I have been playing pathfinder for a while now but only recently tried my hand at building a monk. Had fun planning out what feats I wanted to take at what level. Started looking into what the forums had to say and noticed a lot of complaining and hating on the monks. But I enjoy the monk concept too much to let it go and kept tinkering with my monk. Finally I had enough of all the hating on the monk and ran the numbers at various level. To my shock I found that they were right. AC is lower compared to a full plate wearing fighter, attack goes lower too. And the whole MAD thing (Multi Ability Dependent).
Monks vs Fighter. Long run Fighter gets higher AC because magic shields and armor. Higher attack because of Weapon Training and magic items. Amulet of Mighty Fists costs x2.5 as much as a similarly enchanted weapon, that is just brutal. Monks robes, up the damage by one level and increase AC +1 but don't even give an enhancement. You could probably add an enchantment bonus to it but it would probably incur a x1.5 increase in cost for multiple abilities.
Monk vs Ranger or Paladin. Instead of Weapon training, the Ranger gets favored enemy and the Paladin gets holy weapons. Both get spells. Both still also get the benefits of affordable weapons and armor.
Monk vs Rogue. Ok I like Rogues as much as the next guy but this is just a travesty. First Rogues get a bump in HD. Next they get rogue tricks. Bleeding Attack, Slow Reflexes, Fast Stealth. On top of being able to drop huge damage with sneak attacks. What did the monks get... Oh and Rogues get the advantage of affordable weapons and armor.
The Monk is supposed to be the eastern version of the fighter, but it looks like they have been demoted to at around or below the Rogue in ability. Now that the Ninja is here to fill the role of eastern Rogue, where is the Monk to go? Enough is enough, I am gonna fix this.
~Wize