Paladin.. monk?

[fusangite]

I think Burke has an interesting central thesis, but he carries it to far and gives me the, perhaps unsubstantiated, feeling that he's based in the American and modern situation almost to a fault.

Agreed. To head out further on this tangent, my modern faerie campaign a theory of physics based partly on Burke; the central thesis of the game is the idea of postmodern celebrity culture/the spectator/spectacle society has interesting resonances with faerie lore. My co-GM and I have then structured this idea through Gnostic/Sufi ideas of emmanations.

There are these five quasi-gods who correspond to both the five latifa of Sufism and Burke's five dogs of meaning. During a recent episode, the characters attended a cocktail party dressed as the seven Japanese gods of luck. In response, the jingle dog god/NPC/celebrity observed in a TV interview that "that was odd. I usually just go as one of the five gods of meaning."

I'm not familiar with that shaman, and I couldn't throw out the druid, though I admire your integrity in doing so, he's too iconic and cool in his own right.

I'm playing one right now. I'm now at the point where I account for about 50% of the lethal power of the party and 100% of the healing.

I would like a good shaman, I think that in terms of larger fantasy archetypes DnD is missing a dedicated summoner or spirit dealer.

One of the best things about Green Ronin's shaman class is that is gives you a whole bunch of tools for making your setting one in which spirits are real and important. Combined with the 3E MOTP, it allows you to build a setting with very different relationships between spirits and the physical world.

Plus when I play a monk my DM normally lets me use the Oriental Adventures book which is totally awesome.

You'll recall that my position in this thread is simply that the Monk not be used without the accompanying material in that book; so it looks like our disagreement is minor indeed.

On a completely and utterly tangential note: Have you seen the preview material for Weapons of the Gods, Fusangite? It strikes me as a game that fits your aesthetic for ascetics very nicely, though if you peruse the EOS press forums you will note that I have already begun adapting it to Homer and George RR Martin so my own Kitchen Sink of Throwing In Kind +1 insanity can probably never be stopped.

Could you point me in that direction? I purchase non-core books at a rate of about 1 per year so I really don't keep up on stuff like that.

 

[D+1]

So, I ask you guys again: why won't you answer my question and explain why it is so important that you have to find an equivalent to the monk class in the Western tradition. Why does it matter so much?

Well, my own point was that I don't need to find a western equivalent. And that I don't consider D&D monks all that great of an EASTERN equivalent. It is, however, a perfectly fine D&D equivalent because it is a class that while based in eastern archetypes far more than western doesn't have a thing to say about the society that actually produces it. D&D monks work well in my campaigns whether they are sprouting from a Medieval Japanese culture, Viking, Egyptian, or Feudal Europe.

If you want to put a monk in your campaign, just design a setting where the monk makes sense instead of trying to shoehorn this poor nunchuk wielding, shuriken throwing practitioner of Eastern asceticism into a Clunyesque monastery or a Mediterranean gymnasium.

What is it about monks that makes you feel that they do not belong in any fantasy setting EXCEPT where they are strictly practictioners of Eastern asceticism? Why not simply accept that they are ascetics and let it ride?

 

[fusangite]

Well, my own point was that I don't need to find a western equivalent.

Good! Now that's a position I can respect. It sweeps away all these very silly arguments about Greek history and myth. What we have now is simply a difference in world building approaches.

What is it about monks that makes you feel that they do not belong in any fantasy setting EXCEPT where they are strictly practictioners of Eastern asceticism? Why not simply accept that they are ascetics and let it ride?

Because non-Eastern asceticism doesn't resemble what the monks do whereas Eastern asceticism does, albeit imperfectly.

 

[D+1]

Because non-Eastern asceticism doesn't resemble what the monks do whereas Eastern asceticism does, albeit imperfectly.

And why does the ascetism of D&D monks need to be assigned to any hemisphere or era? That was my point about it being fantasy. If you are concerned with portraying a very particular real-world organization and it's philosophy, sure the D&D monk is pretty flawed if not downright useless. But then I've never thought that the D&D monk was genuinely attempting such a narrow portrayal largely because it DOESN'T portray anything that very closely resembles a real-world pattern.

Yet I think it doesn't make the D&D monk less useful for not being properly oriental or occidental in its construction, it makes it more useful. A very narrow vision of the monk, closely patterned after a particular real-world organization in its form and function is pretty much by definition far more limited for application to a wide variety of fantasy campaigns because it IS best suited to only one particular kind of campaign. One in which the DM wishes to adhere closely to real-world construction.

But the D&D monk is quite clearly a pastiche of elements from monastic ascetics from across the globe and time. Mostly eastern perhaps but definitely intended right from the outset for inclusion into PSEUDO-Medieval European campaign settings. That inclusion just IS; they are there just because they are there. If you WANT to explain it in detail you can but it's not as if any particular real-world combination of philosophy, terrain, and historical events has to be heaped upon the campaign world in order to force a particular explanation of why they are there and why they look and act as they do.

