Monks have always stood out a bit in the generally Western flavor of dnd, so this is my proposal for a way to fit them into a character background/campaign.
Monks and clerics both usually start off as initiates in the temple cults. The same vows and initial training leads to a sort of ceremony where they are tested to see if they are chosen to channel divine magic. Those who can channel divinity become clerics, and go on to pursue the mission they are called to by their god.
Monks are those who were not chosen. From there, the same training that awakens divine magic can be forged through hard work into the ability to control what little gods given power all living things are given in the form of ki. Monks who stay with their vows can continue in training, serving as the guards, teachers, administrators, etc. within the temples alongside clerics who are not called to adventure. Other monks might be those who had reason to reject their vows, or were only temporarily living in the temple.
This could set up potential roleplay avenues for monk and cleric players. Does your monk question their place and their faith after not having been chosen? Does it make them feel inadequate, or jealous of clerics? Maybe instead they feel superior, because they had to work to develop their power rather than having it handed to them?
Does your cleric look down on the monk as just a temple servant? Or is the cleric entirely ignorant of the way other clerics treat monks? Are these things complicated by the monk having a higher position in the temple cult, despite not having divine magic?
Or maybe the monk and the cleric are two of the closest members of the party, becoming fast friends through their shared experiences of life in the cults. Maybe they hold each other in special reverance or respect depending on their classes, with Kensei being the teachers to War priests, or shadow monks feeling special kinship and shared mission with trickster clerics.
And then similar questions could come in if their is a Paladin, divine soul sorcerer, or celestial warlock in the party. Are they seen as mavericks? Possible heretics? Potential prophets?
I was a bit confused, but I now gather that by "Western" you mean "Eurocentric," not "American Southwest circa 1870."
I mean, 'ki' is by itself a concept hard to reconcile with, say, a character like Friar Tuck or Brother Cadfael. But once you've gone THAT far, it seems unfair to claim that it's a consolation prize for washouts. There are actual living monks out there right now who aren't failed priests.
And I would have trouble with a cleric telling whatever the Airbender monks are called "too bad you were crap at learning magic, buddy."
The various paths to wielding divine magic and the doctrinal turf wars that situation would cause might be an interesting (if hella specific) campaign, but I'd give this another pass before putting it in a players' background. I'd prefer to just say different people are given different vocations.
Well, Friar Tuck would be more akin to a Cleric, the current Pope is a Franciscan, one of the sects of the Catholic Priesthood associated with Friars.
But to the point, I don't think anyone's stopping you from merging clerics and monks into an order, but the Monk in the PHB is dedicated to unlocking the power within themself, and ki is not really described as a divine boon or anything.
Monks could be something like Jedi, whether or not there's a midichlorian factor influencing Ki is up to you. Monks could be something akin to the Western European characters in Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat franchises. Or maybe the ability to tap into ki is while not a midichlorian, but a mutation, and there's a special school for the gifted run by a man named Xavier....
I mean look at the race that I most associate the Monk class with, the Githzerai, no need to have a divine reason to take an ascetic, disciplined, focus lifestyle to unlock your potential. There's lots of ways to put the Monk in a world without necessitating an Asiatic component, at worst tie the practice to another race (like the Gith, or elves or Kenku or whatever) and have some more "liberal" schools open to human acolyte/padawans/students.... Maybe it's something Tieflings developed over time as a way to push against the fear of becoming an agent of Hell, there's lots of ways to port.
Like any supernatural ability, it's pretty easy to invent a way or path through which a character can come to their abilities. The next step as a DM is to determine how common those abilities are. Are the Monks a common force in your world, maybe even cultivated by the state (though folklore suggests Ninja / Way of Shadows types actually evolved as push back against state oppression)? Are they something that is "storied" so while most people never meet a Monk, they're exploits are the stuff of childhood stories? Or if a Monk throws down in the street with someone would there be a bunch of "what was that?" even among the most seasoned adventurer.
But to the point, I don't think anyone's stopping you from merging clerics and monks into an order, but the Monk in the PHB is dedicated to unlocking the power within themself, and ki is not really described as a divine boon or anything
My proposed concept is just that: monks don't have ki as a divine boon, its just the life energy they have as living beings in a world where gods made all living beings. They could choose to see that as its own kind of gift in a zen kind of sense, but it isn't like a specific boon of getting to channel divinity.
Monks could be something akin to the Western European characters in Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat franchises. Or maybe the ability to tap into ki is while not a midichlorian, but a mutation, and there's a special school for the gifted run by a man named Xavier....
You can do this kind of thing, but my goal is trying to preserve the whole "body/mind spirituality" of the monk in a society that is more based on western fantasy. Not just radically reskinning monks to not be monks.
But to the point, I don't think anyone's stopping you from merging clerics and monks into an order, but the Monk in the PHB is dedicated to unlocking the power within themself, and ki is not really described as a divine boon or anything
My proposed concept is just that: monks don't have ki as a divine boon, its just the life energy they have as living beings in a world where gods made all living beings. They could choose to see that as its own kind of gift in a zen kind of sense, but it isn't like a specific boon of getting to channel divinity.
Monks could be something akin to the Western European characters in Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat franchises. Or maybe the ability to tap into ki is while not a midichlorian, but a mutation, and there's a special school for the gifted run by a man named Xavier....
You can do this kind of thing, but my goal is trying to preserve the whole "body/mind spirituality" of the monk in a society that is more based on western fantasy. Not just radically reskinning monks to not be monks.
Where are the Monks in Western fantasy that behave anywhere analogously to the PHB Monk? While you're at it, do show me where the Monk's Ki is described as a divine gift.
If you want to integrate the Monk as written with a Western skin, that's just a hard road. The closest geographic thing you'll probably get to would be something like Dervishes. Or Jedi if you want to be imaginative. And I don't see the latter as a radical reskinning. Endeavoring to integrate Monks as presented in the rules with the structures that produce clerics is.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I never said ki is called a divine gift, or proposed adding that lore. I don’t get where you a finding that.
