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Message: <blockquote data-quote="D+1" data-source="post: 2107391" data-attributes="member: 13654">Oh come on, it's fantasy.  Everything corresponds when you accept that the entire foundation upon which you're building is rooted in UNreality.  You can accept dragons, orcs, mind flayers, and beholders in this FANTASY world, but NOT humans with epicanthic folds and a Buddhist philosophy (because clearly that was never found in Europe...)?Strangely enough I tend to think of monks looking and acting a LOT more like Obi-wan Kenobi or a fit, fighting, ass-kicking Friar Tuck, NOT Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan or Chow Yun Fat.  It could not be more irrelevant that there is no "Western" tradition of monks in the vein of ninjas or shaolin because (apparantly it requires repeating) it's fantasy.  At least in proper fantasy that I'm familiar with (where one actually uses the imagination) it is emininently feasible and perhaps even desireable to plunk a shaolin monk right smack dab in the middle of Camelot as a knight of the round table, or pit ninjas against vikings, or samurai fighting against Saruman and Sauron without batting an eyelash.Which perhaps is why we import monks into D&D.So why is it a problem for a campaign setting to potentially provide an answer to questions like - if Bruce Lee fought Hercules over the hand of Cleopatra in marriage, who would win?Well my understanding of Asian magical theory is clearly lacking.  I have NEVER thought of monks as magical.  I have always thought of them as achieving their abilities through intense physical and mental training, not magic.Well I would say "extra-normal enhancement" or something similar rather than "magical agency" but I would otherwise agree with that.</blockquote>

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