Why Does the Monk Class Work in DnD

[Ninja-Bear]

Nolgroth a Jo stick is a 4 foot staff where a Bo staff is 6 foot.

[PhilFleischmann]

I can only imagine how confusing the Monk's powers must have seemed given how incongruent they were with Christian monastic traditions. Just as Paladins must seem very odd to anyone who has never heard of Lancelot or Galahad, or Rangers to those who never read Lord of the Rings. The vast cultural reach of the game shows just how historically/culturally/sociologically literate Gygax and his gang were.

Or illiterate as the case may be.  The idea of a paladin being a "knight who can heal you with divine holy powers and is always 'Lawful Good'" is a pure fabrication of Gygax & co.  The word "paladin" originally meant "a servant of the palace" in other words, someone directly serving the king.  That could be a fighter-type or a wizard-type, or a non-combatant butler, or anything else - but it does imply true-blue-loyalty and trustworthiness to the king - which doesn't mean they're automatically either "Lawful" or "Good", because the king himself might be neither.

 

Likewise, the idea that a druid is a "'True Neutral' cleric with nature-related spells" was also entirely new with D&D.

 

No one should hope to find consistency or historical accuracy within D&D.

[Lucius]

I can only imagine how confusing the Monk's powers must have seemed given how incongruent they were with Christian monastic traditions.

Two points:

 

No more incongruent than Clerics were with those same traditions, and

 

How familiar do you think the average nerd was, or is, with such traditions?

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary points out most of them couldn't distinguish aesthetic from ascetic.

[assault]

 

The palindromedary points out most of them couldn't distinguish aesthetic from ascetic.

 

Thankfully, there were no "rouges" in 1e AD&D. That came later.

[tkdguy]

I am sure Gygax and company read the Legends of Charlemagne. However, the paladin class was based on Holger Carlsen, the hero of Poul Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions. Incidentally, D&D trolls were modelled after Anderson's model rather than Tolkien's.

[knasser2]

RPG authors picking out words or names for special significance from foreign cultures is a goldmine of hillarity. I don't think anything quite tops White Wolf naming a Vampire clan the "Giovanni", though. I suppose they thought it sounded sinister and urbane. But for those of you not from Italy, imagine if you will a vampire clan titled the "The Smiths".

 

Actually no, that one works! That band might actually be vampires. Okay, how about "The Joneses". Sound scary now?

 

Mind you, this is White Wolf - the company that also had gypsies with magic stealing powers, so what do we expect? :D

[zslane]

Two points:

 

No more incongruent than Clerics were with those same traditions, and

 

How familiar do you think the average nerd was, or is, with such traditions?

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary points out most of them couldn't distinguish aesthetic from ascetic.

 

We didn't recognize clerics as adhering very closely to any particular template. The closest thing we could come up with were crusading knights like the Templars. I don't think that image was too far off from what Gygax imagined them to be. There's enough congruency there to place clerics firmly within the traditions of western European history and folklore (and the modern fantasy literature inspired by it). Just like there's enough in the Monk class description to firmly place it within the traditions of Asian fighting monks like the Shaolin, rather than those of western mendicant orders like the Fransiscans.

 

All the kids I played with in high school (back in the early 80s) had a working familiarity with the historical and literary inspirations for most of what we found in AD&D. You didn't need a Ph.D in Western Civilization, East Asian Culture, or Medieval Literature to get this stuff.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Yeah Gygax etc were very well read and educated, they just took patterns from other sources than history and turned them into something new.  Gygax was big on borrowing from whatever he thought was neat and turning it into a new, unique but familiar world.  I like that pattern and so do a lot of other people (millions as it turns out).  I mean as soon as you stick magic into a setting, its not historical any longer.  

 

Dragons in medieval time were thought to be basically crocodiles with acid blood and bad breath, maybe wings.  Not Smaug.  Unicorns were vicious and carnivorous.  But that's not what people associate with them now, because fantasy changed things.  I have a host of problems with D&D's various versions (including the "lets stick science in here!" stuff like Barrier Peaks and CIFAL) but lacking historical accuracy isn't one.

[tkdguy]

Some info on the origins of the cleric and paladin classes here.

[akrippler]

Because its the only thing out of place, its an oddity, its cool.

Thats if you go with the traditional eastern style monk.  Whos to say it cant be a brawler? 

[Old Man]

Nothing, except that it would be hard to justify the game effects of a D&D monk with the special effect of "brawler".  The best western-fantasy monk chrome I ever saw was as a sort of Celtic wild man who drew his powers from nature spirits.  It was always very clear that the monk class was originally based on the eastern martial artist variety, however, and that was a little irritating for those of us who didn't want kung fu in our medieval European fantasy.

