The Monk - Part 6: Making an OSE or B/X Monk

 After looking through the various incarnations of the monk/mystic there are some elements that stand out as must have features:

 * No armour

 * Access to some thief skills

 * Restrictions on what magic items they can keep

 * Unarmed combat abilities

It is the last point that I think is the hardest to deal with as it comes with the assumption that monks can also use any weapon. This is both hard to balance and design around, the ideas that monks can use weapons but that their unarmed strikes need to be at least as good as or possibly better than the other options. How do we make it so there is a meaningful choice between the two? Should it even be a choice? 

 There are some elements I am pretty clear on but this balance between unarmed and armed combat for the class is what I think most people struggle with. We have this confused fantasy we are trying to achieve of a mish mash of different kung fu films all smooshed through the lens of the B/X chassis. 

 In many editions there are so many monk abilities it would never be possible to fit them all on a B/X class, it would be nice to retain some of them or even all of them in some way. This could be done by reflecting the different traditions of orders that monks belong to. In the carcass crawler mutoid class there is a table where you roll for mutations on your character, something like this could be an interesting feature for a monk class to reflect the different types of monk orders. Likely this will be hard to fit with the other XP costings and is something I will cut for now.

 Ideally I would like to keep the XP cost for the class to get to level 2 as something around 2500, that would keep the class in line with the Barbarian and just below the Paladin, two classes are think are roughly comparable. 

 Some of the abilities that monks have had in past editions also just do not have anything at all like them currently in OSE which makes it hard for me to gauge what sort of "cost" these abilities should have when it comes to XP, this may also be a factor as to which abilities I end up including.

The Monk - Part 5: Rules Cyclopedia Mystic

 

 Released in 1991 I believe, this is going to be the last monk we will look at and probably the most relevant.

The Rules Cyclopedia class reverts to the mystic name, having strength and dexterity as prime requisites while also needing a min score of 13 in dexterity and wisdom. Mystics get a D6 for hit dice and now not only can they no longer wear armour they also can not use any magic items that offer protection! We are told 75% of mystics are lawful, seemingly there being no alignment requirement.

 As a mystic levels it naturally improves it's AC, movement, number of attacks and unarmed strike damage. Mystic's unarmed strikes also start to count as magical weapons for the purposes of damaging invulnerable creatures. A mystic does 1d4 damage at first level with unarmed strikes and tops out at 3d12 at 16th level where it has 4 attacks a round!

Mystics get some optional acrobatics abilities at the cost of -20% experience points earned. This comes in the form of Acrobatics Check = d% roll vs. ([3 * Dex] + [2 x Lvl]), a return to annoying formulas rather than a straight table. The rules do suggest you could also just do it by a roll under dex check on a d20 which is probably far better.

As standard a mystic gets the following thief abilities: Find Traps, Remove Traps, Move Silently, Climb Walls, and Hide in Shadows. At 9th level you get access to the special fighter combat options too.

Next we get a fairly familiar set of features as the mystic levels

Gentle touch being the new quivering palm which you can use once a day instead of once a week and can use for charm, cureall, death, quest, or paralysis rather than just death like in previous editions.

There are some tweaks to the previous restrictions on a monk, now instead of having to donate most of your wealth your cloister just straight up owns anything you collect. Once you reach 10th level as a mystic the number of mystics at that level is restricted and you have to beat one in solo combat to actually advance to the new level. Some good news is that when you want to build a stronghold at 9th level, your current cloister will pay for it for you.

As we might have expected this class is the closest to something that might fit in B/X or OSE however it still has way too many abilities.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/17171/DD-Rules-Cyclopedia-Basic

Tomorrow I try to figure out what the heck I actually want from a monk class and what is achievable!

The Monk - Part 4: AD&D 2nd edition's Fighting-Monk

 That is right kids, the monk has been unceremoniously kicked down the road and in 2nd edition it only appears as a kit for the priest (cleric).

So to qualify as a fighting-monk you need to be a priest with 13 dexterity score and as a priest you get a d8 hit dice as well as the ability to cast divine spells for the first time in the class's history!

 Fighitng-monks are barred from using armour, can never own more things than they can carry on their back and must take a weapon specialization in on of the three styles of unarmed combat from The Complete Fighter's Handbook. 

 All of which is to say there is not a lot going on here. We get a few familiar touch stones however this is not a full class and the divine casting abilities are an outlier.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/16888/PHBR3-The-Complete-Priests-Handbook-2e

One last monk to consider tomorrow in part 5 hopefully more useful than this short one! 

The Monk - Part 3: AD&D PHB Monk

 

Monks are monastic aesthetics who practice rigorous mental and physical training and discipline in order to become superior. 

 To qualify as an AD&D monk we need 15 in strength, dexterity and wisdom with an 11 in con on the side. You are restricted to lawful alignment (if you stray from lawfulness you become a level 1 scrub), gain no bonus XP benefits or dex boosts to your defences.

 Monks attack as a thief, getting an extra 1/2 a point of damage for armed strikes per level and a D4 hit dice (although you get an extra HD at first level). Thief saves are also used for a monk as are a number of thief skills such as open locks etc. Monks also get the extra save of being able to dodge non-magical missile attacks with a save vs petrification.