Just because they don't fit your campaign because they inaccurately portray a more realistic eastern ascetic tradition doesn't mean that they have no place in D&D. They don't need to be associated closely with shaolin or ninja, etc, any more than a cleric of Odin or Set bears even a passing resemblence to real-world religion involving those deities, or that many of the weapons and armors being used in the game have real-world equivalents

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

Agreed. To head out further on this tangent, my modern faerie campaign a theory of physics based partly on Burke; the central thesis of the game is the idea of postmodern celebrity culture/the spectator/spectacle society has interesting resonances with faerie lore. My co-GM and I have then structured this idea through Gnostic/Sufi ideas of emmanations.

There are these five quasi-gods who correspond to both the five latifa of Sufism and Burke's five dogs of meaning.

In response to that two things: First of all I think you would be very interested in reading Sean Stewart he's a Canadian/American sci-fi author who does interesting things in that vein. In terms of urban fantasy, or fantasy generally, he has the best take on spirits and the supernatural acting as parts of modern or post-modern (in this case in the literal sense as many of his characters work in a world that lives in the immediate ruins of modernity) I have yet read. Galveston is my favorite and, in my opinion, the best Texas ghost story I have ever read and the second best bit of Texas fantasy around aside from the Cowboy Genesis or, possibly, L'Amour's Haunted Mesa. Night Watch or Resurrection Man might be closer to what your are doing, however, particularly the character of Double Monkey or the Lady in the Garden in Night Watch.

Second, good lord! I don't think I would ever incorporate a rhetorical work into a role-playing game on that level. Sounds like a good take on Burke though. Would be interesting to actually work out a character class based on rhetoric. The Monk of Eloquence or the Druid of the Silvae Rhetoricae? The could be a crazy shadowy cipher of the way alchemists worked in European history teaching the rich and powerful while organizing themselves into cabals and correspondence societies. Their power magnified by various artifacts of their forgotten masters, all of them on the look out for their ultimate goal, the Philosopher's Stone! Though in this case it's really a stone cut out of a dead philosopher and then used to beat another one, oooh how they hate philosophers!

At their head of their shadowy guild I see a leader known only as the Logographer a being posessing, and posessed by, their most powerful artifact, the Silver Tongue of Cicero! Cut from his head by the enemies of true statesmanship the new Logographer must cut out his own and graft in place in order to posess both the title and its true powers. The power of Ethos protects you, the power of Pathos weakens your enemies, and the power of Logos destroys all opposition!

I'm playing one right now. I'm now at the point where I account for about 50% of the lethal power of the party and 100% of the healing. One of the best things about Green Ronin's shaman class is that is gives you a whole bunch of tools for making your setting one in which spirits are real and important. Combined with the 3E MOTP, it allows you to build a setting with very different relationships between spirits and the physical world.

Sounds interesting, more or less the reverse of how all my druid characters end up working in the party. I'd have to see it to really get if I think it fits the summonner archetype I'm looking for. The closest one I've seen so far is the Genie Mage in Dragon Sands, and it wasn't that interesting mechanically. I recall seeing a shaman book I wasn't that impressed with, but perhaps it was another one.

You'll recall that my position in this thread is simply that the Monk not be used without the accompanying material in that book; so it looks like our disagreement is minor indeed.

To be accurate I think that's part of your position, but I agree that we have similar complaints we just disagree about how important they are or rather, perhaps, on the context they should be viewed in. I don't at all know if we agree on the virtues of the Monk class but I suspect it would be a similar dichotomy.

Could you point me in that direction? I purchase non-core books at a rate of about 1 per year so I really don't keep up on stuff like that.

http://eos-press.com/products-wotg.html

It's not a d20 book in any way shape or form, so I'm not recommending that you spend budget on it unless you are looking for a break, but I do think that you would enjoy looking at how the game is set up and how it incorporates ideological systems into character powers, character development, and basic mechanics.

It does, btw, have the very neatest looking basic die roll mechanic I have yet seen.

My suggestion would be to go through the download material, the sticky threads, and the top few threads in the forum. It's a pretty exciting system, and Brad Elliot who runs EOS press is a very supportive line manager and excellent conversationalist.

I'd also appreciate your input on a side project of mine that's developed out of looking at that system, you can skip down to the thread on how I stopped worrying and learned to love the plate armor.

I'm looking to describe the basic heroic movements, in seven steps, of characters in Chivalric literature from Homer to George RR Martin. And I mean movement, getting from point A to point B while defending yourself, not combat, hacking at all the people between point A and point B.

