The observant vagabond, the wandering soul, the tranquil champion... The Monk has existed as a class and archetype in The Elder Scrolls for as long as I've known the series. It's fun and refreshing to play a character who develops no reliance on external implements, who seeks power from within rather than without. Personally, the Monk has been the class suggested to me in both Morrowind and Oblivion during character creation... multiple times.

The sudden exclusion of this archetype from Skyrim is boggling. For the reasons above, it should have remained. For reasons unmentioned, it was removed. I intend for this thread to be an unofficial guide for reviving this character concept and archetype to allow players to once again walk the path of the Monk.

So, go ahead. I am in as much need of assistance in accomplishing this as I imagine most others to be. What can you offer in the process of this archetype's revival?

It's my understanding that "classes" are defunct now in TES and that your playing style is the main driving force.

Well, they removed all classes. But you can still do a monk, just more focused on Sneak and Archery. The Hand-to-Hand reduction is what svcks for Monks... that's the classic TES monk, anyway.

It is difficult to make Hand to Hand combat exciting in any game, particularly a real time combat game. What ends up happening is, punch punch punch, haymaker or kick. Not much you can really do with it, and not much progression you can do with it. I do agree it should be an alternative to build a monk however. They could have just as easily went the path of introducing hand-to-hand weapons (claws, brass knuckles) if nothing else.

Yup yup. I guess he could be a Khajiit Monk - at least he'd have Claws

Monks have these traits:
Unarmed or special martial arts weapons.
There is only 1 perk that does unarmed weapons and that is fists of steel in heavy armor (AR of glove = unarmed damage bonus)
There is an enchant that increases unarmed damage by +5 that can be placed on a glove and a ring.
There is a glove of the pugilist that does +10 damage
Khaijit claws do 15 damage instead of 4.

So unarmed Khaijit with legendary deadric gauntlets(100 in heavy armor) fist of steel perk with a ring and gauntlet enchanted for unarmed you can expect to do:
15+50+5+5 = 65 damage per punch. No clue what a haymaker charged punch damage bonus is.

Thats pretty weak damage at high levels, and thats the best it will get.
I would pick a weapon and go as a dual wielding weapons master style monk instead.

Monks dodge and wear robes
If you use the alteration magic school you can get 300 AR without wearing armor which is about 35% damage reduction. You can also pick up magic resistance and spell absorbtion with alteration which is nice. Problem is 35% damage reduction is probably not going to work very well for a melee based toon.
You are probably better off with smithing and light armor to get closer to the AR cap of 567 for 80% damage reduction. There may be some fur armor that doesnt look much like armor?


I just dont see a melee focused unarmed non magic using monk viable in the game. A ninja, samuri, warlock, battlemage, spellsword, thief, assassin, mage, sorcerrer, necromancer, barbarian no problem, but not a monk. Not without a mod adding in some new perks or spells to help ya out.

Thank you, this is the kind of thing I was looking for. The more I think about it, the more it seems that I would have to settle for using Alteration for defense, and bound weapons for offense. I'm quite disappointed that this character archetype was removed