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Message: <blockquote data-quote="fusangite" data-source="post: 1971211" data-attributes="member: 7240">I'm not demanding that anyone do anything. What I am saying is this: I know that a significant portion of people who play D&D share my priorities to a greater or lesser degree. For those people who share my priorities, the core rules are deficient in how they deal with Oriental material. People who share my priorities need more Oriental material in the core before the monk class is useable by us as a core class. I'm not saying that people who don't share my approach and priorities are playing the game wrong when they include monks as written in the core rules, unsupplemented by other materials. What I am saying is that they have an opportunity that the rules do not provide people who share my priorities. If you mean that the core rules do not limit people from adding material that lets their game be Oriental, African or Mesoamerican in character, I am in full agreement with you. But if you are saying that the core rules, by themselves provide sufficient material for people to run Oriental, African or Mesoamerican campaigns without either purchasing or generating large amounts of additional material, I must disagree with you. The archetypes provided are too rooted in Europe -- Samurai and Paladins might both be code-bound fighters but things break down after that. A dozen or so specifically non-European monsters and one specifically non-European class are insufficient resources by themselves.I'm not suggesting D&D is meant to be a Tolkien simulation. If it were, it would be awful. Robert E Howard is, in fact, a perfect example of what I'm talking about. His world is Europe, North Africa and the Near East as viewed through European mythic history. His Near Eastern and African places and cultures are not based on how people in those places saw themselves; they are based on how Europeans imagined them.Hong, You seem to be arguing that Monk = person capable of killing or fighting with their bare hands. And that any historical or mythological individual who has done this is best represented through the monk class. You argue that the name of the monk class, its abilities that do not pertain to melee fighting, its weapon proficiencies and the text describing it are irrelevant. And that the only relevant thing about the monk is its allegedly unique capacity to kill things with unarmed strikes. I do not accept this reasoning.Any class can take the Improved Unarmed Strike feat, thereby enabling them to carry out the functions that you seem to perceive as the exclusive purview of the monk. Because you somehow have got it into your head that Monk=anyone who can kill something with his bare hands, you then argue that the monk is suited to European-flavoured campaigns because of the many stories in which European heroes do fight creatures with their bare hands. This is a cheap tactic. What you are doing is changing a necessary condition into a sufficient condition: a necessary condition for D&D monks is the ability to fight unarmed therefore if a character can fight unarmed, they meet the criteria for being a D&D monk. If that were the case then every character class capable of obtaining Improved Unarmed Strike (all classes) would therefore be monks. Let me make an argument similar to yours: Saint Christina the Astonishing could detect evil at will. The paladin is the only D&D class that can detect evil at will. Therefore Saint Christina the Astonishing is best modeled as a paladin. This falls down immediately upon noting that Saint Christina could also levitate at will. You offer the following example:Beowulf did not kill Grendel's mother with his bare hands. He struck he with his sword. It broke. He then wrestled her with his bare hands for a while. ThenHe then beheaded Grendel's mother with the sword. This makes my point very nicely. Beowulf killed Grendel's mother with a weapon for which the monk does not have a proficiency.That's right. Unarmed fighters with superhuman abilities were not part of European tradition. Proficient swordsmen who, when deprived of their weapons, could still fight absolutely were. But no -- there is no mainstream Western tradition of the martial fighter who eschews arms. That is a particularly Oriental thing -- one of the most interesting and exciting features of Oriental settings. A single episode in a swordsman's life in which he defends himself ably after being disarmed does not make him an "unarmed fighter." The monk class is one that does better without arms than with; European tradition does not contain this as an heroic archetype. Oh yeah -- this is really reminding me of that alignment thread. Yes -- I happily acknolwledge that if you change the rules to eliminate the problem I'm having, I won't have a problem with the rules. Just don't pretend that your rule changes are the core rules.I'm not arguing for rigour; if I were, I wouldn't be playing D&D. I'm just