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Message: <blockquote data-quote="fusangite" data-source="post: 2809043" data-attributes="member: 7240">No need. Just go to Encounter Critical fansite. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Let me put it this way: suspension of disbelief is a weird thing in fantasy and sci-fi. In order to maintain it, things have to conform to some kind of internal logic because they certainly don't conform to the logic of the world in which we live. Maybe it's a weird internal logic; maybe it's an arbitrary internal logic but there we are. In my personal experience, the monk is one of the things that most often causes problems with suspension of disbelief in D&D. It certainly causes problems for me when it comes to suspension of disbelief.In my experience, they do for an awful lot of D&D players. For instance, in my current game, the GM and I are total history geeks. Two of the other players mock us for being history geeks and don't give a damn about history and anthropology and one guy is just so really easy-going. Yet, even though none of us knew eachother when we formed our opinions on this, we all find the monk does stick out like a sore thumb. At the beginning of the campaign, a player who later dropped out really wanted to play a monk and we let her but we found that the incongruousness of the character did actually mess with everybody's suspension of disbelief a bit. I'm not a fan of core D&D containing anything that is likely to cause such a significant portion of the players to find the game world less credible. Now, I understand that for some people, the colour-coded dragons also do that. But neither I nor my current gaming group find, at the personal level that that particular bit of arbitrary weirdness makes game worlds seem less believable the way the monk class does.It sounds like your experience is different from mine, that very few people you game with have the same trouble with monks that the people I encounter in gaming do. I find that interesting but, my experience of different gaming groups is broad enough that I can feel somewhat confident that even if not the majority, the number of people in the hobby who react to the monk the way that I do is large enough that my proposal for improving the core rules with respect to monks is worth considering.I'm the same way, actually, with the Mind Flayers and the Great Wheel (the other things you list don't seem to mess with my suspension of disbelief) but I don't recommend they get torn out of or reinforced in the core rules because I find that people who share my view on those things are a much much smaller portion of the hobby than those who share my views on monks.Making it easier to suspend disbelief. For me, maintaining suspension of disbelief is one of the three most important jobs for a GM; I want core rules that make that easier not harder. Hence my demand that the monk either get yanked or provided with enough context that it doesn't have that effect. I really don't care which. Eurocentric D&D is not a worthy goal in and of itself. D&D in which people can easily feel immersed in the story and world are worthy goals. Often, a level of cultural or mythological consistency helps to achieve those goals. I don't fundamentally care what mythological or cultural tradition D&D draws from; I just want D&D to feel consistent with itself. In my view, the biggest contributor to suspension of disbelief is self-consistency. People playing D&D anticipate encountering roughly the kind of world that they would expect to find in a successful fantasy novel.Remember those "one of these friends doesn't belong" puzzles you were handed when you were six? So, here are your four squares:Square 1: Picture of an elf drawing a bowSquare 2: Picture of a swordsman clad in mailSquare 3: Picture of a dryad or faerieSquare 4: Picture of a shuriken-wielding shaolin monkWhich one of these friends doesn't belong? Most people who read fantasy novels or watch fantasy movies will pick square #4. They just will. That's why the monk is different.So are the three musketeers. So are Australian aboriginal dream shamans. So is Dr. Jeckyll. They don't belong in the core PHB either. Just like the monk, they belong in supplements, unless core D&D is prepared to put enough resources in the core PHB that they don't look out of place either.Because I think mutilation projects should be self-consistent. Otherwise, by your arguments, there is nothing that doesn't belong in D&D. I don't want a 2-page spaceship section in the PHB; I don't want a 2-page radioactive mutant section in the PHB. What I want is a game that's about something, not a game that just takes all possibly interesting stories and ideas and sticks them in a blender.</blockquote>

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