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Message: <blockquote data-quote="xenoflare" data-source="post: 2871536" data-attributes="member: 12431">Hi,  I like the monk because I like Asian stuff - well, cos I'm Chinese, and I grew up within that cultural framework, I guess. I like underdog, subaltern heroes who excel through perserverance and dogged determination, and I got my first exposure to the monk in early editions of OA; back then, i guess there wasn't such a big emphasis on level-GP parity? So it was possible to play the peasant weapon-wielding, humble ascetic student alongside Siegfried, Elric, Fafnir etc.  Now in 3.x, well, monks are still a personal favourite of mine, becos i still like the idea of punching and kicking things. i won't go into the whole underdog thing anymore, because the money system in DnD is so whack - i'm wearing clothes that can fuel an entire economy? and i'm a practicioner of "simple unarmed combat?" wth?  I like the monk i guess because of its flavour which some other posters have admitted are their main beef with it. I guess it is essentialist to be mr mumbo-jumbo oriental b.s. monk, to sorta be racist that all Chinese guys know kung fu, all Japs are katana freaks, and all Malays are silat masters. But DnD in its very essence is like that - we have races which are defined as inherently good or evil, or inherently predisposed to certain kinds of behaviour. i'm not going to wail about that - i don't really like it, but hey, some degree of stereotyping is required within the tropes of fantasy, to make it work.  I like being able to take the monk as a tool-kit, to throw it with other classes around as a flavour thing. For example, my fave characters usually involve 4 levels or so of monk, some other levels of another class like psion, wizard, or druid, then going for a monk-ish prestige class. It kinda works together - let's say I want to play a Shaolin monk who's heavily into reincarnation. I could be a Monk 4/ Druid 6/ Nature's warrior 5 or something. I'll be a priestly, unarmed kinda guy whose Wild Shape is a consequence of his memory of his past lives, of drawing upon the chi that is for all purposes - in that worldview - the world.  But having said that, it brings in all the things i don't like about the monk.  There's nothing sacred about it.  All the leet stuff you wanna get from the monk? Someone else can do it probably better than you can, with more flexibility, to boot. Since DnD is about money-fueled power to a great degree, you can find a way to ignore poison, to dimension door, etc thru your items list. Or you can multiclass after cherry picking a couple of levels of monk to get the frontloaded benefits - once you have even 1 level of monk, you get Wis to AC, you get the nice unarmed damage that you can ramp up with size increases/ feats/ gear/ spells..  That means essentially that dabbling monks - like the nature's warrior i suggested - are in the end more powerful usually than the "pure" monks. And hey... well that affects fighters and rangers too - the fighter/ templar/ weapon master is gonna own more than a pure fighter, and a ranger/ justiciar/ bloodhound is gonna get his mark more than a pure ranger.  So while the monk - as it is - is a fun toolbox for players like me to tweak and twink, i think it's poorly designed as a base class - it does not allow some ppl to enjoy themselves - those who just want to play VIABLE kung-fu men without having to tweak it out the wazoo. i've played in a game with a level 15 monk who's my monastic superior - i'm a monk drop-out from the same temple who went on to explore his own fighting style, and i outperform him through no fault of his own - he was just playing an "orthdox" monk, and i was doing my psion/ monk/ lucid cenobite build..  I'll leave flavour out - because that is quite subjective. But on the final note, the greatest thing about monks i'm peeved at is this.  WTF? NO HADOUKEN FTW?</blockquote>

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