Just looking over monks and have a few questions.

The avoid helpfile suggests it has similar components to dodge. The biggest question this brings to mind for me is whether the weight you carry affects avoid?

Also, does being skilled in your opponent's weapon matter at all for a monk? Since you don't parry it seems like it wouldn't, other than the few times you might choose to wield a weapon and forego your monk abilities.

The helpfile for transcend seems to say that as your skill in transcend goes up (as long as you are empowered) you will slowly unlock new types of attacks besides spear and knife. Is it possible to get some more details on this?

Avoid explicitly says it is based on wisdom - are other monk abilities also? Specifically, anticipate and intensify?

And finally, it seems strength as the prime stat is a hold-over from before there were paladin options. In the monk case in particular, it seems like strength is far from the prime stat they should worry about. Is it possible to allow human and halfsie paladins some leeway in picking prime stats? Or even just change it automatically when you dedicate maybe.

Thanks!

What's the difference between spear and knife transcending? Besides the damage nouns, is there actually a gameplay reason to choose one over the other?

Slash vs. Pierce.

Probably doesn't make much difference often, but for instance a ranger can have a barkskin edge to resist some slashing damage.

Mobs can have similar resistances/vulns. Something you'd have to test as I don't know any specificly that are resist or vuln to slash/pierce.

This is correct.

In my dream world, trascend spear would act as if you were wielding a spear. You do not want to be intensified against a shapeshifter with the porcupine form when you figure out it does not work like this.

"The avoid helpfile suggests it has similar components to dodge. The biggest question this brings to mind for me is whether the weight you carry affects avoid?

Also, does being skilled in your opponent's weapon matter at all for a monk? Since you don't parry it seems like it wouldn't, other than the few times you might choose to wield a weapon and forego your monk abilities."

I don't know the answers to these, but I'm curious too. As Tolgrumm I basically geared for dam, saves, hp in that order and ignored weight. Of course, I also tanked like a rock.

"The helpfile for transcend seems to say that as your skill in transcend goes up (as long as you are empowered) you will slowly unlock new types of attacks besides spear and knife. Is it possible to get some more details on this?"

I don't know why the helpfile for transcend is so vague -- my assumption is that basic class abilities are not secretive. IMMs can edit this if they need to.

Transcend abilities are based on level, not skill percentage. The below is based on my logs, so it may be a bit off, but you get them at or before the following levels:
Level 29 - transcend bless - holy attack
Level 34 - transcend cleanse - light attack
Level 41 - transcend halt - ice attack
Level 44 - transcend purge - fire attack
Level 47 - transcend channel - lightning attack

"Avoid explicitly says it is based on wisdom - are other monk abilities also? Specifically, anticipate and intensify?"

Anecdotally, I would say no for intensify and yes for anticipate. As a dwarf (18 wis), anticipate stunk so much that I never improved at it outside of skill learns for ranking or IMM XP, and it was hardly reliable for, say, countering bash. On the other hand, I rarely failed at intensify once perfected and got plenty of attacks.

I always wondered if because the highest wis of any race that can be a paladin is 21 (I think elf and halfie), the wis based skills were maybe coded with that in mind instead of as with a 25 max potential.

That way the primary of strength for a paladin doesn't hurt them too much, and having a 23 wis on a char might make those skills better than anticipated.

I have no idea if any of that is true though.
Just a theory I have that in making the class skills they knew the limits of paladin stats and took them into account.

If that's true, I call the next gnome paladin.

There was actually a bug with anticipate skill learning that was fixed recently. I played an elf monk recently with 21 wisdom and anticipate was amazing for certain moves. I noticed it fired a lot more with physical moves and spells than communes. I could anticipate bash on an orc and I think I dodged about 80% of all bashes directed at me.

(Note: When I still had said mortal the bug was active and I experienced the same thing. The only time I learned was skill learns/imm xp)

Cool. It must have been fixed sometime between my bug report and when it got looked at, so I thought it was behaving as designed.

http://forums.carrionfields.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=17&topic_id=20200

:P