Monks Underpowered?

[Klaus]

Gauntlets are not monk weapons.

PHB 3.5, pg 116, table 7-5: Weapons
"Unarmed Attacks
Gauntlet
Unarmed strike"

"Gauntlet: This metal glove protects your hands and lets you deal lethal damage rather than nonlethal damage with unarmed strikes. A strike with a gauntlet is otherwise considered an unarmed attack." (PHB 3.5, pg 118)

Once again, Is there any reason why a monk couldn't wear +1 gauntlets?

 

[Goolpsy]

I'dd say u can. And that you WOULD indeed use your (Monks) damage.

 

[interwyrm]

Anybody else feel that monks don't even really fit into typical d&d fantasy just in a flavor standpoint?

I exorcize them from my games.

I mean... I can see them in oriental type games... but most d&d imo seems to be a western sort. And, while there were monks in europe... they weren't 'fighting monks'... they were scholars.

 

[Benben]

Anybody else feel that monks don't even really fit into typical d&d fantasy just in a flavor standpoint?

I tend to use them as mythic heroes a la Cu Chulain and Hercules. In which case Monks are the only class that have the sort of superhuman athelticism you get out of myth.

 

[Jeb McDonald]

Monks and +1 gauntlets

If a monk in my campaign were to put on +1 gauntlets, my response would be: "Fine. However, you lose your flurry of blows ability and your increased damage". My reasoning is monks do more than simply punch. They strike with feet, knees, elbows, and head-butts. Putting on magical gauntlets won't make all of those other attacks magical.

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

Anybody else feel that monks don't even really fit into typical d&d fantasy just in a flavor standpoint?

Feh.

D&D is a syncretic mish-mash of fantasy things. Sure, super kung fu martial artists aren't exactly crawling out of surviving medieval European woodcuts, but neither are rakshasas, couatls, dragons breathing anything but fire and poison, beholders, illithids, rust monsters, green slimes, iron golems, destrachans, dinosaurs, aboleths, fireball-casting wizards, shapeshifting druids (who, BTW, were just as much scholars as Christian monks were), orcs, spider-worshipping dark elves, and so on and so forth.

Sure, it's the DM's perogative to run the game s/he wants to run, and if you want to axe the monk because it doesn't feel right, that's fine. But if you're dropping everything that's not Western, you're logically going to cut out a lot of the Monster Manual and many other classes, too.

Brad

 

[Klaus]

If a monk in my campaign were to put on +1 gauntlets, my response would be: "Fine. However, you lose your flurry of blows ability and your increased damage". My reasoning is monks do more than simply punch. They strike with feet, knees, elbows, and head-butts. Putting on magical gauntlets won't make all of those other attacks magical.

As stated in the PHB, monks *can* attack with elbows, knees, headbutts, etc, but nothing prevents them from attacking with only their hands. The first sequence of strikes I learned in my kung fu (choy lin fut) training was the lim po, or Continuous Punch, wich was nothing but hand-strikes against several oponents.