Level Titles: Assassins and Monks

To continue with our discussion of level titles in Dungeons & Dragons, I thought it might be worthwhile to take a look at two classes that first appeared in Supplement II to OD&D, Blackmoor (1975), and later in the Advanced D&D Players Handbook (1978) – assassins and monks. Here are the level titles of the former, as they were in Blackmoor:

As with most level titles, these are all mostly synonyms, with a few exceptions, the first being "dacoit," which is an archaic term that, like "thug," ultimately derives from India. Another notable exception is "guildmaster of assassins," which suggests, like the titles immediately before it, that there's some kind of organized structure granting these titles to assassins as they gain experience. The text of Supplement II more or less states this: "Any 12th level assassin (Prime Assassin) may challenge the Guildmaster of the Assassins' Guild to a duel to the death, and if the former is victorious he becomes Guildmaster." This suggests there's a single Assassins' Guild rather several, as seems to be the case with thieves.

Regardless, the assassin level titles in the Players Handbook are somewhat different:

While many of the low-level titles are identical to those in Blackmoor, their arrangement is changed. In addition, Gygax indulged in his fondness for odd archaisms, like rutterkin and waghalter, while getting rid of "dacoit." Interestingly, he added a new title above "guildmaster assassin," namely, "grandfather of assassins," for reasons both historical and practical.

Monks offer an intriguing parallel to assassins, because, like them, their level titles suggest the existence of a single organization that governs them and thus grants these titles. Likewise, above a certain point, the granting of these titles is tied to success in combat against the previous holder of the title, perhaps inspired by martial arts trials. The OD&D level titles are:

In the AD&D Players Handbook, we get this version of them:

The AD&D list differs only in inserting an additional level and reserving the title "grand master," as opposed to simply "master" for the highest level. Otherwise, the two lists are almost identical, even down to the progression order of the various master titles (Dragons, North Wind, West Wind, etc.). I find that interesting, but I'm unsure what conclusions, if any, we can draw from these facts. It's also worth noting that, according to some sources, the "master" titles were inspired by the names of mahjong tiles, which seems plausible, given how wide were the interests in games of men like Arneson and Gygax.

Now Under Construction

Because I did a Retrospective post on Kara-Tur: The Eastern Realms last week, I was reminded of how excited I was by the announcement that the long-awaited Asian expansion to AD&D, Oriental Adventures. OA was a long percolating project about which Gary Gygax had talked for years beforehand, in part because he felt the monk class didn't belong in "standard" AD&D, given its inspiration in the legends of the Far East. Despite this, there didn't seem to be any evidence that such a project was likely to happen anytime soon and I largely put it out of mind.

Then, without warning, in issue #102 of Dragon (October 1985), this advertisement appeared:

Now, we'd finally get official game rules for samurai and ninja and martial arts and everything else we fans of Kurosawa and Kung Fu Theatre had long thought should be brought into AD&D. To say that Oriental Adventures was greatly anticipated, at least among my friends and myself, is something of an understatement and this ad, featuring a washed out, black and white version of Jeff Easley's cover painting, is a big part of the reason why. Though my feelings about OA are now a bit more mixed, I still have many fond memories of it – and the long October I spent waiting for November 1985 to roll around so that I could finally lay my hands on it.

Random Roll: PHB, p. 32.

 A close reading of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rulebooks often reveals little details that are easy to overlook. In most cases, these details are rules-related, but one occasionally finds details that pertain to the implied setting of the game. I came across one of these just recently while re-reading the description of the monk class found in the Players Handbook.

There can be only a limited number of monks above 7th level (Superior Master). There are three 8th level (Master of Dragons) and but one of each higher level. When a player character monk gain sufficient experience points to qualify him or her for 8th level, the commensurate abilities attained are only temporary.

The above is, I think, well known and has been an aspect of the class since its first appearance in the pages of OD&D's Supplement II. Like the druid, the monk is a class that advances to higher levels only through the defeat of the current holder of that level in a trial by combat. I know that, even back in the early days, some players and referees disliked this aspect of the class, both because of its seeming unfairness – why don't other classes have to do this? – and because it introduced an additional layer of complexity to leveling up. For myself, I liked it precisely because it was unique; it gave the monk a bit of flavor to distinguish it further from other classes.

The next sentence of this section of the PHB also contains a bit of flavor, but one that I must have somehow overlooked, because I honestly cannot recall ever reading it before.

The monk must find and defeat in single combat, hand-to-hand, without weapons or magic items, one of the 8th level monks – the White, the Green, or the Red. 

For a moment, the colors baffled me. I quickly realized that they were connected to the fact that the title of 8th-level monks is "Master of Dragons," of which there are only three. Thus, it would seem that these monks consist of the Master of White Dragons, the Master of Green Dragons, and the Master of Red Dragons. How had I never seen this detail before? It's baffling to me and yet I have no recollection of ever having seen it, let alone making any use of it in all the years I played AD&D.

