Editing Monk (section)

===Second Edition===
Remembering the mistakes of old, the first thing Second Edition does to help the Monk is remove the excessive MAD. Wisdom is less necessary for the class, as it's only required for saves on Ki Powers if you use those and for Will (although Wisdom also governs Initiative in this edition, making it more generally worthwhile to everyone), and has Expert proficiency on Unarmored Defense and on all saving throws - which no other class gets - though their unarmed strikes are only at Trained. Alongside the other classic features (Speed, proficiency improvements, Punch upgrades), you also get the ability to upgrade whichever saves you want, though you can't upgrade all three of them to Master rank.

Class Feats for the Monk find themselves either focusing on stances (each now granting a unique unarmed attack) and Ki powers (Which are essentially identical aside from not being mandatory) alongside the other fare of various monk feats. Particularly troubling is that without taking a certain feat at level 1, they are unable to use any of the fancy monk weapons without issue (and as of the APG, another feat permits access to some bows so you can totally be a Zen Archer letting you do Flurry and Ki Strike with your arrows). Another issue is that if you want to focus on ki powers, you 100% NEED to take one of the first-level feats in order to open access to any later ones, and the option feels a bit one-sided when one of them adds typed damage to your punch while the other...makes you move twice in an action.  The reworking of magic items (including NOT making armbands of shielding because there's the option to put magical armor runes on what amounts to clothes) does seriously help mitigate the issues with item space.

Curiously, the monk also has technically two multiclass options: The base one, and the Advanced Player's Guide '''Martial Artist''' archetype, which pretty much exclusively permits you to get the better fists (though no counts-as-metal shit) and the mundane stances without wasting time with the other stuff or worrying about level restrictions that apply with multiclassing. Another strange archetype is the '''Bullet Dancer''' from Guns & Gears, which introduces a stance made for firearms. While funny in concept, the archetype provides no additional proficiency in firearms, and this limits you to mostly pistols and old-fashioned rifles.