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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sword of Spirit" data-source="post: 6763053" data-attributes="member: 6677017">That's not what I'm saying. Let me explain. I never claimed that the specific names of the classes are an essential part of the fluff--rather it is the specific concepts of each class that indicate the iconic fluff. The D&D Monk was clearly intended to represent practitioners of certain ascetic Asian martial arts traditions. The name "monk" is a crappy name for that concept, so I use a name that more effectively expresses the actual fluff.Other than in 2e, D&D has expanded the range of such martial artists to allow such traditions to exist outside of Asian-inspired cultures. However, even when they do so, the original fluff is still prominently and unmistakably present, in a way that cannot be ignored without rejecting the fluff entirely. I just reread the fluff in the class entry (both in 5e and 3e) to make sure. They aren't just martial artists. They are ascetic martial artists who empower their unarmed attacks with a magical (5e) or supernatural (3e) form of energy called ki, and acquire a variety of other supernatural abilities through channeling this ki.They are not just the "unarmed combatant" class. The name of the thread is "Do Classes Have Concrete Meaning in Your Game?" So we all should be speaking from the perspective of how it works in our game.As far as your claim that I am defining the fluff, that isn't accurate. I am using the fluff from the game materials. Where I have changed names or limited presence of certain elements, that is to represent where that official fluff is appropriately present in my world. Saying that there aren't representatives of the Monk class that lack connection to an Asian martial arts tradition is simply taking a less anachronistic view of a setting than many--it is in no way redefining the class fluff. Heck, if anything it is reinforcing it.As I mentioned above, unless I have different books than other people, the 5e books themselves define fluff. If you aren't using the fluff in the books, then you are redefining it--not me."Straw Man Fallacy" comes to mind.Did your spy train in an environment of ascetic contemplation, seeking to perfect their body, mind, and spirit, and thereby acquire the ability to supernaturally empower their unarmed (and monk weapon) attacks and other physical and mental capacities?If they did, then you are fine by the fluff. You could even stretch it outside of an Asian theme, if you can position such a tradition in another culture.But using the class to simply represent improved unarmed combat skills is a complete refluffing of the class, it is not within the boundaries of the class as presented.Now, I'm not actually saying that's bad. I'm just saying that that isn't how I run my D&D games, and that I'd rather preserve the iconic fluff presented in the official D&D materials, and channel other character concepts into systems that allow them to be expressed "natively", without fluff hacking.I should add, that if I'm correctly interpreting your stance (and I may not be), we appear to be brushing up against a self-determination/self-definition issue. Since I myself am pretty passionate about a person's right to do such, I have great respect for others that feel the same way. Since we are talking about character boundaries within the scope of an RPG, and that just doesn't ping as personally important to me on my self-determination radar, I'm coming at the entire question without any reference to self-determination, and focusing on published iconic fluff and how to apply it in one's game. As such we are more likely to talk past each other than to each other.</blockquote>

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