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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MoogleEmpMog" data-source="post: 1964921" data-attributes="member: 22882">A view of fantasy rooted in Tolkien won't account for:The barbarian, the cleric, the druid (unless you take Gandalf as druid rather than wizard, sorcerer or bard, as some suggest), the spellcasting ranger (debatable), the paladin or either the sorcerer or the wizard - whichever you don't think of Gandalf as.Nor the beholder, aboleth, ilithid, rust monster, ettin, giants, dinosaurs, dire (as opposed to giant) animals, mummies, vampires (save for a single reference), most of the outsiders, and many more.Nor basically every magic item that costs more than 4,000 gp.Nor basically every spell above 3rd level.What is a "typical fantasy setting," anyway?  My idea of "typical fantasy" is Robert E. Howard, not JRR Tolkien.  Monks fit quite well in the Hyperborean Age, as strange warrior-mystics from exotic lands.  Conan even fought some probable wizard/monks in The People of the Black Circle.  They seem perfectly at home to me.  So do psionics, another branch of that deviltry men call magic.Of course, D&D is not typical fantasy.  It certainly isn't historical fantasy.It's D&D fantasy.  It's arguably the highest-magic fantasy around.  It's attached to no specific world culture of Earth, but draws upon many.  It is equal parts superheroes and sword and sorcery, with bits of epic fantasy thrown in.Fighters, rogues, wizards and sorcerers are quite generic, equally appropriate to an Oriental, European, historical, fantastical, space fantasy or sword and sorcery campaign, although in the last case they might be enemies only.Paladins, bards and druids are loosely based on legendary or historic archetypes of Europe, but none of them fit ability-wise.  Druids arguably fit an Oriental mold as well, since shapeshifters and nature-worship appear quite commonly in eastern myth.  Bard-as-artisan fits an Eastern mold directly, and paladin-as-samurai or mystic does as well, albeit with a change of clothes.Barbarians actually do fit the Norse berserker model.  Yet the class is generic enough to fit anywhere.Monks actually do fit the Shaolin monk model.  Oriental approved.  Yet he fits as a magical warrior in a western campaign, with no more change of clothes than a paladin needs to fit in an eastern one.Clerics, if anything, fit an eastern campaign better than a western one; far, far fewer clerics of Europe had magical or miraculous powers attributed to them.  Their outer trappings are a funky mix of medieval knight templar and classical pantheist.West: Fighter, rogue, wizard, sorcerer, barbarian, paladin, bard, druidEast: Fighter, rogue, wizard, sorcerer, monk, bard, druidNeither: ClericHardly decisive.</blockquote>

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