Post/Author/DateTime	Post
JulesCARV 04-03-06, 02:17 PM	We know that in Eberron, the alignment restrictions on clerics have been lifted: a cleric of any alignment can worship a god of any alignment. We also know, from the Church of the Silver Flame Part 2 Dragonshard, that paladins keep their classical, D&D alignment restrictions just as strongly as ever in Eberron, and there are no LN, NG, etc, Paladins, barring UA variants. What about monks, bards, and barbarians, though? Do they keep their classical D&D alignment restrictions? Personally, I find the "lawful only" monks and "non-lawful only" bards restriction to be silly anyway, but in a world like Eberron, where alignments are blurred enough to allow clerics and their religions to be mismatched by more than one step in terms of alignment, but not so blurred that paladins can be anything other than lawful good, is there an official position on whether other alignment-restricted classes have had their restriction loosened or not?
Vharuck 04-03-06, 02:21 PM	To sum up my whole argument, the alignment bending only applies to clerics. Why? Because the means by which a person worships a deity can vary greatly from what that diety represents. The reason clerics can have alignments different from their deities is because they aren't their deities. However, a monk must be lawful because the training and discipline is necessary to advancing as a monk and doing what a monk does. A barbarian cannot be lawful, since giving into unbridled emotion is very chaotic. However, I never knew why bards had to be non-lawful. I guess it's just that their magic is antithesis to order.
Kid SixXx 04-03-06, 02:36 PM	However, I never knew why bards had to be non-lawful. I guess it's just that their magic is antithesis to order. Bards are "free spirits." The tendency towards "non-lawful" probably represents their wanderlust & the notion that they have an "artist's soul" that doesn't respond postively to restraint from any source, societal or otherwise. I often think of the bard / carnival mentality whenever I hear "Ramblin' Man" by CCR on the radio.
Nivek Loneshadow 04-03-06, 02:54 PM	I'll buy all those arguements save maybe for the Monk. He's the closest thing to a martial artist we get and there is no reason they have to be lawful to learn techniques.
Kid SixXx 04-03-06, 03:06 PM	I'll buy all those arguements save maybe for the Monk. He's the closest thing to a martial artist we get and there is no reason they have to be lawful to learn techniques. I'd have to disagree. The lawful bent of monks probably refers to their disipline & the amount of focus it requires to stick to the regimen of mental, spiritual & physical conditioning required to master the martial arts. If you're talking about use of lethal force or "forbidden techniques", then restraint or quality of mercy, IMO, is already represented by whether a monk is good, neutral, or evil. Now, if you wanted to build a system for unarmed combat that completely excluded monks (much like the system in the book, The Quintessential Monk), then I'd eliminate the monk class altogether and replace it with "combat styles" and alignment tracks. Sort of like the system in the game, Jade Empire.
Khaine 04-04-06, 02:33 AM	To sum up my whole argument, the alignment bending only applies to clerics. Actually, no. There are a number of lawful bards in the ECS, too many to be typos. Why, I dunno :uh-huh:
DwarfPcfan 04-04-06, 10:22 AM	Plus remember, Complete adventurer has a feat called divine inspiration that allows a paladin/bard multiclass. It allows a bard to continue advancing both as a bard and a paladin only he has to remain lawful good to be able to continua as a bard and a paladin. Personnally, I'd drop the alignement restrictions on bards and barbarians. Barbarians in the real world had complex ritualised societies where any trangression of sacred law could warrant certain exile or death. The chaotic barbarian stereotype comes from a bad interpretation of vikings by mostly inacurate cartoons. Vikings in fact had a lawful society, the only difference was that their rules were'nt the rule of the rest of the world. I don't see barbarian rage as a chaotic expression. I see it mostly as calling in your inner fury and releasing it. In the real world, beserkers believed they would call animal spirits to possess them while they rage. Both interpretation aren't opposed to law. Lawful people can be as passionate and furious as everybody else... As for bards, even if they are traveling performers. Just because rock stars cultivate rebellion, they still aren't necessarily opposed to the law doing it's job. Bards fill many roles, from thespians to traveling singers, to full fledged concert Mozart's. Now while the traveling singer might be chaotic, and most of the time is. The other too could be lawful and easily find the passion to create wonderful effects. So in my mind, both bards and barbarians could be lawful logically...
