Monk

General

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

Monk is a choice for a player that wants to practice both magic and hand-to-hand fight, but rather isn't interested in using weapons. It is a good class to gain 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
• blessed spellbook, which can be either healing, protection or sleep
• random scroll
• 3 potions of healing
• food rations, apples, oranges and fortune cookies
• 20% chance of a magic marker, or if not, then 10% chance of an oil lamp.

Monk restrictions

The thing that make a monk unique is a set of restrictions put on this class.

Vegetarianism

Monk feels guilty about eating non-vegetarian food inflicting a little allignment penalty. As a recompensation for this he gets all the resistances (except magic) by reaching experience levels. Most players choosing this role are trying for vegetarian conduct although the penalty can be considered fair price for getting some intrinsics.

No body suit, no shield

Monk is penalized for using a body suit (all armors and mails, this doesn't include robes, cloaks and shirts) with a large to-hit penalty. For a low-level monk it is virtually impossible to hit while wearing a body suit. 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.

No weapon

There is actually no penalty for using weapon, but still using weapon can be considered a restriction. Monks train few weapon skills and even them to basic, training martial arts to Grand Master. 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.

There is a Monk FAQ.