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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Marandahir" data-source="post: 8411849" data-attributes="member: 6803643">It's in the mechanics of the Way of Mercy too. Way of the Iron Embrace, Way of the Desert Wind, Way of the Cobalt Soul, Way of the Astral Self, Way of the Long Death, Way of the Ascendant Dragon, all these builds fit Monks that aren't particularly Orientalist tropes. But the Monk class itself is particularly orientalist cliches in its core class mechanics, which is an issue. Again, I have no issue with Wuxia being a genre of play in the game. The problem is complicated, but the simplest solution is not not use the minefield name. And we've seen WotC avoid names to prevent confusion in other cases: they made Critical Role change their Draconian Dragonborns into Draconblood Dragonborns so as not to confuse with Draconians from Dragonlance. They haven't released a Templar subclass or feat or background of any kind, because Templar has a VERY SPECIFIC meaning in Dark Sun. Samurai is being used here to represent kitchen sink Oriental Adventures warriors when it's very specifically a warrior caste from Japan. Paladin and Druid and Bard don't have the same cultural currency outside of their RPG counterparts that Samurai and Ninja etc do. Sure, Paladins were the predecessors of the duchies and counts of France, the 12 legendary companions of Charlemagne. And yes, as an amateur Celtic cultural scholar, I'm well aware of the real world meanings of Druids and Bards. But if people aren't thinking of nature mage RPG character for Druids, they're otherwise thinking people in white cloaks with sun symbols performing human sacrifice at Stonehenge, which is ALSO fanciful. And likewise, the idea of Bards have been taken over by collective cultural ideas to represent musicians and poets, travelling minstrels etc. These latter two are also concepts that defy national borders - we've got Bards and Druids in history from Spain to Ireland to as far away as the Black Sea and Turkey - wherever there were Celtic-speaking peoples. So these are concepts that are really pan-European. While Samurai are very specific to just one country, Japan. To apply them more broadly is a form of cultural appropriation that we really shouldn't be doing.</blockquote>

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