History part 2: about the time the monk appeared TSR also introduced 3 new settings, 2 of which had whole new classes, Forgotten Realms, Oriental Adventures and an Arabian/Middle Eastern themed one. The monk was a sort of import from oriental adventures where there were classes similar to the sohei monks.
Monks were in the original AD&D Players' Handbook. OA came later, and Forgotten Realms and the other setting even later than that. (I don't know the pre-AD&D history of monks.)
Ok wow, I did not expect such an insightful discussion. I asked the same thing on Reddit and someone got mad at me for playing the game differently than them. Kudos to you guys for being civil.
As far as the Monk suffering from presumed (and arguably misappropriated) cultural associations, pretty sure Shadowrun did a pretty good culturally agnostic update to the D&D Monk when it called the role Physical Adept. Physical Adept admittedly doesn't really "sound" very D&D. So maybe the Monk could be renamed something like Disciple (maybe it's a completely self developed path, maybe they belong to an order that follows a master, there's a whole range of possibilities allowed). Instead of the "soul points" being floated as replacement for Ki, maybe treat the former Monk now Disciple's power pool like the Bard's inverted. Instead of inspiration, Disciples simply have discipline they can expend in play, and grow as they level up.
To settle the armored unarmored martial artist discussion, here's a curveball to the discussion. Treat martial arts powers like Eldritch invocations. One can choose among unarmored defense and let's call it "Encumbered Grace" (or a better phrase) and maybe some other possibilities so there would be as many features to choose from as modus operandi of the Arashikage ninja clan (Zartan, Firely, Storm Shadow, and Snake Eyes and substantial percentage of G.I. Joe C-list characters all trained arguably under the same house but possessed many different ninja skills, none of which were taught by the Soft Master).
Could probably do something similar for Barbarian but this discussion seems to have morphed into a "Monks, why?" more than a discussion of both classes. We could easily diss the Barbarian as being a class initially based off presumptions and superstitions and paranoias "civilized" Rome or Europe had for foreign cultures they came in contact with, and D&D played along with those tropes until it instead seemed to lean into stuff that can fall into Noble Savage tropes (which isn't so much a necessarily positive evolution so much as a trajectory). If D&D One wanted to be really bold with it's claim to make Background more meaningful to character making, they'd abandon the Barbarian class and instead grant the Far Traveller, Outlander, and other backgrounds features that currently belong to the class and make the rest feats.
Honestly I wouldn't hold my breath on a grab bag of features you can mix and match for your build. I'm not saying it's an invalid design choice- prior editions and Pathfinder are big on them- but generally speaking they've moved that kind of thing very much into the realm of full casters as opposed to more martially oriented classes in 5e, and while they've been making some changes in 1D&D, I don't think they're planning to overhaul a specific martial class to that extent, based on what we've seen for Fighter and Barbarian. It could work, but honestly I don't think they need to basically give the Monk class a bunch of options to essentially become a Fighter instead. If you want to wear armor and just make all your attacks with the Attack action, Fighters already have a Fighting Style for that, and despite what people say it's actually not massively better than what Monks are capable of, given that they can already use a d8 for main attacks from level 1 while still making Martial Arts attacks.
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Monks were in the original AD&D Players' Handbook. OA came later, and Forgotten Realms and the other setting even later than that. (I don't know the pre-AD&D history of monks.)
Ok wow, I did not expect such an insightful discussion. I asked the same thing on Reddit and someone got mad at me for playing the game differently than them. Kudos to you guys for being civil.
As far as the Monk suffering from presumed (and arguably misappropriated) cultural associations, pretty sure Shadowrun did a pretty good culturally agnostic update to the D&D Monk when it called the role Physical Adept. Physical Adept admittedly doesn't really "sound" very D&D. So maybe the Monk could be renamed something like Disciple (maybe it's a completely self developed path, maybe they belong to an order that follows a master, there's a whole range of possibilities allowed). Instead of the "soul points" being floated as replacement for Ki, maybe treat the former Monk now Disciple's power pool like the Bard's inverted. Instead of inspiration, Disciples simply have discipline they can expend in play, and grow as they level up.
To settle the armored unarmored martial artist discussion, here's a curveball to the discussion. Treat martial arts powers like Eldritch invocations. One can choose among unarmored defense and let's call it "Encumbered Grace" (or a better phrase) and maybe some other possibilities so there would be as many features to choose from as modus operandi of the Arashikage ninja clan (Zartan, Firely, Storm Shadow, and Snake Eyes and substantial percentage of G.I. Joe C-list characters all trained arguably under the same house but possessed many different ninja skills, none of which were taught by the Soft Master).
Could probably do something similar for Barbarian but this discussion seems to have morphed into a "Monks, why?" more than a discussion of both classes. We could easily diss the Barbarian as being a class initially based off presumptions and superstitions and paranoias "civilized" Rome or Europe had for foreign cultures they came in contact with, and D&D played along with those tropes until it instead seemed to lean into stuff that can fall into Noble Savage tropes (which isn't so much a necessarily positive evolution so much as a trajectory). If D&D One wanted to be really bold with it's claim to make Background more meaningful to character making, they'd abandon the Barbarian class and instead grant the Far Traveller, Outlander, and other backgrounds features that currently belong to the class and make the rest feats.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Honestly I wouldn't hold my breath on a grab bag of features you can mix and match for your build. I'm not saying it's an invalid design choice- prior editions and Pathfinder are big on them- but generally speaking they've moved that kind of thing very much into the realm of full casters as opposed to more martially oriented classes in 5e, and while they've been making some changes in 1D&D, I don't think they're planning to overhaul a specific martial class to that extent, based on what we've seen for Fighter and Barbarian. It could work, but honestly I don't think they need to basically give the Monk class a bunch of options to essentially become a Fighter instead. If you want to wear armor and just make all your attacks with the Attack action, Fighters already have a Fighting Style for that, and despite what people say it's actually not massively better than what Monks are capable of, given that they can already use a d8 for main attacks from level 1 while still making Martial Arts attacks.