Im not trying to totally reskin monks. I’m just suggesting placing them inside the religious structure of the campaign world, the same way they were in the real world.
But other than the ascetic practice, Western (christian, and probably Judaic, again the Dervish gives some possibility with strains of Sufism) monks don't have the physical disciplines that ascetic practices that the Asiatic models actually do have. In your own world description your tying clerics and monks together as branches that grow from the same temple practice. While that's true in the West, it doesn't produce anything like the class feature Monks in D&D have. At least the cleric, there is dogma that posits a Western cleric has some relationship with divine power.
You also write this "Monks are those who were not chosen. From there, the same training that awakens divine magic can be forged through hard work into the ability to control what little gods given power all living things are given in the form of ki." The foundation of a Monk, in your world is failed cleric. That breaks with how the class is set out in the game, and frankly how monasticism actually works in the west.
You're free to do your own thing, but to me it sounds like you're trying to force a fit or integration that's just not necessary and can easily be worked around by thinking of what the Monk class actually does, and how they'd fit into a western world (explorers? There's actually some scholarship who think a lot of 18th century secular philosophical metaphysics may have come with some very rare contacts between the Western university systems and Zen "missionaries" and "explorers" aren't quite the right word, but it's entirely possible to have a Monk from "elsewhere" maybe even a few and it would be in accords with the West.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
On Toril monks originally came from Kara-Tur, the region of the Realms based on China and Japan. Our DM ruled that monks spread from Kara-Tur to Faerun via trade with Waterdeep. You could do something similar in your campaign world if you wanted.
Came into this thread expecting an interesting tie between Monks and guns & dust hardscrabble Frontier Westerns. Am disappoint. q_q
Monks as failed clerics could be an interesting twist for a given campign setting, but I don't think it flies as a general "ALL monks from ALL worlds are just clerics that couldn't" notion. It's a neat piece of worldbuilding for a specific game, though.
And since I imagine errybuddy's in here looking for ways to ti the super Eastern, ki-and-asceticism Monk to Frontier Western stories...
The Monk is actually a great stand-in for the Mysterious Wanderer common in such stories. Mysterious Wanderers often have something extra going for them, displaying inexplicable abilities nobody else can quite match. A Kensei monk whose choice of Kensei ranged weapon is the revolver very much aligns with John Woo-style Way of the Gun action, while Open Hand style monks are those who've forsaken the gun after a personal tragedy or similar dire circumstance. The monk doesn't follow an openly recognized martial tradition, but instead is the sole student of a secretive old master who handed down techniques the monk must safeguard, sworn to teach them only to his one, single chosen successor The Faceless background from the Avernus book could be a fantastic tool for this sort of character, someone whose entire persona is tied up into myths or legends of the Old West.
If your table allows reflavoring, try it out with your next Western game. Put your unarmored monk in a worn poncho and a wide-brimmed hat, and when the other players ask after your history, make sure the DM's the one who says "Nobody knows where the Wanderer came from, or how he learned to do the things he can do. Some have tried to find out, but if they succeeded they never told anybody else. All anybody really knows is that the Wanderer's always been there, old as the desert itself, and those who wrong him or his always end up in the ground."
I think "YMMV" is the answer that will cause you the least headaches over time. If it's any consolation, the foundational text of Western Civ (for better or worse) has a story about a kid with a slingshot beating a nine foot tall warrior with full scale mail a shield and a helmet.
Man that old weapon-v-armor table was a trip. I remember one of the esoteric pole arms had a negative against one specific type of armor you wouldn't expect. I have to assume it was a holdover from the wargaming days where the only time the weapon was ever used historically was in some battle during the Hussite Wars or some such thing. There's a lot of logic behind it, but it seems like inelegant game design, looking back at what D&D actually evolved into.
I think "YMMV" is the answer that will cause you the least headaches over time. If it's any consolation, the foundational text of Western Civ (for better or worse) has a story about a kid with a slingshot beating a nine foot tall warrior with full scale mail a shield and a helmet.
I have some ideas here, btu can you please let me know which text you are referring to ? Would it be something like "The Chronicle Of The Valiant Feats, Wonderful Victories & Bold Adventures Of Jack The Giant-killer, Who Flourished In The Reign Of The Good King Arthur" ?
I'm pretty sure TimCurtin's talking about David and Goliath. I don't remember Goliath being armored but it's been a couple of decades since I actually read the story, I don't remember the enemy of David's people being particularly technologically sophisticated, I think they just had strength in numbers, which was why David opted for a "let's do this champion vs. champion" proposal as opposed to a straight up battle.
I'm pretty sure TimCurtin's talking about David and Goliath. I don't remember Goliath being armored but it's been a couple of decades since I actually read the story, I don't remember the enemy of David's people being particularly technologically sophisticated, I think they just had strength in numbers, which was why David opted for a "let's do this champion vs. champion" proposal as opposed to a straight up battle.
According to I Samuel, he had bronze scale mail and greaves that weighed 125 lbs. Also, he was the one calling out the Israelites, for the classic forty days and nights. The metatextual purpose of the story is to make King Saul look like a dickhead for not answering the challenge.
That's what I thought of initially, which would make the bible the foundational text of Western Civ (why not), but for me it is hardly relevant to heroic fantasy, and I think it's best to keep these subjects well apart. :D
As you like. I don't see how you get to the author of Solomon Kane without Bible stories, but you've got a formula that works for you, so good!
Way I see monks in medieval settings are not really martial arts masters, but just brawler type characters, with a touch of superhuman ability. Like, if your friend Bob is over here slinging fireballs in Renaissance Europe, it isn't too much of stretch to say that you harnessed a different kind of magic, i.e ki, to increase your physical prowess. And if that doesn't work for you, you can just reflavour your unarmed strikes to be like gauntlet strikes with custom gauntlet things or something. Or just only allow Kensei monks in Western Civ games and chalk ki up to just amazing martial prowess.
