A monk by another name

[Chimera]

IMC, the Martial Arts were first taught to Humans by an elder race called the Elorhim.

"Monk" is simply the Elorhim word for "Practitioner of the Martial Arts".

Problem solved - for my homebrew world.

Otherwise, yeah, there are a lot of different terms, but nothing really simple that just rolls off the tongue and fits.

 

[gtJormungand]

Wait hei-shi doesn't happen to be pronounced he-she?

It's pronounced "hey-she".

 

[Klaus]

Hey, just name them after the original western martial arts (Pankrateon): pankrateonists! (Pan = all, everything; Krathos = power; Pankrateon = full power).

 

[Rel]

I'd probably go with "Ki Master".

I'd then have to suffer through a bout of hassling by my players asking if they could take the "Gate Keeper" prestige class and so forth.

But I'd probably still stick with "Ki Master".

 

[Campbell]

When you take a good look at what PH Monks actually do the inner Shadowrunner in me screams 'Physical Adept... Physical Adept.'

 

[GSHamster]

The Midnight campaign setting calls them "Defenders".

As an aside, they're not really Eastern monks in Midnight, they're just people who practice fighting unarmed as weapons are outlawed.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Shaolin originated the art of "Kung Fu"; by some reports actually originated all martial arts.

So I turned the guy into a saint in my Monotheist campaign setting. St. Shaolin, who practiced the art to subdue, rather than destroy. He was an ascetic, much like a lot of the actual monks of the early Christian church, doing esoteric practices for the benefit of spiritual enlightenment...and also resisting oppression of the Empire the whole time, and winning in the gladitorial games with his spiritual martial arts.

 

[Drew]

I'd just call them monks. Medieval Western monks had quite the reputation going for them as wrestlers. If you just happen to expand their "wrestling" technique to boxing, well then, there you go. Change out some of their weapons or rename them to be more apropos to the setting and you're set.

Which would work great if monks didn't have standard abilities such as Slow Fall, Abundant Step, Quivering palm, and Tongue of the Sun and Moon, all of which are very wuxia. Coupled with the monk weapons (nunchaku, sai, kama, etc) its really hard to pretend they aren't eastern. Friar tuck may have been a pretty good grappler, but he did not use nunchuks.

Incidentally, the monks in my world were taught their unarmed fighting from a githzerai master that came to the world to escape persecution from his enemies. The style was first taught in the west, then spread to the east where it really took hold because the people there were forbidden from carrying weapons (much like the real world evolution of the martial arts, except the whole "started in the west thing.")

My campaign is meant to discourage things that I don't personally like (monks patterned after eastern archtypes ackwardly inserted into psuedo-medievel europe) without actually restricting players from building standard 3.5 D&D characters.

 

[Prince of Happiness]

Which would work great if monks didn't have standard abilities such as Slow Fall, Abundant Step, Quivering palm, and Tongue of the Sun and Moon, all of which are very wuxia. Coupled with the monk weapons (nunchaku, sai, kama, etc) its really hard to pretend they aren't eastern. Friar tuck may have been a pretty good grappler, but he did not use nunchuks.

So? You just say that they're derived from closer mystical and aesetic traditions. Why does it have to be specifically Asian? It doesn't. Change the names for the weapons, most of the weapons are based off of farm tools anyways. How does this keep any of it from working? It doesn't.

 

[comrade raoul]

The monk niche in Arcana Unearthed is filled by martial artists called "oathsworn." Even though AU is "variant" D&D -- as opposed to "deviant" D&D, for which one uses The Book of Erotic Fantasy -- I much prefer oathsworn to monks. Just how many David Caradines are wandering pseudo-medieval landscapes, anyway?Jeff

<Donaldson> They're probably a bit more common than the bloodguard, anyway. </Donaldson>