Reflavouring D&D for a Wuxia campaign

[TomPN]

So, I've seen several discussions on creating a Wuxia campaign in D&D, and I thought it would be a good idea for me to pull together all of my ideas.

Weapons

Names - rename the weapons using the ideas in the DMG
Unarmed strikes - normally, these do 1+STR damage (unless you're a monk). For Wuxia, make them do 1d4+DEX for everyone
Martial Wuxia - all weapons without the two-handed property count as finesse weapons
Unarmored defense - normally, a character without armor has an AC equal to 10+DEX (unless they have the unarmored defense trait). For Wuxia, give unarmored characters an AC equal to 10+DEX+CON (like how the barbarian's unarmored defense works), unless they naturally have the unarmored defense trait.
Thrown - if you make an attack with a thrown weapon, you can make another (assuming you still have the ammunition) as a bonus action (following the rules for two-weapon fighting)


Abilities

Emphasize DEX over STR - acrobatics, not athletics!
Perching - characters can land on and move across thin objects - such as a branch or a flagpole - without making a check or save. When they are attacked, their attacker can choose to try to knock them off their perch, instead of damaging them - then they make a save to avoid falling.
Jumping - characters do not need a running start to jump long distances. In addition, they can jump twice as far. OPTIONAL: While jumping longer than their original jump distance, they spend one round entirely in the air.


Class names
Renaming the classes while keeping their abilities is by far and away the easiest way to create a Wuxia-flavoured campaign.

Still trying to come up with names for them all, so if you have any suggestions, let me know
FYI - I know that some (most) of these are Japanese, but it's more what it sounds like


Barbarian -
Bard -
Cleric -
Druid -
Fighter - Ashigaru (foot soldier)
Paladin - Samurai
Monk - Monk
Ranger - Ronin
Rogue - Ninja/Shinobi
Sorcerer -
Warlock -
Wizard - Wu Jen


If I come up with any more ideas - or if you have any suggestions - I'll put them up here.

[Unoriginal]

You can just refluff all melee weapon attacks into unarmed strikes. It's easier to say "this guy has a greatsword on the statblock, but it's described as him doing mighty blows" than take a guy and give him an 1d4 unarmed attack he'll never use.

It'd fit with the martial arts aestethic of people using any weapon or strike with the same results.

Could vary the description of the fighting styles depending on which weapon is being refluffed, though.

[M Placeholder]

The Wizard could be renamed to Wu Jen.

[Blackbando]

Monk - Ninja/Shinobi
Rogue -

Now, of course, this is just my opinion, but this image, to me, looks wrong. Rogues fit best as a ninja/shinobi, while monks fit best as a, well, monk.

[Knaight]

Wuxia is a deeply Chinese genre, and every class name you have is explicitly Japanese. This isn't a great fit.

As for what to do with the classes, there are wuxia archetypes that at least roughly fit them. Fighter to Ashigaru is all sorts of iffy, but Fighter to Soldier works just fine, with soldiers being a major archetype among wuxia characters. The Ranger is a pretty good fit for heroic bandit archetypes, making Bandit a workable class there. You can kind of map spellcasters to the Sage and Scholar archetypes, maybe using that for divine and arcane magic respectively. Barbarian remains Barbarian, though the implication is that it applies to different groups (hill tribes, nearby horse riding cultures, outsiders from the southern jungles), Rogue warrants a bit of renaming but conceptually works pretty much fine, Monk can absolutely stay Monk given that the Shaolin monks are the explicit main inspiration for the class, which is basically pulled out of wuxia to begin with (though heavily altered).

With all that said, D&D is a pretty bad fit for a wuxia game overall, even with refluffing.

[Vogie]

I would actually just say that all players are monks, full stop, and then they have to choose another type on top of that. No players can be a monkmonk.

That way, they don't ever have to worry about ki, and get all of the scaling without you dictating things at random, and they still get all of the normal features of their chosen class.

I do like switching to the Barb's unarmored defense, though. It makes it so your players can dump wisdom if their chosen class doesn't use it, and allows shields as well.