 Unarmed combat brings back some familiar elements from earlier versions such as the chance to stun or kill. If you hit roll is 5 higher than required you stun the target for D6 rounds. To kill we have the super clunky mechanic of you have to have already stunned a target with hit then roll a D100 and score less than the opponent's AC modified by how many levels over 7 the monk is. Truly the to kill option is a pain to work out and roll at the table in my opinion, the upside is you could theoretically one punch a dragon. The damage from and number of unarmed attacks you can make both increase by level until you can make 4 attacks around for 8-32 at 17th level.

After this comes a whole slew of special abilities I'll bullet point as there are so many of them.

* Speak with animals as druids do (3rd level)

* ESP only has a 30% chance of working on a monk, dropping by 2% per level (starting at 4th level)

* Immune to diseases and Haste/Slow (5th level)

* The ability to mimic death (6th level)

* Limited self heal (7th level)

* Speak with plans as a druids do (8th level)

* 50% chance to save against charm, suggestion etc which increases by 5% per level (starting at 9th level)

* Int set to 18 for purposes of defence against Mind Blast and Telepathy (10th level)

* Immune to poison (11th level)

* Immune to Geas and Quest spells (12th level)

* Once a week you can quivering palm, touch someone for three rounds and if they have less HD than you, they die. (13th level)

After this we get some familiar restrictions. No armour allowed, limited on what treasure they can keep (same as paladin), no to hit or damage bonuses from strength score, no hirelings or henchmen before 6th level, have to win in single combat to progress at higher levels and limits on what you can spend on your stronghold.

Another fiddly version of the class that is largely considered to be weak.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/17003/Players-Handbook-1e

In 1985 AD&D gets a slightly revised version of the PHB monk in Oriental Adventures, it is not different enough that I'll be looking at it though.

Tomorrow we see what 2nd edition AD&D has to offer in part 4.

The Monk - Part 2: Mentzer's Master Mystic

 

Coming as part 4 in the BECMI set (Basic, Expert, Champion, Master, Imortals) is the black box master set designed to take characters from level 26 to 36 this set also contains a monk class of sorts. For master we have ditched the monk as the name and gone with mystic.

Mystics are NPC humans, monastic people who follow a strict discipline of meditation, denial, seclusion, and mastery of the human body. Mystics are skilled in unarmedcombat. They live in cloisters, or lairs.

 We get a whole slew of information on how cloisters are organised so you know exactly how many people make up a cloister and their classes which is nice but not exactly relevant to running a player character.

Mystics advance in levels at the same XP cost as fighters however they are limited to level 16 and after each level up you have to spend 1-6 months back at your cloister to prove you are not just out in the world having too much fun. You only gain XP from treasure if you give it to the needy and 10% of your treasure has to be tithed back to your cloister. So do you lose 10% of the XP you should get from your treasure or are cloisters considered needy?

 When in unarmed combat your unarmed strikes count as silver weapons (2nd level), +1 weapons (5th level), +2 weapons (8th level), +3 weapons (11th level), +4 weapons (14th level) and +5 weapon (16th level) however this is only for the purpose of being able to damage a creature, you do not get any to hit or damage bonuses!

 Mystics do get to use special fighter options such as disarm, stun etc and can use the different martial arts styles from the Companion Set. If you use a dominant style in combat then you get to do double damage unless the opponent saves vs spells. This is adding a level of fiddly onto combat which I do not really like.

 Next you get some acrobatics skills as a mystics. Jumps/leaps, tumbles/falls, dodges, catches (stopping yourself from falling), swings and balances all of which you succeed on a d100 roll that is less than or equal to three times your dex plus two times your level which would have been much better expressed in a table. For the benefit of having these acrobatic skills you earn 20% less XP than a normal mystic.

 And that is it.

 It is a bit of a bare bones, get you started class. By this point you are supposed to be skilled enough as a DM to be able to work it out yourself. No mention given of mystics having to go without armour, what their HD should be, any stat requirements or their saves.

 I like the stuff on how cloisters are organised even if it is not that useful for the class itself. There are some nods to making different orders more unique by having them use different martial arts styles however again this is hand waved and left up to the DM.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/17167/DD-Master-Set-BECMI-ed-Basic

 

Tomorrow back to calling a monk a monk?

The Monk - Part 1: Blackmoor

 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.

Huberic of Haghill

By Bill Owen and Bob Bledsaw

Judges Guild

Advanced (no level)

Premise: A retired adventurer rules over a castle built on top of some sealed off dungeons.

What do we get here?

 Over just under a page we get information detailing the mini setting of Haghill and NPCs found there along with a second page providing a hex map of the location.

Usability/formatting

 What little information there is is fairly easy to scan through and parse. You get just enough information from the single sentence description to run each NPC and a nice little collection of rumours about the area.

 The map is pretty easy to make out what is going on despite only being black and white.

 What you do not get here is any dungeons or clarification of what is actually going on. There are no monsters and the only magic items listed are owned by NPCs.

 Portability

 There is not much to tie this to a specific setting other than the god of the local cleric which you can easily change to fit your own setting.

Recommendation

 Alright so this is not an adventure at all really. I may have been over sold by the review of the setting on Melan's blog.

 As a concept this is pretty fun and gives you stuff to work with, you just need to have your own dungeons from other products or ones you have made yourself to slot in where required here. This could make a nice campaign setting for kicking off a campaign if you put some work into it. These days there are better products out there but this does show the roots of how such things should be written.

I am not actually sure you can buy this anywhere right now given most people have rightfully cut ties with the current owner of Judges Guild, good luck in your search.