The detail makes a certain amount of sense, since, unlike levels above 8th, there are three 8th-level monks, so there ought to be some way to distinguish them. Of course, I soon find myself wondering: Why only three? Why not one for each color of dragon? Is there some special significance to the three dragon colors chosen? Why are they only evil dragons? Thinking about and potentially answering these questions are the stuff from which a fantasy setting is made. I have no idea if Gary Gygax intended there to be a logic behind the three Masters of Dragons or not, but I enjoy puzzling out matters like this regardless. I doubt I'm alone in this regard.

J is for the Jeweled Path

While the worship of a god or gods is commonplace among Men -- and, indeed, is unique to them -- not all Men are followers of a deity. Some Men instead guide their lives according to some philosophy, creed, or ideal, such as the well-known devotion of paladins to Law. In a similar vein, the monastic ascetics of Aranoon are devoted to a system of thought they call the Jeweled Path. The teachings of the Path bear some resemblance to those taught by Turms Termax, focused as they are in harmonizing one's body and mind accord with the secrets of the cosmos to achieve mastery. Indeed, the resemblance is so close that some charge that the Emerald Tablet of Turms is in fact derived from earlier books by the sages of the Jeweled Path -- a charge that has only become more popular in the years since the fall of the Thulian Empire and the widespread condemnation of Termaxianism.

Of course, the similarities are largely superficial. Where Turms understood "mastery" to mean the transcendence of mortality, the Path teaches that the acceptance of one's mortality is one of the keys -- or "jewels," in the philosophy's jargon -- to inner harmony. Only when one understands that to be a Man is to die can one achieve the insight needed to become all that being a Man entails, including powers and abilities that some might deem "magical." To outsiders, it is the mystical abilities of Jeweled Path ascetics that are their most noteworthy feature, a fact that simultaneously amuses and annoys adherents of this ancient creed.

In the former lands of the Thulian Empire, the Jeweled Path remains largely unknown, except to scholars of western lands. Comparatively few of its devotees can be found even in the largest cities and settlements of the east and those who can be are typically solitary individuals traveling the world for their own purposes rather than as representatives of the great monasteries that supposedly exist in their homelands. There are, however, stories that, since the opening of Dwimmermount once more, several ascetics of the Jeweled Path have been seen in Adamas, seeking a property on which to establish a school in which to teach their esoteric philosophy. Like so many stories in Adamas these days, it's almost certainly untrue in its specifics, though, just as certainly, there's probably a grain of truth in it as well.

Cheating Methods

In thinking about the monk class recently, I consulted Philip Meyers's September 1981 article in Dragon, because it presents an alternative take on the class first introduced in OD&D's Supplement II. I like Meyers's approach in the article and it's definitely influenced my own take on the monk (about which I'll talk more in a future post), but what struck me when I was reading the article was the following passage:

Of all the character classes in the AD&D game, the class of monks is the most difficult to qualify for. A monk must have exceptional strength, wisdom, and dexterity, and -- if he or she wishes to survive for very long -- constitution.

The odds of rolling up such a character, even using the various "cheating methods" listed in the Dungeon Masters Guide, are not favorable.

The "cheating methods" Meyers references are those listed on page 11 of the DMG, under the header "Generation of Ability Scores." There, Gygax notes that

While it is possible to generate some fairly playable characters by rolling 3d6, there is often an extended period of attempts at finding a suitable one due to the quirks of the dice. Furthermore, rather marginal characters tend to have a short life expectancy -- which tends to discourage new players, as does have to make do with some character of a race and/or class which he or she really can't or won't identify with. Character generation, then, is a serious matter, and it is recommended that the following systems be used.

Method I is 4d6, discard the lowest, and arrange to taste. Method II is roll 3d6 12 times, pick the six highest, and arrange to taste. Method III is roll 3d6 in order six times for each ability score and take the highest result. Method IV is 3d6 in order but enough times to generate 12 characters and choose the character one likes best.

I've railed against both these methods and the rationale behind them before, so I won't do so again here. What I find interesting, though, is that Meyers explicitly deems these methods "cheating," a feeling I myself shared back in the day. I find it interesting not because Meyers agrees with my, but because it's a case where I think at least part of the culture of D&D players had come to accept a style of play that was not only counter to what Gygax had actually written but that was also counter to the way that Gygax and the Lake Geneva crew apparently played.

As I understand it, many of the Greyhawk players were unrepentant power gamers, rolling and re-rolling until they got the "right" array of ability scores for their characters. This is a behavior I never encountered in my own early days, brought up as I was on the sacredness of the notion of 3d6-in-order, no exceptions. Outside of the DMG, this was the rule in every D&D rulebook I'd ever seen until 3e, which formalized the 4d6-drop-the-lowest. But clearly this was not an approach Gygax continued to find conducive, as it is nowhere canonized in any AD&D rulebook and indeed is noted as being sub-optimal.