[Lalliman]

There's a bit of a conflict of interest here. Many of these changes work towards eliminating Strength-focused characters from the game (after all, there are no full-plate-wearing greatsword-swinging characters in Wuxia), but you haven't gone all the way. Strength is still sitting there as basically a trap option. If you want to ensure the Wuxia trope that everyone is highly agile, I suggest making a fundamental change: fuse Strength and Constitution into one (slightly altered) stat.

Instead of six, you'll have five stats. Dex, Int, Wis and Cha work as normal. The new one might be called Brawn or Body. It governs your Athletics skill, your Brawn save (which envelops both Str and Con saves), increases your HP like Con does, and you add it to the damage of your melee and thrown attacks. (In addition to your Dex mod.) Unlike vanilla Strength, you never use it for attack rolls (which is frankly realistic by real life standards as well).

In this arrangement, Brawn is useful, but is no replacement for Dex like Str is normally. Some characters will be brawnier than others, but all martial characters will favour Dexterity to a certain degree, and all will be effective without armour.

This of course means that all weapons end up as finesse, even the two-handed ones. The heavy weapons could be given a minimum Brawn requirement to wield, while still keying off Dexterity.

That suggestion aside: As Knaight already said, the Japanese class names you've given aren't quite appropriate to this mostly-Chinese genre. You can of course blend the cultures in your fictional setting, and D&D itself does recommend the use of Japanese themes on p. 41 of the DMG. But it's a bit odd to call it wuxia and then brand it in a totally Japanese way. I would personally avoid the use of non-English class names completely. The players at the table will still be speaking English, which means that when asked about his profession, the fighter player will probably still say "soldier", rather than ashigaru or whatever other term we settle on. The brain can only handle so many foreign words before they start blending together, so I would save them for where they are most effective.

[DnDegenerates]

Mechanically no changes are necessary. Renaming and flavoring is all you need.

Otherwise homebrewing just counteracts itself while attempting to make things new and different by merely making it all the same.

Base classes/phb archetypes can all be fluffed for any Asian setting. They'd represent the different walks of life adventurers in the setting have, as opposed to forcing them all to be the same.

What's more important is that characters and the DM are all enthusiastic and well read on the SETTING.

The roleplay will make it come to life. Anything can be renamed and envisioned through roleplay to defeat whatever a mess of mechanical revisions and additions could hope to add. Especially in the hands of a player skilled at embracing their character.

[Sahe]

Mechanically no changes are necessary. Renaming and flavoring is all you need.

Otherwise homebrewing just counteracts itself while attempting to make things new and different by merely making it all the same.

Base classes/phb archetypes can all be fluffed for any Asian setting. They'd represent the different walks of life adventurers in the setting have, as opposed to forcing them all to be the same.

What's more important is that characters and the DM are all enthusiastic and well read on the SETTING.

The roleplay will make it come to life. Anything can be renamed and envisioned through roleplay to defeat whatever a mess of mechanical revisions and additions could hope to add. Especially in the hands of a player skilled at embracing their character.

Pretty much this.

Although depending on how deep you want to delve into the Chinese mythology aspects of it some homebrewing could be a good idea. A good example is Wuxing or the Five Elements (Fire, Wood, Metal, Water, Earth) opposed to the four Greek Elements. This might effect some subclasses (Way of 4 Elements Monk) and Genasi, possibly Dragonborn and Tieflings as well depending on how you want to go about it.

EDIT: At least that's my approach to a Wuxia-Style campaign I'm currently planning.

[Knaight]

Base classes/phb archetypes can all be fluffed for any Asian setting. They'd represent the different walks of life adventurers in the setting have, as opposed to forcing them all to be the same.

What's more important is that characters and the DM are all enthusiastic and well read on the SETTING.

Putting aside the overtly setting specific stuff in D&D that don't fit all settings for now, it's worth noting that the change here isn't primarily a matter of setting. Setting gets changed incidentally due to a change in genre, and it's the differences in genre which cause the problems with fit.

Meanwhile D&D can handle dungeon crawling in mythic China just fine. Refluff the equipment list a bit (mostly armor, a lot of the weapons work just fine), change a couple of class names, pick monsters carefully and probably homebrew a few, done.