Monks and the Sacred Fist
Boy, do I ever feel foolish after finally sorting this out.
I have been complaining about the Monk class for years — perhaps as long as I have been playing D&D. I even did a video where I talked about Monks because I have such a problem with them. So this idea I had is like a facepalm to the soul.
Divine. Monks.
Like, Monks with spells if you’re playing an edition prior to 4e. Or, just Monks with the Divine power source if you’re playing with 4e rules. I complained about the 4e Monk already — it was a slap in the face to the Martial power source.
But even the Monk doesn’t belong to the Martial power source. It might have seemed like that, coming from where it was in 2e/3e — I don’t know enough about 1e to make that call — but dang. Of course the Monk is Divine.
Let’s look at it from the 4e perspective first.
Every power source in 4e had roughly four classes assigned to it initially, before they broke away from that. The Arcane source never made much sense and they just kept remaking the Wizard over and over and over again…
The Divine source got a treat — Cleric, Paladin, Avenger, Invoker — a full set.
The Avenger is pretty much the worst striker around. All three of its primary class options for dealing extra damage revolve around situations that don’t come up in standard play — monsters don’t run away, or allies don’t work together, … I don’t even remember what the third one was. The Avenger just didn’t make sense.
It also didn’t make sense with its flavor. It was a Divine assassin of sorts. It was pretty clear to see where the focus was supposed to be — it just failed to meet expectations. The Avenger was designed to be a “boss-killer.”
But when is that even necessary?
We waited until the Player’s Handbook 3 for a weird Psionic Monk. And because the Monk was Psionic, that meant a lot of the Ki Focuses were designed to be used with psychic powers and… let’s not get into that too much.
See, if they had just gone with a Divine Monk, they don’t have had to create the freaky-weird Avenger, and the Monk would not have sucked “as much.”
Mysticism permeates the concepts of the Asian monasticism that D&D draws from so heavily — monks were often philosophers and spiritual leaders in addition to martial artists — doesn’t that sound like the Divine power source? Okay, how about an attack called “Heavenly Dragon Fist?” It’s just so obvious.
I’m probably glossing over a lot because of how stupid this whole thing made me feel. Divine Monks. Monks with Divine powers. Duh. It is obvious, isn’t it? You could make Monks Martial, but the Divine power source needs a striker — not the Avenger. Read that flavor and tell me it wasn’t basically a Monk anyway.
So yeah. My next rewrite to the Monk will be Divine.
And he might just have a power called, “Facepalm to the Soul.”
I want to say that it was Jeffro’s Space Gaming Blog that recently did a bit on the role of the Monk, addressing the complaints that the monk is like a fighter but not as good at fighting.
His take is that the Monk is the party’s anti-spellcaster. While you wouldn’t want to have him go toe to toe with a large number of monster mooks, his advantages of speed and magic-resistance makes him the ideal guy to make a bee-line to the casters and take them down as quickly as possible.
My problem with the Monk is that he’s a big glob of Orientalism in an otherwise occidental setting, which often requires a bunch of aggravating hand-waving on the DM’s part to explain why there are martial artists in his setting.
I’d be more interested in a Monk class that is a combination Herbalist, Divine Caster, and Rogue. Maybe with a Welsh wrestling combat option?
I have a similar problem with the Monk as a “big glob of Orientalism.” My approach is to take what Monks have in common — regardless of where they’re from, East or West — and distill that into a character archetype that gels with the rest of the Divine archetypes.
“Heroic Monks” have several things in common that I think can be fairly represented — asceticism, leading to the preference for unarmed or lightly armed (read: clubs and staves) and unarmored (cloth) close-quarters combat, and spiritual knowledge or wisdom.
Knowledge or wisdom of the Monk may be derived from meditation, record-keeping, practicing various arts and sciences (e.g. herbalism as you suggested), and so on, and so forth. This is most likely derived from the monastic pursuit and will vary by order or tradition.
The martial traditions, while they may vary by “style,” will still probably focus on lightly armed and unarmored combat. Otherwise they’d be “Paladins.” I intend to differentiate Monks from other Divine archetypes partly by combat role and partly by flavor.