Euangelion 04-04-06, 11:08 AM	Keep in mind as well that a bard loses nothing by becoming Lawful other than the ability to advance further as a bard. Thus there's no issue with NPC bards being Lawful; just don't advance them further in that class if you scale them with the party. Also, bards don't have to be chaotic, being neutral in regards to Law/Chaos could just mean that they respect the law, but believe it must be balanced with freedom. They don't have to be complete "free-spirits." IIRC, Hellcow recently has bemoaned the bard's alignment restriction, especially in regards to the bards of the Dhakaani.
FuzzCube 04-04-06, 12:21 PM	I have a house rules that lifts the alighment restriction from monks. I don't think that self discipline equals being lawful. It's easy to find examples of self disciplined criminals. My personal opinion is that any class requires the same amount of dedication and self discpline in order to excel. Why is monk different from a wizard or fighter when it comes to the need for self discipline. Different classes stress the self discipline and dedication on different things: Monk - martial arts. Fighter - fighting techniques. Wizard - arcane arts and scholarship. Sorcerer - the ability to focus power. etc. Alighment restriction should reflect a philosophy or way of life, hence: Bards are non lawful because art requires some form of free spirit and individialism. Paladins are lawful good because being a paladin is all about selflessness and the greater good. Barbarians are non lawful because it requires the ability to lose control from time to time. I can go on and on, but every alighment restriction in my game must have a good reason for its existence, and in my game monks are not necessarily trains in monasteries. For example Valenar and Talenta monks are trained by another more expireinced monk in their company. A monk can also be trained by a hermit or a passing adventurer
Belabras 04-04-06, 01:10 PM	I have a house rules that lifts the alighment restriction from monks. I don't think that self discipline equals being lawful. It's easy to find examples of self disciplined criminals. Which is what Lawful Evil is for. Lawful doesn't mean the character must follow the laws of the land, just that there is a guiding rubric the character adheres to in their actions. To my mind that is reflected well in the discipline and dedication required for martial arts themed abilities of the Monk. That's my 2cp at least.
Euangelion 04-04-06, 03:53 PM	One way of thinking about non-lawful monks is to realize that "monk" can mean more than one thing. In D&D, a monk (PC class) gains certain abilities through their disciplined training that ordinary people cannot do. I see this as a form of magic. It is perfectly understandable to me that only those with the properly organized mind and body can learn this unusual form of magic, thus monks (PC class) must be Lawful to learn it (though if they become non-lawful they retain their abilities, meaning that they must possess the proper discipline to learn but not use the special abilities.) However, one can be a monk (profession) without necessarily being Lawful. Just use levels in the expert NPC class to represent the mundane non-lawful monk. They can even take Improved Unarmed Strike as a regular feat at 1st level to represent some training.
JulesCARV 04-04-06, 05:03 PM	Personally, I think that LE people usually aren't criminals at all. They're just evil law-abiding citizens. I think organized criminals are usually more NE. On topic, though, what about druids? Druids seem to be a specialty form of cleric, of sorts, so if a cleric of the Traveller can be LN, can a druid be CG? Or... not? In terms of requirements, druids don't have a strict code of conduct like paladins, but their conduct isn't as loose as that of a cleric either (i.e., they have special restrictions on armor and weapons).
Raziel_Brokodar 04-04-06, 06:10 PM	I'll buy all those arguements save maybe for the Monk. He's the closest thing to a martial artist we get and there is no reason they have to be lawful to learn techniques. I think the lawful alignment of a monk comes in part from the level of discipline that they require.
