Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Blue Orange" data-source="post: 8425468" data-attributes="member: 7025997">Back in the day they had 2d4 at level 1, then got 1d4 (like mages!) per level up to 18d4 at top level (this when fighters were capped at 9d10 plus 3 points per level). In 1st ed it was sort of an add-on/optional class with random thief abilities, disappeared entirely in 2nd ed, then came back in 3rd with a (more) logical d8 as it is now. Even the title is somewhat off-brand, conjuring up ideas of cloistered scholars in most parts of the world for what is, essentially, a martial artist. Monks in most cultures (including non-Shaolin Buddhist monks in China, the site of the original inspiration, which is the Shaolin monastery) are a lot closer to the stereotypical magic-user or sage than anything else.I think it has to do, as billd91 says, with people mentally filing the paladin and ranger (and barbarian) with the fighter (who have the biggest hit dice) and the monk still being kind of 'its own thing'. If you accept the fighter-mage dialectic as sort of the organizing principle of D&amp;D classes, with other classes falling somewhere along the spectrum, the monk is seen as 'almost at the fighter end' rather than 'at the fighter end' as it really should be.I think OP's original argument is sound, and you could make a pretty good case for a d12, as the monk relies on their own toughness rather than armor. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink&nbsp; &nbsp; ;)"&nbsp; data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

[QUOTE="Blue Orange, post: 8425468, member: 7025997"] Back in the day they had 2d4 at level 1, then got 1d4 (like mages!) per level up to 18d4 at top level (this when fighters were capped at 9d10 plus 3 points per level). In 1st ed it was sort of an add-on/optional class with random thief abilities, disappeared entirely in 2nd ed, then came back in 3rd with a (more) logical d8 as it is now. Even the title is somewhat off-brand, conjuring up ideas of cloistered scholars in most parts of the world for what is, essentially, a martial artist. Monks in most cultures (including non-Shaolin Buddhist monks in China, the site of the original inspiration, which is the Shaolin monastery) are a lot closer to the stereotypical magic-user or sage than anything else. I think it has to do, as billd91 says, with people mentally filing the paladin and ranger (and barbarian) with the fighter (who have the biggest hit dice) and the monk still being kind of 'its own thing'. If you accept the fighter-mage dialectic as sort of the organizing principle of D&D classes, with other classes falling somewhere along the spectrum, the monk is seen as 'almost at the fighter end' rather than 'at the fighter end' as it really should be. I think OP's original argument is sound, and you could make a pretty good case for a d[B]12[/B], as the monk relies on their own toughness rather than armor. ;) [/QUOTE]

Verification