Martial Artists and Monks     

You wouldn't expect, looking at how the monk character class is portrayed in recent editions, that it was one of the original classes, but it was!  A lot of original D&D players may not necessarily remember the monk, until you mention the Master of Flowers, and then you might hear: "oh yeah!  That class that nobody actually played!"  Master of Flowers was the designation for the highest level of monk.  But monks were woefully poor choices as an early D&D class.  Some might argue that monks have never really been a popular class, in all of their incarnations.  Some monks were clerical spell casters, some were martial artists, some were sort of fantasy superheroes, but monks have had a hard time finding a place in D&D.

Part of this, of course, is due to D&D's default "European" setting.  Player characters are assumed to be from a feudal kingdom, generally one with at least one huge trade metropolis, medieval style guilds, and soldiers armed with metal armor and weapons as far as the eye can see.  The economics of such societies is often woefully inadequate, especially with adventurers coming out of the dungeon with thousands of gold pieces upon which they never seem to pay any taxes.  But the flavor is European.

Non-European settings are often treated by D&D as places where adventures may happen, but the adventurers themselves are not local.  This theme has extended throughout the history of D&D, so that since classic adventures such as the Desert of Desolation up to more modern adventures such as the Mummy's Mask, the heroes are always assumed to be European-style folks traveling to a distant land of mystery.  Moreover, the stereotypes and tropes used to represent non-European settings are often problematically racist.

Oriental Adventures

Yes, the name is terrible, and I make no apologies for it.  Oriental Adventures was fantasy Asia from an entirely Western perspective.  As far as I know, no Asian writers of any sort had credits in the book.  This book was Asian culture as viewed through the lens of martial arts movies.  And the monk class has the same general origin.

Oriental Adventures was dropped after Third Edition, and this was probably a good idea.  It probably should have been dropped earlier, in favor of a more authentic setting.  But I suspect that it had nothing to do with a desire for authenticity, and had more to do with a shift in what Western popular culture thought about Asia.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Asian fantasy adventures (as seen by the West) were based on Hong Kong movies, Japanese video games, and samurai/ninja in comic books.  The basic tropes were established:  a secret order of monks in the mountains who teach mystical martial arts, a loyal samurai who has lost honor and must wander as a ronin, massive numbers of ninja who melt out of the shadows and attack without mercy.  But in the 1990s, these were entirely supplanted by a new genre: anime.  Well, the Japanese video games weren't supplanted, they just quickly followed along with the anime trend.

Monks were drawn from Chinese historical martial arts movies, and Western books that were inspired by the same.  And the stories told in many of those movies fit in nicely with the medieval era swords and sorcery of early D&D.  But anime was another thing entirely.  Yes, there were sometimes martial arts, but the context was generally very far from standard Western fantasy.  It was a further bridge, and it was one that the creators of D&D did not want to cross.  So the monk remained the same, and continues to be a strange niche class: only remaining in the D&D setting due to having always been there.

Does D&D Have to Be Western?

What Oriental Adventures attempted to prove was that the archetypes of fighters and wizards, clerics and rogues, could transcend a Western setting.  Other settings did the same for the Middle East (Al-Qadim) and Africa (Nyambe) among others, all written (however well-meaningly) by Westerners.  But what I think these settings ended up proving was that D&D was not flexible enough to translate to a non-Western setting, at least not the way it was being written.  Because in order to accommodate these new settings, they required new, specific rules at every level.

Let's suppose that our story goal is to be able to tell stories in a non-Western culture.  Of the classes as they are written now, some will be perfectly adequate to the task (the fighter) and some will not (the druid).  The component rules can help a lot with that.  Instead of making up a new character class, we can tweak an existing one to fit better within our new campaign world.  If Armored Fighters simply aren't a feature, we can remove that component and replace it with something more fitting.  The system can be setting agnostic.  But the components, perhaps, should not be.  In the same way that Heritage can be designed around a culture specific to the campaign world, and Domain Components can be designed around a specific religion, a component can also bring a particular setting to life.

In the case of the monk, it seems clear that this Setting Component has to do with the use of ki as the source of some of the monk's abilities.  We already know that the monk has the Agile component.  We can see the likelihood of a Martial Artist component to encompass Flurry of Blows and increased damage with Unarmed Combat.  The religious avocation that the monk is named for is a tertiary component at best.  So that leaves the ki powers as a likely secondary component that is specific to a campaign world.  It can be taken by the monk or other classes for a campaign set in the world where ki powers are a thing.  It can also be swapped out for something else to make the monk class fit better in a setting where ki powers are not a thing.

