Does it have nice features?

Compared to Fighter it has halfed AR (thac0)
Fists are inferrior to magic weapons.
AC also very bad.

When I give my Monk a +3 Axe, her AR looks much better.

What a point of a Monk?

A single job it does well - rush to a Caster with Stunning Fist. Mages have low Fortitude save hence they almost always getting stunned this way.

Monk starts weak, but quickly becomes quite durable.WIS bonus to AC if you don't wear armor and robes (so you can make monk from cleric or, even better, Deep Gnome). +1 AC bonus every monk 5 levels. Bonus against spells (evasion, improved evasion, diamond soul).

However, you're right about martial abilities. Fists suck and monk is better running with great axe. Still, properly built monk is almost untouchable.

At 16 level my monk has 21 AC = 10 base + 3Dex + 2Wis + 2Deflection + 4 Generic
Additional easy +4 AC from Mage Armor - 1st lvl Arcane spell from Mage

For comparison my Fighter has 30 AC at 16lvl.

Actually my Monk AC was very hard at the beginning with Mage Armor and Wis bonus :)

Thanks, now I will consider using some Axe or Sword!


One more question:
Is it true, that Fists are bugged and Monk suffers the attack on opportunity by enemy? I don't know how exactly, but my Monk getting damaged much more compared to the same AC Barbarian.

Honestly, I didn't bother using fists as any axe (monks are proficient with those) was simply better, especially at later chapters, where you get +4 and +5 weapons.

Lvl 1 Deep Gnome monk can have +14 AC bonus (from maxed Dex, Wis and racial bonus). Even if you don't count racial bonus, stat boost is on par with very good chainmail (or good plate armour). And you can still wear bracers and rings to get better AC.

Even if you do n't want to use Depp Gnome, any race with bonus to WIS or DEX can be a good monk.

Well, I dont know how IWD2 monks are.

But I'm just baffled anyone would think that Monks are supposed to be overpowered ? NO class is supposed to be overpowered, and Monks are, if anything, underpowered in D&D.

Especially in BG1+2 Monks are really weak weak pushovers. Unless you fail the saving throw against their stun, they are a piece of cake to deal with. So either use your highlevel Paladin or use summons to take that hit, and afterwards you process them to paste, easy.

In D&D3 they are probably a lot more viable, because they get a lot more of the features they are supposed to have. But even if D&D3 Monks get carefully implemented, they arent especially strong.

Now IWD2 is some sort of crippled D&D3, so I dont know how well they got implemented. From the sound of it apparently there are no Monk weapons in IWD2. Thats already one big nerf right there, because they dont even get their extra attacks, which they only get with hand attacks and monk weapons.