Monks in Forgotten Realms are really interesting, and powerful. As F.R. Wiki says they can for example "support themselves on a single extended finger for an indefinite period of time".

In IA they: have little life, may only get 50% DR and 40% can be breached easily. They can only get 4 APR, 10 with GWW, but any fighter can have 9+critical strike simultaneously, RB's abilities are far superior to their(monks and RBs are both "naked warriors" so that's why I compare them) thaco of about -10 only, so their main advantage would be magic res. and nothing more. And one more thing: monks can only deal crushing damage(who would use a monk with a sword in IA? 1 APR...) so here's the idea:
If it is possible ofc, enable monks to switch fighting styles between: crushing(with fists and legs) and piercing, with their fingers(like a finger-spear)

It would make them a bit more useful throughout the game(however their animation of attack would have to lack the kicking part)

I agree with you that monk should be improved. I love this class very much and they are not really powerfull in IA (to say the least).

I see one point where they can improve more. They got the immunity to non-magical weapons at level 20. That is completely useless in IA (and even it is useless in standard BG). How about to change it to a more usefull one? For example monk can get +15% resistance to physical damage (it is less what barbarians get but still a nice bonus). Other improvement could be to allow monk to have more APR, for example get another +1/2 at level 21 and another +1/2 at level 24. It means 5 APR which is still not superior compared to other type of fighters APRs.

Monk improvements are left for the version of IA in which we will work on Expanded Fighter stronghold. The stronghold is the same for monks. You have already realized improvements to most classes or kits are done while we work on their strongholds (Swashbuckler being the exception I guess).

Can monk be the other one?

I think a lot of player like very much monks and it could not be a lot of work to improve it a bit to the level where it is really a good alternatives against a barbarian or a riskbreaker.

We are working on a huge quest for druids. It's a lot of work. We need to prioritize anyway, can't do everything at once.

Yeah, we'll wait

However I see now that monks will be hard to adapt to the idea of more tactical challenges. Only thing they do is fist fight, even warriors have a wide range of weapons, and can change them during fights+they have to pick good specialisations to be useful. This means probably that monks will have to be modified hard to make them suitable for the mod...

They could make use of lots of gauntlets too, however in IA a monk without these which add +5+6 is pretty useless

I'd love to see them improved in IA 8 ^.^

Sorry for making double post, but after such long time it wouldn't be even noticed.

Firstly: I have no idea of D&D so this is only my idea which I consider to be nice and would enable monks to be a bit more tactic-friendly.
Secondly: something would have to be done with gauntlets, to fit this.

The idea is to make separate gauntlets(or both at once if needed) which could be put as weapon(to right and left hand) some could even have blades or such to enable monks to deal other types of damage than crushing.

Second option would be to add many short-time HLAs but I have no ideas at the moment about them.

And 1 more thing, as for now I haven't yet seen any monks or barbarians amongst enemies(yeah, except for Balthazar)

Ofc no such changes in IA7, but the suggestions are for the future, hope that monks will once again be interesting chars to play!