C = controller, D = defender, L = leader, S = striker
Exorcist (C) – turn undead, banishment, hold person
Monk (S) – armor of faith, flurry of blows, unarmed strike
Oracle (L) – divine guidance, spiritual aid, visions of blood
Paladin (D) – demand justice, divine sanction, righteous smite
I like the idea that you can still have a western style martial artist monk, in the vein of someone like Friar Tuck, who could more than hold his own with a quarter-staff or in a fist-fight. Where it becomes difficult is when you’re using a system with special attacks and abilities that draw heavily from concepts of ki or use particularly eastern fighting styles.
Now, you can have the Monk as Retired Paladin archetype, that you get with someone like Brother Cadfael; it’s a concept that admittedly works better in a later edition system in which level 1 characters have more going on in their personal and martial histories than the simple “answering the call to arms”.
Anyway, I’ve decided that I’m going to try to cook up a western-style monk as an OSR class, who will be sort of a jack-of-all trades investigator type, basically taking a Brother Cadfael/William of Ockham character and beefing them up to where they’d fit in D&D.
They’re going to have normal HD, probably Cleric saves, slightly gimped Rogue abilities, and, instead of Divine casting, I’m contemplating a potion-making/herbs-as-potions-on-demand ability. Maybe divine scroll writing and casting? They’ll probably be given reduced turning, too. So, you’ll end up with a cleric with reduced casting abilities who’s good at sneaking into places.
I don’t read Jeffro’s regularly. I’ll have to pop ’round and see what he had to say about Monks.
At some point I’ll have to (finally) draft the skill system I’ve been working on — my overhaul to abilities and skills puts Detect/Discern as Wisdom-based skills, and each falls under a different skill set:
Detect is a “Rogue” skill, and Discern is a “Scholar” skill. If your PC has a good Wisdom score, they can generally get by without the training bonus, otherwise it takes some downtime to shift between skill sets.
I’ll be interested to see, once I finally get the system on paper, how players actually use it. *strokes chin*
Also, my mistake; it was from “Don’t Split the Party”, but probably linked from Jeffro, because otherwise I have no idea how I found it (it’s not one of my regulars).
Now with a link! http://harbingergames.blogspot.com/2014/05/misunderstood-and-improperly-played-1e.html
I skimmed the article. Want a cool glance at a mechanical whatsiwhosit without any reference, lol? His article (or the comments, anyway) refer to the Monk as a Wizard Slayer and Cleric Killer. Well…
As I’ve styled the Monk a Divine archetype, it will use Charisma as the focus of all its powers. Anything the archetype derives from an ability score, it will derive from Charisma. (This might make more sense with the knowledge that I’ve rebranded Charisma as Willpower.)
Now, since Charisma will be the Monk’s highest score, the Monk will necessarily have a high Resolve defense — the defense attacked by powers that aim to damage or destroy the soul or existence of a creature (used by many a Cleric or Warlock).
Additionally, as a Striker, the Monk will have a class bonus to the Reflex defense — not to mention the Armor of Faith class feature that grants a straight-up bonus to Reflex while unarmored — which is the defense targeted by explosions and Wizard and Sorcerer powers.
Ultimately, this will mean that a Fighter can cream a Monk because the Fighter is better-armed and armored, but the Monk can effectively beat down the majority of spellcasters by being quick on his feat and strong-willed.
Huzzah!
Monk makes saving throw; Monk delivers axe-kick to wizard’s face!
A lot of the archetypes are still in flux — I’ve focused a lot of my design efforts in the past on making Fighters “not suck” when compared to others, and so most of my better designs are mundane, not magical.
The Divine classes in particular, have changed a lot over time. The decision to make “priest” a Trade instead of a Class was a big deal — it allowed me the flexibility of calling pretty much anyone a priest while divvying up the former Cleric/Priest spells and powers to more deserving archetypes.
I probably have that decision to thank for the existence of the Exorcist and Oracle more than anything else — and what does any of this have to do with the Monk?
Well, one of the thematic decisions I decided to define “Divine” power with was the idea of Oaths and Vows. Divine characters bargain with the deities on a power-for-power basis. These prayers are granted by virtue of the characters having devoted themselves to the gods — and these bargains are rarely, if ever, turned down.
The reasoning is that there’s “no such thing as bad publicity.”
NPCs might not realize this, but the gods basically write blank checks for their followers on the premise that anything those followers do will promote faith or fear in the gods. That goes for ALL the gods.
Monks devote their lives to the embodiment of the Divine ideal, which allows them to channel Divine power on a more subtle and unconscious level than the others. Right now, that translates into the ability to make saving throws at the start of their turn instead of the end.
