Of course I meant “Monks” in the RPG culture sense. Real monks are religious people. To the point that D&D ought to make them divine characters: apparently, this was the norm on 2e. I remember the 1e Monk having several supernatural abilities, the book just didn’t explain it; but it was there.
As far as I know, Batman transitioned from Charles Atlas Superpower to Badass Normal at some point in history. In fact, on its own page, Batman is called
The Badass Normal. That happens.
There are some mistakes on that site when it comes to similar tropes. Some examples are doubled in both tropes despite those tropes being different. 4e’s martial classes are mentioned in both tropes. That also happens. Careful reading of the pages and examples can give you the difference.
Anyway, moving back to the main point…
I’m not arguing against a pure martial hand-to-hand class: it’s a cool class. Most of the 3.5 Monk’s abilities can be explained in martial terms, with some changes on mechanics, I grant you. I can also see someone learning the language of animals; D&D just doesn’t work that way, since those abilities are class-based or spell-based magical abilities. Nevertheless, it should: it is not such a powerful ability to be usable only once in a day or something like that. Most animals aren’t that bright, anyway.
I just always wondered why my Monk called Sun Wukong couldn’t launch a Kame-Hame-Ha, even with a different name. Monks in RPGs tend to have a very strong mystical/supernatural theme with them.
Yeah, there are some oddities in 4e’s martial powers, but the vast majority of them were just badass stuff. I think Martial healing itself is strange and not to my taste (and I’m a 4e fan); they will work slightly different differently in my game. However, of course, that brings back
Lots of HP discussions, so let’s avoid that.
However, when monks are supernatural, they are usually based on Qi, not psionics. That choice had a lot of context to happen, ultimately being a consequence of design space.
So, I guess the real fight here is Ki Monk vs. Pure-Martial Monk. That is a hard choice to make. I’m not against having 50+ classes so splitting them sounds like a good idea.
I do have one question: if monks don’t have Qi stuff, who will? That seems a great dilemma for me; monks are perfect for that.
However, I think this is a tangential point and a discussion not really needed here. Forgive me for such interruption; sometimes I just have to do this just because. I’ll take a time to read this class (and re-read Pathfinder’s Brawler hybrid class), and them reflect more about that.
…
Really, guys, why every monk needs to know kung-fu? Hahahahahahahaha.