If I had to chose between a thief and a monk I would go with a thief. Both do about the same damage and the thief has a chance to critical strike at master dagger. If you get a high unarmed item as well as hands of the master the monk will probably do a little bit more damage. The thief has the best selection of misc skills, whereas the monk has very few good skills.Another good balanced party suggestion is MTCS. A Knight will do more damage than a monk but not till he GM plate and armsmaster. The later you can't get to the final area of the game. The cleric can handle repairing as he can get master rank. A monk can get as much AC as a Knight and sometimes more. At GM unarmed he can evade attacks and actually probably takes less damage than a knight. unarmed attacks are one of the faster attacks in the game and he will get many more attacks in than the knight will for much of the game.