ChaoticGood 04-04-06, 11:20 PM	Personally, I think that LE people usually aren't criminals at all. They're just evil law-abiding citizens. I think organized criminals are usually more NE. You can think that all you want, but that isn't the way the alignment is presented in any 3rd or 3.5 material. For a prime example, look at King Kaius. He knowingly and willfully committed a crime against the Code of Galifar when he signed the Treaty of Thronehold. Not only is he guilty of fraud, but if his fraud is ever discovered, the Treaty would be voided, thus making him indirectly responsible for a potential Second War. That's not just a criminal act, it's a crime against humanity. (Or... mortality, I suppose?) And let's not forget the various killers and assassins of the Emerald Claw, who are also by and large Lawful Evil. I'm pretty sure killing people without just cause is outlawed by the Code of Galifar, not to mention various local laws. You can feel free to play Lawful Evil however you see fit, but don't expect a lot of people to fall in line with that mode of thought.
Vegepygmy 04-05-06, 12:01 PM	Personally, I think that LE people usually aren't criminals at all. They're just evil law-abiding citizens.With respect to D&D alignments, Lawful does not mean "law-abiding." This has been pointed out many, many times. In fact, you can read about it on the Wizards website here: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/sg/20050325a You will never be able to intelligently discuss D&D alignment until you understand this basic concept.
dang 04-05-06, 01:49 PM	i know this doesn't matter as much in eberron, but... does it make a difference that good monks of the SH worship a CG god (Dol Dorn)? could that allow for some slight flexibility in re: alignment of monks? and why are there just details of Dol Dorn and Mockery monks? why not Boldrei or Dol Arrah or other lawful deities? are they supposed to not exist, or just be uncommon?
JulesCARV 04-05-06, 02:23 PM	I'll put it this way, then: LE people aren't any less lawful, or more likely to be criminals, than LG people. An orderly, disciplined, well-organized, and justified criminal rebellion or resistance movement could be LG. An orderly, disciplined, well-organized, mafia-type organization could be LE. I don't think that LE has a higher prospensity to commit crimes (in the "breaking the law" sense) than LN or LG, though. I don't really want to turn this into an alignment debate thread, though. I probably shouldn't be arguing this case, since I think that the "lawful only" restriction on monks is dumb anyway, but as for a Dol Dorn worshipping monk, I don't think monks powers come from the gods they worship anyway. That there are lawful monks who worship Dol Dorn doesn't mean anything more than that there are lawful fighters or rogues who worship Dol Dorn. I think that this would be the case even in Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms (although lawful clerics who worship Dol Dorn wouldn't exist, of course.).
Vegepygmy 04-05-06, 07:35 PM	I'll put it this way, then: LE people aren't any less lawful, or more likely to be criminals, than LG people. An orderly, disciplined, well-organized, and justified criminal rebellion or resistance movement could be LG. An orderly, disciplined, well-organized, mafia-type organization could be LE. I don't think that LE has a higher prospensity to commit crimes (in the "breaking the law" sense) than LN or LG, though.I would disagree, since most (criminal) laws are aimed at protecting innocent persons from being victimized by those who would harm them. Good people, by definition in D&D, tend not to harm innocents. Evil people, by definition in D&D, tend to do so. Thus, it seems rather obvious that orderly evil people will be more likely to harm innocents than orderly good people will be (since that's what evil people do), and thereby run afoul of the law.
