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Message: <blockquote data-quote="mlund" data-source="post: 5986201" data-attributes="member: 50304">Are all monks mystical martial-arts badasses? Are all martial-artists mystics? Are all martial-artists monks? No, no, and no. That's a great indication that these components don't have to be chained together into an exclusive package deal like AD&D gave us.Likewise, are all Barbarians rage-fueled melee combatants? Do rage-filled characters only fight in melee? Are all illiterate, uncivilized people raging killers? No, no, and no. That's a solid sign that these aren't an exclusive package deal either.Are all Fighters high HP warriors who hit things with a high degree of accuracy for good (or better) damage? Are all the best specialists in a particular fighting style Fighters? Are characters that use Combat Superiority Fighters? Yes, yes, and yes. That's a pretty good indication that you have a core package qualified to be a class (probably a Super Class) on your hands in the Fighter.The Monk's core class features when compared to other classes are martial-arts stunts and attacks. It's a combat style that benefits greatly from the same kinds of tricks that fall under the Fighter's Combat Superiority Shtick. Additionally, if the best combat specialist in a particular weapon in the realm is supposed to be a fighter then it stands to reason that the guy with the best Kung Fu in all the land is, *gasp*, a Fighter.Meanwhile the mystical harmony and monastic enlightenment shticks can clearly be used by characters that are not unarmed combat badasses - pretty much definitive examples of what Backgrounds and Themes are for. Silo'ing them into a Monk class locked away from any other play-style is just wasteful. Also, the hyper-narrow Okinawan AD&D -> 3E Monk is a mess of over-restrictions, cutting down the Chinese-style sword-wielding and polearm-fighting martial artists. I don't want to have to wait until "Oriental Adventurers 5E" to build a Sohei, Shugenja, or Wu Jen when the components to build them can easily be included in the Core game.I want to see a lot of build options under the Fighter's tent with some familiar default options. I want a Slayer coming with the Barbarian background and the Reaver Theme standard. I want a Martial-Artist sporting the Monk background and Mystic Harmony theme. I want a Marshall rocking the Officer background and the Leadership Theme out of the gate. If I want to only take 1 or 2 of these things and try a new combination I'm not married to playing a Barbarian, Monk, or Warlord.The sad part is we probably won't see them. Instead we'll get to wait around with various mechanics unnecessarily married to criminally narrow "classes" just so people can use the word "class" to describe a particular build without some sort of stigma. Wizards of the Coast will be happy to sell us splat-books full of new overly-narrow "classes" that are nothing but overly-specific, poorly-balanced nonsense and recycled concepts we could've used with a better Core implementation.Hooray for another edition of super-random junk like 3E Hexblades, Swashbucklers, and Knights that should've been playable variants of the Cardinal Classes out of the gate but instead had to wait for a crap-shoot-o-quality-control in splat-books years and years after the PHB released. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":P" title="Stick out tongue    :P"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":P" />- Marty Lund</blockquote>

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