That's really awesome actually. Mind if I use that, Prof?
Of course not! Use away! It's a DM's job to find good ideas that other people have made, and then bring them to their group. God knows I do it ;p
That's really awesome actually. Mind if I use that, Prof?Of course not! Use away! It's a DM's job to find good ideas that other people have made, and then bring them to their group. God knows I do it ;p
Along the lines of your other "house rules", do you remove alignment requirements for other classes like Barbarian, Druid, or Paladin?
Along the lines of your other "house rules", do you remove alignment requirements for other classes like Barbarian, Druid, or Paladin?That's really awesome actually. Mind if I use that, Prof?Of course not! Use away! It's a DM's job to find good ideas that other people have made, and then bring them to their group. God knows I do it ;p
I actually haven't, but that's because for druid and barbarian they still have drastically widened alignment choices (five out of nine for druid, 6 for barbarian, while monk only had three), and I've always seen paladin as a lawful good warrior who's defining feature was indeed both the Code and that they are lawful good. I DO tend to give paladins a bit of leeway to avoid Lawful Stupid (ie, archer paladins, shooting enemies in the back when they run away, planning ambushes, those are fine. Just don't cut down people asking for mercy ;p).
Also, I don't associate lawful with "has a code of honor." Anyone can have a personal code. Lawfulness is more about order. The trope of a barbarian king is more neutral in my eyes - he has a personal code and a strong sense of honor, but he and his tribe aren't orderly or regimented in any way. For the druid, I see the neutrality part as the druid needing a connection with nature. Likewise, I see the need for lawful good or evil as being connected with a strongly ordered country. A druid wouldn't feel obligated to follow a city's king simply because he has that position. Nor would they feel the need to tear that king off the throne.
...But, then again, I've always been somewhat iffy on druids ;p
I see. Thanks for your insights, as well as new rules to play around with ^^
Just because you try to improve yourself doesn't mean that you are lawful, and I can just as easily give non-lawful characters the same powers and make the flavor still fit. For instance, a chaotic character figures out how to make his body do what he wants, and so he never has to age and poison can't figure out how to affect him.Yeah, but if you change the fluff, such a character could also be a druid (poison immunity, check. Unaging, check. Control of her body to the point of changing shape... Check, even if you didn't ask for it). And for that character, the druid's alignment limitation doesn't make any sense either (why can't that character be Chaotic Good ?).
The fluff of the monk isn't "tying to control her body". It's "trying to become perfect". It's not a training in which you redo the same move until you do it perfectly, or some kind of "solving a mathematical question" (like wizard's magic) ; it's improving as a whole : the monk does some kata to meditate about herself, she discovers the reasons why she dislike spinach, she now knows she were wrong, she become a better person, and as a result of her personal improvement she become unaging - only because she's more "in phase" with the Universe, not because she did some katas, and not because she tried to cease aging (I know that example of self-improvement is retarded, but I can't find any other example I can easily translate in English - nevertheless, I hope you understand my point). That's a Lawful way of thinking (trying to improve without other goal than trying to improve), and she can't achieve this without being Lawful (even if she wasn't Lawful at the beginning, she will eventually become Lawful by having everyday that way of thinking).
The fact it's the way the monk improve doesn't prevent other classes to gain the same ability from other power source and other fluff (cf the druid)... But it prevent the monk to be non-Lawful.
I still feel like you are putting the class in a pigeon hole that it...
The Perfect what? There are groups in D&D that would define such perfection as a chaotic goal, and others that would use chaos to achieve it. Free the mind and let it flow in the here and now.
The Ciphers in Planescape are one such group. Though its members come from all alignments, one of their main tennants is "Action without thought," or more accurately "Action instantaneous with thought." This can be a chaotic or lawful philosophy, and both would be a pursuit of the perfection you describe. If 2 people have the same abstract goal, and go about it in 2 different ways, why should the mechanics inherently decide that only 1 can possibly achieve their goal? This should be left up to the players and the game to decide.
The problem is the alignment system lumping too many different ideals and beliefs into the same box.
A person can pursue personal discipline, order, and reason and also believe in libertarian political ideals. A person can believe in flexibility and lack of commitment and still believe in a rigid social order.
A person can believe in the importance of a strong community and adherence to communal customs and norms, while also feeling that those customs are an arbitrary social construct without exterior moral force.
