Developing monastic orders in a high fantasy world WITHOUT kung fu monks

[brian 333]

The Defeated

A walled fortress high on an inaccessible mountaintop was, in a previous generation, a prison, first for the officers, then for the nobility of a kingdom which was ultimately defeated. They were not allowed to go home because it was feared that they would foment rebellion against their new lords.

As the original population aged and died off, they were replaced with political prisoners and POWs awaiting ransom. Then the nation that built it abandoned it.

Those who for whatever reason cannot go home after a war are welcomed into the Order which now serves the ex soldiers by giving them a place among others like themselves.

[Wintermoot]

I'm not a big fan of the monk class and neither is anyone in my gaming group. I don't think fighting monks or nuns makes any senses, even in a fantasy world.

Okay. I'm not going to bother explaining the historical context here because what's the point. You are either already aware of it and choose to ignore it, or you are willfully choosing to not do any research on it to understand it because you already made up your mind that its goofy. That's fine with me.

If you and your party just don't like Monks then don't include them in your game. End of. Of all the classes in the game, this is the easiest one to excise without affecting the game at all. Boom. Problem solved. It's harder to excise freakin' ranger IMO. And Ranger is just fighter with a dog.

The issue seems to be that you and your group don't like monks, but then spent an inordinate amount of time trying to find a way to shoehorn them back in with elaborate backstories and bizarre designs.

just stop. Just. Stop. You don't like monks. Don't include them.

The game doesn't require having unarmed combat specialists. Least of all unarmed combat specialists with strange religious overtones that you don't understand. And if you throw them out, a lot of the funky mechanics put in to make them work can be thrown out as well.

So just throw them out and move on. You don't need to design heroic freedom fighters forced to learn to defend themselves with their fists because sturdy sticks were too hard to find in the forested mountain they were enslaved on. Let the heroic freedom fighters use clubs and move on.