou Disciple. So the Monk itself sucks, but it can often be worth it to dip the class, get Monkish abilities combined with casting/manifesting/martial maneuvers, or going for the level 20 Unarmed Damage (because of size increases - it's the largest core damage in the game, so if you have lots of size increases available, you want to apply them to it Fist of the Forests 3+Improved Natural Attack+Enlarge Person+Empty Hand Mastery = Colossal Damage Dice). So stuff around Monk doesn't suck, it's just the Monk-class. And even it has the redeeming feature of having great two first levels (it's the remaining 18 levels that's the problem).