Tell me about Monks in your world.

[Christopher Lambert]

The Monk. I've seen more controversy regarding this class than any other in the core rules. In my experience, players usually don't want to play the monk as written. They shoehorn their martial artist character concepts into this class because there's no other way to get a competent unarmed combatant in the standard rules. Usually what they want to play is closer to a fighter, swashbuckler or rogue with unarmed skills.

Do you allow monks in your games? If so, what changes do you make if any? Is there anything you add from other sources?

In the next campaign I'll run, the monk will follow a more western tradition. I'll start with the cloistered cleric from the Unearthed Arcana and modify that using the spontaneous casting rules plus a few other minor modifications.

If a player wants to play a "martial artist", I'll let him build it using the fighter class(or whatever makes sense for that character) and some unarmed combat feats I'm still working on. What I have now doesn't balance very well yet. If a player really wants to play a standard monk as presented, and I've rarely seen that happen in the last twenty-five years, I'll let them. I'll rename the class as Shou Lin or something to avoid confusion and the character will hail from just a little bit past way way waaaaaaaay over there.

Sam

It doesn't help that DnD isn't very flexible, and Improved Unarmed Strike sucks Furthermore light fighters (and any unarmored character who wants to melee) get hosed by the rules (you effectively give up three feats for nothing). A fighter who went unarmored, even if he took a PrC, and only used his unarmed attacks in combat will be much weaker than a typical heavy fighter. In D20 Modern (which works very well for a low-magic setting, too) you have to pay for your armor feats. You don't get them for free. If you choose not to spend up to three feats on armor, that means you have three feats to spend on other things like an unarmed damage feat.

The monk is one of the least flexible and least supported classes out there. The lawful requirement is annnoying on it's own; what does being lawful have to do with unarmed combat?

Part of the reason is that the monk isn't a martial artist, he's a mystic, with all kinds of semi-random (and often useless) ki abilities; that's why he only gets a 3/4 BAB. However, people who don't like the mystic angle will gravitate towards it anyway, since it's the only way in the core rules to have unarmed attacks that do decent damage. Well, sort of decent damage.

Here we come to support. WotC goes out of it's way to nerf the ability to add magical effects to unarmed damage. Monks don't get a real enhancement bonus to their weapons on their own (they can't even do that at the cost of 5 feats slots!) ... they have to get a druid to cast greater magic fang on them (I suppose they'll go for the +1 "get every weapon" variety so you're not forced to count how many "weapons" you have on your body) or they have to buy a ridiculously expensive magical item to do so. There's no way of doing this on your own or for a reasonable price.

I wish DnD monks did less base damage; not only would this not scare DMs, but more importantly it means WotC could hand out some more useful enhancement bonuses to monk attacks without fear of creating monks that deal way too much damage.

There were a few tries in non-core products; my favorite was the bracers of striking. Unfortunately it turned your monk into a pugilist rather than a graceful martial artist, which is bad for at least some people.

Even the psion-monk combo doesn't work very well. In some 3rd party sourcebooks that I read (in 3.0), there was no power that would enhance unarmed attacks. I was quite surprised to see this; what were the psi-monks doing during playtesting? Even in 3.5 there's no option either; the 3.5 version of metaphysical claw doesn't have the "affect every natural weapon" option either. Psionics doesn't provide any options for making a good monk, either.

I've seen Monte's oathbound; similar to a monk. Too similar. More of the same. Maybe AU has some "monk"-boosting spells that actually do their job properly, though. It has the "Hands as Weapons" feat that lets you turn yourself into a magical weapon. Very cool. I donb't have the book here (lent it to a friend) so I'm not sure if it affects all your magical weapons.

The best martial artist class I've ever seen is D20 Modern's Martial Artist advanced class. Grim Tales and Spycraft also have very good methods of dealing with martial artists (neither of them use an advanced class, but both have their foibles as well). I don't believe DnD is capable of handling an unarmored warrior - there's no balanced way of boosting AC at low levels without boosting it at higher levels too (which is the source of some of the balance problems).

 

[Shades of Green]

I like the monk concept; it does not fit my world in its unaltered form, however, though a similar class exists.

The reptilian/humanoid Celirans of the southern forest-swamps rever Meya Ennah ("The One Mother" in their tounge), a monotheistic goddess of Nature as a whole. As such, Meya Ennah is nominally "True Neutral", though, in truth, she has more than one... "aspect". Most Priestesses worship the lifegiving, motherly aspects of nature and acts as liasions (sp?) between their tribe and nature herself. Some worship Meya Ennah as a death goddess, some as the godess of the Life Cycle as a whole, transcending good or evil - and some worship the primal, bestial side of nature, the piece of her revealed in predators and stalkers. The Huntresses, priestesses-assassins of the Tigress (as they call Meya Ennah), are, in game terms, a mix between a Monk, a druid and a rouge - hardly spellcasters, but deadly to those they consider as their... prey.