I'm pretty sure TimCurtin's talking about David and Goliath. I don't remember Goliath being armored but it's been a couple of decades since I actually read the story, I don't remember the enemy of David's people being particularly technologically sophisticated, I think they just had strength in numbers, which was why David opted for a "let's do this champion vs. champion" proposal as opposed to a straight up battle.
According to I Samuel, he had bronze scale mail and greaves that weighed 125 lbs. Also, he was the one calling out the Israelites, for the classic forty days and nights. The metatextual purpose of the story is to make King Saul look like a dickhead for not answering the challenge.
That's what I thought of initially, which would make the bible the foundational text of Western Civ (why not), but for me it is hardly relevant to heroic fantasy, and I think it's best to keep these subjects well apart. :D
As you like. I don't see how you get to the author of Solomon Kane without Bible stories, but you've got a formula that works for you, so good!
Have a good one, everybody!
Thanks for the Biblical history lesson. Have fun! 😊
For me, you can give whatever explanation you want, divine or not, it's not a problem of explanation it's a problem of genre.
I personally don't have a problem with the concept of Ki in itself, inner strength has been the staple of the fantasy genre for a very long time. I'm even OK in my campaigns with "oriental-ish" philosophies.
But the fact is that I look at most of my games in a western medieval or possibly renaissance view in general. It does not prevent the characters from being from elsewhere, but I don't like mixing genres too much. I don't like technological explanations to magic, or mixing SciFi with Heroic Fantasy (I like SciFi very much, but it's its own genre). Same with psionics, except in settings where they are "native", a la Dark Sun, and even then I find that they do not mix that well.
And finally the same with "martial arts", when people insist that they play like in Kung Fu. The genres do not mix that well in my head, and I don't like my knights being outfought by people hitting them with kicks and punches, my suspension of disbelief gets hit badly.
It's I think well done in Game of Thrones when even one of the best sword in Braavos ends up losing against a knight, even not one of the very best (and it's not a question of a wooden sword, Musashi won using one against a famous blade for example), and I don't like Arya getting even with Brienne. And it's even worse weaponless than with inadapted weapons.
It was something complicated and not played very often in AD&D, but there where "Weapon against AC" table that made some weapons very inefficient against some types of armor. For example a fist got a -7 against plate armor (not even full plate), which I found very nice and made it that very few people played monks (I think I only played one in 42 years of gaming).
I get it, it's a magic world, but still, I think it's out of genre, whether the monks get their ki from divine sources or not, and whether they look "oriental" or not.
Don' get me wrong, I love oriental games and settings, we played a lot of Bushido, RQ Ninja and Five Rings, but it is its own genre, and I personally don't like mixing. But, as usual, YMMV and to each his own. :D
I'm glad you jumped into this thread Lyxen, your take and its mix of real world-ism and history of mechanics always evokes ways to improve my game running.
Re: mixing traditionally geographically and culturally bound genres (i.e. D&D clearly Shaolin inspired, as IamSposta implies, Monks into a "western euro fantasy"), your point mixed with my morning coffee reminds me of when I tried to get an old girlfriend into the Buffy TV series. "Wait, all the vampires know martial arts?" "Yeah, you see, in the world..." "No, you've lost me, I just can't this." It was a short lived cohabitation experiment.
Anyway, I appreciate your game boundaries re: the Monk and its martial arts. And yes, the Way of Shadow Monk is clearly Wizards way of making the Ninja a Monk subclass. One of the reasons I mentioned Street Fighter in my suggestions for thinking ways of introducing a Monk in a game outside of failed Cleric, was that the martial arts presented in the Monk class are more wuxia than any sort of realistic martial art or unarmed combative. While my game is presently "mapped" to an extent to Faerun's Sword Coast, I'm not maintaining strong fidelity to lore, and after the current game arc may just land the characters in a world where weapons and armor evolved without the more culturally bound trapping traditional "occidental/oriental" splits use (in other words, style over substance heavily defended by meta plot armor).
Two things I want to pick your brain for, one more flavoring one more game mechanical. I liked you bringing up Game of Thrones having an instance of superior plating besting superior sword handling. Conversely, what did you think of the reunion sparring between Arya and Brienne, which was basically brute strength based skill vs flourishing determination?
Other thing is something I'm working on in my house mechanics. In the game I'm running, I'm trying to push the needle away from "kill them all" and more towards you can win battles sometimes without drawing any blood. The characters also have missions where it might be more politic if the opposition is left alive, or may have to capture/arrest someone. I'm trying to import some stuff still in memory from some close quarter battle / exec protection / protectee extraction trainings I've had in old jobs. There's a particularly technique where you're keeping something ranging from a pistol to a carbine at a close retention position and you close distance on a subject telling them to get down or otherwise get out of the way. If the subject hasn't complied to your verbals, when you've closed distance you finish up with "I said move" and then use your support hand to "pop" their shoulder which gets them to your side out of the way or into the arms of a someone you're paired with on the advance so you keep going, and if you drill this through enough reps and keep it fresh, it actually works.
So I'm thinking of incorporating this technique in game as follows. It's what I'll call a allowed hybrid action, with a readied weapon or "spell casting hands clearly intending to do business" a character can close on a subject making an intimidation (or optionally, persuasion - basically instill fear or optionally appeal to reason) check, if that fails and distance is closed a shove can be made to move or prone the subject. If the character was working in a two person "stacked" element who used their action to "help" during the maneuver that helping character gets an attack of opportunity if they proned the target (in my game, we've already clarified if you try to get up from prone, anyone within melee range can take an advantaged attack of opportunity, it's intentionally discouraging getting right back up). I guess what I'm wondering is what you think of armor mods in this? My instincts are saying discard light armor as a factor, but perhaps add the AC modifier for shields and any medium or heavy armor. This also begs the question of armored characters knocked down getting back up. And if this technique is used on PCs, of course they choose how to react to the intimidation, but can be taken down as outlined above.
For me, you can give whatever explanation you want, divine or not, it's not a problem of explanation it's a problem of genre.