Step one would be Tyrion from Song of Ice and Fire - heroic but it's not really his idiom of heroism - and step seven would be Achilles during his rage - where yes he's an A__ kicker but he's not so much invulnerable or totally world destroying as unfreaking stoppable or opposable.

If in the East your epic heroes become light as the dew, what do they do in the west?

 

[tarchon]

Note - I shall repeat, this world is heavily medieval. Monks are treated differently. He's told this repeatedly. Still, the guy acts asian. He's confused why I'm called a 'Monk'.

It sounds to me like the other player doesn't know what a monk is. Seriously.

I recall some other times when I've run into people playing D&D who didn't know the thing a class had taken its name from, definitely "paladin," I think "rogue" too.

Oh, for the "does it fit?", I usually use setting details from a lot of different cultures with medieval-comparable technology levels, so it's not hard to fit monks in somewhere. I mean, if I can figure out how to use drow, I can figure out how to use monks.

WotC probably would have been better off if they'd called a nunchaku a flail, a singham an arrow (or just "pointy stick" even?), and a kukri a knife, and saved us a lot of trouble.

 

[fusangite]

In response to that two things: First of all I think you would be very interested in reading Sean Stewart he's a Canadian/American sci-fi author who does interesting things in that vein. In terms of urban fantasy, or fantasy generally, he has the best take on spirits and the supernatural acting as parts of modern or post-modern (in this case in the literal sense as many of his characters work in a world that lives in the immediate ruins of modernity) I have yet read.

Funny you should mention that. The fellow I co-GM that game with is a close friend of Sean's and has been closely involved with the world building for the books you mention.

Second, good lord! I don't think I would ever incorporate a rhetorical work into a role-playing game on that level. Sounds like a good take on Burke though. Would be interesting to actually work out a character class based on rhetoric.

Youch! That would be beyond me. We're working with a skill-centred classless system in this particuar case. However, I see from your speculation you're proposing Aristotelian rhetoric as the main organizing principle which would be a good deal less difficult because of Aristotle's sense of hierarchy and order. (As opposed to "if order, then hierarchy...")

I'd also appreciate your input on a side project of mine that's developed out of looking at that system, you can skip down to the thread on how I stopped worrying and learned to love the plate armor...

Where is that thread? You phrased this a little ambiguously; can you just post the URL?

I'm looking to describe the basic heroic movements, in seven steps, of characters in Chivalric literature from Homer to George RR Martin. And I mean movement, getting from point A to point B while defending yourself, not combat, hacking at all the people between point A and point B.

Step one would be Tyrion from Song of Ice and Fire - heroic but it's not really his idiom of heroism - and step seven would be Achilles during his rage - where yes he's an A__ kicker but he's not so much invulnerable or totally world destroying as unfreaking stoppable or opposable.

I might not be very helpful here. I almost never pay attention to physical combat styles so I don't really recall how any character physically fights in a story I like. (Except the scene with the old bicycle and the bucket of oil in The Transporter -- now that was cool.)

If in the East your epic heroes become light as the dew, what do they do in the west?

I think the fact that there is no clear answer is one of the problems with constructing a monk equivalent in the West; I don't think there is as stable a theory of what physical perfection looks like in the West because the terms "physical" and "perfection" exist in opposition to eachother in most classical and post-classical Western cultures. I think that pre-modern ideas of physically incarnate perfection actually are in liminal places with respect to Western thought.

The heritage of Plato and the Platonizing of Christianity in the Pauline-Johannine synthesis makes Western thought fundamentally hostile to carnal expressions of perfection. So, instead, what we really have for Achilles, Sampson, Beowulf, etc. is the idea that the character's final heroic act is one in which soul/spirit is so powerful it animates the physical body beyond the body's intrinsic capacity to be animated. The West's ideology of the body is expressed in the dialectic of "Lord, why hast thou foresaken me?" and "It is finished." We tend to over-emphasize the idea of self-sacrifice in these scenes but they also tell us about how the West thinks about the relationship between heroism and the body.

This is part of why medieval hagiography looks like a laundry list. Every time a saint does something miraculous, it has to be treated as an individualized exception, no matter how many miracles he has performed because each miracle is a separate act of divine intervention in which the boundary between the spiritual/intelligible and carnal/self-perceptible worlds is breached.

 

[hong]

I think the fact that there is no clear answer is one of the problems with constructing a monk equivalent in the West; I don't think there is as stable a theory of what physical perfection looks like in the West because the terms "physical" and "perfection" exist in opposition to eachother in most classical and post-classical Western cultures.

See, foosie, there is in fact a simple solution to this terrible dilemma of reconciling the monk with a western game that involves but three words: "screw", "physical", and "perfection".

I think that pre-modern ideas of physically incarnate perfection actually are in liminal places with respect to Western thought.