"Law" attempts to lump communitarian, authoritarian, and logical ideals into one category.
"Chaos" attempts to lump libertarian, anarchical, and randomness ideals into one category.
When you try to lump a bunch of different ideals along one axis, you get the problem we have now where the elements of "lawfulness" that are seen as critical to monk abilities (personal discipline, mental control) are lumped in with a bunch of elements that have nothing to do with monk abilities (political philsophy, moral source, ethical ideals).
It doesn't really work.
im going to revive this thread/debate as i have a player that is going to change from Barb to monk. i can't disallow it cause its raw and house ruling raw will just create more issues than letting the player take the class. like stated earlier there is nothing in raw stating you can't multi from Barb to monk and level as a monk then change alignment back and forth to keep leveling both...
this post will be very long but have very good points...
I'm sorry to to offend anyone. But, anyone arguing the fact that to be dedicated, disciplined, to the point of perfecting oneself is lawful or lawfulness is just flat out wrong. look at many great musicians and it will blow that theory right out of the water. Take Jimmy Hendrix for example. he was dedicated,disciplined, had regimes he practiced night and day, and pursued his music to perfect it. he was FAR from lawful and in fact was utter chaos to the point of it killing him!
The problem i see with monk is a combination of things. First is the name itself. Monk by definition has NOTHING to do with martial arts NOR law OR society.
wikipedia-A monk is a man who devoted part or all of his life to a religion. The word comes from Ancient Greek, and can be translated as solitary. In Greek, the word can be used for men and women alike, but in English,a woman who does the same is called a nun. Monks practice asceticism.
Asceticism (Greek: askēsis) is a word that describes a certain life-style. This life-style is different from others mainly because those who practice it abstain from various sorts of worldly pleasures, especially sexual activity and drinking of alcohol. Often, their aim is to follow religious and spiritual goals.
So technically a true monk is nothing more in game terms than the current cleric. with that said since clerics can be any alignment depending on there diety,religion, belief,then why can't monks?
but i don't think that's what type of monk D&D, pathfinder, and players intended/expect- the cleric is already a role. so that leaves the other type of monk i think everyone expects-the shoalin monk or basically pajama fighting martial artist type monk. I think pathfinder would have been better off changing the monk class name to martial-artist as that's what everyone plays them as, and expects of them.
And since i think D&D/pathfinder based the monk CLASS off the shaolin monk they butchered it by ONLY keeping the martial arts fighting and temple trained theme. Then pathfinder through in the "must be lawful" without any reasoning or explanation or research into shaolin monks. WHY? Because if anyone actually knows anything about shaolin monks and there beliefs-Buddhism and Taoism there not LAWFUL or dedicated to law AT ALL! If they could be tied to any game alignment at all overall, there are exceptions, it would be true neutral. To get an understanding why i will tell you a little about buddhism, the religion of the most famous of shaolin monks (hence the inspiration of the current monk class). there are essentially 3 schools of budhism called paths-low,middle, and high path. i will post one as it gives a perfect example why those monks are probably neutral and DEFINITELY not lawful in any way.
"The middle path is also called Mahayana. It is a belief that we live in the here and now and should act and think accordingly. Mahayana is centered on the basic understandings of life as revealed by Gautama, the first Buddha. These teachings include the Four Noble Truths about life. The first truth is that there is pain, suffering, old age, and death in life. These transient factors affect us all, and are part of the reality that defines life. The second truth states that desire for wealth, health, love, money, and life all cause suffering. This is because we cannot have everything we want, and denial is a source of pain. The third truth simply states that extinction of desire ceases pain and suffering; killing the ego releases one from wants. The fourth truth says that adherence to the Eight-Fold Path is the route to the extinction of desire."
you can read more on the Eight-Fold Path if you wish i will not post it here as it's really long.
Now remember this is there religion and CORE belief it isn't as many put it one simple aspect of there life-it IS there life. NOW, here is the biggest wistle blower as to why these monks would not be lawfull!
"ABOVE ALL, the Buddha left his disciples (n.b., many were women) with a last lesson that underscores ALL his teachings. When asked by one what was the TRUE way to enlightenment, the Buddha replied, "Be your own light, your own refuge. Believe only that which you test for yourself. DO NOT EXCEPT AUTHORITY merely because it comes from a great man, or is written in a sacred book, for truth is different for each man and woman." In short, Buddhism rejects the blind obedience of the "faithful," and prefers its practitioners to know life from experiencing it in all its glory and despair."
