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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hong" data-source="post: 1970121" data-attributes="member: 537">Oh dear.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.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?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.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.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.... 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.People can be stupid. It's not a crime.That was fast. I wasn't expecting the obfuscation to come in for another six posts.No. And D&D defines multiplication as addition. Your point is what, exactly?In D&D, every character past a certain level is Superman. Your point is what, exactly?Because "martial artist" has too many syllables and Gary doesn't work for TSR any more. NEXT!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.Thank you.</blockquote>

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