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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Imperialus" data-source="post: 2810686" data-attributes="member: 893">Someone who doesn't speak Greek? "Baa, baaa, bah, baaa" <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" />because equipping, training, paying, feeding, and maintaining a standing army is a very expensive proposition.  Even here in Canada where our standing army is second rate when compared to many third world nations our yearly tab comes to billions of dollers.  The very existence of a feudal system is polar opposite to a standing army since the entire premise is based around the idea that when necessary noblemen would call soldiers for a brief campaign before disbanding them.  I could get into how the enclosure acts of the 17th century and other techniques that made farming more efficient created the surplus food and manpower required to maintain standing armies in Europe but I'm sure no one wants me to drag this thread that far off topic.  The reality is that before the modern period Rome was the only nation that successfully created a standing army and that was largely due to the sheer size of the empire.  Despite that even at the height of the Pax Romana the Roman army was miniscule.  28 legions * approx 6000 men to a legion ment that on average (assuming full strength) there were only 168,000 legionnaires throughout the whole of western Europe and north Africa.  Compared to the empires overall population that is a miniscule number and I was even pretty liberal with my calculations.  Most legions probably had closer to 5000 combat soldiers at a given time.The best a peasant could hope for is that there was a garrison of a couple hundred soldiers a day or two away.  I mean look at what happened to England during the late 10th century.  Vikings raided with almost total immunity and no one could do a thing about it.any less legitimate than a wizard school or order or paladins?  I'm not saying that the PC's would be involved in the creation or development of these monasteries merely that if the process I described took place over a couple hundred years you could end up with a monk class identical to what is found in the PHB, perhaps with campaign specific ability names but one that makes logical sense in the context of nearly any D&D world.  No matter how civilized the world is there will almost always be boarder regions inhabited by all manner of nasties.  The peasants of said boarder regions would be pretty much on their own.They wouldn't, or at least not at first.  It would almost definatly start out as a simple non magical unarmed combat style(s) not at all unlike Tie Kwon Do, Judo, Karate or anything else that exists in the real world.  Only after the involvement of a church or deity eventually begins to take on more mystical aspects.  It's a back story, something that happens over generations to explain why there are people with English names punching holes through brick walls in the Free City of Greyhawk.</blockquote>

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