Well, you can always use them to make mushrooms, if all else fails.

The heritage of Plato and the Platonizing of Christianity in the Pauline-Johannine synthesis makes Western thought fundamentally hostile to carnal expressions of perfection.

HAW HAW! You stole that sentence from a fortune cookie. I know this, because it's much improved by the addition of the words "in bed" to the end.

 

[fusangite]

And why does the ascetism of D&D monks need to be assigned to any hemisphere or era? That was my point about it being fantasy.

I agree. And all I'm saying is that fantasy worlds should feel self-consistent and shouldn't have parts that clash. If you want to put the monk in a setting, you should probably make one in which the monk doesn't look or feel out of place.

I'm sure you can agree that sometimes setting don't feel self-consistent; sometimes things feel out of place in a particular setting. This is one of the interesting ironies of the fantasy genre that much as we all accept that fantasy is not reality, we nonetheless expect fantasy to be internally consistent with respect to physical laws, social structures, genre, etc.

If you are concerned with portraying a very particular real-world organization and it's philosophy, sure the D&D monk is pretty flawed if not downright useless. But then I've never thought that the D&D monk was genuinely attempting such a narrow portrayal largely because it DOESN'T portray anything that very closely resembles a real-world pattern.

You seem to have this idea that things are either 0% consistent with "reality" or 100% consistent with it. You seem to be articulating the view that because of this binary you see, there are no requirements for fantasy worlds to feel self-consistent. But you must acknowledge from experience that sometimes when you read a flawed setting, or fantasy novel or play in the flawed game of another GM, something that happens in the game can feel inconsistent even if the game is not modeling a real world situation.

Surely we can both therefore agree that conditions do exist in which the monk class can feel out of place. We're not debating that. What we're debating is the question of what the conditions are under which the monk can feel out of place.

A very narrow vision of the monk, closely patterned after a particular real-world organization in its form and function is pretty much by definition far more limited for application to a wide variety of fantasy campaigns because it IS best suited to only one particular kind of campaign. One in which the DM wishes to adhere closely to real-world construction.

I think there's a misapprehension your part as to where archetypes come from -- they come from literature and myth not from the real world. When something clashes in a setting, it usually clashes because literary and mythological archetypes are not getting along with eachother.

But the D&D monk is quite clearly a pastiche of elements from monastic ascetics from across the globe and time.

Really? How does the D&D monk resemble a Sufi dervish? How does the D&D monk resemble a Franciscan friar? How does a D&D monk resemble a Byzantine hesychast? How does a D&D monk resemble a cloistered Benedictine? And of these resemblances, how do they compare to the resemblance of the D&D monk to Oriental monk in the same category? Is there a case in which the monk class resembles a Western monk more closely than an Eastern one? If not, then the monk is what I claim it is.

Mostly eastern perhaps but definitely intended right from the outset for inclusion into PSEUDO-Medieval European campaign settings.

We have a statement on the intention on this board by Gary Gygax himself who explains in the thread next door that the monk class was originally intended to represent Oriental outsiders in his Greyhawk world and that monks were absolutely not indigenous to the quasi-European area. So, Gygax directly contradicts you -- 1E D&D monks were meant to be from outside of the pseudo-medieval culture in which the game was taking place.

That inclusion just IS; they are there just because they are there.

That's not what Gygax says.

If you WANT to explain it in detail you can but it's not as if any particular real-world combination of philosophy, terrain, and historical events has to be heaped upon the campaign world in order to force a particular explanation of why they are there and why they look and act as they do.

This depends entirely on your audience and their needs for a world to be self-consistent. I like to make worlds that feel real and self-consistent to a broad range of people, not just people with low standards.

Just because they don't fit your campaign because they inaccurately portray a more realistic eastern ascetic tradition doesn't mean that they have no place in D&D.

You people are amazing. How can you possibly keep maintaining that this is my argument? I've spent this entire damned thread articulating what place I see the monk occupying within D&D.

They don't need to be associated closely with shaolin or ninja, etc, any more than a cleric of Odin or Set bears even a passing resemblence to real-world religion involving those deities, or that many of the weapons and armors being used in the game have real-world equivalents

Right. That's exactly the standard of consistency I'm demanding -- not identity, just cursory resemblance. A D&D monk is far less like Franciscan friar than D&D Odin is like Odin of the Eddas.

 

[fusangite]

See, foosie, there is in fact a simple solution to this terrible dilemma of reconciling the monk with a western game that involves but three words: "screw", "physical", and "perfection".

Well, you can always use them to make mushrooms, if all else fails.

HAW HAW! You stole that sentence from a fortune cookie. I know this, because it's much improved by the addition of the words "in bed" to the end.

What do you think Dr. Strangemonkey? Is this a response from the Primal Dog, the Jingle Dog or the Tautological Dog?