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Message: <blockquote data-quote="fusangite" data-source="post: 2107833" data-attributes="member: 7240">Agreed. I don't allow psionics in my campaigns either for precisely the reasons you articulate here. And I think monks should be treated like psionics -- placed outside of the core and consigned to supplementary material that actually provides sufficient support for them. The big problem with the monk is that the PHB doesn't provide sufficient resources to run a proper Asian-themed world and so the monk limps along as a core class that is pigeon-holed, in most game worlds, into being an outsider.Actually, I complain about those things a lot too. Don't fault me for being inconsistent here.How, Krieg, do any of the statements on your list invalidate the point I'm making? Nobody. I repeat: NOBODY whatsoever on this thread is saying that there are not stories about feats of unarmed combat. But none of these stories involve people being better at fighting without weapons than with them. None of these stories involve the heroes deliberately eschewing arms and armour in order to make themselves more effective combatants. NOBODY I repeat: NOBODY is taking the position that Western hero narratives don't involve scenes with unarmed combat. A person who can wrestle well is modeled perfectly well with a Fighter with Improved Grapple. A person who can kill people with his fists is modeled perfectly well with a Fighter with Improved Unarmed Strike. Jacob and Odysseus are not modeled well with the Monk class. While it is clear that these characters have Improved Unarmed Strike and Improved Grapple, they also clearly aren't becoming ever lighter. They don't have to avoid armour because using it would screw up their mojo. They aren't blindingly fast either. They didn't learn to do these things well because they grew up as part of ascetic orders that study the perfection of the body. What I am saying here is that the Western tradition lacks stories of characters who are better without weapons and armour than with them. So stop telling me that the Western tradition includes people who can fight unarmed. Every single poster here already knows that. That's not what we're arguing about.Whoa! Stop right there. Are you really stating that the Monk class more closely resembles Hercules than the Fighter class does? While we're at it, Hercules is not a "wrestler" -- he slays the Nemean Lion with his bare hands because it is invulnerable to his weapons of choice: bow and club. Hercules' weapons of choice are not his bare hands. Like Beowulf, he resorts to wrestling only when the weapons fail him. When he fights the Lernaean Hydra, he ends up chopping off its final head with a weapon. He the goes on to shoot Ceryneian Deer...You miss my point here Ace. I'm stating that there is no such PrC because the fact that something is an Olympic event does not mean that (a) it can become a full-time occupation or (b) that a Western heroic archetype will arise from said occupation.Sounds like a fine idea for your character. However, this does not mean that one can make up archetypes. An archetype is an archetype because of its universality. You can't make specialist unarmed fighters a universal in Western literature and myth by fiat. They are or they aren't and you can know whether they are by reading the corpus of literature. Also, on that front, the Olympian ideal was resurrected by the European haute bourgeoisie of the late 19th century because it prized the ideal of amateurism -- the pre-1980s modern Olympics and the Greek Olympics were ideologically hostile to the idea of professional specialist athletes who made their living at it. That's why the idea of Greek wrestler as monk equivalent does a disservice to both Asian and European traditions. 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? 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.EDIT: PS. Plane Sailing's got it right.</blockquote>

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