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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hong" data-source="post: 1970370" data-attributes="member: 537">Who cares about people who don't play the game? The interaction of interest is what goes on around the table, not elsewhere.D00d, I just gave you an example of a heroic fighter who fought one of his most famous battles unarmed. Here's another: Beowulf killing Grendel's mother. How much longer are you going to continue redefining this thing into oblivion?Irrelevant. You said that unarmed combatants with superhuman abilities were not part of European tradition. I gave a counterexample.Irrelevant. The point is that it _can_ be represented using a monk, without requiring any oriental mysticism or similar out-of-area handwaving. That _was_ your primary beef, was it not?D00d, you have to rework D&D wholesale to make it emulate _any_ specific culture rigorously. The same applies to oddities like druids, sorcs, drow, etc. To that extent, I fail to see the distinction between monks and any other anachronism in the game. The point is that since you seem willing to use Celtic precedents to justify including druids in the game (despite actual druids being a few centuries out of time relative to a pseudo-medieval setting), there should be no problem in using Greek precedents to justify unarmed fighters as well. And it's not a huge step from unarmed fighter -> monk.Well, maybe those fireball-hurling wizards could sponsor them to provide half-time entertainment during their mage duels.Make up your mind. Are we talking myth, or history? Because I couldn't give a stuff about the latter, and plenty of unarmed combatants with superhuman abilities appear in the former.Next thing you know, you'll be banning sorcs.I'll remember this the next time someone starts a l*w m*gic thread.Do you know where you can regularly find accounts of flying, teleporting, blasting mages? Wuxia (and some of them even use material components!). By contrast, I am failing to find regular accounts of Gandalf, Roger Bacon, Thomas a Becket, or Thoth-Amon flying around, fireballing their enemies. Next thing you know, you'll be banning wizards.Irrelevant.There are many things that shouldn't belong in the core rules. However, the monk is not exactly top of my list of things to remove (wizards would be it). Certainly just because the monk's origin is at odds with much of the general setting is not a great reason for removing it. A VAST amount of content in the core rules is out of place or time; to be consistent in applying this rule, you'd end up having to dike out huge chunks of material, some of which is as "core" D&D as you can get.What can be modelled by its class abilities. What in-game rationale can be thought up for the class. What cool powers it brings to the character-creation toolkit. Etcetera; pick the answer that suits you best. Narrow concerns about historicity are not particularly important to me.But some parts are more important than others.... for you, maybe. But then it appears you don't really want to play D&D (see below).You seem to have either forgotten the colour reversal, or confused metaphorical "dark" with literal "dark". Oh, and throw in the adamantine armour, crossbows and matriarchal society while you're at it too. A drow is a lot more than just an evil elf.1) IOW: you basically don't want to play D&D. Didn't I say this before?2) The fact that you consider Asian myth FROM THE SAME GENERAL TIME PERIOD to be "incompatible" strikes me as rather myopic.3) I look forward to seeing laser guns in your next game. After all, they don't appear in any incompatible culture/myth system.Exactly. Just as the fact that a dictionary defines the word "monk" in a particular way has no implications for setting.So call it a martial artist and you're good to go.... or have you said this before?No. I make a case on the grounds that all these things are trivially fixable, and complaining about them is akin to complaining that going out in the rain without an umbrella gets you wet. Now if you'd said something about the monk's rigid class progression, or how you can't actually emulate a movie-style martial artist with it (try tanking with a monk and you'll generally get your butt kicked), or the silly multiclassing restriction, or the limited weapon selection, you might actually be on to something.So call it a martial artist and you're good to go.Not that that was the point I was making, but do continue anyway.</blockquote>

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