I'm going to be giving 4e a fair try, and converting my current 3.5 Age of Worms campaign to it.
The thing that has me most concerned is that I have a Monk player(and a Bugbear Monk at that - at least Bugbear is a playable race in the MM already). He's stated that it's fine with him if that character leaves the party until an official Monk class comes out, but I'm trying to think of other options.
Now that I finally have the books, looking at the 4e Ranger class has me thinking that with a bit of tweaking, a 2 weapon Ranger would make not a bad Monk. There are some nice exploits that grant some good battlefield movement, and plenty of powers that play off the character's Wis score.
I also am fairly keen on some of the Pathfinder Monk abilities, like the Ki pool, and all the nifty things Monks can use it for.
Is anyone else working on a homebrew 4e Monk?
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I haven't given it much thought but it did occur to me that some rogue powers would also work well as monk abilities. Particularly those that involve moving opponents around the board. I also agree that the two weapon ranger has some appropriate abilities.
Finally - it should be fairly easy to adapt some specific feats and class features from 3e to 4e to round out the monks - well - monkishness.
Option 1: Wait for Necromancer Games' Advanced Player's Guide, that will contain all "missing" material from 3.5E.
Option 2: Check the Githzerai Cenobite and Kuo-Toa Monitor from the 4E MM. Both have monk-like abilities.
Perhaps some Ranger TWF abilities (using unarmed attacks instead) and some Rogue Utilities (like Great Leap, or the Climby one).
Alternatively, if you want to go all out, you could certainly convert several of the Monk's 3E abilities over. The real issue is each class has ~80 powers over all its levels. You won't need so many if your player is ok with sitting down and just making one power for his character per slot, but without knowing your player I'm not sure if they'd be cool with that.
Cheers! :)
Well, the rogue has some pretty cool grappling powers, and the ranger's got the flurries of attacks... There's some paladin and fighter utility powers I'm sure a monk might have, too. You'd have to come up with a scheme for unarmed strike damage increases, and also some at-wills, but everything else is just picking and choosing different powers.
Cool. I haven't looked at Necromancer Games' site in a while.
I'm certainly very interested in their Advanced Player's guide.
Here's hoping it appears soon.
Just in case anyone is interested, I'll update with whatever we decide to do.
I appreciate the suggestions, people. Please, keep them coming if you have more.
Option 1: Wait for Necromancer Games' Advanced Player's Guide, that will contain all "missing" material from 3.5E.
Option 2: Check the Githzerai Cenobite and Kuo-Toa Monitor from the 4E MM. Both have monk-like abilities.
Particularly there's a couple of the special abilities the Kuo-toas have that feels really good. They can automatically shift to any adjacent square of an opponent they are fighting, either before or after their attack. That and whenever you attack one and miss, they get to counterattack, which if it succeeds deals damage and disarms you.
So it's like this monk comes running in. The badguy swings his big doublehanded axe. The monk steps inside the arc of the swing and uppercuts the guy under the chin, weapon strips him and spins off and around to his left side and is now diagonally behind him.
Wow. If only all monks felt that monky...
OK, so here's what we did. We've had one short play session with our characters converted from 3.5 to 4e. The conversion of the Monk was worrying me most of all, but it seems great so far. The Monk character is 4th level.
So far, we're taking it very slow and keeping the rules as close to core 4e as possible.
The Monk character is basically a 4e Ranger with a few very minor rules tweaks, and some fluff tweaks.
First, we remove one trained skill and the ability to use military ranged and melee weapons, and add a +1 to Will defense (so the class has +1 in all three areas) and give him half of the Rogue's Weapon Talent (When you wield a shuriken, your weapon damage die increases by one size).
From there, we followed the character creation rules for a Ranger, and advanced him to 4th level, taking care to select feats and powers that felt right thematically for a Monk.
Then mechanically, we equip the character with two maces and either hide or leather armour, and use descriptive fluff to say that he is actually using his fists to pummel with, and his sharpened senses to dodge with.
Since so many of the default Ranger powers fit so well with a Monk-type character idea, it seems hard to believe that it wasn't designed with this in mind.
In our first playtest the Monk used moves like Disruptive Strike and Dire Wolverine Strike and it really felt right.
All in all, our first game of 4th ed D&D went pretty well, and I'm happy with it.
You should take a look at the WoC conversion guide from 3.5 to 4E by Andy Collins :
...Then mechanically, we equip the character with two maces and either hide or leather armour, and use descriptive fluff to say that he is actually using his fists to pummel with, and his sharpened senses to dodge with.
Since so many of the default Ranger powers fit so well with a Monk-type character idea, it seems hard to believe that it wasn't designed with this in mind.
Its easy to have fun if your willing to put in a little imagination. Hope your game works out.
When your a little more comfortable with the rules you might want to try adding some extra skill challenges and such to the adventure as well as spicing up the combats with interesting terrain. Both are hallmarks of 4E that I feel should be added to any conversion one does from an old edition.
Hm. The Monk suggestion is pretty similar to what we used...WotC is READING MY MIND
You should take a look at the WoC conversion guide from 3.5 to 4E by Andy Collins :