Next post:  More on ki powers and setting components!

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Class Components:  Breaking Things Down Further     

Thus far, we have identified four components of the barbarian:  Berserker (a powerful and balanced component), Survivalist (a front-loaded component), Agile (a somewhat unbalanced component), and Tough (a balanced, but less powerful component).

Examining the barbarian archetypes reinforces these components.  Archetypes gain certain class abilities, while losing other, standard barbarian class abilities.  Looking over the various archetypes, we can see that when an archetype gives up fast movement, for example, they usually lose uncanny dodge and trap sense as well.  Berserker, as the primary component and the granter of the barbarian's rage powers, is rarely lost entirely  The other three, however, are often switched out as the player desires, to modify their barbarian and make it unique.

Because these components are not balanced against each other, they should not be treated in the same way.  However, instead of swapping components out one for one directly, and attempting to force them to become balanced when they are not, perhaps we can instead think about each component as having greater or lesser importance to the character concept.

For Barbarians, being a Berserker is of primary importance, and being Agile is less important.  But let's consider the other character classes that might have Agile as a component.

The Rogue's Agile Component

Certainly the rogue is the first class that comes to mind when we think about a character that is agile. The following class abilities granted by the Rogue fit within an Agile component:

• Acrobatics, Climb, and Escape Artist class skills (1)
• Increased Reflex save (all)
• evasion (2)
• uncanny dodge and improved uncanny dodge (4, 8)
• trap sense (3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18)

In addition, a number of Rogue Talents fit into Agile, including Acrobatic Stunt, Climbing Stunt, Escaping Stunt, Expert Leaper, Fast Getaway, Improved Evasion, Ledge Walker, Nimble Climber, and others.

The Monk's Agile Component

Monks are also very agile, having many class abilities that fit within this component:

• Acrobatics, Climb, Escape Artist, and Ride class skills (1)
• Increased Reflex save (all)
• evasion (2, 9)
• fast movement (3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18)
• slow fall (4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20)
• high jump (5)

The Bard's Agile Component

Finally, the bard, while certainly not as focused on agility as the rogue or the monk, has certain class abilities that fit within this component.  The bard's Agile component would be fairly front-loaded, and might look something like this:

• Acrobatics, Climb, and Escape Artist class skills (1)
• Increased Reflex save (all)

Standardizing Components

There is a lot of overlap between the way that different character classes get these same kinds of skills and abilities.  And yet, three general levels of components start to make themselves clear:  front-loaded, lower-powered components, such as the bard's Agile (as well as the barbarian's Survivalist), mid-level components, such as the barbarian's Agile and Tough, and high level components, such as the rogue or the monk's Agile (or the barbarian's Berserker).

Would the game benefit if we standardized these into three distinct levels?  Well, consider the rules as written that the players need to keep track of:

• Barbarians gain fast movement at level 1, which is a simple 10 foot bonus to their move.
• Monks gain fast movement at level 3, but this is a different ability of the same name, and increases every three levels.
• Monks and rogues both gain evasion at level 2, but Monks gain improved evasion automatically at level 9, while rogues have to take an advanced rogue talent in order to get improved evasion (which they cannot access until level 10).
• Rogues get uncanny dodge at level 4 and improved uncanny dodge at level 8.
• Barbarians get uncanny dodge at level 2 and improved uncanny dodge at level 5.
• However!  If a rogue or barbarian already had uncanny dodge from the other class, then when they would get uncanny dodge, they instead get improved uncanny dodge.
• Rogue and barbarian levels stack, somewhat, for purposes of when you can avoid sneak attacks, but the rules are complex, to say the least.

These rules are unreasonably, and unnecessarily, complex.  They do not add anything to the story.  Nor do they add that much to the game itself, since the only time you need to think about them, as a player, is when you are creating or leveling up a character.  In the meantime, the GM is the one who is likely to have to use them the most, and this becomes burdensome in terms of slowing down creation of NPCs and antagonists.

Next post I will try to set forth a version of a three-level Agile component that will easily fit into the four classes discussed, as well as being available in some form to other classes!

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