Monk?

[I'm A Banana]

It says Striker, but not Martial. My thinking is that it will be a Ki Strike. If I am right that means we can expect to see it in about June 2009.

Unless "ki" is just another name for "martial"?

I mean "martial artist" kind of sums it up, dunnit?

 

[mach1.9pants]

Unless "ki" is just another name for "martial"?

I mean "martial artist" kind of sums it up, dunnit?

Now you are just getting all technical on us

 

[glass]

Unless "ki" is just another name for "martial"? I mean "martial artist" kind of sums it up, dunnit?

Well, monks could be martial. But ISTM that they will have a lot of potential classes to squeeze into the Martial supplement and a lot of power-source-themed PHBxs to make. I think 'Ki' monks are at least as different from martial classes as (the commonly assumed) Shadow illusionists are from Arcane wizards.


glass.

 

[Nahat Anoj]

I'm really hoping the Monk will be a Divine Striker. Through ascetism, mediation, prayer, and ritual exercise, they apprehend the mysteries of the divine and imbue their bodies with the substance of the gods. This allows them to perform amazing feats of mind and body (that is, run around fast and hit things hard ).

From what little we know, Ioun sounds like the "best" Monk god (he's into perfecting body and mind), but monastic orders dedicated to the Raven Queen, Zehir, Vecna, Pelor, Avandra, Gruumsh or Bane sound like all kinds of awesome to me.

Monks of the Raven Queen are inscrutable mystics, worshipping their perilous goddess by serving as assassins. Banite monks would advocate oppressive regimes as the only path to spiritual tranquility, making detailed studies of past wars (think of a fantasy version of Sun Tzu ). Monks of Avandra are happy-go-lucky, "drunken monkey" sorts, wandering the world and constantly weaving, turning and spinning into and out of danger. Pelorite monks are generous sorts, assiting peasants as they farm their crops and defending them from undead monstrosities. Monks of Gruumsh are savage and brutal, spending days and weeks in the wild, purifying their souls in the viciousness of their existence. Most of these monks would be adversaries in traditional games, but even as villains that all sounds cool titillating to me.

 

[drothgery]

Now, I know that the monk is out for the PHB, but how long will we be waiting until it comes back to us?

No one knows.

I think the best bet is that it comes out in the 4e version of OA (along with 4e versions of all the 'Asian' classes, which a lot of people thought belonged in OA if they showed up anywhere). But that won't be until 2009 at the earliest; no one's even talked about it.

It might be very quickly, with the 'martial power' splatbook coming out this fall. Monk is certainly an obvious candidate if they're going to put any classes in that book.

It might be in PH2 -- I think, and hope, PH2 is subtitled Primal, Shadow, and Psionic Heroes, but that's pure speculation. It could be that they'll use PH2 for a grab bag of 3.x classes that didn't make PH1 instead. Or it could be that they'll fold 'ki' powers and psionics together, and so make the monk the psionic striker.

And it just might be in PH3 or later, under a 'ki' power source.

 

[The Ubbergeek]

Wasn't it specifically mentioned that any Monk they made for 4e would be distinctly "Asian" in flavor?

Now, this doesn't NECESSARILY mean Oriental Adventures 4e. They probably had a lot of success with the 'asian' classes in the various splats. But it would be cool to see....

Originally Posted by ArcTan
As an Asian-American I generally despise the tendency of settings to have a "Chinatown" somewhere in them. FR's Kara-Tur is the shining example of this.

It's really freakin' annoying to have a setting where all the "real" cultures that are allowed to be fantastic, to be diverse, to be different from the real world are generically "medieval European" but the "Far East" always has a thinly-disguised exact parody of China, Japan and India that are exactly like a stereotyped version of the real China, Japan and India only with magic.

Why, then, Monks HAVE to be asianised things, or Samurai....

Why it is bad then to have monks in faerun, who is NOT europe or asia, by example? Or goblinoid samurai as in Eberron (suggested)?

 

[I'm A Banana]

Why, then, Monks HAVE to be asianised things, or Samurai....

They don't have to be, I just thought I remembered someone in the early 4e stuff saying that if done, they WOULD be.

For the same reasons that clerics and paladins are very much Christian stereotypes with fantasy salad dressing (slaad dressing?), and stereotypical monks in anime worship the Buddha and use Ofuda, and the same reason I'd expect a Gladiator to be vaguely Roman-inspired, and a spear-wielding light-armored soldier or a serpent-themed oracle to be vaguely Greek-inspired. Or, get this, a squid-headed monstrosity to be vaguely Lovecraftian and a little bit out of the early 20th Century.

Regardless of how Arc Tan feels, our cultural gobbldegook is always impressed on our legends and myths, and that's where D&D draws a lot of inspiration.

Now, we can recast monks as generic "unarmed combatants," in the same way we can recasat clerics as generic "divine spellcasters," or paladins as generic "divine warriors," but I think you loose a lot of evocative potential when you reduce the class to functionalism alone. When I think of kickass martial arts, I'm thinking Bruce Lee, or Jet Li, or corny old Kung Fu movies. When I'm thinking of kickass samurai, I'm thinking Kurosawa and Musashi.

Why it is bad then to have monks in faerun, who is NOT europe or asia, by example? Or goblinoid samurai as in Eberron (suggested)?

Did I say it was?

I wouldn't say it is.

But Faerun has had a pretty strong case for being "European," and the goblinoids in Eberron have a pretty strong case for being "Vaguely Asian."

And vast benefits can be had from tapping the resovoir of mythological history that is inherent in the myths from which these archetypes are being drawn.

Heck, 3eOA even has a chapter recommending things like dwarven samurai.

So this isn't the fight you're looking for.

 

[ZombieRoboNinja]

Hmm, I'm guessing the martial splatbook is a more likely place for monks than an OA splatbook.

Why? Because the monk will almost certainly make use of a lot of advanced unarmed-combat and grappling feats, abilities and powers, and if they put all that in the martial splatbook, those same feats and powers could also be accessible by fighters or rogues and other non-"Eastern" grapplers and unarmed fighters.

On another note, since they're simplifying the heck out of the "mandatory" enchanted items too, it should also be a lot easier to balance monks' unarmed attacks (rather than making them use magic nunchucks or gloves like 3e/NWN). Although it's still an open question whether they'll want to start dealing with magic-items-as-class-features again.

 

[lbporter]

I have never realy liked the Monk, it is just too mystical for me. I prefer Billy Jack to Bruce Lee, and I would like a Defender Role martial artist. A no armor martial arts bada**. I will probably cobble one together once I know the system and see the martial power book. I am still psyched for D&D 4E.

Luke

 

[lbporter]

Apologies to Ken New (Kennew142) for stealing his 'Billy Jack' line . But we do agree, as does more than half of our group.

Luke