fusangite said:
Ah... the reasoned, careful response I've come to expect of you Hong.
Oh dear.
So, it's okay for you to discuss what a class is generally like, minus a whole bunch of specifics such as the magic the class uses, the weapons the class uses and nearly every other one of its features besides how it does melee combat.
I never said that the monk's noncombat abilities were irrelevant. I said that for many people, the defining characteristic of the monk was the unarmed combat schtick. When they talk about what their monk character does, it generally starts off with "he doesn't use weapons". Another defining characteristic is self-sufficiency: "he doesn't need items". Neither of these concepts is particularly out of place for your typical D&D campaign, even one that self-consciously emulates medieval Europe. You still have all your funky magical powers, but from the point of view of historicity, they're just another fantastical D&D element, like fireballs and teleporting and plants that eat you. A rigorously European game might ban monks, but it'll probably ban lots of other things as well.
But when I suggest a general resemblance between two things, it's "babbling."
Yes, because on the one hand, you have said that it's not geographical separation that counts, it's mythic theme; then when people have mentioned how D&D draws from myths as disparate as Arab, ancient Greek and African, you say it's because these Europeans had heard of these places. Like Europeans had never heard of Cathay before 1975.
... or was it because these places weren't too far away from Europe? But I thought it wasn't geography that was your beef?
Yeah -- and that's a surprisingly rare thing in European myth and literature.
Hercules killed the Nemean lion with bare hands. There is an Olympic sport called "Greco-Roman wrestling", even. I suppose now you'll be saying that ancient Greece doesn't count as European or something.
What gives you the sense this doesn't bother me? All I have indicated is that the other classes in the PHB can be fitted into a mythic Europe framework and the monk cannot.
Then you're not trying hard enough. What exactly is mythic European about shapeshifting priests of "nature"? How about pseudo-kenderish halflings who don't share anything with the Tolkien original except the name and the height? How about (hoary old example follows -->) flying, teleporting, blasting wizards? And I haven't even got to the funky creatures in the MM. After all that, a guy with the ability to punch people to death should be easy-peasy. I do hope you're not implying that white men never figured out how to punch people to death.
Yes, the monk is based on (movies of) Asian stories of martial artists doing crazy kung fu things. But who gives a damn what it's based on? The important thing is what it represents in-game, whatever may have caused some designer somewhere to think of it in the first place. There's nothing stopping you redefining the monk's backstory to be whatever you please, whether it's for one PC or the class as a whole. People who prefer to do things exactly by the book might have trouble with this, but they're hardly the ones who are complaining about the monk in the first place.
And thank your lucky stars you don't have "Grand Master of Flowers" to deal with any more.
Besides, if everything besides a class's melee attack abilities are just "flavour text," doesn't this make discussing any class with you pretty problematic?
The ability to distinguish flavour text from mechanics is considered a prerequisite to discussing classes in a sensible manner, yes. Notice that I said that the flavour text involving ki could be ignored. I didn't say anything about ignoring the _mechanics_ themselves.
The fact that many things in D&D are, to one degree or another, out of place in a mythic Europe setting does not mean that these things are equally out of place. Druids and dark elves, while more out of place than paladins are still nowhere near as out of place as monks.
... to you, perhaps. It would seem that others put a different ordering on things.
So, please post your marvellous demonstration that colour-reversed, spider-worshipping elves (or floating eyeballs of destruction, or flying rainbow serpents, or brain-eating, squid-headed people) are not as out of place as monks. Otherwise I will be forced to conclude that this post was too small to contain it.
Well, it's a pleasure to correspond with so many people on ENWorld who share my delusion. How do you account for so many people having the same misinterpretation of D&D as I have?
People can be stupid. It's not a crime.
Well, the dictionary seems like a good place to start.
That was fast. I wasn't expecting the obfuscation to come in for another six posts.
Tell us, hong, does the dictionary define a monk as "an unarmed combatant with a bunch of super powers"?
No. And D&D defines multiplication as addition. Your point is what, exactly?
If that definition were to show up in any dictionary or encyclopedia, wouldn't it be much more likely to appear next to a term like "Superman" or "Batman"?
In D&D, every character past a certain level is Superman. Your point is what, exactly?
So, why do you suppose that D&D chose to use the word "monk" to signify someone who does this?
Because "martial artist" has too many syllables and Gary doesn't work for TSR any more. NEXT!
Might it be that the centre of the class is not its melee attack progression but the fact that it represents an Oriental "monk"?
Ah, right. So your real beef with the class is not its weird abilities, or its lack of options, or even its flavour text, but its name. It's good to see such substantive issues being debated in depth on this here mailing list. Perhaps we could rename the class "George" and we could get back to arguing about how rangers got teh shaft.
By the way, I was quite impressed with your unarmed fighter class substitute for the monk. It looks well-balanced and well-designed.
Thank you.
