I hate monks

[Nomad4life]

Didn’t you guys know? Throughout history, ALL monks were kung-fu masters. The eastern ones just weren’t as good as their European counterparts at hiding it, however.

 

[ajanders]

Less Mystic Monks

Try a monk/Duellist combination: it doesn't quite strip out all the mystic powers, but it does get a pretty fair number.

 

[Nyaricus]

Didn’t you guys know? Throughout history, ALL monks were kung-fu masters. The eastern ones just weren’t as good as their European counterparts at hiding it, however.

so you are saying that all Europeans have huge bluff mods for situations that hide the fact that they are amazing matial artists? Hmm, that's a new one

 

[I'm A Banana]

D&D isn't European.

It's American.

It's a hodge-podge mixture of the exotic and strange all coming together in a common meeting ground of opportunity to carve a slice of the pie for itself. It's a melting pot. It throws in the kitchen sink *first.* And then it tries to work out what you get.

I mean, you can make it European. You can give it some Alps and a Riviera or three and maybe a dozen or so failed empires and call it good. Forbid or change everything that doesn't fit with the record. But I guess I wonder what you get out of that. Why have it that way? What do you get? I mean, obviously, a more Eurocentric campiagn, but why do you want a more Eurocentric campaign? That's not snark, just a rhetorical inquiry. I've never seen much of a point in it. But maybe I'm just not that overly impressed with Europe to see what it gives me in a game other than a couple goofy accents and some obvious vague distant origin.

I don't think D&D gains much of anything by pretending to be Europe-centered. It's not. It's cosmopolitain. It's not a product of Tolkien. It's a product of a bunch of game-playing Americans who thought Tolkien was pretty sweet. It's related to JRR like America is related to Great Brittian.

Your game is free to be Eurocentric, I suppose. But that won't sell me a PHB. Monks and Ninjas and Pirates will sell me a PHB. Or Skull & Bones. Or OA.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

D&D isn't European.

It's American.

It's a hodge-podge mixture of the exotic and strange all coming together in a common meeting ground of opportunity to carve a slice of the pie for itself. It's a melting pot. It throws in the kitchen sink *first.* And then it tries to work out what you get.

I'll agree in part and disagree in part. D&D IS a hodge-podge, but the core classes as written, going back to 1st Edition AD&D, are either European archetypes (Cleric, Paladin, Druid) or culture-neutral (Fighter, Rogue, Barbarian)...except the Monk.

Monk powers like "Quivering Palm" etc. all owe a stronger conceptual debt to the Eastern concept of religion than the European Cleric/Priest. Some, like missile deflection, can be seen in the displays of the Shao Lin monks.

As others have pointed out, the Monk (and the Oriental Adventures Shaman) are the 2 major (non-PrCl) martial artists listed in WOTC's publications, but they do a poor job of modeling non-Eastern martial arts, like Pankration, Capoira, Savatte and others. They do an equally poor job of modeling the non-spiritually oriented unarmed combat specialist.

 

[No Name]

Your game is free to be Eurocentric, I suppose. But that won't sell me a PHB. Monks and Ninjas and Pirates will sell me a PHB. Or Skull & Bones. Or OA.

This goes for me too.

I don't see how there's so much planar travel and knowledge of such, yet what lies on the other side of the world is a mystery.

 

[Ranger REG]

D&D isn't European.

It's American.

It's an American-made product, designed by folks mostly of European heritage.

Or as I like to call them ... "haoles."

Mele Kalikimaka, brah.

 

[Smackfish]

It's a hodge-podge mixture of the exotic and strange all coming together in a common meeting ground of opportunity to carve a slice of the pie for itself. It's a melting pot. It throws in the kitchen sink *first.* And then it tries to work out what you get.

Now this i can answer, but before i do, let me make the caveat that I'm not arguing that the monk should not be in the PHB, or even in my game with some changed flavor. I can however see the point that's trying to be made in opposition to the above quoted text, and it's pretty simple: Some people don't want a melting pot. They want generic western fantasy to be generic western fantasy, and the monk doesn't feel western, it feels eastern. Is this cultural bias? possibly, and if it is, so what? Noone's saying they don't like eastern fantasy, it's just that some people want to play one or the other, and not mix the two.

To try to clarify, since I'm notoriously bad at expressing myself clearly, let me use a completely unrelated analogy to make my point: Coffee flavored Ice Cream. I hate coffee flavored ice cream. I love coffee. I love ice cream. But the two tastes do not even remotely go well together for me. Some people love coffee flavored ice cream, and some people love the monk in D&D, which is why it should stay in the PHB. However, in my experience, it is a commonly removed character class, because for some people, the flavor, the style, the feel of the monk does not fit with what they want from D&D.

What I see a lot of here is people saying "Why?" The straight answer is, there really is no why, at least not one that is easy to explain, it's like seeing a nice big bowl of ice cream, and putting some in your mouth and tasting the rich, sweet flavor of COLD COFFEE!? that's the best way I can explain it I guess, i dunno if it's really clear or not, but i hope that it is.

Smackfish

 

[ruleslawyer]

Good for you! I don't like them either.

What upsets me is that I loved the 2E monk.

Well, that's confusing, isn't it?

Leaving aside version issues: I agree with dannyalcatraz that the monk is the odd class out. 3e has the druid (celtic), bard (celtic), paladin (frankish/early medieval european), and berserker (nordic/teutonic), plus some very generic classes; here we have the makings for a perfectly eurocentric campaign. No samurai, no ninjas, no rishis, no kshatriyas, etc. The monk is the only one of these that's non-european. While using druids and paladins may be blending genres a TINY bit, it's not going too far; throwing unarmed combat artists with ki powers in the mix is. Also, druids (a/k/a shamans, nature freaks, etc), bards (jacks-of-all-trades) and paladins (holy warriors/zealots) are easier to transplant to other settings than the monk, because the monk's powers are too darn evocative of specific inspirational sources in fiction and mythology. Finally, you're going way outside the traditional mix of D&D's fantasy sources with the monk; Tolkien, Howard, Moorcock, Vance, and Poul Anderson have plenty of characters on whom the various D&D classes could be modeled, except for the monk. About the closest you get in fantasy that Gygax would have read is the Donaldson Bloodguard, but they don't have the ki stuff going on.

Personally, I'd be happier with an unarmed combatant class.

 

[Ranger REG]

However, in my experience,...

With all due respect, your experience is not gospel, at least to me.