I personally don't have a problem with the concept of Ki in itself, inner strength has been the staple of the fantasy genre for a very long time. I'm even OK in my campaigns with "oriental-ish" philosophies.
But the fact is that I look at most of my games in a western medieval or possibly renaissance view in general. It does not prevent the characters from being from elsewhere, but I don't like mixing genres too much. I don't like technological explanations to magic, or mixing SciFi with Heroic Fantasy (I like SciFi very much, but it's its own genre). Same with psionics, except in settings where they are "native", a la Dark Sun, and even then I find that they do not mix that well.
And finally the same with "martial arts", when people insist that they play like in Kung Fu. The genres do not mix that well in my head, and I don't like my knights being outfought by people hitting them with kicks and punches, my suspension of disbelief gets hit badly.
It's I think well done in Game of Thrones when even one of the best sword in Braavos ends up losing against a knight, even not one of the very best (and it's not a question of a wooden sword, Musashi won using one against a famous blade for example), and I don't like Arya getting even with Brienne. And it's even worse weaponless than with inadapted weapons.
It was something complicated and not played very often in AD&D, but there where "Weapon against AC" table that made some weapons very inefficient against some types of armor. For example a fist got a -7 against plate armor (not even full plate), which I found very nice and made it that very few people played monks (I think I only played one in 42 years of gaming).
I get it, it's a magic world, but still, I think it's out of genre, whether the monks get their ki from divine sources or not, and whether they look "oriental" or not.
Don' get me wrong, I love oriental games and settings, we played a lot of Bushido, RQ Ninja and Five Rings, but it is its own genre, and I personally don't like mixing. But, as usual, YMMV and to each his own. :D
I'm glad you jumped into this thread Lyxen, your take and its mix of real world-ism and history of mechanics always evokes ways to improve my game running.
Re: mixing traditionally geographically and culturally bound genres (i.e. D&D clearly Shaolin inspired, as IamSposta implies, Monks into a "western euro fantasy"), your point mixed with my morning coffee reminds me of when I tried to get an old girlfriend into the Buffy TV series. "Wait, all the vampires know martial arts?" "Yeah, you see, in the world..." "No, you've lost me, I just can't this." It was a short lived cohabitation experiment.
Anyway, I appreciate your game boundaries re: the Monk and its martial arts. And yes, the Way of Shadow Monk is clearly Wizards way of making the Ninja a Monk subclass. One of the reasons I mentioned Street Fighter in my suggestions for thinking ways of introducing a Monk in a game outside of failed Cleric, was that the martial arts presented in the Monk class are more wuxia than any sort of realistic martial art or unarmed combative. While my game is presently "mapped" to an extent to Faerun's Sword Coast, I'm not maintaining strong fidelity to lore, and after the current game arc may just land the characters in a world where weapons and armor evolved without the more culturally bound trapping traditional "occidental/oriental" splits use (in other words, style over substance heavily defended by meta plot armor).
Two things I want to pick your brain for, one more flavoring one more game mechanical. I liked you bringing up Game of Thrones having an instance of superior plating besting superior sword handling. Conversely, what did you think of the reunion sparring between Arya and Brienne, which was basically brute strength based skill vs flourishing determination?
Other thing is something I'm working on in my house mechanics. In the game I'm running, I'm trying to push the needle away from "kill them all" and more towards you can win battles sometimes without drawing any blood. The characters also have missions where it might be more politic if the opposition is left alive, or may have to capture/arrest someone. I'm trying to import some stuff still in memory from some close quarter battle / exec protection / protectee extraction trainings I've had in old jobs. There's a particularly technique where you're keeping something ranging from a pistol to a carbine at a close retention position and you close distance on a subject telling them to get down or otherwise get out of the way. If the subject hasn't complied to your verbals, when you've closed distance you finish up with "I said move" and then use your support hand to "pop" their shoulder, and if you drill this through enough reps and keep it fresh, it actually works.
So I'm thinking of incorporating this technique in game as follows. It's what I'll call a allowed hybrid action, with a readied weapon or "spell casting hands clearly intending to do business" a character can close on a subject making an intimidation (or optionally, persuasion - basically instill fear or optionally appeal to reason) check, if that fails and distance is closed a shove can be made to move or prone the subject. If the character was working in a two person "stacked" element who used their action to "help" during the maneuver that helping character gets an attack of opportunity if they proned the target (in my game, we've already clarified if you try to get up from prone, anyone within melee range can take an advantaged attack of opportunity, it's intentionally discouraging getting right back up). I guess what I'm wondering is what you think of armor mods in this? My instincts are saying discard light armor as a factor, but perhaps add the AC modifier for shields and any medium or heavy armor. This also begs the question of armored characters knocked down getting back up. And if this technique is used on PCs, of course they choose how to react to the intimidation, but can be taken down as outlined above.
Your campaign idea sounds pretty cool. And yes, a monk would probably be good at using martial arts to disable an opponent without killing them.
I saw a very enjoyable campaign that was Human only and no Kung-Fu fighting Monks because that was the world within which the story was set.
I see no problem with setting parameters on character creation.
Just be aware that using existing settings where Artificers and martial arts Monks exist and restricting players from being such may be met with some resistance on grounds of established story unless you can find a way to create your character creation parameters in your story.
I know you want us to find a way that explains martial arts Monks in the setting you envision, but that's your vision. We cannot describe it in terms of our visions and hope it'll align with yours to make sense or vice versa attempting to convince us that ours do not make sense.
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Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider. My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong. I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲 “It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
I'm glad you jumped into this thread Lyxen, your take and its mix of real world-ism and history of mechanics always evokes ways to improve my game running.
Always happy to help and to roam around memories and campaign ideas... :D
Re: mixing traditionally geographically and culturally bound genres (i.e. D&D clearly Shaolin inspired, as IamSposta implies, Monks into a "western euro fantasy"), your point mixed with my morning coffee reminds me of when I tried to get an old girlfriend into the Buffy TV series. "Wait, all the vampires know martial arts?" "Yeah, you see, in the world..." "No, you've lost me, I just can't this." It was a short lived cohabitation experiment.
