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.
Contents
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.
No weapon
There is actually no penalty for using weapon, but still this can be considered a restriction because Monks can attain proficiency 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.
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 | |
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Max | Skills |
Basic |
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Skilled | |
Expert |
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Grand Master |
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