THAT IS DEFINITELY NOT LAWFUL! now you could argue that the Pathfinder monk is not a shaolin monk and your right. BUT, that statement would prove that the monk class is not based on true monks of history and just makes them pajama fighting kung-fu fighters. i've seen a couple times where James Jaccobs has asked to show me where this or that was actually used in history and this shows that monks, the ones we emulate as the monk class, were not lawful. The lawful restriction makes no sense when the MOST famous of all monks simple put were NOT lawful.
What should have been done with the monks is provide ORDERS the monk could take that dictated his alignment restrictions, abilities, and powers the smae way that clerics choose a faith. Not pigeon holing the pathfinder monk into "all monks are like this ONE order and must be Lawful because yes-the book only says so".
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Chaos is ordered actually. There is always a pattern in everything. So what is viewed at one level looks chaotic but when the big pictures is view it's a very orderly machine. Basically think of chaos and Order as a circle. The more chaotic you get the more patterns appear and the more orderly it gets. The reverse is true as the rules make for orderly society the more order you apply via rules turns chaotic in mess of rules leading to a Chaotic society. Over time though the pattern appear certain laws are accepted others rejected and order begins to appear again.... shaping chaos into order? How is that not fundamentally lawful behavior? But the creatures that do this are considered chaotic in alignment?And yet in Planscape, you have a chaotic society that maintains control on limbo through the shear force of their minds. They understand chaos, and can therefore shape it to their will, bringing cities to the landscape.
Yay!
Read Salvatore's Cleric Quintet (if you haven't already) for a good look at a main character monk.
Where he repeatedly points out the Monks' abilities are based entirely in physical conditioning in control in contradiction to your statement about psionics.
Taoism has a philosophy called Wuwei which is very similar to what Caineach is talking about the Ciphers having (ie. action without thought) and martial arts grounded in taoist philosophy (eg. Taijijuan, Bagura, Xing I, etc.) also have this philosophy of Wuwei.
What I'm having difficulty reconciling is how a monk with a Taoist flavor can both pursue wuwei and pursue lawfulness (as lawfulness is conceived of by many people in this forum).
Reading up on it, it would look to require far more dedication and discipline than you seem to imply. "Action without thought" and "action without action or effort" aren't quite the same thing. Converted to "thoughtless action" vs "effortless action," it better demonstrates the difference in English.
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Step 1: Roll up a monk. Make them Lawful Neutral.
Step 2: Claim he/she/it is from a sect that believes that a person's reality is defined by their perspective and through understanding the perspectives of others one can better understand reality. Recount how the sect has mapped out nine classic alignment types based on centuries of observation and study.
Step 3: Have fun exploring each and every alignment type in a methodical, self-enlightening kinda way! On Tuesday you can schedule in a few hours of Chaotic Evil, on Sunday an evening of Neutral Good and come Wednesday you can meet with your fellow sect brethren for a day of Neutral contemplation!
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As for being lawful -- other than 'the book says so': a monk is a living weapon, the result of an perpetual process of personal perfection. That takes some serious commitment....
..even the 'chaotic' styles are still approached in a lawful, methodical manner - even the ones that basically boil down to 'Just let loose and go with the flow, yo!'.
It's times like these I'm glad to be playing a chaotic evil good lawful character. :)
I personally go for Barbarians being any non-lawful and Monks being any non-chaotic. Even then, if you have a good concept for a lawful barbarian or a chaotic monk, I'm willing to run with it. The only time I get strict with alignment is Paladins, especially being played lawful stupid, which is a hold over from when I got stabbed in the back by the party paladin in my early days of AD&D while picking a lock in the dungeon... and the DM let this slide.
lots of stuffI always viewed the D&D monk as more of a Yamabushi then a Shaolin monk.
