I seem to get owned with hand to hand and it takes forever to kill something and the only way i can pull this off is if I run circles around my target hitting them for about a minute before they die (if I dont die in the process)

You have chosen a somewhat hard road since fists can't be poisoned or enchanted and do limited damage. So. . . you need to get very fluent in what you have going for you:

1. Damage fatigue. Use spells to augment the effects of your fists. You want to get your opponent on the ground so you can pummel him.

2. Poison. Try to use a bow and start fights from distance with a poisoned arrow. Naturally, one of the effects you might want to work into your poisons for an approaching arrow-shot foe would be damage fatigue.

3. Consider conjuration or illusion to help with crowd control.

For a monk not using weapons, these suggestions are very good :tops:

I agree in that it does seem odd for a monk to use a bow, but I included the idea because marksman is a major skill for the stock monk class. :foodndrink:

You do have to keep moving. Train up the skill to get better power attacks, and use them (press and hold Attack while moving.) Train strength. The Warrior doomstone (south of Skingrad, near Silorn) and the Jode Heaven Stone (east of Anvil) can give you once-a-day Fortify H2H.

I've played a couple of hand-to-hand characters, but I found that I had to turn the difficulty down a bit to make it viable.

and to do poisons I gotta do alchemy? I kind of wanted to avoid that since I just finished Morrowind for the first time with both XPansions and I have a 37 Witch Hunter which all I did was max out alchemy and bows lol. I wanted to try something new