Bad Habits

A high kicking, low punching, staff wielding, kama waving story driven campaign for human monks that will take your sack wearing brother or sister from level 1 to 20. No need for bad haircuts or modelling yourself on Friar Tuck as you'll be expected to be in your mid twenties, fit and healthy and ready for anything.

Luckily for your misbehaving monk there are no alignment restrictions so don't worry about doing things that wouldn't be approved of back in your temple. This also applies to romancing your companions and providing that you're nice to them they should be more than happy to leap into bed. Lady monks will however have to follow a quest to seduce their darling.

There is nothing to stop you from playing as a halfling barbarian if you want but it was made for human monks and therefore you will be treated as such and all equipment and things that you find are designed for a robe wearing brother or sister and their travelling companions.

Talking of companions you will be teamed up for most of the game with a sorceror and a swashbuckler there is also a fighter that will arrive and a favoured soul that needs a favour. Equip them well, make them some nice weapons or items and try to keep them alive as they're not a bad bunch and extremely loyal to your cause. They are also very talkative and like nothing better than discussing "current affairs" so don't forget to have a chat with them now and then.

There is crafting available and I strongly recommend that you use it when workbenches are available ( use the pestle and mortar on ingredients in your inventory to make the required essences ). Don't worry about giving your caster companion the necessary feats as she'll get them for free from somebody as the game goes on. However I do recommend investing in her "use magic items" skill so she can read any scroll.

A monk's life is not all about meditating, chanting and fighting and in this tale you will sometimes get the opportunity to be diplomatic and sneaky so invest in those skills as you will get more experience for doing some things without a fight. With diplomacy there is no "dice rolling" as if your level of competence is high enough the option will just appear in the conversation. If you feel the "need to sneak" then putting your companions in puppet mode ( behaviour tab ) or telling them to wait will prevent them from cramping your style. In fact in quite a lot of situations rushing in and attacking everything at once will be a recipe for disaster.

Monks move fast so I strongly advise setting your companions behaviour to make sure they don't get left behind ( Guard distance and follow distance should be on the closest possible ) and don't forget to turn off "back away" too because.. Well just because you're a hero/heroine of course. Your caster companion would probably appreciate being set to overkill casting mode too.

There are side quests in this and I recommend that you do them all even if some seem to be completely "unmonkish", but these are desperate times and call for desperate measures. Besides they'll get you to a higher level earlier and it will help your inventory too.

I have tested this on normal only and I have managed to scrape through with nobody dying at all but it wasn't easy. Apparently on hardcore it's very hard and there will be casualties so there's a challenge for your hardcore monk, but don't say I didn't warn you. If you get battered there is a respawn /reload/quit option so the choice is yours but save often if you want to keep everyone alive. You can rest just about anywhere providing it's not next to any villains or monsters but doing that would be rather silly.

Talking of monsters there is one big red one that you will encounter on your travels and I advise living to fight another day as you will get another chance to deal with him when you're better prepared as he's extremely hard to kill first time around. You have been warned.

To play this you need both expansions ( Mask of the Betrayer and Storm of Zehir ) and it is also compatible with a Mac. I have no idea how long it takes to play this but it's a looong time.

There is one issue with a couple of custom dresses but they looked too good so I left them in this. So if you have a strange wardrobe malfunction try removing whatever's in the belt slot and putting it all back on again, that always worked for me and if by any chance your companion suddenly turns up topless on the level up screen don't worry about it because she does that sometimes too.

* Installation..

I've broke it up into four parts to