Siran Dunmorgan 04-05-06, 08:16 PM	Why are there just details of Dol Dorn and Mockery monks? Why not Boldrei or Dol Arrah or other lawful deities? Are they supposed to not exist, or just be uncommon? There are also extensive details on atheist monks in Eberron, i.e., the sharaat'khesh. The Dhakaani revere no gods, placing their trust in bards as the spiritual leaders of their peoples. Here's commonplace idea: an order of wizard/monks (don't forget to take the Monastic Training feat!) devoted to Aureon. Take spells that enhance one's monk abilities (e.g. cat's grace, or the ever-popular bull's strength) An order of cleric/monk or druid/monk devotees of Balinor has a certain cachet, as well. For those of you who have Complete Arcane or Miniatures Handbook, an order of monk/warmages dedicated to Dol Arrah, Dol Dorn and Dol A— umm… The Mockery (the "War Triad" popular in some parts of Karrnath) might provide an interesting character background. There's all kinds of things you can do with the assumption that the gods can be interpreted more or less how you like, without them actually interfering with you. For instance, one might postulate an order of medusa monks, devotees of the Shadow, who function as a Secret Police of sorts in Droaam. Similarly, one might concieve of a monastic tradition without monasteries, passed from master to student on a one-to-one basis as they wander Khorvaire in emulation of the Traveler. Another interesting idea (for a human character background) is the notion of a sect of enchanter/monks whose patron is the Fury: they seek the keys of control over human emotion to achieve their own evil ends. They do not themselves indulge in ugly emotions, but they know well how to inspire and control such expression in others. Still another interesting character background can come from an order of diviner/monks, dedicated to uncovering the secrets of the Prophecy: their monastic disciplines are a key to accomplishing their goals out "in the world," particularly as they move toward the Dragon Prophet or Cataclysm Mage prestige classes. Now, just on account of the way the rules work, there are going to be plenty of characters who don't multiclass this way, i.e., many of these putative orders will include characters who are single-class monks, or single-class warmages, or what have you. That's okay, since the idea is mostly to provide interesting character backgrounds or organizations with which player characters interact. —Siran Dunmorgan P. S. I would disagree, since most (criminal) laws are aimed at protecting innocent persons from being victimized by those who would harm them. Good people, by definition in D&D, tend not to harm innocents. Evil people, by definition in D&D, tend to do so. Thus, it seems rather obvious that orderly evil people will be more likely to harm innocents than orderly good people will be (since that's what evil people do), and thereby run afoul of the law.This stance is found in the doctrines of Saint Cuthbert, from the "default" Dungeons & Dragons setting: Saint Cuthbert is principally a god of law, and has a reputation for smiting evil simply because evil people are more inclined to violations of law than are good people. I'm not sure if the support for this statement comes from the description of Saint Cuthbert in the Player's Handbook or Deities & Demigods, but I can support it if need be. —SD
ArcTan 04-05-06, 08:24 PM	Plus remember, Complete adventurer has a feat called divine inspiration that allows a paladin/bard multiclass. It allows a bard to continue advancing both as a bard and a paladin only he has to remain lawful good to be able to continua as a bard and a paladin. Personnally, I'd drop the alignement restrictions on bards and barbarians. Barbarians in the real world had complex ritualised societies where any trangression of sacred law could warrant certain exile or death. The chaotic barbarian stereotype comes from a bad interpretation of vikings by mostly inacurate cartoons. Vikings in fact had a lawful society, the only difference was that their rules were'nt the rule of the rest of the world. I don't see barbarian rage as a chaotic expression. I see it mostly as calling in your inner fury and releasing it. In the real world, beserkers believed they would call animal spirits to possess them while they rage. Both interpretation aren't opposed to law. Lawful people can be as passionate and furious as everybody else... ALL societies have laws. ALL people live by those laws, for the most part. It's one's attitude toward what law is or ought to be, and how law ought to function, and law's place in the world that gives you a Lawful or Chaotic alignment. You make it sound like you have to be an out-and-out sociopath to be Chaotic, which isn't true at all, and if true would force us back towards 1e's Law = Good and Chaos = Evil. While Norse society did have laws, I would say their society definitely tended more to Chaos than Christian Europe. That was one of the big differences between the attitudes of Christian missionaries and the Norsemen they tried to preach to. Norse religion emphasized that you were responsible for your own future afterlife, that the gods' intervention in life was rare and that the gods wished *you* to prove *yourself* in battle, and that the honor earned by your own strength was what the gods desired. Good and evil were realities, but good was conceived of more as boundaries you wouldn't cross rather than an overarching law for all human beings, everywhere. The Norse could justify going a-viking very easily in their society, because there was *nothing wrong* with raiding and killing members of other tribes and nations if it helped your own family and your