I see what you mean, and for me it's all a question of the "seriousness" of the genre-mixing. I'm not saying that I always run "serious" campaigns, I've done a few silly ones although they were mostly short ones if not almost always one-nighters. What saved Buffy for me at start was that it was always not serious, like most of what Whedon does. I like Firefly as well despite its weird mix of SciFi and Western style, again because it's not serious. It does not mean that there are not serious things being discussed and shown in both Buffy and Firefly, but it's almost always tongue-in-cheek which is why I'm much more forgiving in those cases of genre-mixing.
Anyway, I appreciate your game boundaries re: the Monk and its martial arts. And yes, the Way of Shadow Monk is clearly Wizards way of making the Ninja a Monk subclass.
I would have been happier with something that better resembled shadowdancers. The problem is that players will always make shortcuts and with the power set of the shadow monks, they will immediately jump to the word "ninja" and there goes away the more arthurian feel (for example) that I wanted for my campaign.
One of the reasons I mentioned Street Fighter in my suggestions for thinking ways of introducing a Monk in a game outside of failed Cleric, was that the martial arts presented in the Monk class are more wuxia than any sort of realistic martial art or unarmed combative. While my game is presently "mapped" to an extent to Faerun's Sword Coast, I'm not maintaining strong fidelity to lore, and after the current game arc may just land the characters in a world where weapons and armor evolved without the more culturally bound trapping traditional "occidental/oriental" splits use (in other words, style over substance heavily defended by meta plot armor).
I'm actually completely in line with this. Not only do I really like Wuxia since I watched A Touch of Zen so many years before, Raining in the Mountain and the first derivations of "magic" in there with things like A chinese Ghost Story, then agan Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, or House of Flying Daggers. But even then, we kept this fairly separate from our "japanese-style" campaigns like Bushido / Land of Ninja / LotFR because again the feel is fairly different.
That being said, we very much enjoyed the pathfinder campaign of the Jade Emperor, because it was a lot about the culture shock of taking "western-like" characters into an oriental setting with all its weirdness. It was planned that way a bit like campaigns mixing Kara-Tur in could be.
Two things I want to pick your brain for, one more flavoring one more game mechanical. I liked you bringing up Game of Thrones having an instance of superior plating besting superior sword handling. Conversely, what did you think of the reunion sparring between Arya and Brienne, which was basically brute strength based skill vs flourishing determination?
The reason I did not much like that encounter between Arya and Brienne is that Brienne is really one of the best knights, has been training for a very long time with as much drive as Arya if not more, is much heavier and stronger and has not only much more reach but an excellent armor. She even has a much better weapon than needle, actually. In a clearly non-magical contest, she should have won easily, whe can hit Arya wherever she wants and cut her in half whereas Arya would have to find the weak spots in her armour to even damage her (admittedly Brienne touk the contest a bit lightly and should have worn her helmet).
After that, the fight was fairly cool, but there is no way Aray could have taken that sort of punishment and still be that good, so it sort of broke my suspension of disbelief.
Don't take me wrong here, I'm all for the underdog (or at least the apparent one) winning when playing D&D, which is a different mix altogether because magic takes such a huge part.
You don't need a strong armor to be well-armored, and I can accept this, although my point of view is that 5e took it a bit too far in allowing weaker armor or even no armor at all to be almost as strong as full plate and shield. There really should be some benefit in terms of AC to wearing that much metal, and it's almost gone in that edition. Dexterity is too string already, and allowing Dex-based fighters to have as much AC as Str-based armoured ones is a bit too much for me.
Other thing is something I'm working on in my house mechanics. In the game I'm running, I'm trying to push the needle away from "kill them all" and more towards you can win battles sometimes without drawing any blood. The characters also have missions where it might be more politic if the opposition is left alive, or may have to capture/arrest someone. I'm trying to import some stuff still in memory from some close quarter battle / exec protection / protectee extraction trainings I've had in old jobs. There's a particularly technique where you're keeping something ranging from a pistol to a carbine at a close retention position and you close distance on a subject telling them to get down or otherwise get out of the way. If the subject hasn't complied to your verbals, when you've closed distance you finish up with "I said move" and then use your support hand to "pop" their shoulder which gets them to your side out of the way or into the arms of a someone you're paired with on the advance so you keep going, and if you drill this through enough reps and keep it fresh, it actually works.
I think I see what you mean, the only difficulty I'm having is that I'm not sure that D&D is the right system for this, especially 5e since the mechanics are so condensed.
So I'm thinking of incorporating this technique in game as follows. It's what I'll call a allowed hybrid action, with a readied weapon or "spell casting hands clearly intending to do business" a character can close on a subject making an intimidation (or optionally, persuasion - basically instill fear or optionally appeal to reason) check, if that fails and distance is closed a shove can be made to move or prone the subject. If the character was working in a two person "stacked" element who used their action to "help" during the maneuver that helping character gets an attack of opportunity if they proned the target (in my game, we've already clarified if you try to get up from prone, anyone within melee range can take an advantaged attack of opportunity, it's intentionally discouraging getting right back up).
Before we go to the end, I agree that one of the thing I miss in 5e is more AoO. There were really too complicated in 3e, but now they are very much indigent, and adding them back for getting up is a simple change which I might actually make in my campaign. The only problem is that it makes things like pushing or shield-bashing too strong and something that is hard to protect oneself against.
I guess what I'm wondering is what you think of armor mods in this? My instincts are saying discard light armor as a factor, but perhaps add the AC modifier for shields and any medium or heavy armor. This also begs the question of armored characters knocked down getting back up. And if this technique is used on PCs, of course they choose how to react to the intimidation, but can be taken down as outlined above.
