Bard or Monk

[mdematti]

They’re both a ton of fun.

That having been said, monks weight limit can be kind of backbreaking as a first character. Monks take a hit to their AC for carrying over 15lbs. And like, a backpack weighs 3.

There’s ways around it. Medicine Bags are good. But as soon as you pick up a weapon to take back to town and sell, you’ll be suffering a penalty to combat. In groups, it will matter less because someone else might be tanking. But while soloing, it does kind of matter. Monk was my first character in vanilla, I made it up to 45. So it’s definitely not impossible. It’s not even hard. But...it’s a thing you will be thinking about. You will start complaining about people having autosplit turned on, and throwing out thousands of copper and maybe even silver because it’s fucking up your ability to solo. In addition to using medicine bags to carry loot, you can focus on fighting monsters that drop lightweight valuable stuff. Drakes that drop gems. Bone chips in a month when people are buying again. Silk to work on tailoring your own cured silk. It’s specifically humanoids, with their weapons and armor that you can’t really afford to always fight for 4 hours, filling up 8 bags.
On the plus side, with bandages and mend a monk can pop back up to 75% hp while soloing every 6 minutes. So you don’t spend nearly as much time seated as an untwinked warrior or rogue. Feign helps you solo too, by splitting camps.

Bard, more group friendly. But does more to exaggerate carpal tunnel.