own people. This is somewhat of a stereotype of Norse religion, but it's enough of a true one to justify the decision to model the Chaotic Good Outer Plane of Ysgard after the Norse Ysgard. Compare it with Christianity, which preached the doctrine of loving all human beings as oneself, of an absolute law that required one to justify all acts of war and violence before the eyes of the universal God and his universal divine authority on Earth, the Church, and the responsibility of Christendom to spread God's Word to every other part of the world so that all human beings might have the opportunity to be saved. Sure, these are stereotypes, and sure, individual bastards in Christian Europe could easily bend or subvert the rules to go out on raids and wars of conquest that were no more moral than the Vikings' were. But they had to justify it in a *different way* -- they had to explain themselves as furthering the cause of justice and mercy for all human beings by spreading God's Word to the heathens who desperately needed it, rather than being able to say that they were simply slaying members of other tribes for the good of their own tribe in glorious battle, as was mandated by the gods. Very different. In sociology there's a general split observed between "cultures of honor" and "cultures of law". Cultures of honor make *you* responsible for defending your right to your own property, your dignity, and your citizenship -- if someone wrongs you, you have the right to go seek retribution by force, you can call a trial by combat, etc. The society as a whole obviously rules on what constitutes a true wrong and not, and the society provides the framework where you seek retribution, but the retribution still comes from you. Societies of law, in contrast, see it as the state's business to deal with rights and wrongs -- if someone commits a crime, an organized, universal, public body paid for by the taxpayers seeks them out and punishes them, regardless of whether the wronged person themselves has the resources to participate in the process, regardless even of whether the wronged person seeks to press charges. Cultures of honor, which I see in D&D terms as Chaotic societies, have most crimes dealt with the way we deal with civil suits -- you have to identify most wrongs and call people out on them, and the society will support your right to seek revenge but often not do it for you, only making exceptions for really, really big crimes (the high crimes that get you kicked out from society permanently, sins against the gods). Cultures of law, or Lawful societies, have most crimes dealt with by the country as a whole -- if you get murdered in the USA, which is mostly a culture of law, even if no next of kin ever comes forward to press your suit, the state's job is to find and punish your killer on your behalf, because murder is a crime against *everyone*. Same if someone gets caught with stolen goods -- even if the person they stole from isn't even aware of their theft. So yeah. I don't necessarily think a Barbarian PC class is an average member of a barbarian society anyway -- and I would argue that giving yourself over to *berserk* rage, lashing out with an extreme adrenaline rush and no concern for your safety (hence the AC penalty), is something that's kind of Chaotic-aligned and repugnant to the way a Lawful-aligned person would act (if you're Lawful, it doesn't just mean you follow laws, it means that you try to keep yourself controlled and disciplined throughout your whole life, that you try always to act the way you rationally think an ideal person would act, Kantian categorical imperative and Golden Rule and all those things that "civilization" has invented to define morality). But even disregarding that, the kind of society a Barbarian is supposed to come from is one whose laws will probably be, on average, Good -- most societies don't like people who lie, cheat, steal and murder -- but will enforce those laws in a Chaotic system rather than a Lawful one. It's controversial, but most sociologists do seem to think that primitive societies start out as cultures of honor -- Chaotic -- and move to cultures of law as they get more technological, the population gets denser, and laws become more complex. As for bards, even if they are traveling performers. Just because rock stars cultivate rebellion, they still aren't necessarily opposed to the law doing it's job. Bards fill many roles, from thespians to traveling singers, to full fledged concert Mozart's. Now while the traveling singer might be chaotic, and most of the time is. The other too could be lawful and easily find the passion to create wonderful effects. So in my mind, both bards and barbarians could be lawful logically... Well, no, and bards aren't necessarily opposed to the law doing its job. Neutral bards certainly aren't, and even Chaotic bards may not be opposed to the existence of the law as long as it doesn't get in the way of what they do. I would harshly disagree that a concert Mozart is a Bard. Bards aren't just great musicians, and in fact the greatest musicians in the concert-hall sense probably aren't bards -- they're experts with many, many ranks in Perform (music). Bards are a kind of stereotype of wandering merrie minstrels who probably sacrifice some Perform (music) ability to have adventuring skills, and whose music isn't just very, very good music but tinged with a wild magic born of passion -- and, sure, Lawful characters can *have* passion, but by definition they chain their passion to some vision of how the world should be, try to channel it into a disciplined system of thinking and acting, rather than letting it just fly out into the wild. Bards' passion