Actually, even plate armor was not that hard to wear and that encumbering, especially late 15-16 century ones (although we see mostly half-plates in museums). SO getting up should not be more complicated, you are already taking an AoO with your system and you should be proficient with the armor anyway. Otherwise, if you want to make things a bit more complicated, I would suggest , rather than using a modifier linked to the exact armor, which makes it complicated and hard to manage with the bounded accuracy, just to add something linked to the armor type. Nothing for light armor, and a modifier for medium (-2 ?) and heavy (-5?) ?
You can also make it harder to get up, maybe with 2/3 of a move with medium and 3.5 with heavy, but that would make things really complex. Or maybe 1/3 for no/light, 1/2 for medium armor and 2/3 for heavy armor ? That would compensate for the AoO ?
Ninjas of the Round Table? 😊
Actually, Sir Palamedes was described as a Saracen... that word could be used to refer to any Easterner (literally means that in Greek and Arabic)...
Just as an aside, the original proposed 2E AD&D (when Gygax was still with TSR) was going to have a Warrior-Monk (in this case, partly modeled on the Knights Templar) for the 'Eurocentric' portion of the PHB, while the Oriental Adventures part would have the traditional Shao-lin Monk. The reasoning for this was because The Scarlet Brotherhood in The World of Greyhawk was this shadowy monastic sect of Sueloise who were pulling the strings behind much of the intrigue built into the setting. The Warrior-Monk was going to be like a Fighter-Spy instead of the more Paladin-type (let alone like the Hospitaller-inspired Cleric). The idea was that the Flanaess was going to mostly be the "playground" of the European-types (Oeridians, Suel, Flannae) with the Baklunish sort of representing the Arab, Seljuq-Turks (the Paynims) and Persians of the late Crusades period (13th/14th century).
If you had a Shao-lin type Monk that had come all the way from Suhfang (Greyhawk's version of China), you could reasonably be assured the common people (a superstitious lot who generally don't like outsiders) would look at you askance, especially if you were somewhere that wasn't metropolitan like The City of Greyhawk itself. It wouldn't have been actually discouraged, after all, 3 of the original personages of Greyhawk went to Suhfang at one point after gaining entry to the last level of Castle Greyhawk: Lord Robilar, the Archmage Tenser and Terik the Fighter (all 3 members of the Citadel of Eight). Otherwise, you played your Samurai, Monks and Ninjas in the western half of the continent of Oerik. That's not to say there wasn't trade between the two areas (there probably would have been something analogous to The Silk Road).
Eh, what might have been....
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Monks have always stood out a bit in the generally Western flavor of dnd, so this is my proposal for a way to fit them into a character background/campaign.
Monks and clerics both usually start off as initiates in the temple cults. The same vows and initial training leads to a sort of ceremony where they are tested to see if they are chosen to channel divine magic. Those who can channel divinity become clerics, and go on to pursue the mission they are called to by their god.
Monks are those who were not chosen. From there, the same training that awakens divine magic can be forged through hard work into the ability to control what little gods given power all living things are given in the form of ki. Monks who stay with their vows can continue in training, serving as the guards, teachers, administrators, etc. within the temples alongside clerics who are not called to adventure. Other monks might be those who had reason to reject their vows, or were only temporarily living in the temple.
This could set up potential roleplay avenues for monk and cleric players. Does your monk question their place and their faith after not having been chosen? Does it make them feel inadequate, or jealous of clerics? Maybe instead they feel superior, because they had to work to develop their power rather than having it handed to them?
Does your cleric look down on the monk as just a temple servant? Or is the cleric entirely ignorant of the way other clerics treat monks? Are these things complicated by the monk having a higher position in the temple cult, despite not having divine magic?
Or maybe the monk and the cleric are two of the closest members of the party, becoming fast friends through their shared experiences of life in the cults. Maybe they hold each other in special reverance or respect depending on their classes, with Kensei being the teachers to War priests, or shadow monks feeling special kinship and shared mission with trickster clerics.
And then similar questions could come in if their is a Paladin, divine soul sorcerer, or celestial warlock in the party. Are they seen as mavericks? Possible heretics? Potential prophets?
I was a bit confused, but I now gather that by "Western" you mean "Eurocentric," not "American Southwest circa 1870."
I mean, 'ki' is by itself a concept hard to reconcile with, say, a character like Friar Tuck or Brother Cadfael. But once you've gone THAT far, it seems unfair to claim that it's a consolation prize for washouts. There are actual living monks out there right now who aren't failed priests.
And I would have trouble with a cleric telling whatever the Airbender monks are called "too bad you were crap at learning magic, buddy."
The various paths to wielding divine magic and the doctrinal turf wars that situation would cause might be an interesting (if hella specific) campaign, but I'd give this another pass before putting it in a players' background. I'd prefer to just say different people are given different vocations.
Well, Friar Tuck would be more akin to a Cleric, the current Pope is a Franciscan, one of the sects of the Catholic Priesthood associated with Friars.
But to the point, I don't think anyone's stopping you from merging clerics and monks into an order, but the Monk in the PHB is dedicated to unlocking the power within themself, and ki is not really described as a divine boon or anything.
Monks could be something like Jedi, whether or not there's a midichlorian factor influencing Ki is up to you. Monks could be something akin to the Western European characters in Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat franchises. Or maybe the ability to tap into ki is while not a midichlorian, but a mutation, and there's a special school for the gifted run by a man named Xavier....
I mean look at the race that I most associate the Monk class with, the Githzerai, no need to have a divine reason to take an ascetic, disciplined, focus lifestyle to unlock your potential. There's lots of ways to put the Monk in a world without necessitating an Asiatic component, at worst tie the practice to another race (like the Gith, or elves or Kenku or whatever) and have some more "liberal" schools open to human acolyte/padawans/students.... Maybe it's something Tieflings developed over time as a way to push against the fear of becoming an agent of Hell, there's lots of ways to port.