 

[warlord]

You always could bring back the great 2e OA martial arts system or import the Palladium martial arts system. To solve the light fighters getting the crap beaten out of them problem I judst use a class bonus to defense like in the SWRPG.

 

[Greg K]

I ditched UA strike for the brawling, Combat MA, and defensive MA feat chains as well as Blood and Fist MA styles.

 

[Trickstergod]

Seeing as how the initial poster asked whether we allowed monks in our games, thus meaning a no is a perfectly valid answer despite what some who didn't read the full first post might say, here's my own input.

No, I don't allow monks in my games. It comes with a certain amount of Asiatic baggage that, while fine in places like Oriental Adventures, doesn't float my boat in a pseudo-Western implied setting.

Furthermore, I don't really like the image of someone, say, punching a hole through plate mail with their bare hand. Even an unarmed combatant with less cultural influence upon it wouldn't do it for me; I find the idea of a bar room brawler or pugilist or wrestler or whatever going fist to claw with a monster to be a bit silly. Sure, doing the job with three feet of steel versus a thirty foot long beasty also might be seen as a bit silly, but I can deal with it better than someone thumping a dragon in the nose with their fist. I don't even really like the Defender from Midnight.

So, no, don't use monks. Were I to run a more Eastern flavored game, sure, but there the style of it doesn't seem quite so jarring to me.

If it means much, I also tend to avoid psionics as it comes off too strongly as sci-fi and implied evolution (didn't even really like it in Dark Sun). I'm curious how often the two - dislike of monks and psionics - goes hand in hand. I'd say fairly regularly.

 

[Turjan]

No, I don't allow monks in my games. It comes with a certain amount of Asiatic baggage that, while fine in places like Oriental Adventures, doesn't float my boat in a pseudo-Western implied setting.

If it means much, I also tend to avoid psionics as it comes off too strongly as sci-fi and implied evolution (didn't even really like it in Dark Sun). I'm curious how often the two - dislike of monks and psionics - goes hand in hand. I'd say fairly regularly.

Same here. Somehow, I have no place for an obvious oriental sterotype IMC. You might find one or the other NPC with some levels of Quarterstaff Master from "Masters of Arms", though. I don't have psionics, either, because I like to have the campaign not too much cluttered with completely different concepts; either there's magic or there's psionics; IMC it's magic.

 

[Christopher Lambert]

I like psionics. I don't like monks. The hypothesis isn't 100% correct

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

The Light Fighter style monk does get a much better skill list and skill points for loosing all those armor proficiencies, but you can certainly argue that it's not enough.

I let monks in under a number of justifications.

Just now, I've got monks as religious arbiters, a poor man's knight errant, and as semi-secret agents of various dieties and organizations.

The Oathsworn from AU is a nice example of how you can write the arcetype into fantasy fairly well.

 

[Eldragon]

I have always seen the 3.0 and 3.5 Monks as the ultimate in spellcaster killers. No other class is better at killing off another character who relies on magic better than a monk (Wizards, Sorcs, the and the spell-centric clerics and druids). At lower levels the monk does not have a lot of fearsome abilities, but the monk continually gets new and better abilities as he levels up. Grapple, Great saving throws, improved evasion, and spell resistance, makes the monk stand out far above any other class. When we played higher level games (12+) my players always made sure to have monk so that any equally high level Wizard or Sorceror could be easily delt with.

Because of the meta-game traits of the monk, In my campaign world monks are the people who keep the magic users in check. I ignore the eastern kung-fu monk and the western friar architypes altogether. While I can go into elaborate detail on the subject of monastic orders in my capaign world I will give you the reader's digest version:

The lawful nature of monastic orders cause the monks to promote a belief in order in society. Those who use magic to disrupt order are stopped... with extreme prejudice. e.g. The arch-wizard super-villain atop his mage's tower summoning a demon will probably have a group of well trained and high level monks come knocking at his tower door. It is equally possible a wise and good King who has gathered local druids to improve the yearly crop havest may generate the ire of the local temple of monks.

Its not that monk in my campaign world dislike magic, but that they want to keep magic usage with safe limits. Much like how a druid grove fights urban spawl.

 

[Trickstergod]

I like psionics. I don't like monks. The hypothesis isn't 100% correct

Sure it is! I said regularly, not always. Heh. I avoid giving outright definitive, no exceptions allowed kind of statements.

There's almost always an exception, after all.