Monk Powers

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I must admit, I'm not persuaded. But that's okay. I can live with not liking the monk class. In fact, it's what get me out of bed in the morning.

 

Being an interested practitioner in the martial arts myself, I think the monk class is an awesome addition to DnD, if a bit oversimplified at times. I am lucky enough to have met people who have trained in the Shaolin Temple and became masters (Steve Demasco) and have trained a bit in it myself, and I can speak from experience that some of the things that I have seen are well beyond what you would expect from the human body. Shaolin training involves the strengthening of the fists through continuous punches on hard surfaces, the strengthening of focus and the will through countless hours of concentration and meditation, the strengthening of the most vulnerable areas of the body (skull, throat, etc.) to withstand blows not normally possible, and countless other things. The damage reduction, I would say, comes from the "iron body" techniques that allow you to do crazy stuff like break iron bars over your head and make certain parts of the body rock solid for short periods of time. In fact, the guy that let's trucks run over his stomach (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeuXN69gvoY) follows the exact same principles as the iron body techniques, from what I have heard of his description of how he does it.

The only thing that bugs me is the lack of other monk techniques associated with the real ones. If a monk successfully grapples a light-armored character in combat, they should be in for a beating, not to mention certain techniques which are designed to weaken, blind, or incapacitate in some other way. Let's not forget that low level monks shouldn't be able to damage fully-armored (as in helmet and everything covered) characters with their fists yet, and should have to rely on special monk weapons like the ball and chain.

As for roleplaying or multiclassing a monk, it's all about how much you know about them. I once had a monk-rogue multiclass with a decent backstory, one of my all time favorite characters. His life as a rogue came by force- join the local thieves guild or have his family harmed. Once he had enough money he secretly sought training in the local temple and later took down the entire guild with a few choice attacks upon their operations. He does nothing for revenge, only to alleviate the suffering of the victims, and always went for nonlethal damage where viable.

 

Good grief, where did you find that thread? It's some four years old . We need to have a "Black Onyx" award for thread necromancy .

Anyway, for a more "realistic" monk, perhaps you might want to check the Martial Artist archetype for the Pathfinder Monk. It specifically aims to remove some of the monk's supernatural mojo with somewhat more mundane abilities.

 

After a friend of mine managed to kill a great red wyrm, single handedly, with a monk - we decided never to use the class again. Way too cheasy. He was level 21, by the way. Pretty much immune to everything.

 

Lol! I was just really bored, searching through the topics before I went to work. Since i'm a big martial arts proponent I thought I would put my two cents in on a long dead thread