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You don't get the 2-handed extra damage for monks.


It's strange how many players use weak monks.

 

@kmonster
One reason why people play with low strength monks is that monks needs their ability points elsewhere. Unlike with normal tanks, dex and wis must be high to at least get some AC. Con is needed since they get less HP/lvl than other tanks. Some may want int for expertise and skills. You simply don't have much over for strength.

 

And if you use the EoU mod that makes fists "light weapons", you don't need a high STR to get a good AB bonus.

 

So playing low strength monks is some sort powergaming.
And using EoU to remove the drawbacks even more.

The muscles decide the speed and damage potential of an attack using fists.
Martial artists who split bricks can do this because they have gained enough strength to hit so fast and not because their knowledge about the world is so high.

It sounds pretty unrealistic that monks who aren't even strong enough to score a knockout in a box ring should be able to penetrate the thick skin of some monsters.

WIS is used for the stunning attack and quivering palm feat, you can also consider the unarmed damage increase as experience based, so strength isn't overestimated.

The seemingly old, wizened, but bery wise monks have still far more strength than the average adventurer although they might not look so.
If people get weaker with old age it's mainly because they don't use their muscles as often as before any more.

 

If it helps I have played monks in pnp and on the computer and they are anything but weak. Also in 3.0 all monks used a BAB of .75 as stated earlier but they gained an extra attack every three points gained. This was in addition to the flurry of blows ability. They got rid of this ability because they had to utilize a difficult to use system of non monk level BAB not counting towards their unarmed attacks. In 3.5 this was changed to giving them the standard BAB progression but they improved flurry of blows by changing it from one extra attack that gave you a -2 penalty to a flurry that starts at -2 and decreases the penalty to 0 and then later grants a second extra attack.

 

Also, monk fists are considered light weapons in pnp. The fact that they weren't in IWD2 was probably an oversight. A monk with low strength still doesn't hit as hard as a monk with a high strength score (weapon finesse only adds the dex bonus to the BAB, not damage), so I'd hardly call making a low dex monk "power gaming".