[akrippler]

Nothing, except that it would be hard to justify the game effects of a D&D monk with the special effect of "brawler".  The best western-fantasy monk chrome I ever saw was as a sort of Celtic wild man who drew his powers from nature spirits.  It was always very clear that the monk class was originally based on the eastern martial artist variety, however, and that was a little irritating for those of us who didn't want kung fu in our medieval European fantasy.

 

Agreed, its a hard sell for my bar room brawler to throw a quivering palm at someone lol. 

[PhilFleischmann]

And even if he could, you certainly wouldn't call him a "monk".  And he wouldn't need a minimum 15 Wisdom, nor would he be required to be Lawful in alignment.

[knasser2]

Monks in a period European setting can certainly be odd.

 

 

[zslane]

Well, for anyone who grew up in the 70s (as Gygax and crew did), such a mixing of cultures had become a fixture of popular entertainment, and would have been thought of as pretty cool, not "odd":

 

[akrippler]

My buddy is playing a monk dwarf in our game. There's no eastern element to the way he plays, just in the rules. But from my point of view his character completely fits into the world without problem.... it's up to the player to make the character fit or stick out, sometimes thats what they want.

[Ninja-Bear]

I picked up new plastic unpainted minis for Pathfinder monks and they look Eastern!

[grandmastergm]

On 5/28/2017 at 5:18 PM, Nolgroth said:

I've always felt that the DnD monk, being based on Far Eastern philosophy and traditions clashes with the Western European feel of D&D. So why is it so popular a class? Is it because of the powers associated with it? Does it fill a niche that the other classes don't? Is it because of the prevalence in martial arts action heroes in modern media?

 

The reason I ask these questions is because I am building what amounts to a class system for a game I am planning. I keep looking at the classes that I've built (which are really just archetypes that have Characteristics spreads in them) and I am debating on whether the Asian mystic martial artist has a place in there. I would love to get more opinions than my own internal, conflicting voices.

 

I think people like the monk for several reasons:

 

1) the popularity of martial arts movies and media

2) the monk is the fastest class, and can run faster than most mounts at the highest levels

3) the monk has the most attacks of any of the classes, in pretty much any edition

4) the monk tends to play like a rogue but with elements of other classes (barbarian speed, cleric wisdom, and fighter armor class)

5) the monk was really overpowered in 3rd edition with some feat and item combinations, 4e and 5e balanced out the system much better

 

You could do a combination of eastern monk (martial arts) and western monk (religious devotion), I just made one for a convention game I plan on running

[Ragitsu]

I want to thank D&D's Asian-flavored monk for helping the pencil-and-paper industry to expand beyond the "medieval European fantasy" mold. Even if early examples of such campaigns involving the monk weren't exactly nuanced as far as cultural representation goes, they still paved the way forward in their own way.

 

[Worldtraveller]

A good series of novels that explore this idea is 'Gonji'. A samurai in a european fantasy setting. It's worth checking out the first book at least if you're interested in how to develop something like this for a game world.

[indy523]

Nolgroth

 

DnD Monks are basically something thrown in to have a class that was hand to hand with mystic powers.  Although it had an Oriental feel to it the way the game reacted to it was to just throw monasteries in with Castles and Mages in with Druids.  The original DnD was based on Tolkein and the east was Mordor the land of the Dead and Cursed Evil.  Monasteries was something they just fit in along with hobbits and Druids.  IT fit because the world was designed for them to fit and they were a specialty class.  Back in the day 1st edition had a set number of high level monks and Druids with the Grand Druid being 14th level and the Grandmaster of Flowers being 17th and there only being one character with that level.  To get to that level you had to defeat the old master in combat.  This was most unlike how a pacifist Buddhist or Shoalin Monastery probably operates.

 

For me though I think it is not an issue to convert the Monk Class to a western version based on Friar Tuck for instance.  Instead of hand to hand these monks fight best with a staff, or a club, never use sharp weapons that draw blood, have skills in research, literacy in ancient languages and more points in knowledges.  Maybe a 3 point skill focus that gives one point off any geographic, cultural, noble, religious or natural lore knowledge only a Monk class can have.

 

Instead of mystical powers based on inward practice and honing of chi the Monk could have divine gifts that give him benefits such as the Jawbone of Sampson that makes the Monk's weapon Penetrating or the Walk on Water ability that gives bonuses to acrobatics and allows running over water, etc.  Maybe Western Monks have the ability to attack undead, etc.  You could keep the eastern Monk as well and maybe do an Arabian version using powers based on those culture's myths.

[ghost-angel]

D&D was based on Tolkein and Jack Vance (the magic system is Vance, while the races are Tolkein).

 

The Monk goes all the way back to the Blackmoor release, it's based on Remo Williams, and probably also no small part on the popularity of Kung Fu movies in that era as well. The class totally fits into the utter mish-mish of fantasy and medieval Europe that is D&D.