The 'Cultural' Classes: Barbarian & Monk

[Insight]

I'm curious how other DMs handle certain character classes that are based more on cultural origin or upbringing as opposed to skill sets. The two that immediately come to mind are the Barbarian and the Monk.

In my view, Barbarians are characters from a culture that lives within nature, has few social constructs, little institutionalization, and are generally very warlike. I like Barbarians as an idea, and I don't really have a problem with people in my game wanting to play Barbarians, given an appropriate culture in the campaign setting.

Monks are also a cultural origin type class, to a lesser degree. These characters have been brought up with a certain philosophy and mindset, and have spent many years developing and honing their skills. They live away from their native society, usually in isolated places, and normally only associate with their own brotherhood. Obviously, the Monks in the PHB are based on Shaolin Monks, and may not be appropriate in all campaign settings.

That being said, here is my question: do you allow characters to add these sorts of classes during play when they did not start with them? In other words, do you allow player characters to become Barbarians and/or Monks, or do they have to start play with one of these classes in order to advance them? What are your reasons for allowing or disallowing this?

 

[HellHound]

We use Barbarians as any form of unhinged fighter... so you get people who start to 'lose it' picking up the class - often fighters grab a level of it to rage once per day.

As for monks, I don't have any in my home campaign. And for other campaigns, I don't see it as any harder to pick up the monk's skills if you adopt their ways than it would be to learn magic as a wizard.

 

[Turanil]

First thing: this thread relates to general discussion, not houserule.

That being said, here is my question: do you allow characters to add these sorts of classes during play when they did not start with them? In other words, do you allow player characters to become Barbarians and/or Monks, or do they have to start play with one of these classes in order to advance them? What are your reasons for allowing or disallowing this?

I guess that WotC named these two classes Barbarian and Monk to recall the old editions of the game. Myself I just renamed them in Berserker and Martial Artist, so you get back to classes representing sets of abilities.

 

[drnuncheon]

I allow them under the same rules as I allow any other multiclassing - they need to declare it a level in advance, have in-game opportunity, and we both have to agree it's the right direction for the character.

J

 

[Insight]

Well, actually, this IS a house rule issue, because the RAW don't make any distinction between multiclassing TO different classes, other than with Paladin, Monk, Barbarian, etc in that you can't multiclass AWAY from them and later go back. A lot of people have house rules about this.

 

[Anax]

To a certain degree, it kind of depends how you want to look at it--and, of course, paladins should probably be on the list as well, probably alongside druids and rangers.

My take on it is that multiclassing into one of these *ought* to be predicated on some sort of access to appropriate training, with the possible exception of Barbarian.

Barbarian: The name screams "savage from the frozen wastes", but really, this is all about a much more direct fighting style. The barbarian is essentially a model for "fighting with raw power". The chaotic alignment requirement could, in my opinion, also be dropped--I can easily believe in a very very disciplined person using willpower alone to enter a sort of frenzied state. In any case, this does not particularly require that you have a barbaric background. Some examples of reasons a person might enter this class: 1) Experience in war--wars are nasty nasty things and can brink out a kind of berserker rage in a person, 2) Living desperately--same sort of deal here: the character no longer has time to think about the best way to fight--he fights however he has to to survive, 3) Intentional training--in this case, think about someone training at wrestling in an urban setting--focusing on releasing all of his strength in a frenzy, rather than fighting smart. So you can also think of this class as a tactical choice. A fighter must give up his normal focus (gaining techniques) in order to focus on raw power.

Monk: This is something that certainly ought to be available at later stages in a character's career. My current monk is a rogue 3/monk 8. She was living on the streets when she tried to mug the wrong person--a high level monk. The monk was impressed by her agility, and she was impressed by him as well, and he managed to convince her to accept training at a monastery. We have another monk in the party as well, a half orc who learned the rudiments of unarmed fighting by observing his captors before escaping from them. He is largely self-trained and fights in ways atypical for a monk. I do think that a certain access to training (whether written, in person, or in a monastery) is appropriate here, but it's really up to the player and the GM how to set this up. And in a world where there are well known monks, it could be simpler than that.

Paladin: To be honest, I think this is one of the iffier cases--I've always felt that paladins should need to have a serious calling, and serious training. We play with core rules paladins, but I'd be more comfortable with prestige class paladins. In any case, this is somewhat similar to the case of monks in that intensive training in a martial religious order makes sense for character development--but there are ways around that. Perhaps the character just feels a calling and prays. The same could be said of clerics. When gods can inspire in dreams (not to mention in direct action), anything is possible.

Druids and rangers: Similar sort of thing to clerics and paladins, although, of course, there's a certain amount of "likes nature" that has to be dealt with in contrast to the "likes a deity" for paladins and clerics. There's no reason not to allow access to these classes to anyone who has a good concept of what their character should be like.


So that's my take on it--I think *anything* ought to go as long as the player has a good character concept to go with it. (If anything, I think that the existing class restrictions in the RAW are too binding.) In a looser less-RP-oriented gaming group, even a reasonable concept of what the character's classes represent isn't super important. After all, there's a difference between the abilities that a character has and the character itself. So best to treat all the "core" classes as reasonable choices for any character at any time, and save the special restrictions for prestige classes.

 

[Tonguez]

I tend to veiw Rage as an act of Will - a euphoric state beyond normal limits - as such a Barbarian might not be the frothing at the mouth, frenzied berserker commonly envisaged instead he could be a cool as ice and absolutely intense, calculating fighter 'in the zone' (in WWE Wrestling the Undertaker suddenly rising from the ground and stalking forward with slow deliberate steps is Raging (on the inside) just as much as Hulk Hogan entering Hulkamania or the Ultimate Warrior is raging on the outside)

Monks I tend to require a but of training (in Martial Arts) and contemplation before allowing as a multiclass

Paladin ought to be a PrC

Druids and Rangers are just wilderness types (Grizzly Adams was obviously a Ranger) the only icky part is magic (but yeah thats because its magic)

 

[Li Shenron]

I sometimes think too that it's odd for a PC to become a Barbarian later in hew life...

But lots of people prefer to see classes as "ability sets" with loose ties to cultures or lifestyles. Barbarian is one who fights with instinct and physical power, compared to a Fighter which trains the technique.

It's a mixed bad in the book... for example the Monk was written with strong ideas of (1) martial arts and (2) philosophical meditation. It makes me very sick to see Half-Orc or monstrous monks, just because it's concievable that a monstrous race could care for philosophy inner search, or for fighting unarmed: two very different things if you think about! AFAIK in western culture you're very unlikely to see the two things meet (a strong phylosopher kind of sounds as oxymoron), while in eastern culture there is an old tradition of them. Only I don't like having chinese orcs or japanese vampires in my game

My opinion is that some of the classes are indeed based on old archetypes, and books make some mess when trying to keep the archetype and expand it at the same time.

As for Paladins, I think they have been conceived from level 1 instead as PrCl exactly because there are legends of characters who were basically born with the holy aura around, or received "the call" when they were 8yrs old. Furthermore, there is no true relationship between someone's level and someone's age (one could be 40 when turning from a commoner to a 1st level Paladin).