I am starting a new series today looking at the Monk. Hopefully this will end up with me building my own Monk class for OSE/Basic but I think the best way to go about that is look at the roots of the class given the hit and miss nature of its various incarnations.
Today we start off all the way back in 1975 with Dave Arneson's Blackmoor supplement for the original D&D. We get the first mention of the Monk here in the opening "Men and Magic setting.
Monks (Order of Monastic Martial Arts), a sub-class of Clerics which also combines the general attributes of Thief and Fighting Man.
Right upfront we get the thesis statement of the class. Arneson sees the class as a mix of the thief and the fighter even if it is technically a subclass of the Cleric. So just three classes really to build into one, no problem.
The stat requirements:
* Wisdom must be 15 or more
* Strength must be 12 or more
* Dexterity must be 15 or more
Given we are rolling 3d6 down the line here you are not becoming a monk easily.
Interestingly there is no alignment restriction although Arneson suggests most (75%) monks are lawful. Where the monk does get restrictions is no armour allowed and must treat treasure as a paladin does which is found in the earlier Greyhawk supplement.
Paladins will never be allowed to possess more than four magical items, excluding the armor, shield and up to four weapons they normally use. They will give away all treasure that they win, save that which is necessary to maintain themselves, their men, and a modest castle. Gifts must be to the poor or to charitable or religious institutions, i.e. not to some other character played in the game. A paladin's stronghold cannot be above 200.000 gold pieces in total cost, and no more than 200 men can be retained to guard it.
Now a monk can use any weapons, you get an extra half point of damage per half level up to 8 points when using weapons! Now the interesting part is when you get to unarmed combat, a hit that is 5 above the target number stuns an opponent 75% of the time for 3-12(!) turns and outright kills them 25% of the time! When making unarmed attacks as a monk you also have your own damage table which ranges between 4 and 40(!) at max level AND can attack twice if you have a higher dex than your opponent.
Following this you get a whole slew of thief skills as a monk. Open locks, remove traps, listening, climbing, move silently and hide in shadows are all given to a monk in various degrees.
To put the icing on the cake you get speak with animals (4th level), speak with plants (8th level), simulate death (5th level), self heal (starts at 7th level and improves from there), immune to suggestion and hypnosis (8th level), int set to 18 vs telepathy (10th level), immune to quest spell and geases (also 10th level), once a week you can straight up kill someone by touching them (13th level), save to dodge missiles both physical and magical from 1st level and finally from 8th level if you fail a save you only take half damage.
That is a lot of stuff.
To counter act some of this broken nonsense you have a d4 hit dice, the high starting stat requirement and from 6th level you have to solo a monk of equal level to advance.
Phew, I think that is everything.
There is a lot of flavourful stuff in here, a lot of which make the class pretty damn over powered even if it is a glass cannon. Putting all this into an OSE class would be impossible and in my go against the design philosophy of Basic anyway.
Despite being completely over the top there is a lot of stuff I like here and would definitely want to include in my own monk class. The stuff about having to defeat other monks to level up is very flavourful. One thing I am never sure about is having monks use weapons, I like my monks unarmed and finding away to balance between unarmed strikes and weapon using is difficult.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/17172/ODD-Supplement-II-Blackmoor-0e
Tomorrow we look at a different monk.
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