Playbook: The Monk (PBtA)
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This is a largely unarmed martial artist that can shift between various fighting styles. I say "largely" because some styles don't affect your unarmed attack¸ meaning that you can fully benefit from them even with a weapon (and there's a pair of optional extra moves in the back that lets you treat weapons as an unarmed strike).
How the core of the class works¸ is you choose several fighting styles at 1st-level. You can only have one active at a time¸ and each gives you a different type of bonus. For example leopard is all about speed¸ snake lets you use your Dexterity to attack and has 1 piercing¸ and tiger just gets a flat damage bonus. As you level up you can expand on the bonuses that each style gives (though again¸ you can still only benefit from one style at a time).
To make things easier to track¸ there's a sheet of "style cards" for you to cut out¸ one for each fighting style¸ and a space on the character sheet to place the card. The cards list the starting benefit¸ plus any bonuses for advanced moves. When you have a style active¸ you place the card on your sheet¸ and when you change it¸ you replace the card.
There's also a small ki pool that you can use to deal a bit of extra damage¸ or gain a bonus when attempting various physical feats.
Of course all of this is in addition to a slew of other moves (there are twenty-eight advanced moves in total): you can hold more ki¸ gain additional bonuses when you defend¸ become tougher when you have ki¸ deal more damage with it¸ use it to reinforce your mind¸ and so on. In this way you can better control what kind of monk you wanna make.
If you check out the previews¸ you can see the entire core class plus some of the advanced moves. More than enough to to try before you buy¸ for at least a few levels.
This product contains five files.
Two are letter-sized character sheets that use our new character sheet layout. One has a completely blank gear section¸ while the other fills in the initial choices if you want to just check some boxes and start playing.
The third is a sheet of the aforementioned "style cards".
The other two are digest-sized books¸ one in color¸ the other in black and white (to make it easier to print off at home if you want). They both contain:
- The monk class¸ complete with (again) 28 advanced moves.
- New weapons¸ dungeon gear¸ and magic items¸ including the Sword of the Gathering Clouds of Heaven and the Compliant Golden-Hooped Rod (which fans of Dragonball will recognize).
- The bakemono race¸ with an advanced move if you want to gain additional benefits while in your animal form.
- The dragon master compendium class¸ which lets you utilize multiple styles at once.
- A few extra moves that we literally couldn't fit on the sheet.
- A director's cut with questions to ask yourself when rolling up a monk¸ alternative backgrounds¸ and explanations and suggestions for some of the moves.