thats fine but a large majority of Yamabushi were still Buddhists. some were strict follows of dharma and that is the only order of monks i've read that actually took a strict lawful path. Many were hermits and therefor most likely true neutral as there only desire was perfecting themselves and reaching enlightenment. after reading over a great deal of sights and info about eastern monks the only thing i could actually find in common about monks is almost ALL orders were strictly neutral. meaning there sole moral compass was the pursuit of perfecting themselves and reaching enlightenment, they had no pursuits of good or evil, society, helping others, enforcing law, or abiding by it. things like that just got in the way of reaching enlightenment and did not concern them. Almost all monks revered nature in the religion which is why most combat styles are named after animals,monkey style, tiger stance, way of the serpent, etc. SO if ANY alignment should be restricted to them them it should be neutrally aligned-CN,N, and LN. Plus, a true monk dedicates himself to reaching enlightenment and perfecting himself so in that note monks should be forbidden to multi-class. At least my points have actual historic proof and explanations instead of "monks must be lawful" or monks must be lawful because "to me lawfulness is THIS or THAT ".
I still stick with my opinion that paizo just got it all wrong with the monk. to completely eradicate the monks culture and oriental flavor takes away what the monk really was all about. And then they replaced the striped culture and flavor with well.. nothing. They should have taken the time to give the monk a golarion culture,flavor, and background instead just basically making him a kung-fu fighter. which there's nothing wrong with that if they just would have not called him a monk, cause he's really not. It would have been easy to make a few orders of different alignments with different powers (or even one order for each alignment) to give a player options, some character history, and a them to roleplay. they did this for the cleric and the monk just seems rushed, robed, and watered down. I would like to see maybe a book for monks come out in the future with some orders and alignment options to fix this.
I agree with a previous poster that part of the problem comes from the fact that the Monk is the martial artist AND the seeker of perfect harmony.
I think the fluff around the monk justifies its Lawful alignment, similarly to how the fluff around the paladin justifies its LG alignment.
The part that sucks is that any concept of oriental character/martial artist/mystical warrior is funneled into one class, which has no choice but to be Lawful. True, the system is bendable enough to make a pugilist/boxer fighter, or a fighter-rogue ninja; but if you want to make a '70s style kung-fu fighter, you're bound to be interested in the monk and stuck with an imposed alignment that, as many posters already pointed out, has very few mechanical justifications as far as game balance goes.
'findel
There's no absolute as to why you have to have lawful monks, just providing a context and rationale. When you think about monks, they always seem to learn from an Order (of the Lotus, Yellow Lily, Tiger, etc.). There's generally a ritual to how they learn, organize, and fight.
It's a common trope, sure, but it's not the only one.
Drunken style and monkey style both suggest chaotics.
A GM once allowed me to create a group of monks for his campaign who were basically Barbarians. The idea was that in the distant past there was an evil group of wizards who controlled his entire world (this was part of the GM's setting). The group of monks I created were basically "house slaves" whereas everyone else were "field slaves". This group of monks suffered abuse at the hands of the wizards (rape, assault, starvation, etc.) but also learned some magic from them. When the evil wizards were overthrown, the group of monks weren't welcomed in the rest of the world (because the "field slaves" saw the "house slaves" as having been "Uncle Toms"), so the monks went out into the wild to find their own way. There, they combined the magical training they'd had from the evil wizards to the demands of life in the wild and developed a tradition of being mystical warriors dedicated to fighting evil mages/magic.
They may imply Chaotic but Monkey Style and Drunken Style Monks still have to under go intensive training, the level of Kung Fu required to do most of what you see in any Martial Arts movie (Basically what the Monk is capable of) Requires years of training, hard work, and dedication to the style.
Discipline and Focus are two key elements of any martial art. So I can easily see the Lawful restriction for Monks.
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Why are Wizards not restricted to Lawful then? Discipline and focus are just as key to their magic is it not?
Discipline and Focus are two key elements of any martial art. So I can easily see the Lawful restriction for Monks.
I think because thematically monks have more more inclination to keep order and peace than a wizard would.
Why are Wizards not restricted to Lawful then? Discipline and focus are just as key to their magic is it not?
Discipline and Focus are two key elements of any martial art. So I can easily see the Lawful restriction for Monks.
+1
This is true of every class. Rogues need discipline and focus to learn to pick locks, but they can still be chaotic. I really doubt Houdini was lawful, but if he didn't have dedication and patience I don't know what he had.
Why are Wizards not restricted to Lawful then? Discipline and focus are just as key to their magic is it not?
Discipline and Focus are two key elements of any martial art. So I can easily see the Lawful restriction for Monks.
+1 as well
Discipline and focus do not equal Law. Similarly, I could see an elven army as being very disciplined and focused, yet composed of "usually chaotic good" soldiers...
