Shattered Kingdoms

i deffinatly agree, I would love to see a new class decided upon so that in 10 year i might be able to play it (love the Bard btw), but i would much rather it be something like a psionic, or even a spellsword or mage killer.

And a barbarian picking up a weapon isn't strange? Secondly, how would they be inclined toward a certain cabal? I made sure that their most powerful moves were incompatible with a certain lightie only cabal. No class is fully equipment independent. A monk without armor is just like a mercenary and swashbuckler without armor. The hits they take are going to hurt a lot more than if they don't and spells are going to take them out if they don't have saves or magic resistance.



Paladin, hellion? Rogue, scout?



SK is based on fantasy, not the dark ages. And martial arts are not oriental in origin. Neither are monks.



I haven't finished throwing out ideas yet.

I'm afraid martial arts are in fact oriental in origin. In the european middle ages, the only martial arts availiable were generaly simple sword styles, along with some techniques passed down from a war veteran to his men and such.

Clearly there were some magnificent longsword skills in play, but nothing like a sophisticated martial art training program like those found in the east.

Also, you are right. Monks are not oriental. However, the monks of europe had nothing to do with martial arts. They were just a bunch of people that secluded themselves in certain remote locations in order to better study some things, or just to follow their religious beliefs.

However, your term of 'monk' obviously describes the bald dude with massive muscles, or a girl wearing a quipao that has her hair rolled up in ox horns.

As I said earlier, I believe that this kind of 'monk' class will make SK overly oriental aligned.

First of all scouts and rogues are not spellcasters. They just use certain magic devices. Secondly, Hellions and Paladins are divine spellcasters. I was talking more about a class that combines melee damage with arcane magic.

I don't know how to tell you you're wrong other than pointing out that you're just another Japanese fanboy/fangirl.

I don't know what to say to these "sword tricks" taught by generals or whatever. That's far from the truth since Europe housed Greece AND Rome. And those guys conquered a bunch of stuff *prior* to the middle ages. It can't be said that these soldiers that were led around by the Greek and Roman armies only knew a few sword tricks. They were professional soldiers that were taught how to kick some serious [REDACTED]. Ultimately, I find "sword tricks" to be completely demeaning to the way that militaries are run. Generals command armies, the soldiers need to know what they are doing *before* they are deployed.

The middle ages does hold the Knights Templar, which was one of the most badass military forces in its day.

One of the things I left out from this class was mounted combat, but there's only so much I can work with. I put what I wanted to put, fist and leg fighting, and ground combat.

But let's also ignore the Native Americans and African cultures too. They certainly didn't know [REDACTED].

The ancient training of the Roman Imperial army could be considered akin to a martial art, if you want to consider a huge group of men being trained to act as one, huge cohesive unit a "martial art".

No doubt in my mind they got a lot of combat drilling too, however.

I think people are trying to equate martial arts specifically with hand to hand combat which is a very narrow minded definition.

Even with just hand to hand combat though, there have been cultures other than eastern ones teaching it for a long time as well.

There's even an ancient sect of arabs that were trained assassins and equivalent to ninjas. The fact that you never hear of them speaks highly of their skill. I happened to run across them when looking into the effects of certain compounds upon nightvision and there was a blurb from a researcher who talked of them using certain drugs to see at night for assassinations. Interesting stuff but I digress.

What does any of the abbove martial art-ish things have to do with monks?

I'll once again point out the fact that when you mention the word 'monk' you speak of unarmed martial arts. The only non-oriental unarmed martial art that I am aware of is roman wrestling and pagration, and those were certainly not used by monks.

As per the knights templar, they were not badass individualy. Dont believe everything you read. I think they were just war veterans, which made them somewhat combat hardened, and yes they had military training. Thats about it for them.

Still, the knights templar have nothing to do with monks. If you want a more sophisticated heavy armor class its going to be hard to do, as most things are covered by merc barb swash and paladin/helion, but empty handed monks, or monks using sickle chains, wrist claws, and staves are oriental no matter how you look at it.

Maybe I should think up a new name for the class to stave off you Japan freaks.

Erevan, monks are not oriental, and there are plenty of non-oriental martial arts. Boxing and wrestling are both martial arts - just because they didn't originate from a single person or culture overall doesn't make them any less valid as fighting techniques. If you want me to list specific disciplines that aren't Asian, I can do that, but it's not really that big of a deal.

I kind of like the ideas of monks. As is they seem redundant and pretty boring to play, but there's a lot of weight to the idea of unarmed combat. Maybe some spells or fighting stances? I could see some awesome stuff happen with stances if you made which hand the monk punched with matter - right-handed monk punches more effectively with his right hand, or certain abilities can only be initiated when the monk is oriented with his right side towards the opponent - lots of possibilities, there.

EDIT: also, was it your intention to leave monks without the ability to escape a grapple for a full rank? it seems more logical to me to just merge escape and grapple, and have escaping check grapple for the skill check. *shrug*

New class - WRESTLER!