D&D General Monk: The Past, Present, and Questionable Future of an Iconic Class

[Maxperson]

YOU had that craziness, not everyone else in the community. Don't try and force it on us now. Take Kung-Fu Joe and play with that doll by yourself in the mud. It's okay. I won't judge you for doing it because Brian Blume made you. I get you OSR types like that kind of thing. Just be respectful and don't bring it to my table.

You seem to think that how you run your personal game is how D&D is in general. It isn't. Why should we be forced to take your personal view on things as gospel, instead of you know, going with facts and accepting that the D&D game has eastern influences all over the place and that the monk class in fact based on Remo Williams?

You are free to remove monks and eastern influences from your game, but in a discussion about the game in general, which this thread is, your personal game is entirely irrelevant.

 

[Ancalagon]

The point about "monks may not fit in some campaigns" is valid. (the delivery? well....). But I think that could be said for a number of classes too!

Some are obvious, like artificers. The feel may be too "high tech" for some games (the alchemist is "better" for this, but it's a weak subclass..). But it's not the only one! Like druids. "what do you mean, druids don't fit in a game?!?". Well... for druids to work, you need a specific cosmology detail - that you can get magical might from worshiping "nature". This may not work in some campaigns...

On the other hand, don't underestimate the power of reflavoring. In an online game where I wanted to try something "classic", I decided to recreate Legolas as the base for a character. How did I do it? Kensei monk. all the "monk powers" are explained as elven powers . Worked like a charm, lots of fun too.

That aside, I really like the OP. I've said it before too: if the monk is as good at fighting as a fighter, why ever play a fighter? The monk has to be "not as good" in combat, or at least "good in a different way".

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Non-Specific Punching Person

I love that! So far as I'm concerned that's the class name from now on!

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I decided to recreate Legolas as the base for a character. How did I do it? Kensei monk

Didn't someone already try that in Picard?

 

[nevin]

Good post. The history of the monk, and your takeaways of its design tropes from that history, seem pretty spot on to me. Probably my only point there is that I feel the monk has always had a secondary trope of carrying a bit of divine flavor; obviously it's origin as a cleric subclass in OD&D, but also unarmed fighting kits for clerics in 2e, and prestige classes favoring monk/cleric and monk/paladin combinations in 3e. That seems to mostly have gone away by 5e, with the psionic monk being a precursor of that flavor change when it was introduced in 4e.

I think your playtest observations are pretty on-point. I understand and support the impulse to have both unarmed and weapon-based monks as valid tropes that the playtest is following. But they need to be explicit as to if unarmed strikes are going to have magical item support. I don't feel that 5e's current "do what you want" magic item approach makes balancing intra-class specialties (like unarmed versus weapon-based monks, or Str vs Dex fighters) truly feasible within the rules; the DM needing to add weight to the scales somewhere seems like a near necessity if build balance is at all a play priority.

I would say that Monk Stunning Strike does give benefit to the Monk; assuming a Monk uses and succeeds on their SS use, they'll still be able to make 3 more attacks that turn benefiting from the Stunned condition (if their Di points hold out). Allowing the stun to extend to the end of a monk's next turn would give 7 attacks on a stunned target, which might be a bit too strong. (Although reasonable people can argue about the overall strength.)

I can understand why they choose to move a lot of the weird, wacky Monk flavor ribbon out of the base class, but I would like to see them moved into specific subclasses that support those ribbons. Weird immunities, strange movement abilities, and supernatural perceptive abilities should all be in the Monk's wheelhouse.I

Well that's because the western monk was obviously divine but a lot of people overlook the oriental monk is completly divine. The entire idea of the eastern monk is someone who follows the edicts of heaven and as a result become's one with reality. Eventually gaining mastery of reality itself in thier own bubble. With the advent of Buddism becoming so powerful Budda even took a place in the celestial heirachy as the moral compass of the gods in the upper realm since even they don't know what the creator wants from them.

Watch the movie the sorcerer and the white snake wth Jet Li. It give's you a very good look at the chinese vision of a truly holy monk (who gets his power from his holiness, not the gods, not the creator just being completely in tune with the creators reality and rules.)

But if you are looking at myths and historical monks there aren't any western one's or oriental ones that i know of that aren't divine.

Now some people like martial arts movies and want the monk to be Bruce Lee. Problem is Bruce Lee at his most bad ass kind've sucks in any DND version past level 6.

 

[nevin]

bb

 

[Voadam]

I saw the Remo Williams movie but never saw or read the novels.

Remo in the movie is a bad ass combatant. The name "The Destroyer" is appropriate.

I think the monk, like the thief in OD&D and throughout D&D would have done better to use the fighting man as its base mechanical chassis instead of the magic-user. Better HD, good attacks, with no armor making them light skirmisher fighters instead of full tanks. Strikers in 4e role terms. 5e, like 4e gave them as good accuracy as fighters, finally but it is about half the issue. 2e and on gave them d8 cleric HD which helps but is a bit shy of what I would says is needed for a skilled no armor no magic combatant in D&D to play a martial artist role.

d4 HD on top of poor AC is terrible squishy which means do not battle Remo Williams style. It means D&D Friar Tuck is more of a straight up combatant than D&D Remo Williams. Even d8 in AD&D-5e is fairly low.

 

[nevin]

ok Remo Williams dodged bullets even when the gun was in his face, ran on water and wet cement ripped metal doors out of thier frames, became invisible to people because he decided they couldn't see him, could hold his breath for an hour, flipped over a tank, outran a car At least in the book I barely remember the movie but it wasn't much different. he was trained by an Eastern Monk in a secret martial art maintained by a secret society that had existed since before the pharoe's he was a Western person who had the Chi to become an Eastern monk. Nothing non magical or even close to human level abilities about him. He was a pulp fiction Eastern Monk with comic book level abilities.

 

[nevin]

I saw the Remo Williams movie but never saw or read the novels.

Remo in the movie is a bad ass combatant. The name "The Destroyer" is appropriate.

I think the monk, like the thief in OD&D and throughout D&D would have done better to use the fighting man as its base mechanical chassis instead of the magic-user. Better HD, good attacks, with no armor making them light skirmisher fighters instead of full tanks. Strikers in 4e role terms. 5e, like 4e gave them as good accuracy as fighters, finally but it is about half the issue. 2e and on gave them d8 cleric HD which helps but is a bit shy of what I would says is needed for a skilled no armor no magic combatant in D&D to play a martial artist role.

d4 HD on top of poor AC is terrible squishy which means do not battle Remo Williams style. It means D&D Friar Tuck is more of a straight up combatant than D&D Remo Williams. Even d8 in AD&D-5e is fairly low.

I agree even die 8 would have made more sense. In 1st ed I got so frustrated with how gimped they were in TOTM that I gave them st bonuses to damage and allowed them to wear certain magic items like girdle's of giant kind. That made them soooooo much better.

 

[Raiztt]

FWIW, here's an incomplete list of non-eastern monks to consider:

Friar Tuck

Errr... Friar Tuck, as much as I can remember, is literally a fat christian monastic drunk. He's not a fighter/combatant in any way. OP calls out this confusion actually - the western/medieval monk or monastic vs. the eastern kind - which even then the super vast majority of monks of eastern religious traditions didn't practice any martial arts whatsoever.

In my not so humble opinion, monk really should just be a subclass of fighter because at least now they're primarily defined by fighting unarmored and without a weapon (besides their hands).