arguing for functionality. I'm asking: is this class close enough to an available cultural archetype that I can use it? The druid is. The monk is not.No they don't. You're using another hackneyed rhetorical strategy:1. You claim I want classes to map to cultural archetypes with 100% accuracy (not a demand I am making)2. You then argue that classes that map to cultural archetypes with 65% accuracy and classes that map to cultural archetypes with 10% accuracy are effectively the same because they share the attribute of mapping with greater than 0% accuracy and less than 100% accuracy.This then allows you to sayBut the fact is that the monk class doesn't really resemble anything in European tradition and the druid does. After I gave you some information on Greco-Roman wrestling, you asked:I'm talking myth. I gave you the history of this group in order to offer some explanations for why something that was very much part of Mediterranean Hellenistic and Roman culture did not find its ways into European myth. I then suggested that if someone wanted to do a campaign with such individuals, it would therefore be best sited in Antiquity.Generally, read documents from the Middle Ages. I'm not going to assemble a reading list for you but I will give you one example because it's sitting on the shelf next to the computer and therefore doesn't force me to ask myself, "Why am I going through my files for Hong?" So, here's one example: Agobard of Lyons writing on Weather Magic in 815 AD. The weather wizards (tempestarii) described by Agobard have abilities essentially identical to the following D&D spells: Obscuring Mist, Fog Cloud, Gust of Wind, Sleet Storm, Fly, Ice Storm and Call Lightning. I'm a little confused about the last part of your response. Help me out here: I have conclusively demonstrated that every European hero you have offered as an example can be modeled with the Fighter class and cannot be modeled with the monk class without taking a heap of speculative weapon proficiencies. So, how does the monk class help us to model European heroes if you can't come up with one that wouldn't be better modeled with the Fighter class?Remember the Xvart in the 1E Fiend Folio? That was supposed to be Norse dark elf. Note the dark blue skin.No. I just want to play D&D with a different emphasis than you do. Fortunately, your way of playing D&D is not the only way.No. It just indicates a different cognitive organization than you have. Ah… I want to comment on this as the third shopworn rhetorical tactic you fall back on. You did it when I argued that I had a problem with the name of the class too. You argued then that because I had a problem with the class's name, that was the only thing about the class with which I had a problem. Now, you're arguing that because I do not automatically reject things that that are brand new and not specifically referential to any particular myth tradition, that I must therefore accept uncritically everything that is new and does not refer to a specific myth tradition. Of course the name of a class has implications for the setting. You acknowledge that immediately by suggesting that I can solve my problem by renaming the class. Unfortunately, the name of the class is one of a very long list of things I would need to change about the class to make it correspond to Beowulf or Hercules -- an enterprise rendered especially quixotic because Beowulf and Hercules are already modeled perfectly well using other classes in the core rules without any changes.Klaus, You have gone through my list and kindly replaced all the Oriental references with references to Greek mythology. It doesn't alter the fact that (a) the class doesn't actually correspond to an archetypal Greek hero archetype;(b) many of the class abilities (e.g. fast movement) do not in any way correspond with the mythical abilities of Greek pugilists;(c) the class still can't use most of the weapons Greek fighters (including those trained in wrestling) actually used;(d) faith in self was not a principle associated with any Greek philosophy or viewed as a reservoir from which power could be drawn;(e) still being good in your old age does not correspond to not aging; and(f) you have not demonstrated that practice of this art was a full-time occupation.I think you're GMing for a set of players with different standards than mine for what makes a setting feel authentic and believable. If the weapons and people having different names is the only difference you perceive between settings then I imagine this would be very easy for you. Unfortunately, my players and I require more substantial differences in order to make a setting work.As I have said to other posters, the arguments I raise are the arguments of people who share my priorities. I'm not asking you to share my priorities; what I'm saying in this thread is that the core rules, as they stand, do not enable people with these priorities to use the Monk class.</blockquote>

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