One thing I'd like to see would be the capability to re-empower your current state to prolong its duration, instead of going through the mechanical choredom of starting the empowerement of opposite stance once you are able to do so, attacking a mob, then going with what you actually want to do, which is to continue the duration of offensive/defensive.
Admittedly, that's a bit of a minor gripe.
That sounds like a plan to me.
My experience with Aokami gave me a lot of insight to monks. I was only able to defeat a blademaster in dragon stance with certain gladiator buffs. I'd pray for the disarm to go through and then attempt to lag lock them while they had no weapon.
I find it funny that blademasters can run through monks with ease when blademasters are pretty much the same as monks but with weapons. Plus most monk offensive stances are not very good against some melee classes. And my main concern with this whole post is WHY is chakera based on luck? It should be based on received damage, out-put damage, anatomy, and % chance, or at least something along those lines.
I wouldn't mind a Monk with a blademaster like critical strike but keeping it the same as it is now with it landing with luck. IE: You hit for various strikes upon the body based on how high your anatomy is and say your anatomy for beast is 110, you can energy drain them or something but you can't CHOOSE to do so, it'd land much like a chakera strike.
It would go as follows:
1-50 just average damage and nothing spectacular.
51-75 kickboxing a and martial arts a take into affect and you can actually hit the race as often as possible and for the maximum amount of hits a Monk can pull off.
76-99 chakeras start to land, slightly lagging the opponent as usual.
100 you pull off the secret power strikes, IE: Tiger Claw or phantasmal dragon.
Then once you get to 103 you can randomly cause bleeding.
107 you may possibly make them lose movement due to blows to legs.
110 would cause you to lose concentration and add headbutt affect or something like that.
It would make them more viable but at the same time more fun. And as such because they're offensive oriented, empowering in the defensive would do something different.
1-100 would remain the same but the higher forms of anatomies would change.
103 may cause you to block more attacks from that particular race.
107 might cause spell damage to be lessened.
110 would cause you to reverse some damage given to the Monk onto the opponent much like reflective shield but in a lesser amount.
What I hate is the fact that damage is so varied with a Monk. You may have a Monk vs. Warrior fight where the Monk gets extremely lucky and lands a few high damage specialty forms like twin tiger or something and win. But the very next time you fight the person, same preparedness and the Monk gets totally tooled. Beads are fine as is with their stats, but perhaps when a Monk goes into chii bolt 2 it should mimic a persons vuln when they're fighting a Feral their hands become like fire. If they're fighting a Fire Giant they should become like ice. Or something along those lines since Monks and Illithids are the only two things in the game weapons are absolutely pointless for with the exception of a Monk needing to master them to be better prepared for fights later on.
I think it would be cool with some new stances. And maybe make stances selectable, as well as adding slight bonuses to these choices. So if you chose tiger stance you get a mastery in kickboxing a (it can go up to 103), or similar bonuses (higher chance to strangle opponent with beads/autokick with murder, kind of like autothrow/etc) depending on stances. This way you could customise the character and have slight bonuses even while not in the specific stance.
Let's not turn Monks into blademasters.
With that, i agree that monks in defensive suck.
Perhaps they could get trip while on defensive. No AirTrash. That would aid VS unprepared warriors. Or if you drag the fight.
They do kinda have a trip in defence. 
Though, it's not as reliable, it -is- still present.
Maybe give them an Improvised Weapons skill in defense. So-n-so ducks under your attack and hits you with a chair! Either give it small damage amount or possibly a minor affect. They really don't need anything else in offense but I can see how they could use some flavor in D.
Thats already a bard skill I believe.
Brawl ftw
The only useful thing I am finding about defensive is balance. I barely seem to defend better in horse/drunken if at all than when in crane/monkey and I end up losing out on the offensive powers/abilities. Not sure if it's just my bad, bad luck... 
Dey
The only useful thing I am finding about defensive is balance. I barely seem to defend better in horse/drunken if at all than when in crane/monkey and I end up losing out on the offensive powers/abilities. Not sure if it's just my bad, bad luck...
Dey
Definitely. With second parry available in offensive, defensive is made pretty much obsolete.
A couple suggestions on how to improve defensive:
Allow trip during defensive empowerment. This one's already been suggested, but it's a simple thing that will improve the empowerment as a whole.
Give drunken stance an ability similar to deathweaver, wherein you cause multiple enemies fighting you to attack each other. To balance this, take away the ability to lag in drunken.
Give monks a defensive chii bolt.
Defensive Chii Bolt level 1:
Creates an air shield like effect for the monk, causing them to take reduced physical damage
Defensive Chii Bolt level 2:
Causes the monks attacks to do magical damage, just like offensive chii bolt
Defensive Chii Bolt level 3:
Usable as an escape, stuns the opponent for a round or two and activates a vanish-like ability, causing the monk to reappear somewhere else in the area.
what's wrong with you people. Before everyone was complaining monks are to overpowered. Now you are all crying that they need to be worked on? I say that are fine as is.
Second parry in defensive is significantly superior to second parry in offensive.
as is the offensive drop off. Instantly you can no longer lag (except in drunken which has it own drawbacks to drive you insane) or chii bolt. Defensive is considerably less desirable than offensive.