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One last comparison I will make, is to the Monks in World of Warcraft.
To quickly summarize, there are two kinds of classes in World of Warcraft, base classes and hero classes. The hero classes start at a higher level and they tend to have very specific lore. Death Knights are revenants specifically resurrected to be a part of the Lich King's army. Demon Hunters are warriors specifically trained by Illidan through a particular process.
Otherwise, the base classes are generic archetypes that you see in all in-game cultures. Gilnean druids are Harvest-witches, Kul Tiran shaman are Tidesages, but they still fit under the umbrella of the classes named for the night elf druids and orc shaman.
All except one: the Monk.
For some reason, all playable Monks are trained by the Pandaren, no exception. Unarmed, martial artists (sometimes even called Monks) existed in other cultures prior to the introduction of Pandaria, but as a playable class they are explicitly trained by the Pandaren, no matter what race you are playing.
Again, I'm fine with the archetype and its name. I just think it's weird for one and only one class to have a cultural assumption that no other class has. It's both unfair to any other culture that might have a similar tradition, and to the culture it's implicitly making distinct from everyone else.
Most of the Monk weapons are from cultures that inspired the lands of Tian Xia and Vudra - both fairly distant from the Inner Sea. Ki, likewise, would be associated with those places. From a Golarion lens, the Monk class has mechanical ties to far-away, specific locales.
No other class is that specific, not even the Gunslinger (as there’s distinct firearm traditions on multiple continents, and they can also use crossbows), and that’s where the rub comes in.
Now that I think about it, it's sort of funny that World of Warcraft actually has a bit of an in-universe version of the question brought up in the Shaman thread.
The playable Shaman class in World of Warcraft had several cultures from different planets smashed together in order to create a fully featured RPG class out of a handful of RTS units.
Nowadays the culture umbrella has become more intentional (like with what I just said about Kul Tiran tidesages being represented in part by Shaman), but for the longest time it was ostensibly the orc's cultural practice with troll culture glued onto it. Totems, for instance, were not a shaman thing until World of Warcraft.
My druid/monk is real confused. Should they really want to use a sickle in combat? Or a scythe?
I found it interesting that the d20 monk weapons were so very Okinawan: bo, sai, nunchaku, kama. It really wasn't till later books of Pathfinder that traditionally Chinese weapons really got into the mix.
My druid/monk is real confused. Should they really want to use a sickle in combat? Or a scythe?
The correct answer is a Lion Scythe!
I think the monk also covers things like "MMA dude", Krav Maga, and Gun Fu potentially. That we haven't really explored the depths of "what else can we do with this class" is not unique to the monk among core classes.
For instance, if the cowboy Sentai had been wearing a fat suit, then it'd be mean, instead of fun.
Well, it could be mean either way. You wouldn't want to fat shame the overweigh Sentai or have less representation by either removing one or writing one out. I mean, sumo sentai deserve rights too!
For instance, if the cowboy Sentai had been wearing a fat suit, then it'd be mean, instead of fun.Well, it could be mean either way. You wouldn't want to fat shame the overweigh Sentai or have less representation by either removing one or writing one out. I mean, sumo sentai deserve rights too!
Lol. I meant representing the obvious American-inspired character by wearing a fat suit would be mean. That’s the equivalent of the awful Asian makeup in that other picture.
Lol. I meant representing the obvious American-inspired character by wearing a fat suit would be mean. That’s the equivalent of the awful Asian makeup in that other picture.
Clearly, that's the thing that's wrong with yellowface...
Mind you, even if we did change the name of Monk this instant, I don't have a suggestion for what to call it (Martial Artist but I'm a sucker for one-word class names)...How about pugilist or brawler?
This conversation has covered a lot of ground from where it was at 5am this morning, but I didn't want to ignore this. Graystone has the right of it, more or less. These names come up as the most obvious alternative, but while I'm glad that Monk can do the farmer turned amateur fist-fighter now, without necessarily going in for the mystical martial arts, I also don't want to push those elements out of the class. These names don't encapsulate the martial arts hero aspect.
As mentioned, it may be possible there just isn't another word that suits the hand-to-hand (or body-to-anything I guess) unarmoured fighter better than Monk. It's still worth considering to me since as mentioned Monk isn't really the best translation of the concept outside of the legacy of D&D. (incidentally, bringing up Final Fantasy is particularly choice, as in its early days Final Fantasy classes were inspired by D&D - obviously it has grown some since then of course).
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I could say more but this conversation is moving a bit faster than I can quite keep up with, and TheRabidOgre said most of it: The issue isn't that Monks can do wuxia. It's that until 2e Monks couldn't not do wuxia and even now they still keep most of the wuxia to themselves when we could be having wuxia rogues pulling ninja tricks, and wuxia fighters busting out spear tricks (actually, Fighters have gained a bit of wuxia given the ability to leap 30' vertically to slam a foe into the ground... this sparks joy).
Conditions have improved, but the position of the Monk is the world remains very coloured by the specific fantasy of mystical foreign martial artist. It's not that we don't want to have that, but this conversation is about how specific vs. how general the archetypes of classes should be, and this is the voice that says I like that Monk is growing out of the specific "mystical martial artist from a foreign land" and want to see more of that, as well as seeing more the general warrior archetype in the Fighter being allowed to play with toys to embody warrior tropes from around the world, even if they do get a little wuxia from time to time.
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Let me put another lens on this and see how it looks.
If the next book that comes out has a class specifically based on a stereotype of African tribal warriors and mashes them into a class that can only use specific weapons and armor in exchange for a set of class features with very limited flavor options, would we be okay with that? If we wouldn't be, why does the monk get a pass?
I think the monk also covers things like "MMA dude", Krav Maga, and Gun Fu potentially. That we haven't really explored the depths of "what else can we do with this class" is not unique to the monk among core classes.
But again, the category of Monk weapons has been very specific so far - while something like a Bullet Dancer or Wrestler is off in Archetype land. As a core class, the Monk’s mechanics basically assume an Iroran monastery in the Tian and Vudran tradition.
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LOTS of flags popping up in this thread. I'm going to lock it until I sort through everything.