Many martial arts rely on repetitive, almost ritualized patterns however, which we could argue as being Lawful traits. Yet, adaptation and improvisation are more representative of other martial arts, which reflects more Chaotic traits.
As I said, I think that a character in such quest of personal enlightenment justifies a Lawful alignment, but it has nothing to do with martial arts IMO.
'findel
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Wait did I just stumble into yet ANOTHER alignment thread? My bad, I guess I am going to just have to take my lashings and learn from my mistake.
If you are willing to debate alignment one way or another then you should simply do away with it in your games and find something that fits your view of the world better.
Wait did I just stumble into yet ANOTHER alignment thread?
My apologies then. But seriously, with a title like Monks and Being Lawful, what did you expect?
For the better of for the worst, Alignments ARE a part of the game and have, among other things, an impact on which class you can play as a certain alignment and which classes are restricted unless you pick a particular alignment. So yeah, you stumbled on one of those treads...
'findel
Many martial arts rely on repetitive, almost ritualized patterns however, which we could argue as being Lawful traits. Yet, adaptation and improvisation are more representative of other martial arts, which reflects more Chaotic traits.
Not so much really. It takes a lot of training, know-how and focus to make Chaos a workable combat technique
They may imply Chaotic but Monkey Style and Drunken Style Monks still have to under go intensive training, the level of Kung Fu required to do most of what you see in any Martial Arts movie (Basically what the Monk is capable of) Requires years of training, hard work, and dedication to the style.
Actually, given the level of trick photography, fight choreography, special effects, hidden wires and so forth, the requirements are much less. Given a fairly athletic base to start with, intensive training over a few months has turned any number of actors into very believable martial artists on film. Doesn't mean they could fight their way out of a paper bag or engender anything more than laughs in a serious martial arts competition, but they can look good on film.
On the main point of this thread, the obvious point to me is whether you are considering the class to just be a generic martial artist or a monk. Obviously, a martial artist can be of any alignment, and i would have no problem houseruling that someone could play a martial artist character that is not lawful. I would give it somewhat different powers than a monk, however, depending on the alignment.
The term monk, on the other hand, strongly implies that the character is a member of a religious monastic order of some sort, and subject to the rules/discipline/behavioral code of that order. With all due respect to the self-professed Buddhist and Shaolin experts on this thread, all monastic orders that I am familiar with, both Western and Eastern, are very highly disciplined, hierarchical and strict in their observation of certain codes of conduct. That pretty much screams lawful to me.
Bottom line. I have no problem with martial artist characters of different alignments, but that would essentially be a different character class distinct from a monk in the same way that a fighter is distinct from a paladin.
In the Realms, monks are able to punch through solid stone, defy aging and gravity, and other superhuman feats not through just physical conditioning (which would be impossible), but because their abilities tap into a form of psionics. Control of psionics requires intense discipline and is restricted to those select minds that adhere to a Lawful code as it is most akin to the order necessary to cabinet the mind, to push it to an absolute strictness that brings it in harmony with the intense rigor of mental manipulation that will affect the body as well.
Anything less and you're just a martial artist with no special powers.
Read Salvatore's Cleric Quintet (if you haven't already) for a good look at a main character monk.
I don't remember the psionic classes requiring Lawful alignments...
Are you saying Cadderly was a good monk archetype???
Are you saying Cadderly was a good monk archetype???
*double face palm*
They shouldn't. It's stupid.
"Yeah, I've been lying a lot lately, so suddenly I can't get better at punching people in the face."
Why are Wizards not restricted to Lawful then? Discipline and focus are just as key to their magic is it not?
Discipline and Focus are two key elements of any martial art. So I can easily see the Lawful restriction for Monks.
I think because thematically monks have more more inclination to keep order and peace than a wizard would.
Monk-the-class and monk-the-concept are two entirely different and unrelated things.
I seem to recall something about a monk follower of Irori not needing to be Lawful but I can't find it.
If anyone can point out where such a thing exists, I'd appreciate it.
Maybe my brain is mis-remembering. In that case, please lrt me know that I am wrong - again. ;-)
Never heard of it. There's an Aasimar Race Trait that lets you be Neutral or Neutral Good, and the Martial Artist archetype, but as far as I know that's the only way to be a non-Lawful Monk.