doesn't just come out in their music -- it's what forces them to live outside of normal society and *not* be concert musicians but go adventuring, what makes them insatiable for information and experience. Bards' music is focused on the idea of telling stories about what they've personally seen and heard, like the minstrels of legend, hence the way their music is tied to the power and abilities of their travelling companions. Hence Bardic Knowledge -- the idea of Bards as jackdaws of random facts and history and legends -- is *just as big* a part of what a Bard is as their musical abilities, if not more. Bards aren't just musicians, they're wanderers who lust for gossip and trivia and to see and hear the world. That's an exciting goal, but it's a *selfish* one -- they care more about how exciting and fun their own lives are from day to day than being able to function as a reliable part of society playing a distinct role in making the world a better place -- and tends toward Chaos. If you're Lawful you just can't be so self-centered that you'll be willing to wander around from place to place jumping around and savoring bits and pieces of different ways to live instead of settling down and really becoming part of something somewhere. Look, you don't have to accept my justifications of the RAW, but IMO they make sense, and, more to the point, alignment restrictions do play an important role in adding flavor and differentiating the classes -- and I *do* think alignment plays a balancing role, too. Being able to jump from barbarian to paladin without having to roleplay the change bugs the heck out of me. As for Divine Inspiration: There's a reason it costs a feat. I think you *can* possibly go around a-wandering and being a gadabout and still believe you're working towards some ineffable greater good for all society, but you have to understand that if you do that *you will never see that greater good* -- you will be doing essentially random, bizarre things as you drift through life, and have to take the idea that you're doing it all to advance all society's development *on faith*. Meaning you'll have to receive that divine charge from the gods to do it, hence the feat.
ArcTan 04-05-06, 08:33 PM	Personally, I think that LE people usually aren't criminals at all. They're just evil law-abiding citizens. I think organized criminals are usually more NE. On topic, though, what about druids? Druids seem to be a specialty form of cleric, of sorts, so if a cleric of the Traveller can be LN, can a druid be CG? Or... not? In terms of requirements, druids don't have a strict code of conduct like paladins, but their conduct isn't as loose as that of a cleric either (i.e., they have special restrictions on armor and weapons). Law, Chaos, Good and Evil are primarily things that make sense among sentient beings. Outside of human civilization, a Druid is supposed to spend enough time in nature, where such concepts are meaningless, that their years of meditation on the neutral, amoral, a-ethical ways of animals and plants keeps them from getting into the head of sentient beings that debate such philosophies very well. A Druid can tend to one direction or another, but they can't tend *hard* enough to follow the ideologies of the extreme alignments. They just don't *care* about human beings enough to live the way an LG "Serve the Greater Good at All Costs!" or a CE "Smash the bastards! Kill them all!" or an LE "They *must* all bow and serve the higher order. I shall dominate them" or a CG "Live free or die! My rights are everything!" character would. About Clerics: I would say that the general sort of thing you have to do to *be a Cleric* isn't strongly alignment-based -- that in Eberron, religion is abstract enough that even if you live a Chaotic lifestyle, a religious ritual is a religious ritual, and you can live Chaotically and still mumble a prayer to Law that completes a Lawful Good religious ritual without screwing up your lifestyle or the ritual much. Clerical-ness doesn't mandate one kind of lifestyle anymore than a Fighter's martial training does or a Rogue's cleverness does. Just like, in real life, you can easily get your way through a Catholic ritual without believing in Catholicism at all. But a cross-aligned Cleric has to, somehow, *lie* about their alignment, to be hiding what they really are and still getting by in the Church -- perhaps (probably) even lying to themselves about it. Lying, by itself, doesn't push you toward one alignment or another -- Good characters will lie if it serves the greater good, Lawful characters don't like lying but can do it if it's the only way to preserve stability -- but it does create interesting tensions within the character. I don't think a gleefully and openly CE character ought to be able to become a Cleric of Dol Dorn at a whim and have all the other Clerics accept it -- I think it involves a lot of active deception and doublethink on his part. And the other alignment restrictions, which don't involve simply professing loyalty to a god's creed but actually living a certain way -- shoving all your physical and mental processes under strict internal control if you're a Monk, wandering in loose tribal structures outside of civilization and relying on yourself and the instincts unleashed by your emotions to survive as a Barbarian, strolling through different lifestyles and adventures as an observer and weaving it all into art as a Bard, living with nature and getting in tune with the simple cycles of nonsentient animals and plants as a Druid... all of these are bigger parts of the basic way these classes *live*, and all of these should remain bigger deals even if we accept cross-aligned Clerics.
