The monk is a character class in a number of role-playing tabletop and video games. In those games which follow the Dungeons & Dragons traditions, monks are characters with martial arts skills and have very powerful strategies.
Many role-playing video games include warrior classes similar to the Dungeons & Dragons monk. The monk class has also found its way into NetHack and Linley's Dungeon Crawl, which borrow elements of the class from Dungeons & Dragons.
Conversely, in Guild Wars released in 2005, the monk is similar to the cleric class of other popular games, using spiritual powers to heal and purge disease.
Contents |
The monk is a character class in the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game which is typically portrayed as a master of martial arts. It is loosely based on the stereotype of Shaolin Buddhist warrior monks. The Dungeons & Dragons monk specializes in unarmed combat, with no use of armor and only special "monk weapons", such as kama or nunchaku. The monk class, as with other classes of the Dungeons & Dragons game, utilizes a spirit can be overwhelmed when attacked by many enemies at once.
Diablo 3 features a monk character class as a melee attacker, using martial arts to cripple foes, resist damage, deflect projectiles, attack with blinding speed, and land explosive killing blows. It combines the melee elements of Diablo II's assassin class with the "holy warrior" role of the paladin. Blizzard has stated that the monk is not related in any way to the monk class from the Sierra Entertainment-made Diablo: Hellfire expansion. The monk is fueled by spirit, which has defensive purposes and is slowly generated through attacking, though it does not degenerate .
In the game EverQuest, the monk class can be chosen only by the human, lizardman (Iksar), or drakkin races. Monks have hand to hand combat skills, and can fight with or without weapons, using fists or staves, and able to use only leather armor and lighter because of their weight limit restriction.
Monks gain the ability to feign death. This gives the Monk the ability to drop to the ground and cause enemies to forget about his presence, or in MMORPG terms, lose aggro. This technique is useful for pulling, or bringing monsters to a party of player characters to be killed. The monk class also has the capability to mend wounds, which gives a small boost to his or her hit points.
Vanguard: Saga of Heroes was created by the same executive producer as EverQuest, and so Vanguard Monks share many of the qualities as the EverQuest Monk. In addition, Vanguard adds a healer class called the Disciple, which is similar to a Monk who also can use unique healing techniques.
The primary difference in Vanguard is that the monk's "signature" area of expertise is delivering area of effect (AOE) damage via melee, a role not present in most games except, sometimes in some limited way due to a particular special ability or talent.
In Square Enix's Final Fantasy series of role-playing video games, the Monk (Japanese: モンク) is a character class (or "job"). It is frequently also referred as the Black Belt. In Final Fantasy and Final Fantasy III an upgraded, more powerful form of the class appears, named Karate Master or Karateka (からてか). In Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, Bangaas have the ability to become a Monk.
Final Fantasy games that don't use the job-system usually have a representative for the Monk class. The most well-known is Tifa Lockhart from Final Fantasy VII and Zell Dincht from Final Fantasy VIII.
In Gravity Corp's MMORPG Ragnarok Online, Acolytes can choose their second job as a Monk. The monk is a physical/melee class that can, although rarely, provide secondary support in the absence of a priest (for the buffs blessing and agi up)". It is most noted for an ability called "Asura Strike" (sometimes called Guillotine Fist, or Extremity Fist); an attack some consider the most powerful ability in the game, which may result in damage exceeding possible character health. With the right weapon and appropriately built stats, Asura Strike can do massive amounts of damage in a single hit. Their roles in PvE is either to be the main source of damage to a boss monster, or to let to boss and his minions hit him while other players provide the damage. In War of the Emperium (WoE), they are mostly used for ground control, staying in the backlines and taking out enemy characters that get too close.
Five types—called "builds"—of the Monk character class are the Combo Monk, Spirit Monk, Dasher Monk, Asura Monk, and Diamond Monk. Each class requires certain stats combined with specific skills in order to reach their effectiveness.
In the Fire Emblem games, the Monks are usually exclusively male Light Magic users able to defend themselves through Light-related spells while Priests are the male-counterpart to Clerics being only able to use staves. When they're promoted to Bishop class through the Guiding Ring or Earth Seal items, they add staves, or Light magic in the case of Priests, to their arsenal.
Monks, and their promoted forms Bishops excel in Speed, Magic and Resistance while occasionally having high luck and skill. They often have the highest Resistance caps in their respective game and have high Luck and Skill in order to gain high critical rates, which makes up for their low Magic in relation to other magic users. Also, they almost always have poor growths in defense and HP which makes them vulnerable to magic-resistant melee units such as Pegasus/Falco(n) Knights, a characteristic shared by all magic-users in the franchise.
In Heroes of Might and Magic IV, the monk is both a class for heroes and a basic unit:
In Guild Wars Prophecies, monks are spellcasters, without engaging in physical combat. There are three general type of monks: Healing, Protecting, and Smiting.
In Guild Wars Nightfall, dervishes are spellcasters, which actively engaging in physical combat. A holy martial-artist that used power directly from the gods to buff or heal allies and herself. Clearly it was named after the dervish's since they used an attribute called Mysticism. They had Scythes for damage and could shapeshift into different avatars of the gods to gain new abilities, similar to the Druid class from many other games.
As with all other classes in Linley's Dungeon Crawl, a character beginning as a monk is free to progress in any other skill throughout their career.[1] A monk typically begins with several skill ranks in the unarmed combat, fighting, and dodging skills. Since the unarmed combat skill even allows armed fighters to sometimes make free attacks, such as kicks and headbutts, during normal combat,[2] it may be more convenient to start in this class and pick up a weapon skill later rather than disarming oneself with an armed fighter in order to build the skill from scratch.