| Yep, I forgot about the Barbarian's inability to wear plate. Anyway, there is the Aegis Hide (even when not upgraded still adds 15% resistances), and Darkmail(+20% fire res), various Rings of Fire resistance and Control and other unavailable to the WS fire-protective items, which totally guarantee you higher than 100% fire resistance. And there are always potions of Fire res too...the WS is restricted only to Green Protection scrolls, which are scarse.
BTW, one of the best suits of armor for a Barbarian is the Orc Leather, because with it your Barbarian will have permanent 95% Missile resistance at lvl 20(20% natural + 40% hardiness + 25% Inertial Barrier belt + 10% orc leather), and with installation of ToB and an evil Barbarian, that bonus grows to 100 or 105% at one of the Pocket Plane trials.
A monk with its vanilla HLAs is pretty weak, because, frankly, the natural fighter's HLAs are qute useless to him. Hardiness, for instance, is weak unless combined with at least DoE, and a monk cannot use flails. So, I recommend using the Oversight mod, which gives a monk a new HLA pool to choose from. And indeed the monk is weak at first, unless you deploy the Undead prot. Scrolls at maximum use and kill all of the undead in Athkatla and Umar Hills, thus collecting nice loot and gaining sufficient amount of XP for attaining a Quivering Palm, which afterwards kills dragons in a snap(activate, attack, if unsuccessful - run, and remember it kills through Stoneskin).  |