Why do all paladins, monks, and druids seem exactly the same?

[hong]

It's all about the stick.

Druid: Worship the stick.
Monk: Break the stick with fist or whack people with stick.
Paladin: Stick up the

-Mara

Hey, that's my stick!

 

[KrazyHades]

...why is this thread under "humor"?

 

[Warren Okuma]

Probably because there's only one real way to effectively play them.

Maybe you're talking from a roleplay standpoint and not a mechanics standpoint, but mechanics-wise it seems to be the same thing: Paladins abuse Divine Might or whatever to deal uber-damage, Druids abuse Wildshape to turn into a Dire T-Rex or something and get a ridiculously high Strength, and Monks... well I don't know about Monks as the optimizer's perspective is that the Monk sucks and no one would play one.

Nope. You haven't seen a summoner druid. Pity. I bet you didn't see a spiked chain paladin either. Pity. I bet you didn't see a Vow of Poverty monk. You folks need to get out more often.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

It's the whole point of the class system. One druid (or monk, etc) is supposed to look pretty much like another, but have different personalities, etc. Look out across a football field. One linebacker looks pretty much like another. Some are better, faster, stronger, but they look pretty much the same and do the same job.

 

[Elephant]

Since this is supposed to be a Gramma-friendly board...

It's all about the stick.

Druid: Worship the stick.
Monk: Break the stick with fist or whack people with stick.
Paladin: Stick in the mud

-Mara

 

[Warren Okuma]

It's the whole point of the class system. One druid (or monk, etc) is supposed to look pretty much like another, but have different personalities, etc. Look out across a football field. One linebacker looks pretty much like another. Some are better, faster, stronger, but they look pretty much the same and do the same job.

A sword and board paladin is quite different from a large paladin with enlarge cast on him that wields a spiked chain and optimizes in tripping and attacks of opportunity.

A wild shaper druid is quite different from one that optimizes in summoning combined with the eberron summoning feats.

A Vow of Poverty grappling monk is different from a karate chopping monk.

 

[Moon-Lancer]

Nope. You haven't seen a summoner druid. Pity. I bet you didn't see a spiked chain paladin either. Pity. I bet you didn't see a Vow of Poverty monk. You folks need to get out more often.

I was going to mention summoning druids, but i thought about it, and having a flying form would be nice for summons, especily with wind elementals, so i would say a druid is missing out if they dont wildshape at all, but they dont need to use wildshape to melee, but to in general avoid all combat while you summon. this leads to longer lived charicters in my opinion.

wow, thats one ugly run on...

 

[Felix]

Why do all paladins, monks, and druids seem exactly the same?

They don't. Absurd question.

 

[Goblyn]

...why is this thread under "humor"?

Because Hong posted in it.

Duh.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Nope. You haven't seen a summoner druid. Pity. I bet you didn't see a spiked chain paladin either. Pity. I bet you didn't see a Vow of Poverty monk. You folks need to get out more often.

No! They need to get out less often. It's obvious that they let Life interfere with their Roleplaying, and it's so bad that they only ever get to see the standard version of many classes.

About the non-standard PMDs I've seen:

I played a Paladin of Sune in a Play By Post game. He had a rapier and a whipe, light armour, his Dex was higher than his Str and his Int higher than his Wis. He held himself to a high standard than he did everyone else. He didn't scold them for bad behaviour, he encouraged better behaviour. He only reluctantly killed, and tried to get people to stop fighting after he showed them that they were overmatched.

I saw one druid (later Verdant Lord) who trained his dire elephant animal companions (no, he didn't have several at once, he had to abandon one and then took another) to step on halflings (which he hated), and he wasn't the treeshagging pixie you usually think when you hear "half-elf druid". He was more like a killing mashine covered in shrubbery

I also played a druid/master of many forms for some time. He didn't scold people for not embracing nature. He always bought an extra meal for his wolf and told people that he woudln't hurt a soul udeservedly.

We had a monk who was about as wise as your average halfling ranger in your average D&D-parody webcomic. It was alright, because it fit the player, but if you're relatively new and let the official group powergamer design your character, make sure he knows the rules.

The other monk was actually a tielfing rogue/monk/paladin/sun soul monk. He was evil once, but has since then become good. Well, mostly. His fellow party members found out that you shouldn't take that one to the lower planes, lest he... changed in his behaviour. I don't think monks running along the treetops and then dropping down behind the enemy to hit him where it really hurts are that common.
He met his end after his player announced that this would be the last time he could play in the campaign (the player can only play between semesters, and the campaign was nearing its big showdown) and wanted his character to go out in a blaze of glory. He had his head bitten off by a readspawn birther (think big draconic dinosaur thing). I didn't even fudge any rolls for him, the crit - and subsequent failed massive damage save - came all by themselves.


The last part tells me that there's someone listening to those characters who want to "retire" characters, because in our evil campaign, one character (whose player was unsatisfied with the character concept) managed to fail the right save that sent him to one of the higher planes (the DM, ever the quick thinker, put him right in front of a Solar that told him either to renounce his evil ways or die right there.)