The Monk who finally found true love

For a variety of reasons we haven't played our beloved game for several weeks now, so I've yet to try out my hybrid character.

However, I did get a look at the playtest for the Monk class (thanks to Crwth, as usual). Here are my usual half-assed opinions.

First off, the Monk is now Psionic. My initial reaction to that was... well, I was disgusted. I've always hated psionics going all the way back to AD&D. No good reason for that. I think that my problem with psionics started with it not feeling "in place" with the whole swords and magic theme. Anyways, I was young and it's a bias that has irrationally stayed with me ever since.

However, I quickly reminded myself of that and of the fact that it's just a word. With that in mind I was able to get past my hang up and approached it with an open mind (as open as my mind ever gets anyways).

Then, a funny thing happened. I realized that the Psionic power source is a perfect fit for the Monk. In fact, it totally changed a class that never seemed to find the right niche.

With Psionics however, the monk is suddenly associated with it's famous mental fortitude and discipline in a concrete way. What was once just a bit of flavor for RP purposes is now a central theme of the class. It simply works.

Emboldened by that shattered paradigm I continued reading. Much like every class in 4E the monk has some interesting powers, some that are only so-so and formulaic. The new twist of a "Full Discipline" is interesting. Sorta reminiscent of the old "full round action". I like it in that it really makes it easy to visualize the fluidity of the Monk in battle.

My only real complaint is in the weapon proficiencies. I'd like to see more for the monk, just because the real world inspiration (or the one that I visualize when I think "monk") could pick up anything nearby and turn it into a weapon. While I don't think farm implements need to be listed in a PHB, I'm hopeful that the traditional kama, sai, and whatnot find their way into the game as Monk implements. Frankly I'd be surprised if they didn't but for now it is an issue.

All in all, they've done a great job with the 4E monk. Should my current character die, or choose to "retire", I'm thinking my next character will be a monk. Perhaps if the playtesting is done and the PHB3 is out, I might get to try the hybrid monk/sorcerer I've been dreaming of since FR loosened the monk multi-classing restrictions. Now that's something to look forward to.

Wishlist, part 3

Continuing the series (and my train of thought)...

3. Get rid of Alignment.

At best it's a clumsy mechanic that serves no real purpose in game. At worst, it's a set of handcuffs we don't need.

Okay. It defines things for clerics. Gives the paladin class a prerequisite and something to detect. And adds all those nice Protection from Evil type spells or effects.

None of that is reason enough to carry on with the alignment system. Not when it could be so easily dropped or replaced.

Think about it. How often do you stop and wonder if your Neutral Good rogue would really be okay with stealing? Never? Yeah. Same here.

In fact the only time I ever pause to consider alignment is at character creation, and even then only if it's applicable to the class I want or a Prestige that's down the road. Once in a while I even try to match up with a god's alignment. Otherwise it's only use in game is to rationalize my selfishness and greed. "Sorry I left you guys to die to that dragon while I ran in, grabbed that badass sword, bag full of jewels, and fled. But my character is chaotic neutral."

Besides being a handy tool for rationalization, every other redeeming quality for alignment can easily be replaced.

That sword of good that gives a +2 to hit and extra damage vs evil? Um. Have you heard of Bane weapons?

The Protection from Evil spell? Change it to Protection from Outsiders. Or undead. Or giants. Etc...

The paladin and monk? Make 'em stick to a code or philosophy instead. Chivalry or Buddhism or whatever.

Detect Evil? That spell/ability is a thorn in the side of any DM. Think they'll miss it? Guess again. Better yet, use roleplaying to figure out if something or someone is evil. "So Mr. Ogre. Would you rather help build an orphanage or eat the orphans?"

Easy peasy. No more alignment. No major changes to the game. We can even keep the cosmology as it is with Lawful vs Chaotic being just a concept as opposed to a hard and fast set of rules. As an added bonus it also eliminates one of the hardest concepts for new players to grasp. And best of all, it makes a certain dual wielding ranger Drow almost believable.

Multi-classing monks. Why not?

Apparently Dave Noonan is not only reading our blog, but he's also monitoring our Google chat. That sly devil. ;-)

Just the other day Crwth and I briefly discussed monks and multi-classing which brought to light that my current character is pretty blatantly illegal. Oops. We are using the Unearthed Arcana's variant rules on gestalt characters, so that's my loophole. Yeah. That's it.

Anyways, in Dave's latest blog he discusses how the multi-classing restrictions applied to the monk and paladin classes were regrettably left in 3.0/3.5. I curse those playtesters who advised keeping that insane and pointless restriction in the game. I wish I could smack them around a little.

As Dave says, "The path of the paladin "requires a constant heart," but a cleric or a druid can multiclass freely? The dedication and study of a monk exceeds that of a wizard? Baloney."

I whole heartedly agree. It just doesn't make sense on any level. In fact, it's the main reason I've never played a 3.0/3.5 monk or paladin. Even when I've felt the urge to play a lawful character, I just can't get over the multi-class restrictions. Too bad because I had a really fun idea for a cowardly paladin/rogue. And a monk/rogue would be damn cool too.