Nomenclature Assistance

Along with druids, I'd begun to work up a version of monks for use in my Dwimmermount campaign. I was thinking of doing a series of posts about them, but I haven't yet for a couple of reasons, the biggest of which is that I never came up with a satisfactory name for them. The name "monk" is likely a reference to Shaolin Monastery strongly associated with kung fu. Furthermore, as I've mentioned before, the name initially confused me as, to me, "monk" suggests a Christian ascetic rather than a martial arts master. The conception of the class I was planning to introduce into the Dwimmermount campaign was more of a semi-psionic warrior trained through the use of mental discipline to use his very body as a weapon. This conception ties into some things that have come up in the campaign over the last couple of years, as well as the limited background established about the Eld, the Thulians, and the mysterious Ancients.

So, what I need is a name, something more appropriate than "monk" that evokes the idea I've outlined above but fits within a fantasy context. Any suggestions?

REVIEW: A Tale of Two Monks

Or a monk and a martial artist anyway.

This review is the first time I've ever directly compared two similar products. As a rule, I don't like the notion of comparing and contrasting RPG products, because I think that even ostensibly similar products can have very different goals and intended audiences. I remember an article in an old issue of Dragon that was ostensibly a review of TSR's SF game, Star Frontiers. While the review was quite thorough, what I remember most about it was that the reviewer frequently compared it unfavorably to GDW's Traveller. Now, as everyone knows, I'm a Traveller geek and make no bones about that. I rank the original 1977 boxed set up there with OD&D in terms of being one of the greatest works of imagination ever produced by this hobby. That said, even at the time, I thought Star Frontiers deserved to be taken on its own merits and reviewed solely on that basis.

Consequently, this review isn't so much a comparison of Adventure Games Publishing's Martial Artist Class and Brave Halfling Publishing's Delving Deeper - Monk as a discussion of how two two different writers writing for two different games can draw on the same source material and spin it in different ways. One of the joys of the old school revival is watching how a wide variety of people take the same inspirations and present them in so many unique ways. What's even better is that, because old school games have such simple mechanics, it's very easy for me to buy a product intended for, say, OSRIC and adapt it to my Swords & Wizardry game. If anything about 2009 reminds me of 1979 it's this glorious smorgasbord of product offerings from which to swipe cool ideas and not have to worry about whether they'll "work" in my home game.

Let's start with AGP's Martial Artist Class. Written for Castles & Crusades and selling for $1.00, this 7-page PDF follows the same basic format of other recent electronic products by James Mishler. Although completely lacking in art, the product more than makes up for it by the density of its two-column text, which presents an alternative to C&C's monk class. Using Strength as its Prime (rather than Constitution, as the standard monk does), the martial artist is focused primarily on combat, both unarmed and armed. That's not to say that it's lacking in other class abilities, but it's clear that, as its name suggests, the martial artist is intended for players who want to play characters who've devoted themselves, bodily and spiritually, to becoming living weapons. In this respect, the martial artist is a broader archetype than the monk, since the class lends itself to a variety of character types that break the "militant ascetic" mold. Rounding out the PDF is a collection of descriptions of exotic and mundane weapons and how they might be used by martial artists.

Brave Halfling's Delving Deeper - Monk is also a 7-page PDF, written by Luke Fleeman and selling for $0.75. Of those seven pages, one is taken up by the cover, another by the Open Game License, and a third by a piece of short fiction. In addition, the product includes a couple of pieces of black and white line art by Brian Thomas. As a result, Delving Deeper - Monk isn't nearly as textually dense of Martial Artist Class, but that's to be expected in a PDF supporting Labyrinth Lord, which is far simpler mechanically than Castles & Crusades. The monk presented here is much closer in concept and presentation to the monk of OD&D/AD&D, being a more "generalist" class with abilities beyond those focused primarily on combat. The monk is thus the class for people who wish to play characters that cleave closely to "inscrutable mystic warrior" archetype -- equally adept at conversing with animals as kicking ass. The product also helpfully includes some advice on integrating monks into a campaign, either as PCs or NPCs.

I like both these products. They're both a terrific value and have the benefit of including lots of simple mechanics that can be lifted for use in almost any old school game. In addition, their differences highlight the fact that there's no "right" way to present anything in an old school game except what works for the referee and his players. Despite having already offered up my own version of the monk some months ago, I still found lots of food for thought in these two PDFs. Of the two, I give Deliving Deeper - Monk a slight edge, because it's closer to the monk of Blackmoor and thus closer to the kind of class I'd use in my own campaign. Mind you, the martial artist isn't intended to be a replacement for the monk class of C&C, nor does it occupy exactly the same mental space. It's closely related, to be sure, but there are subtle differences and, in some campaigns, the monk and the martial artist could reasonably exist side-by-side without any contradiction. I still prefer the monk for its closer connection to tradition, but I can easily imagine that others might feel the martial artist is a broader and thus "better" class.

