Monk and Swordsage

[Gloombunny]

The former is a base (20-level) class in the latter. The latter is Tome of Battle: Book of Nine Swords. It is like unto awesomeness captured in ink.

Except for those punks who despise everything even the least bit non-pseudo-historically-Eurocentric in D&D. *shakes fist at them*

Even they have no excuse not to like the warblade and crusader!

 

[Andor]

Swordsage does indeed rock. It has pretty much nothing in common with anything in IH however.

If I had to guess (I don't, but I will anyway) we'll see the Monk, Swordsage, and Psiwarrior all get folded into a Meditative Warrior type who uses the Psionic power source in the PHB II or the Psionics Book for 4e. Chi is afterall pretty much the same fluff as Psionics.

 

[hong]

As long as they get rid of that idiotic crystals and ectoplasm nonsense. Psionics : ectoplasm :: magic : bat guano

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Personally I'd just like to see WotC try to make a non-mystic unarmed fighter. That would be nice to see, just once.

 

[Campbell]

As long as they get rid of that idiotic crystals and ectoplasm nonsense. Psionics : ectoplasm :: magic : bat guano

I'm hoping the bat guano gets removed too. I prefer my magic sans animal feces.

 

[Andor]

What? All Shao-lin monks exude glowing slime. Everybody knows that.

 

[Cadfan]

I mostly agree.

But to do this, the basic problem surrounding unarmed attacks will have to be fixed.

That problem is that it generally costs resources (feats) to learn to fight unarmed, on the apparent assumption that unarmed fighting is to be used in D&D as a sort of un-disarmable, completely concealable backup weapon. On top of this, unarmed fighting is generally automatically worse than armed fighting in terms of damage and access to weapon bonuses.

This means that if you want to create a fighter who specifically fights unarmed, you have to expend resources to make your character worse than he would have been if you hadn't done so.

To solve this, the monk gets unarmed attacking free, and then he gets a bunch of boosts to his unarmed damage. In exchange he loses most of the good combat weapon proficiencies.

If a monk type class got the unarmed attacking abilities of the current monk, plus the weapon proficiencies of a swordsage, I feel like it might be a little... awkward. I don't know if I want to say too good, but it would be an awkward pairing.

Some solution would have to be invented to handle this.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

The monk, with its exclusive focus on unarmed combat, punching dragons to death, may have fit when it was created in the ninja and kung fu heyday of the 80's, but today wuxia and martial arts genre films use swordfighting just as much as unarmed combat.

Eh...I remember a lot of films where weapons & unarmed combat were freely intermixed, even in the 1970s...although in a lot of those, it was the villain who used weapons more than the hero(es).

It is like unto awesomeness captured in ink.

I wasn't that impressed with Bo9S and the Swordsage. Tastes differ, though.

Except for those punks who despise everything even the least bit non-pseudo-historically-Eurocentric in D&D. *shakes fist at them*

I just think they belong in their own supplements.

Even they have no excuse not to like the warblade and crusader!

The Crusader was the only base class in Bo9S I actually liked- I could easily dump the Warblade into the trash.

Chi is afterall pretty much the same fluff as Psionics.

IMHO, Chi/Ki has more in common with MoI mechanics & fluff than the XPH.

As for martial artists & their weapons, I discussed a variant I'm working on in post #21 of another thread ( http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=203353 ):

The only thing that has to really get detailed is the list of "Martial Artist Weapons" that a PC can use with abilities like Flurry of Blows (or its equivalent). Some will have limitied lists, like Escrima. Others, like Shaolin Kung Fu may be quite extensive. In an alternative to generating specific weapon lists for a variety of martial arts, you might try making a general list for the players to choose from, like:

Proficient in all simple weapons, PLUS Choose one of the following groups as the PC's Melee Martial Arts Weapons and additional Ranged weapons:

1) 1 One-handed and 2 Light Martial weapons + 1 Martial Ranged Weapon
2) 3 Exotic Light weapons + 1 Martial or Exotic Ranged Weapon
3) 1 Exotic Light Weapon + 1 Exotic One-handed weapon + 1 Martial Ranged Weapon
4) 1 Martial or Exotic 2 handed weapon + 1 Martial or Exotic Ranged Weapon

(I've expanded the list to include options like using All Simple Weapons as martial arts weapons.)

The PC gets to choose one group at 1st level as his "Martial Arts Weapons" ("Monk weapons" in 3.5 lingo), and as a class feature, may choose additional groups as he increases in level.

 

[Klaus]

Swordsage does indeed rock. It has pretty much nothing in common with anything in IH however.

If I had to guess (I don't, but I will anyway) we'll see the Monk, Swordsage, and Psiwarrior all get folded into a Meditative Warrior type who uses the Psionic power source in the PHB II or the Psionics Book for 4e. Chi is afterall pretty much the same fluff as Psionics.

Ki and Psionics were spelled out as being the same in, iirc, Secrets of Sarlona.

 

[GreatLemur]

What I'm hoping is that the monk will kill the swordsage and take his stuff. IMO the separation between the two classes is artificial, since they're both essentially mystic unarmored wuxia classes.

That's cool and all, but I don't really want to lose the whole unarmed martial artist thing. I would, however, love to lose the mystical unarmed martial artist thing, so I'd be plenty happy if there was some kind of Fighter option that let me trade weapon and armor proficiencies for unarmed damage and dodge bonuses.

As long as they get rid of that idiotic crystals and ectoplasm nonsense. Psionics : ectoplasm :: magic : bat guano

Good Christ, no kidding. Fantasy fiction has way too many glowing, floating crystals in it already, without dragging in new age tropes.