Oh well. Maybe in 4e.

Damn playtesters.

Everybody was Kung-Fu fighting

Not in 4e baby.

The word (and by "word" I mean rumor and speculation) is that there will be no monk in the new 4th Edition of D&D. This belief seems to be based almost entirely on the conspicuous absence of the monk in anything the Devs have said/written/dreamed about.

For now, I'll assume that the rumors are true and the monk will no longer exist as a stand alone core class.

But, does this bother me?

Yes and no.

On the one hand, part of me is against the cutting of any core class. In some measure I believe that the class is the first thing that defines a character. It's an important part of their identity. When you tell someone about your latest kick ass character the first words are what class he or she is. Not what feats or skill ranks he has.

"My new character Drazz't is totally awesome! He's got Dodge, Two Weapon Fighting and 4 ranks in Survival."

I don't think so.

On the other hand, and this is a profound about face on an earlier blog, I think that the pruning of a few classes could be a good thing. Thanks to the talent tree.

Why have a seperate Monk class when you can take a Fighter and follow a "martial arts" or "unarmed combatant" talent tree? Same goes with the Paladin. Chose Cleric or Fighter and take a "holy defender" or "champion of the faith" or "Cavalier" tree. I'll even go so far as to eliminate the Sorcerer (a personal fave) and say, take a wizard with the "inate casting" or "dragonblooded" talent.

My paradigm on class has shifted. It's not about class anymore. To steal a line from Shakespeare, the play is the thing.

Speaking of "the Bard", I hear the Bard is another class that won't see 4e ink. Meh. Who cares?

Addendum: According to the latest Dev&Des Article the Bard will be in 4e. Meh. Who cares?

Blogwatching

I just finished going through all of the blogs that are accessible from here, which had a bunch of teasers to ruminate over.

James Wyatt talks about the "rule" about an encounter using up party resources, and thus a party can only face so many encounters before they need to rest -- but what if the big encounter happens first? As a DM, this is definitely a problem that needs to be addressed, and they claim to have done so. Huzzah, but how?

He also talks about his work on the demons in the 4.0 Monster Manual, and while he doesn't give anything away about them, it caught my eye because the monster books are my favorite ones, so I'll be watching what he says closely.

Chris Perkins also mentions the Monster Manual, and how one of my favorites won't be there, because he has been promoted to god status. This makes my mind race about how they're going to handle the gods in 4e -- there's nothing like a statblock for a god to make a DM feel powerful, and a player feel puny. How long am I going to have to wait for that!

Stephen Schubert reveals himself as the math geek at Wizards, mentioning negative binomial distribution; as someone who has been picking apart the structure of the game from a programmer's point-of-view, it's nice to hear them come right out and state that there is something mathematical behind their decisions. Until we see some progression charts or combat rules, we'll have to wait and see where this comes into play.

The programmer in me really perked up at Mike Mearls' blog post, where he discussed "intended use" of game elements. Specifically,


If we also want to make it a playable character race, we'll design a separate racial write up for it. We won't try to shoehorn a monster stat block into becoming a PC stat block.


Considering the amount of work I've done for xmld20 in this area, tearing apart the monster entries into races and monster classes, this comes as mixed news: will I still be able to figure out this breakdown if they don't supply it? Will every monster be provided in a class-based way? Or am I stuck with what they give me? Their discussion of race levels fuels my hopes a bit, since they're thinking more ... mechanical, I guess you'd call it.

Didier Monin discussed D&D Insider, which I'm excited about, for the most part. The part I'm not interested in, as I've mentioned before, is the set of applications they're providing, and that's what he focused on. Sure, character generators might be nice, but as a third-party developer, I have these hope that they're not that good so I have something to work on. And even if Griff thinks there might be times where we'd want to use the Game Table, I think we'll just play DDO instead.

Two things by Rodney Thompson caught my eye: he discussed the idea of magic items as "immediate reward" (versus XP as a "delayed reward"), which is a good way of thinking of it. But then he states that you


...don't have to actually get a new magic item for the potential for reward to be there, and in many cases you'll feel as though you've been rewarded when someone else gets an item. In 4E, I think there is going to be a very interesting dynamic between magic items and players. I believe it was mentioned that some traditional things about magic items were going the way of the dodo...


I like the first part, but... what things are going the way of the dodo? As Griff mentioned in an earlier post, there's no more XP cost to crafting, but that doesn't seem to cover what Thompson is talking about here. Next to the monsters themselves, the magic items are my favorite bits to the game.

Thompson finished by dropping a bomb: 25th-level spells. This took a second reading for it to sink in. Is this just a high-end spell, using everything the wizard has, with metamagic and such? We're not talking about a 49th-level wizard I assume...

Finally, Logan Bonner got my jaw dropping when he stated


...[w]ell, that assumes that there will be monks, that they have ki strike, and that DR exists. Now, at least one of those is true...


Everybody loves a monk, don't they? You can't get rid of them, can you?? Not when we've been waiting patiently for them to appear in DDO all this time...

I hope that the Gleemax setup gets finished sooner rather than later, so following these blogs is a little easier. An RSS feed, perhaps, folks?