D&D 5E Fighter should be called Knight and Monk Should be called Fighter, change my mind

[jmartkdr2]

I do not accept the flat assertion that "ranger" was a real-world historical social class.

It's an official job title, a government law enforcement agent with a particular portfolio. A paladin is just "a government agent" though typically a rather high-ranking one (ie sent out under the Holy Roman Emperor's direct orders rather than being locally appointed.)

On the other hand, even if you disagree - that still leaves 5/13, or more than a third. Adding "knight" wouldn't meaningfully change the ratios IMO.

 

[jmartkdr2]

Tangentially, my only issue with the monk is that it's trying to capture two distinct fantasies with one class (unarmed warrior and wuxia/kung fu mystic). This makes it unnecessarily tricky to build a character who leans on one fantasy but not the other, like a wuxia swordsman, ninja, pugilist, or luchador.

I don't think you need to split the class - Tasha's already went a log way to making unarmed fighters viable with just a Fighting Style; a subclass certainly has enough design space for a proper pugilist or wrestler. I do think monk could be rewritten to make unarmed fighting feel more like "one of several options" rather than the default that you need to work around, which would make kensai and mystical ninjas easier to pull off at first level. But I don't see a 'need' for a new class.

 

[Umbran]

It's an official job title, a government law enforcement agent with a particular portfolio.

The character class is not based on those. The class does not currently have and has not traditionally had government or law-enforcement mechanics, duties, or lore.

The character class is based, first and foremost on Aragorn, from Lord of the Rings, and then on Robin Hood, and eventually Drizzt (in a weird, circular self-definition). None of these people worked for the government as law enforcement.

A paladin is just "a government agent"

The Paladin that is a basis for the class is not a generic government agent. They were 12 specific knights highly placed in the court of Charlemagne, led by Roland/Orlando (as in the "Song of Roland" - the oldest surviving major work of French literature). The Paladins references are comparable to the Knights of the Round Table. In calling them "government agents" you vastly underplay the social class implied by the name.

On the other hand, even if you disagree - that still leaves 5/13, or more than a third. Adding "knight" wouldn't meaningfully change the ratios IMO.

Adding "knight" might not change the ratios meaningfully - but it would entirely misrepresent the class by referring to a specific archetype of heavily armored horseman, when the class is actually far more broad than the one archetype.

 

[Staffan]

both should just be warriors.
monk as a subclass or pack of feats on the warrior base.

This goes back to the old discussion: is this a variant on a particular archetype, or is it a full archetype with its own set of variants? If it's the former, a subclass can be sufficient, but if it's the latter you need a full class (this is basically the issue I have with 5e's psionic offerings so far).

What I mean is that yes, you can do "dude who fights unarmed" as a perfectly cromulent fighter subclass. But the fighter doesn't have room for all the various more-or-less supernaturally powered monk subclasses like the Way of Shadow ninja-style monk, the Way of the Elements bender-style monk, and stuff like that. If you want that kind of variety, you need a monk class for those to work off (though it might not be named monk – I believe Level Up calls their an Adept).

At the point when classes stop being narrative elements, classes stop being useful. They become skeletons created in the hope to avoid creating a character that's good at everything, which can and has been done by budgeting and talent trees. No "class" is necessary.

WoW taught me a thing about talent trees: you need to put strong/iconic abilities deep into the trees, or they become poachable. This means that it can take a long time for them to "come online".

The classic WoW example are Enhancement shamans, who traditionally dual-wield using elementally empowered weapons mixed with direct elemental attacks. Their most iconic ability is Stormstrike, which lets them hit really hard with both weapons as well as (IIRC) give them an attack speed buff. In classic WoW, this ability was deep into the Enhancement talent tree, so you needed to be like level 40 (out of max 60) to take it. Before you had it, you were basically relegated to autoattacks with an occasional Earth Shock or Flame Shock, which was a pretty dull way of leveling up. However, this ability needed to be this deep into the tree in order to be an Enhancement shaman thing instead of being something any Shaman could get.

But in a later revamp, they changed things so instead of picking talents á la carte from a talent tree, you just chose a subclass and got all of its iconic abilities right away. Some may have been delayed to later levels, but you didn't need to pick and choose to get the iconic abilities. You wanna be an enhancement shaman? Here's Stormstrike, right at level 10 when you get the subclass.

So talent trees generally aren't a good way to provide characters with iconic abilities. They work best for fine-tuning things.

 

[Weiley31]

Sounds like something a Deception would say.

 

[CreamCloud0]

Thief makes people think of Bilbo yet they chose super generic "Rogue" which is nothing like the X-Man, unfortunately.

But I get it, not all Rogues are Thieves but neither was Bilbo.

if we really want to be faithful to The Hobbit why don't we rename the class as 'Burglar'

 

[DarkCrisis]

if we really want to be faithful to The Hobbit why don't we rename the class as 'Burglar'

Yes!

 

[Horwath]

Also I think the abilities of the monk, don't feel like a generic fighter, so naming them fighter would be kind of off (there is just too much esoteric stuff going on with that class)

psi warrior, rune knight, EK all are more esoteric that lets say Champion or Battlemaster

 

[Horwath]

No, you can get away with two of them.

Warrior
Mage

true,
you can have only one and take spell slots/spells known as feats.
but 4 describes affinity to magic better in a scaling manner

You simply theme your warrior as a fighter or a barbarian or whatever and your mage as a wizard or cleric or whatever.

And for paladins you just multiclass the two. For rogues, they're just warriors who invest heavily in skills.

For the record, I'm very much against the 'you can do that concept without a class' movement. I'd love to see every concept given the detailed, loving, in-depth treatment of a full class rather than just a quick paint job on a fighter.

you can do it both.

you can make all features in the game as feat to pick from with prerequierement and level gating and then you can print out classes with preselected features and have concept and lore behind that.

then some people can switch out a feat or two from your guideline or in advance users, create a class as you perfectly imagine in your mind.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Sure there is.

I am not familiar with those characters, but to be clear I was talking about boxing the sport (not sure if those characters are boxers or not---I can't weigh in on those in particular). But my point was really more that pugilist brings to mind figures like Muhammad Ali and Jack Dempsey or Jack Johnson, and there isn't the same treatment of boxing the way other martial arts have been treated in movies and books. You will sometimes see it. For example there are Chinese martial arts movies that have brought in western boxers as part of a broader martial world. And you will occasionally see boxing used to punch out a guy with a gun or something in American movies. But there isn't the monks deep lore and cinematic language for the pugilist. Jack Dempsey's championship fighting doesn't unlock the power in movies and novels that the Nine Yang Manual does. It is like the other poster said, we have long associated it with sport more than adventure stories. That isn't a comment on any of these things in real life.

Also something about pugilist feels a lot more limited than the monk. The monk is drawing on internal energy, pressure points, spirituality not just punching things really well or hitting people with liver shots. You can layer those kinds of things on a boxer/pugilist. But I think the buy in is steeper for most players