ArcTan 04-05-06, 08:35 PM	I'd have to disagree. The lawful bent of monks probably refers to their disipline & the amount of focus it requires to stick to the regimen of mental, spiritual & physical conditioning required to master the martial arts. If you're talking about use of lethal force or "forbidden techniques", then restraint or quality of mercy, IMO, is already represented by whether a monk is good, neutral, or evil. Now, if you wanted to build a system for unarmed combat that completely excluded monks (much like the system in the book, The Quintessential Monk), then I'd eliminate the monk class altogether and replace it with "combat styles" and alignment tracks. Sort of like the system in the game, Jade Empire. Yes: If you want to eliminate alignment restrictions you can rewrite Barbarians to just be a Ranger/Fighter hybrid, good at surviving in the wild, fighting with "traditional" combat systems and techniques, but no body hardened by extreme self-reliance, no harnessing of base animal instincts into berserker rage. You can do something similar so that Druids just know a lot about nature but treat it as any other kind of magic to manipulate (creating the LE "mad scientist" Druid, for instance), or Bards so that Bards just are really good at music and can use music as a kind of magic without having any particular wanderlust-tied abilities -- but these are all changes and reflavorings of the classes in question.
ArcTan 04-05-06, 08:41 PM	I have a house rules that lifts the alighment restriction from monks. I don't think that self discipline equals being lawful. It's easy to find examples of self disciplined criminals. My personal opinion is that any class requires the same amount of dedication and self discpline in order to excel. Why is monk different from a wizard or fighter when it comes to the need for self discipline. Why do you think the mystical side of martial arts traditions emphasizes that they *are* different from other things you learn how to do? Monks aren't just martial artists, they're the mystical martial artists from legend. Someone who's deeply into the mystical connection between, say, the discipline of karate with Buddhist mystical teachings, will tell you that to *truly* master karate you can't just mentally learn the techniques and practice them the way ordinary soldiers learn hand-to-hand combat and firing guns, or the way college students learn rhetoric, discourse and high-level argumentation. You have to somehow achieve a transcendent state where you have absolute and perfect control over your mind and body by having complete awarenses and control over your _qi_, your spirit (what they call "ki" in D&D) and in order to do so you have to let go of selfish desires and meditate on the way your _qi_ connects to the whole world, on the way the world holds together, on the feeling of simply being one with the world and feeling the motions and currents of existence flow through you, so that you can act without thinking. Whether this is truly a "Lawful" way of thinking in D&D is arguable, certainly, but in *my* conception of D&D it is, since it involves overcoming simple human emotion and impulse and trying to have a -- if not rational -- serene, universalized, detached view of reality. Whether this actually has anything to do with being good at martial arts in real life is also arguable, but it certainly does in books and movies about the heroic, legendary, mythical martial artists that the D&D Monk represents. And it's this mystical stuff that's the only way you can explain the supernatural abilities D&D Monks possess -- a monk in the stories has to have this magical, bizarre connection to all reality so that they can do things like defy the laws of physics and deflect bullets, strike through stone walls, mentally ward off the effects of poisons and diseases, etc.
JulesCARV 04-06-06, 03:43 AM	Bah. A crusader would tell you that there's a deep, mystical connection between being good at hacking people to bits with a sword and having faith in Jesus and knowing the Bible. A mujahadeen would tell you that there's a deep, mystical connection between blowing up humvees with improvised explosive devices and having faith in God, reading the Qu'ran, knowing the teachings of the prophet, etc. And yes, a Shaolin monk would tell you that there's a deep, mystical connection between being good and kicking the crap out of people and following the eightfold path, knowing the four noble truths, etc. Of course, Eberron is a fantasy setting, so it does make more sense that a crusader really would be divinely blessed (well, there are paladins and clerics, after all :)), and monks get their powers from a unique spiritual condition, and mujahedeen cast Sanctify Explosives on their bombs.