As a lifelong fan of martial arts media, I've always been a big fan of the Monk class ever since I first encountered it when playing Final Fantasy Tactics. But, historically, it has been a class which has consistently been underserved in tabletop RPGs; many don't include it (I also had to write my own homebrew monk for Old School Essentials and Dungeon Crawl Classics), or the monk which they present is completely imbalanced and broken. D&D is no exception, with most editions presenting a monk which is poorly designed and underpowered, with the occasional potentially game-breaking feature sprinkled in (I'm looking at you here, Stunning Strike). It seems like many designers are afraid of making the Monk too powerful, and as a result, produce a class which is ultimately disappointing.
Game balance is not a core design conceit of Shadowdark - classes are primarily defined by "being the best there is at what they do", i.e. having a particular gameplay niche, and excelling at it. The Monk may appear to be an odd fit for this design paradigm, as it traditionally is defined by a hodge podge of features - but my goal was to create a class that fulfilled the genre fantasy of a martial arts master, but without necessarily overshadowing any of the other classes. Yes, the Monk can hit both accurately and powerfully, but neither its to-hit or damage can reach the heights of the Fighter. If anything, a high level Monk, with high physical stats and the right combination of qigong techniques, could be said to be the class which is best at damage evasion/negation - but that is different than the Pit Fighter, which is straight up the best class at not dying.
Let the Monk be awesome! (But, hopefully, not game-breaking)
As always, playtest feedback is greatly appreciated, and will help to inform future revisions of the class. Look forward to seeing it in its (hopefully) final form in my upcoming supplement, Fatal Folklore: Kunlun.
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I really enjoyed your work! Excited to test it!
Thank you! Please let me know how it goes 👊
As a lifelong fan of martial arts media, I've always been a big fan of the Monk class ever since I first encountered it when playing Final Fantasy Tactics. But, historically, it has been a class which has consistently been underserved in tabletop RPGs; many don't include it (I also had to write my own homebrew monk for Old School Essentials and Dungeon Crawl Classics), or the monk which they present is completely imbalanced and broken. D&D is no exception, with most editions presenting a monk which is poorly designed and underpowered, with the occasional potentially game-breaking feature sprinkled in (I'm looking at you here, Stunning Strike). It seems like many designers are afraid of making the Monk too powerful, and as a result, produce a class which is ultimately disappointing.
Game balance is not a core design conceit of Shadowdark - classes are primarily defined by "being the best there is at what they do", i.e. having a particular gameplay niche, and excelling at it. The Monk may appear to be an odd fit for this design paradigm, as it traditionally is defined by a hodge podge of features - but my goal was to create a class that fulfilled the genre fantasy of a martial arts master, but without necessarily overshadowing any of the other classes. Yes, the Monk can hit both accurately and powerfully, but neither its to-hit or damage can reach the heights of the Fighter. If anything, a high level Monk, with high physical stats and the right combination of qigong techniques, could be said to be the class which is best at damage evasion/negation - but that is different than the Pit Fighter, which is straight up the best class at not dying.
Let the Monk be awesome! (But, hopefully, not game-breaking)
As always, playtest feedback is greatly appreciated, and will help to inform future revisions of the class. Look forward to seeing it in its (hopefully) final form in my upcoming supplement, Fatal Folklore: Kunlun.