Chacun à son goût.

Final Score: 4 out of 5 polearms for one, 4½ out of 5 polearms for the other -- You decide.

Grognard's Grimoire: S&W Monk

I've always had a fondness for the monk as a class, partially because, when I first encountered it -- in AD&D, not OD&D -- I didn't quite get it. At the time, I don't think I'd seen a single martial arts movie and I'd never watched Kung-Fu. To me, a "monk" was a Christian priest or brother living in a monastery or, if I stretched the term a bit, it could cover mendicants like the Dominicans and Franciscans. So, when I first saw this class in the Players Handbook, I imagined someone kind of like Friar Tuck. Given the monk's fondness for staves, this didn't seem entirely unreasonable to me. Consequently, my early D&D campaigns included tonsured, sandaled, quarter staff-wielding priests/brothers who, while largely pacific in their behavior, knew how to whoop ass when needed. Unsurprisingly, St. Cuthbert of the Cudgel served nicely as their patron deity in my early games.

Despite correct this misapprehension, I still like the monk. I think there's definitely a place in D&D for an unarmed combatant and he need not be of obviously Asian origin, though he certainly can be. Below is my first stab at a monk usable with Swords & Wizardry. I'm not 100% happy with it, even if I like much of it. It's largely inspired by the Blackmoor version of the class, but it's largely recognizable to those who know the class from later sources.

The material in the quote box below is hereby designated Open Game Content via the Open Game License.

The Monk

Hit Dice Type: 1d6 per level. After reaching 9 hit dice, the monk gains only 2 hit points per level.
Armor/Shield Permitted: None
Weapons Permitted: Any
Prime Attribute (5% XP bonus): Wisdom 13+, Dexterity 13+
Alignment: Any
Race: Human

Monk Class Abilities and Restrictions

Armor Class: The monk gains an unarmored AC bonus that increases with experience, as indicated on the Monk Advancement Table below.

Deflect Missiles: The monk may deflect non-magical missile attacks with a successful saving throw.

Fast Movement: Beginning at 3rd level, the monk moves faster than normal when unencumbered.

Quivering Palm: At 12th level, the monk gains a fearsome attack, usable once per week. If the monk successfully deals damage with an unarmed attack against a creature with fewer hit dice than himself or herself, the monk may then choose to slay the creature automatically at any time thereafter, up to one day per level of the monk.

Slow Fall: At 4th level, the monk takes damage from a fall as if the fall were 20 feet shorter than it actually is. The monk must be within 10 feet of a vertical surface to use this ability. At 8th level, any fall is treated as if it were 40 feet shorter and the monk must be within 20 feet of a vertical surface. At 11th level, the monk may fall any distance if he or she is within 30 feet of a vertical surface.

Still Body: At 6th level, the monk can slow his or her bodily functions to appear dead for a number of turns equal to his or her level.

Still Mind: At 3rd level, the monk gains a +2 bonus to saving throws against spells that affect the mind.

Unarmed Attack: The monk specializes in unarmed, hand-to-hand combat. Such attacks deal 1D6 points of damage, but the monk may choose whether they inflict normal damage or subdual damage. At 6th level, the monk rolls 2D6 for unarmed attack damage and takes the higher result of the two dice. At 11th level, the monk rols 3D6 and take the highest result of the three dice for unarmed combat damage.

Wealth: A monk may never possess more than five magical items, including weapons. In addition, a monk must donate all treasure they acquire to their monastic order, except that needed for personal upkeep.

Wholeness of Body: Beginning at 7th level, the monk can heal a number of hit points of damage equal to his or her level per day.

Monk Advancement Table
Level	Experience Points Required	Hit Dice (d6)	Saving Throw	AC	Fast Movement
1	0	1	14	9 [10]
2	2,000	2	13	8 [11]
3	4,000	3	12	7 [12]	13
4	8,000	4	11	7 [12]	14
5	16,000	5	10	6 [13]	15
6	32,000	6	9	6 [13]	16
7	64,000	7	8	6 [13]	17
8	128,000	8	7	5 [14]	18
9	256,000	9	6	5 [14]	19
10	350,000	9+2 hp	5	5 [14]	20
11	450,000	9+2 hp	4	5 [14]	21
12	550,000	9+2 hp	4	4 [15]	22
13	650,000	9+2 hp	4	4 [15]	23
14	750,000	9+2 hp	4	4 [15]	24
15	850,000	9+2 hp	4	4 [15]	25
16	950,000	9+2 hp	4	4 [15]	26