When I saw Athnul in the Monk deck, I immediate thought she'd be fun to play, but the more I looked at her, the more I wondered ... what does she really *do*?
d10+d6+2 base doesn't really seem like a lot of combat oomph, she's only a middling at best scout because her evasion ability shuffles whatever she ran into back into the deck ...
I feel like I must be missing something with her kit, but I cannot figure out what it is.
One of my group members played Athnul all the way through Season of the Runelords (OP rules).
She gets enhancements to her combat check even if she puts Skill Feats in Wisdom (you're almost never not recharging for a combat check). This lets her double dip Wisdom barrier/close checks with her combat, at the expense of having a lower die for blessings. Luckily, there's quite a few Gorums in the Monk deck. She also has the Amulet of Mighty Fist line (Fiery Fists/Furious Fists) to boost her combat checks even more, so that helps too. The Monk deck also has the Ascetic's Belt, Serpentform Belt and Ring of Serene Contortions to help boost combat checks. She never seemed to have a problem with combat.
She has very few things clogging her cycle velocity. She can actually explore with impunity because of a decent combat + lots of blessings and allies.
My group member used the Keen Strike Monk to use Fortitude for all barrier checks, and in addition to being hilarious ("hrrrrnnnn, I'm going to tank the Explosive Trap with my body!"), it concentrates almost all the checks into two stats.
I've played her through SotRu with OP rules as well, and also Keen Strike Monk (the only time I played through a season with OP rules!).
zeroth_hour2 already mentioned the most important aspects; if you maximize both strength and wisdom before going for constitution, you easily have parity with other characters that would just use a weapon.
If you focus on spellcasting, which both roles are fairly adept at, you can have cure and steal soul in your deck, which just helps out a lot.
I think the Keen Strike Monk is vastly superior to the other role since you can pick up a lot of great power feats for either barriers, combat checks, casting or support. In particular, when you get the divine skill, you can just pick up all the blessings and spells even easier and use them to fuel your fists.
Athnul and Sajan from the Monk CD are two of my favourite characters of the game; it's somewhat of a shame that I played them both in the easiest set, since I don't want to play the same character twice.
One virtue of Athnul is she fights well with any card in her hand. This is a big advantage in situations where another character might be deprived of a needed combat spell or weapon (for example, game effects that discard weapons & Attack spells, or recharge your hand, etc.)