Like any supernatural ability, it's pretty easy to invent a way or path through which a character can come to their abilities. The next step as a DM is to determine how common those abilities are. Are the Monks a common force in your world, maybe even cultivated by the state (though folklore suggests Ninja / Way of Shadows types actually evolved as push back against state oppression)? Are they something that is "storied" so while most people never meet a Monk, they're exploits are the stuff of childhood stories? Or if a Monk throws down in the street with someone would there be a bunch of "what was that?" even among the most seasoned adventurer.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
My proposed concept is just that: monks don't have ki as a divine boon, its just the life energy they have as living beings in a world where gods made all living beings. They could choose to see that as its own kind of gift in a zen kind of sense, but it isn't like a specific boon of getting to channel divinity.
You can do this kind of thing, but my goal is trying to preserve the whole "body/mind spirituality" of the monk in a society that is more based on western fantasy. Not just radically reskinning monks to not be monks.
Where are the Monks in Western fantasy that behave anywhere analogously to the PHB Monk? While you're at it, do show me where the Monk's Ki is described as a divine gift.
If you want to integrate the Monk as written with a Western skin, that's just a hard road. The closest geographic thing you'll probably get to would be something like Dervishes. Or Jedi if you want to be imaginative. And I don't see the latter as a radical reskinning. Endeavoring to integrate Monks as presented in the rules with the structures that produce clerics is.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I never said ki is called a divine gift, or proposed adding that lore. I don’t get where you a finding that.
Im not trying to totally reskin monks. I’m just suggesting placing them inside the religious structure of the campaign world, the same way they were in the real world.
But other than the ascetic practice, Western (christian, and probably Judaic, again the Dervish gives some possibility with strains of Sufism) monks don't have the physical disciplines that ascetic practices that the Asiatic models actually do have. In your own world description your tying clerics and monks together as branches that grow from the same temple practice. While that's true in the West, it doesn't produce anything like the class feature Monks in D&D have. At least the cleric, there is dogma that posits a Western cleric has some relationship with divine power.
You also write this "Monks are those who were not chosen. From there, the same training that awakens divine magic can be forged through hard work into the ability to control what little gods given power all living things are given in the form of ki." The foundation of a Monk, in your world is failed cleric. That breaks with how the class is set out in the game, and frankly how monasticism actually works in the west.
You're free to do your own thing, but to me it sounds like you're trying to force a fit or integration that's just not necessary and can easily be worked around by thinking of what the Monk class actually does, and how they'd fit into a western world (explorers? There's actually some scholarship who think a lot of 18th century secular philosophical metaphysics may have come with some very rare contacts between the Western university systems and Zen "missionaries" and "explorers" aren't quite the right word, but it's entirely possible to have a Monk from "elsewhere" maybe even a few and it would be in accords with the West.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
On Toril monks originally came from Kara-Tur, the region of the Realms based on China and Japan. Our DM ruled that monks spread from Kara-Tur to Faerun via trade with Waterdeep. You could do something similar in your campaign world if you wanted.
Came into this thread expecting an interesting tie between Monks and guns & dust hardscrabble Frontier Westerns. Am disappoint. q_q
Monks as failed clerics could be an interesting twist for a given campign setting, but I don't think it flies as a general "ALL monks from ALL worlds are just clerics that couldn't" notion. It's a neat piece of worldbuilding for a specific game, though.
And since I imagine errybuddy's in here looking for ways to ti the super Eastern, ki-and-asceticism Monk to Frontier Western stories...
The Monk is actually a great stand-in for the Mysterious Wanderer common in such stories. Mysterious Wanderers often have something extra going for them, displaying inexplicable abilities nobody else can quite match. A Kensei monk whose choice of Kensei ranged weapon is the revolver very much aligns with John Woo-style Way of the Gun action, while Open Hand style monks are those who've forsaken the gun after a personal tragedy or similar dire circumstance. The monk doesn't follow an openly recognized martial tradition, but instead is the sole student of a secretive old master who handed down techniques the monk must safeguard, sworn to teach them only to his one, single chosen successor The Faceless background from the Avernus book could be a fantastic tool for this sort of character, someone whose entire persona is tied up into myths or legends of the Old West.
If your table allows reflavoring, try it out with your next Western game. Put your unarmored monk in a worn poncho and a wide-brimmed hat, and when the other players ask after your history, make sure the DM's the one who says "Nobody knows where the Wanderer came from, or how he learned to do the things he can do. Some have tried to find out, but if they succeeded they never told anybody else. All anybody really knows is that the Wanderer's always been there, old as the desert itself, and those who wrong him or his always end up in the ground."
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You should check out an old TV show called Kung Fu, it was literally all about a Shaolin Monk in the old west.
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0068093/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_8
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I think "YMMV" is the answer that will cause you the least headaches over time. If it's any consolation, the foundational text of Western Civ (for better or worse) has a story about a kid with a slingshot beating a nine foot tall warrior with full scale mail a shield and a helmet.
Man that old weapon-v-armor table was a trip. I remember one of the esoteric pole arms had a negative against one specific type of armor you wouldn't expect. I have to assume it was a holdover from the wargaming days where the only time the weapon was ever used historically was in some battle during the Hussite Wars or some such thing. There's a lot of logic behind it, but it seems like inelegant game design, looking back at what D&D actually evolved into.
I'm pretty sure TimCurtin's talking about David and Goliath. I don't remember Goliath being armored but it's been a couple of decades since I actually read the story, I don't remember the enemy of David's people being particularly technologically sophisticated, I think they just had strength in numbers, which was why David opted for a "let's do this champion vs. champion" proposal as opposed to a straight up battle.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
According to I Samuel, he had bronze scale mail and greaves that weighed 125 lbs. Also, he was the one calling out the Israelites, for the classic forty days and nights. The metatextual purpose of the story is to make King Saul look like a dickhead for not answering the challenge.
As you like. I don't see how you get to the author of Solomon Kane without Bible stories, but you've got a formula that works for you, so good!
Have a good one, everybody!
Way I see monks in medieval settings are not really martial arts masters, but just brawler type characters, with a touch of superhuman ability. Like, if your friend Bob is over here slinging fireballs in Renaissance Europe, it isn't too much of stretch to say that you harnessed a different kind of magic, i.e ki, to increase your physical prowess. And if that doesn't work for you, you can just reflavour your unarmed strikes to be like gauntlet strikes with custom gauntlet things or something. Or just only allow Kensei monks in Western Civ games and chalk ki up to just amazing martial prowess.
