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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Samuel Leming" data-source="post: 1870375" data-attributes="member: 16462">The fighter IS the martial artist of D&DThe place of the monk in my world has changed slightly since I started this thread.  Which is a good thing, as I began this discussion to learn.Before I proceed I should clarify that by martial arts I'm refering to studied, and perhaps systemized, techniques for conducting combat and/or warfare, not just unarmed combat.The fighter class, with their numerous feats, ARE the martial artists of D&D.  They excel at all forms of physical combat except for unarmed.  IMO, this is a problem. A problem that I will solve before my next campaign by creating a set of balanced feats that will allow fighters to improve their unarmed damage and unarmored defense.  When a player's character concept is a variation of "He's good at the kicking of the butt", the fighter class should be high on his list of choices even when unarmed combat is considered.  Characters with other classes will be able to take these feats also, particularly rogues, and if their concept requires a consideral amount of unarmed skill they'll be able to multi-class as a fighter without having to worry about any of the excess baggage that comes with the monk.  The single worst thing about the D&D monk is that people play it when they really want to be playing something else.The western style divine monk I discussed in an earlier post will be the default monk type in my world.  I'll make more use than I originally thought of the standard D&D monk and variants, which I'll refer to as mystic monks for now since I haven't thought of a better name yet.The divine monk usually desires a quiet life of contemplation and service, but sometimes duty and circumstance demands more of him.  I still intend to base this class on the cloistered cleric from Unearthed Arcana with the spontaneous divine caster option.  These monks will be able to freely multi-class.  Monasteries will be common and monks will most likely be more numerous than clerics.  Most of the NPC holy men of my world will belong to a priest NPC class, the adept class not being quite right.Mystic monks will be very rare.  After reading all the posts here I've decided to keep the multi-class restrictions for mystic monks.  Shao sums up the reason better than I could:Since I'm allowing any class to pick up some skill with unarmed combat, multi-classing the monk is no longer needed.  I'm not claiming that multi-classing in someone else's game is bad and it wouldn't bother me one bit to play in someone's game where monk multi-classing was unrestricted, but for my game it will be restricted until a character has over twenty hit dice.  In my next game unless a player's character concept includes "I'm on a personal quest for enlightenment and perfection" the mystic monk is not for him.  I'll make sure there are other ways for him to play what he wants.There will be three variations on the mystic monk.  The monk as presented in the PHB is a path towards physical perfection, so I'll introduce mystic monk variations for the paths to spiritual perfection and mental perfection.  The mental mystic monk will be easier to design.  This philosopher monk will be to the psion as the warrior monk is to the fighter. The spiritual mystic monk will be more difficult to pin down since there are so many examples: Fakirs, yogis, hermits and all those buddhist & hindu monks Shao mentioned.Well, monks in my world.Sam</blockquote>

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