Monks are given some benefit or ability that enables them to get more benefit out of the ring of increase damage. This could be:
Monks with Expert or Master level martial arts can force-fight walls to break them. (Possibly not uncarved rock though.)
When monks are weak from hunger, they don’t lose any Strength, due to being experienced with fasting.
When you play as a giant monk, Master Kaen should also be a giant, complete with giant-sized robe, so when you defeat him you can get a usable robe as well as the quest artifact.
A variant monk role, or a “specialization” picked at some early level such as 3 or 5, which is a weapons-using monk. Has the same or a slightly reduced capacity for spellcasting and gains weapon skill caps at the expense of reducing martial arts’s cap to Skilled or Expert. Still has a body armor penalty.
When you begin the game as a monk, you are prompted (if you have not already configured in .nethackrc) whether you want to be a weaponless monk or a weapons monk. Using weapons when you have chosen to be weaponless, or vice versa, you take alignment penalties.
Monks should receive a benefit for fasting. This could be in the form of giving them a point of alignment record every so often when they are Hungry or worse, and/or slowing down their hunger rate when they are Hungry.
Non-chaotic monks should suffer a Luck penalty for eating meat, not just an alignment penalty.
Tulpas, a W-class monster that is exclusively summoned by casters, especially monk-types and Master Kaen, with several of Kaen’s appearing through the monk quest. They take on some of the properties of their caster, and leave no corpse.
All monk techniques should have shorter timeouts, but if a technique is used in chained blitz, it has a one-off very long timeout.
Monks have ki-empowered strikes, which means they can strike incorporeal beings such as shades bare-handed.
Monks get shorter cooldowns for techniques as their experience level increases, to a minimum of 50 turns.
You can play a Vow of Poverty Monk, from D&D. This gives you insanely good bonuses and intrinsics, but you are prevented from having any worldly possessions on your journey (which is pretty much all items).
Monks can control whether their strikes cause a staggering blow. This would lend itself to variants that implement technique and combat style systems.
Monks who have passed through all the “Student of X” titles may go back and speak to the Grand Master to choose an elemental specialization and receive a power related to it. Stone gives a physical damage reduction; Air gives a random extra movement point here and there and a rare chance of dodging an attack. Water automatically counterattacks melee attacks. Fire boosts attacking power or gives extra attacks.
Monks start with potions or a wand of enlightenment.
Being satiated abuses wisdom for Samurai (at the same rate it does for Monks currently), and gives Monks slow alignment penalties instead of abusing wisdom.
Monks’ vegetarian-breaking alignment penalty is assessed at -1 alignment per X weight units of meat you consume. Eating a huge chunk of meat will cause a much larger penalty than a jackal corpse.
Alignment penalty, or possibly even angering your god, for Monks and Priests for consorting with a foocubus.
If you are a Monk and the game decides to generate a delicatessen, replace it with a health food store 80% of the time. This is independent from the special case for health food stores in Minetown.
Artifact shuriken The Silver Star: deals +d8 damage to all targets. Like Mjollnir, it returns to the player’s inventory after being thrown, but doesn’t have any chance of hitting the player. Since there is only one of it, it cannot be multishot.
This would be a good first sacrifice gift for Monks.
Add a non-wielded-weapon non-quest artifact that is a guaranteed first sacrifice gift for Monks.
Monks can gain intrinsic immunity to just about everything by leveling up, but most of these are nullified if the monk is wearing body armor.
Monks get a small amount of free bonus movement points when they kill a monster bare-handed, and also gain a small amount of free bonus movement points while making movement actions and not wearing body armor.
Monks, and possibly other roles, can learn martial arts techniques out of spellbooks similar to dnethack wards and SLASH’EM bard spells.
Monks can forcefight or kick boulders and break them with high enough Strength.
Sitting as a Monk enables meditation, which can have useful effects.
Healers start with higher Intelligence (perhaps at the cost of their high starting Charisma, which they don’t need as much). Priests could stand to have guaranteed a bit more Int and monks a bit more Wisdom, as well.
Monks will only get gifted weapons whose skill they have previously trained at some point.
Rather than giving Monks a flat -20 to-hit for armor, base it on the armor delay - the factor that determines how many turns armor takes to take off or put on.
High level (maybe only XL 30) monks can get enlightenment by sitting on normal floor.
Monks, or anyone skilled in martial arts, can kick weapons out of an enemy’s hand.