Thanks for the Biblical history lesson. Have fun! 😊
I'm glad you jumped into this thread Lyxen, your take and its mix of real world-ism and history of mechanics always evokes ways to improve my game running.
Re: mixing traditionally geographically and culturally bound genres (i.e. D&D clearly Shaolin inspired, as IamSposta implies, Monks into a "western euro fantasy"), your point mixed with my morning coffee reminds me of when I tried to get an old girlfriend into the Buffy TV series. "Wait, all the vampires know martial arts?" "Yeah, you see, in the world..." "No, you've lost me, I just can't this." It was a short lived cohabitation experiment.
Anyway, I appreciate your game boundaries re: the Monk and its martial arts. And yes, the Way of Shadow Monk is clearly Wizards way of making the Ninja a Monk subclass. One of the reasons I mentioned Street Fighter in my suggestions for thinking ways of introducing a Monk in a game outside of failed Cleric, was that the martial arts presented in the Monk class are more wuxia than any sort of realistic martial art or unarmed combative. While my game is presently "mapped" to an extent to Faerun's Sword Coast, I'm not maintaining strong fidelity to lore, and after the current game arc may just land the characters in a world where weapons and armor evolved without the more culturally bound trapping traditional "occidental/oriental" splits use (in other words, style over substance heavily defended by meta plot armor).
Two things I want to pick your brain for, one more flavoring one more game mechanical. I liked you bringing up Game of Thrones having an instance of superior plating besting superior sword handling. Conversely, what did you think of the reunion sparring between Arya and Brienne, which was basically brute strength based skill vs flourishing determination?
Other thing is something I'm working on in my house mechanics. In the game I'm running, I'm trying to push the needle away from "kill them all" and more towards you can win battles sometimes without drawing any blood. The characters also have missions where it might be more politic if the opposition is left alive, or may have to capture/arrest someone. I'm trying to import some stuff still in memory from some close quarter battle / exec protection / protectee extraction trainings I've had in old jobs. There's a particularly technique where you're keeping something ranging from a pistol to a carbine at a close retention position and you close distance on a subject telling them to get down or otherwise get out of the way. If the subject hasn't complied to your verbals, when you've closed distance you finish up with "I said move" and then use your support hand to "pop" their shoulder which gets them to your side out of the way or into the arms of a someone you're paired with on the advance so you keep going, and if you drill this through enough reps and keep it fresh, it actually works.
So I'm thinking of incorporating this technique in game as follows. It's what I'll call a allowed hybrid action, with a readied weapon or "spell casting hands clearly intending to do business" a character can close on a subject making an intimidation (or optionally, persuasion - basically instill fear or optionally appeal to reason) check, if that fails and distance is closed a shove can be made to move or prone the subject. If the character was working in a two person "stacked" element who used their action to "help" during the maneuver that helping character gets an attack of opportunity if they proned the target (in my game, we've already clarified if you try to get up from prone, anyone within melee range can take an advantaged attack of opportunity, it's intentionally discouraging getting right back up). I guess what I'm wondering is what you think of armor mods in this? My instincts are saying discard light armor as a factor, but perhaps add the AC modifier for shields and any medium or heavy armor. This also begs the question of armored characters knocked down getting back up. And if this technique is used on PCs, of course they choose how to react to the intimidation, but can be taken down as outlined above.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Your campaign idea sounds pretty cool. And yes, a monk would probably be good at using martial arts to disable an opponent without killing them.
D&D campaign settings can be customized.
I saw a very enjoyable campaign that was Human only and no Kung-Fu fighting Monks because that was the world within which the story was set.
I see no problem with setting parameters on character creation.
Just be aware that using existing settings where Artificers and martial arts Monks exist and restricting players from being such may be met with some resistance on grounds of established story unless you can find a way to create your character creation parameters in your story.
I know you want us to find a way that explains martial arts Monks in the setting you envision, but that's your vision. We cannot describe it in terms of our visions and hope it'll align with yours to make sense or vice versa attempting to convince us that ours do not make sense.
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider.
My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong.
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“It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
Ninjas of the Round Table? 😊
Actually, Sir Palamedes was described as a Saracen... that word could be used to refer to any Easterner (literally means that in Greek and Arabic)...
Just as an aside, the original proposed 2E AD&D (when Gygax was still with TSR) was going to have a Warrior-Monk (in this case, partly modeled on the Knights Templar) for the 'Eurocentric' portion of the PHB, while the Oriental Adventures part would have the traditional Shao-lin Monk. The reasoning for this was because The Scarlet Brotherhood in The World of Greyhawk was this shadowy monastic sect of Sueloise who were pulling the strings behind much of the intrigue built into the setting. The Warrior-Monk was going to be like a Fighter-Spy instead of the more Paladin-type (let alone like the Hospitaller-inspired Cleric). The idea was that the Flanaess was going to mostly be the "playground" of the European-types (Oeridians, Suel, Flannae) with the Baklunish sort of representing the Arab, Seljuq-Turks (the Paynims) and Persians of the late Crusades period (13th/14th century).
If you had a Shao-lin type Monk that had come all the way from Suhfang (Greyhawk's version of China), you could reasonably be assured the common people (a superstitious lot who generally don't like outsiders) would look at you askance, especially if you were somewhere that wasn't metropolitan like The City of Greyhawk itself. It wouldn't have been actually discouraged, after all, 3 of the original personages of Greyhawk went to Suhfang at one point after gaining entry to the last level of Castle Greyhawk: Lord Robilar, the Archmage Tenser and Terik the Fighter (all 3 members of the Citadel of Eight). Otherwise, you played your Samurai, Monks and Ninjas in the western half of the continent of Oerik. That's not to say there wasn't trade between the two areas (there probably would have been something analogous to The Silk Road).
Eh, what might have been....