In 4e, saving throws aren’t reactive the way they were in previous editions, nor do characters receive inherent bonuses to them. The majority of saves are a straight 55-45 chance (roll 10 or higher) at the end of your turn to remove an ongoing effect.
This makes persistent effects easier to manage by removing the need to define a duration — it ends when the target shakes it off.
Monks then, have the opportunity to shake off an effect before ever actually being subject to it — well, unless they’re the target of multiple effects at once, since they only get the one save.
(This isn’t actually a new effect in the system, it was previously a Warden effect called “Font of Life.” It seemed better suited here.)
Just tossing it out there, but maybe also have something like “Make two saving throws, take the better roll; if both saves succeed and a save would normally mean half damage,take no damage instead.” It would undoubtedly be a high-level or a limited ability or it could be pretty broken, but while we’re brainstorming…
(I might actually just make that an artifact item or something; anything to keep newbie B/X adventurers alive, amirite?)
“Save for half damage” (as such) is nonexistent in 4e, which is the engine I’m building most of the features and powers on — there *is* a comparable mechanic in the “half damage on miss” effects of many AoE powers.
You might be familiar with Evasion vs. Mettle features from 3e (take no damage on Reflex save vs. Fortitude/Will save) — when 4e made all the defenses static instead of saves, these features transferred to “take no damage from a missed attack.”
Minions for example, never take damage from a missed attack. If you take the “Mettle” feat, you take no damage from an attack that misses your Fortitude or Will defense. Curiously enough, I’m not aware of a feat-like equivalent to Evasion that made it across the Edition Threshold. *shrug*
So, to answer your suggestion — yeah, there will be something like that. It’ll probably be an optional feat and not Monk-exclusive.
There’s plenty of good material to go around. :)
I have to start posting some of the stuff I’ve been working on, or no one will believe me when I finally publish. <_<
I seem to remember that most of the save for half-damage throws tended to be for things that would be absurd for anyone to just shrug off, namely area-of-effect explosion type deals and crushing damage(which is usually an out so that you just die outright instead of starve to death because because they can’t get the juggernaut off the fighter who is otherwise fine).
I’ll be looking forward to it. In the meantime, I might have my monk-sleuth done by the end of the day.
I’m reading through B/X and BECMI material (is there a difference, or are they pretty much the same thing?) as part of my ongoing research and it might be possible however unlikely, that the system I’m developing will be vaguely compatible with the older material.
I don’t know exactly how, or why. It’s just that conversions seem like they’d be fairly straightforward what with the simplified math and everything. Maybe it’s just ’cause I can see the code in the Matrix now, or something. *shrugs*
It’s just that none of this stuff seems all together different.
BECMI is mostly different because of the expectations set by putting the ascension paths in place as the end-game. Additionally, there were HUGE changes made to the demi-human races as a ‘fix’ to make up for the fact that they had level caps (in a system that went up to level 14, being capped at levels 8-10 wasn’t a big deal) so that they could actually hit monsters with lower ACs, introducing all sorts of complicated things like Alphabetic attack ratings.
B/X is a game where you’re fighting from obscurity to become a lord of a small kingdom; you’re kind of expected to retire, keeping things going like a generation game. BECMI is a game where you’re a king fighting to become a god. There is seriously an end-game path that expects you to play through all 36 levels of each of the non-demihuman class once to become David Bowie or something.
Based on your description, I’m getting the idea that the difference between B/X and BECMI is approximately the same as the difference between say, 3e and Revised (3.5) or 4e and Essentials (4.5). I’m assuming the former preceded the latter by some years. Is that a fair assessment?
Yeah. I can’t remember the exact dates on BECMI, but essentially the re-released Basic and Expert with some changes by the new editor, who went on to write three more folios of additional rules for the levels above 14. A lot of the supplemental material he added included things like siege engines, castle engineering, and that completely nutty large-scale combat system I told you about. One of the problems with BECMI was that they didn’t update the spells to include the damage caps that AD&D had, so you got some really ludicrously high damage for anything that was 1d6 damage per caster level. Ultimately, they put everything together in one book (the Rules Cyclopedia), but it’s got a radically different (and more complex)feel from the B/X rules.
It’s more like if for 3.5 they stapled all of the Epic Level splatbook content for the d20 system to the core rules.