Monk Design

[Ogrillian]

I’ve been playing a spear wielding monk for a while now, and a friend of mine wanted to play a monk as well, we’re both Martial arts fans, and he wanted to know why a monk’s attacks are reduced to using slow kicks for their unarmed strikes. I told him to re-read the manual it counts as any body part. And he came up with the following reasons.

1. An untrained person can use 2 or more punches in the same time a trained person could swing anything heavier than a small dagger. While a kick would take the same time

2. A monk’s speed when carrying the same amount of weight as an equal leveled fighter, is by definition moving your body faster, yet a trained unfettered arm cannot be swung as many times as a Greataxe wielded by a fighter.

3. Anyone who has watched Cops or MMA knows a headbut does NOT require a free hand, but restrained hands reduces kicking ability.

Yes I know this involves real world mechanics, but he brought up an interesting argument, and he has valid points

Can anyone think of a way to change this, either by class rules or subclass? No multiclassing is allowed for players.

[Brother Oni]

I think you've posted this in the wrong forum. You may have better luck with replies in the correct game system specific sub-fora.

[Anonymouswizard]

First off, you should report your post and ask it to be moved to the correct subforum (probably either Roleplaying General or D&D 5e).

Can anyone think of a way to change this, either by class rules or subclass? No multiclassing is allowed for players.

I'm assuming this is 5e?

You need to remember two things. The first is that an 'attack' isn't representing a single blow, but rather a series of strikes, parries, and feints, with depending on group preference what a successful hit is varies (my group tends to run it as a couple of strikes getting past their defence). This gets a bit more complicated when you take ranged combat into account, but even then there's more to the process of making an attack than just loosing an arrow.

Secondly, nothing in the rules limits what a Monk (or anybody for that matter) can use for their unarmed attacks. Punches, backhand strikes, kicks, elbow strikes, headbuts, knee strikes, belly flops, as long as the GM okays it then you're fine.

And now I want to play a halfling monk with a stepladder who goes around belly flopping on monsters...