D&D (2024) Help Me Hate Monks (Less Than I Currently Do)

[Paul Farquhar]

That means that the clerics in D&D that are priests(and all of them are)

Not according to the rule book!

 

[Bedrockgames]

Not according to the rule book!

I liked the 2E approach to clerics

 

[Bedrockgames]

I played an astral elf mercy monk who was a vigilante trying to control his powers to heal the sick and punish the wicked, ultimately with goals of becoming an eventual god of death. i don't see how "monk is Asian" affects the story of that, when he mostly uses daggers to fight. Saying that monk is type casted to be an Asian stereotype is a very limited view or imagination of the class when the possibilities are endless IMO

There is nothing wrong with it if that is what you like. I just have a hard time connecting to this concept

 

[Maxperson]

Not according to the rule book!

Yes according to the 5e PHB(rule book). The acolyte background makes it clear that there are priests without clerical powers. Clerics are also priests, just not ordinary ones.

"Clerics are intermediaries between the mortal world and the distant planes of the gods. As varied as the gods they serve, clerics strive to embody the handiwork of their deities. No ordinary priest, a cleric is imbued with divine magic."

Their magic makes them extraordinary priests. They get a priest's pack as part of their equipment!

 

[ezo]

I started what I hoped would be a fun thread where we could discuss different orders or even types of monks for D&D. I regret starting this thread.

I feel your pain.

To address the OP (late to the thread...). I've had different forms of monks in different editions, mixing oriental and occidental influnences sometimes. For 5E however, since that is the current "flavor of the month" I'll give a couple examples.

First is from an "all-monk" campaign I played in online near the end of the pandemic. The DM flavored any "animal-head" races as coming from a Zootopia-like contenient far away. We had an aarakoca, leonin, and tabaxi to begin with. Each with a different subclass as well. The concept was we were emissaries from those lands seeking knowledge, trade, and perhaps even alliances with the kingdoms of the mainland. Our martial arts were derived heavily from our animal-connection. I guess you could sort of think of it like Kung-Fu Panda but without quite as much oriental flavor?

I've also used monks as adversaries, based on the Master of the Desert Nomads module. These were more "cloistered" than kung-fu type monks.

I have one player who has monks (along with paladins) as their favourite class(es) and they play them a lot. We developed a more cloistered occidental monk (a "friar") which used ki not for physical prowess, but mental prowess in knowledge and lore. It was a fun experiment.

Finally, as others have mentioned, practitioners of martial arts come from all sorts of cultures. I was glad when the added Unarmed Fighting Style, for example.

To my mind monks are too often portrayed as the wuxia style, like bards are protrayed as minstrels. My favourite bard I played was a dwarven orator. He never had an instrument, but was more a motivational speaker-type.

Anyway, monastic or not, oriental or occidental or otherwise, feel free to break the mold with monks and give them a twist you like. I understand sometimes when a player brings in a PC who is "out of touch" with the theme or genre of the campaign, but if you failed to stipulate that prior to the player joining, just try to roll with it IMO. If you told them ahead of time, (personally) I would stand my ground and tell them "no, make something else--it doesn't fit with this campaign" and not loose a wink of sleep doing so.

 

[barouqeworks]

There is nothing wrong with it if that is what you like. I just have a hard time connecting to this concept

i mean its pretty easy to make using the flavor that the game gives you.
they make it so that mercy monks have to wear masks and one of these masks shown in an example art is literally a plague doctor mask, giving me something to latch on to with the concept, and making a monastic order of plague doctors who have been trained in the way of balancing life or death.
i feel like some people are too quick to jump to the stereotype of "monks are oriental mysticism" and limit themselves because they believe "eastern fantasy" and "western fantasy" dont mix

 

[MGibster]

I really don't get what this obsession with "monastic orders" is. It's not part of the rules, it's not part of the fluff. It's not even part of history - itinerant friars and wandering mystics have always been a thing. Why can't the player decide for themselves how they acquired their abilities? why must it be tied to some organisation?

Some of us like to have organizations within a setting for the player characters to join. In the city of Greyhawk, a character could be a member of the Guild of Wizardry, the Thieves Guild, the Night Watch, or a member in good standing in the temple of Rao. Nobody's forcing this on any player. If Grump McLoner wants to make a character whose an orphan, doesn't get along with others, and is lone wolf with no ties to anyone or anything, well, okay, fine. Make that character. Nobody's forcing anything down anyone's throat.

 

[MGibster]

I introduced the Ordo Ventricula Sanctus to my players at our first session and they fell in love. Instead of making the entire order the bad guys, I decided there was a schism within the order and the heretics were the bad guys. This is one of those instances where the PCs take an unexpected interest in something relatively minor but in a good way. We spent a good 15-20 minutes with the Fat Boys even though the players had it figure out in the first five they weren't the bad guys. Some of them even participated in creating some background lore for the order. I was asked if they had any paintings or images of monks from the past and I replied in the negative. They typically have things like artistic writing (I was thinking of Arabic scripts in mosques) and the player said, "What if they have recipes collected by renowned monks on their wall?" I didn't think about it, but that's what they have now.

One of the players says he's coming back as a Fat Boy if his character dies and another character asked the Abbott if she could write the history of the order. So I'm going to have to come up with a brief history of the order and what they do. In a nutshell, they're a monastic order devoted to Fharlanghn, god of distance, roads, travel, and horizons. They travel the world, eating new meals with interesting people, and are known for protecting their fellow travelers from bandits and wandering monsters.

I'm going to have to write another adventure that features the Fat Boys in it.

 

[Bedrockgames]

i mean its pretty easy to make using the flavor that the game gives you.
they make it so that mercy monks have to wear masks and one of these masks shown in an example art is literally a plague doctor mask, giving me something to latch on to with the concept, and making a monastic order of plague doctors who have been trained in the way of balancing life or death.
i feel like some people are too quick to jump to the stereotype of "monks are oriental mysticism" and limit themselves because they believe "eastern fantasy" and "western fantasy" dont mix

For me it isn't about not mixing them. My whole point when I jumped in the thread was kitchen sink is cool and having monks and samurai as options for default D&D would work for me. I am fine with mixing settings like that. It is more that the flavors of a lot of the 5E subclasses in general just don't really interest me. I do like having monks where the asian flavor is clear because that is obviously where they are drawing on for source material (and one of the monk subclasses is clearly that, though I think they stripped out some language to make it more neutral). But I am open to other type of monks concepts

 

[Bedrockgames]

Some of us like to have organizations within a setting for the player characters to join. In the city of Greyhawk, a character could be a member of the Guild of Wizardry, the Thieves Guild, the Night Watch, or a member in good standing in the temple of Rao. Nobody's forcing this on any player. If Grump McLoner wants to make a character whose an orphan, doesn't get along with others, and is lone wolf with no ties to anyone or anything, well, okay, fine. Make that character. Nobody's forcing anything down anyone's throat.

I think having monk orders, communities and sects makes sense in setting. It also make it easier for players when they pick those classes. Same with clerics and gods (it is useful to have a list of gods and religions for players to connect their character to when they are doing character creation).