Monk

The monk is one of the player roles in NetHack. Monk are always human, lawful, neutral or chaotic. He is a martial-artist suiting to the "Shaolin Monk stereotype".

The Monk is a good choice for a player who wants to practice both magic and hand-to-hand combat, but isn't interested in using weapons. It is a good class with which to achieve conducts.

Monks know all nonmagical armors from the start. Their special spell is restore ability. When crowned they get a spellbook of restore ability instead of the standard crowning sword.

Starting Equipment

• +2 leather gloves
• +1 robe
• a blessed spellbook, (equal chance of healing, protection or sleep)
• a random scroll (not enchant weapon)
• 3 potions of healing
• 3 to 6 uncursed food rations
• 5 to 10 apples
• 5 to 10 oranges
• 3 to 6 fortune cookies
• 20% chance of an uncursed magic marker
• 8% chance of an oil lamp

Code of conduct

The things that make a monk unique are the penalties imposed for non-Monkish behaviour:

Vegetarianism

Monks feels guilty about eating non-vegetarian food, and suffer a small alignment penalty for doing so. As compensation for this, they gain intrinsics rapidly as they level up. Most players of this role keep vegetarian conduct simply to avoid the penalty, although the penalty can be considered a fair price for getting otherwise tricky to find intrinsics, such as disintegration resistance.

No body armor, no shield

Monks are penalized for wearing body armor (all armors and mails; this doesn't include robes, cloaks and shirts) with a -20 to-hit penalty. For a low-level Monk it is virtually impossible to hit while wearing body armor. Some players however start using them when reaching high level, dexterity and Luck.

Wearing a shield makes a Monk incapable of dealing a "staggering blow" which reduces his abilities in martial-arts.

Magic

Monks are the only role other than Wizards that can achieve Basic skill in all magical schools. They can only attain Expert skill in the Healing school.

Skills

Monk skills
Max	Skills
Basic	Weapons: quarterstaff, spear, crossbow, shuriken Spells: attack, divination, enchantment, matter
Skilled	Spells: clerical, escape
Expert	Spells: healing
Grand Master	Combat: martial arts

Strategy

No weapon

There is actually no penalty for using weapons, but this can still be considered a restriction because Monks can attain proficiency in very few weapon skills. They can train up to Grand Master in martial arts though. As a result, they deal more damage bare-handedly than using a weapon (with an exception for some powerful artifacts). Trying for a weaponless conduct is very popular for a monk.

External links

• A Monk FAQ.