Beyond Monks: The Art of the Fight

[Messageboard Golem]

Beyond Monks: The Art of the Fight features the martial artist, a new core class, 10 new prestige classes that specialize in unarmed combat, over 90 new feats, including supernatural "ki feats" designed for the monk class, style mastery feats for advanced characters and many new feats appropriate for any class, rules and advice for running cinematically styled combat, ways to customize the monk class, and more than 20 new magic items.

 

[Psion]

Beyond Monks: The Art of the Fight

Beyond Monks is an electronic product distributed in PDF format. It provides new classes, feats, and other options for martial arts in a d20 System fantasy game. Beyond Monks is available at www.rpgnow.com.

A First Look

Beyond Monks is a 67 page PDF product, including the mock "cover", a blank page, and a copy of the Open Game License. The going price for the book is $8.00 US. I already am not too keen on the recent upward trend of PDF product prices; customers are conscious of the fact that they are not getting a printed product and don't expect to pay a comparable price. Even given the reality of this trend, Beyond Monks is priced at a dollar more that the two most popular d20 products of comparable size: The Book of Eldritch Might II and Wild Spellcraft.

Beyond Monks does utilize the bookmark feature of PDFs with convenient telescoping folders.

The "cover" picture is color. The picture is detailed but otherwise unimpressive, and depicts a woman slamming one ruffian with a piece of furniture while kicking another ruffian.

The interior art is rather sparse, being confined to chapter headers. Each illustration depicts some of the items and option in the chapter it attached to. The artwork is somewhat mediocre.

Overall, I think that Beyond Monks seems a little costly for a PDF of this size, but still cheaper than a comparable size print product if you don't factor in printing costs.

A Deeper Look

Beyond Monks is organized into four chapters, plus an appendix and an index.

Chapter 1: New Classes

The chapter on classes contains one new core class and ten new prestige classes.

The new core class is the Martial Artist. This is a somewhat curious choice. The monk has already been established as the definitive unarmed martial artist of the default d20 system. However, I too have had concern about how well it fits that role. Though you really cannot make an effective unarmed martial artist without taking monk levels, the more specific archetype of a more contemplative and spiritual monk shines through in the name of the class, its alignment requirements, and its esoteric powers. The argument that the monk really isn't general enough to cover the role of all would-be practitioners of exotic unarmed fighting styles strikes a chord with me.

The Martial Artist class is a fighting type class, with good attack bonus advancement, good Fortitude and Reflex saves, and four skill points per level and access to a number of athletic skills. The Martial Artist has improved unarmed strike ability and an unarmed damage progression slightly faster than that of a Monk. They also receive the flurry of blows ability of the monk, but not the monks faster unarmed attack progression.

The Martial Artist also has its own unique class abilities. At first level the Martial Artist receives an ability called Surge. The ability is similar to the barbarian's rage ability in that it lasts a short amount of time and leaves the character fatigued. The benefits are different, however. The character receives a bonus to their base speed, a Haste bonus to AC, and a reduction of penalties when using the flurry of blows ability.

As Martial Artists progress, they receive other class abilities. There are three main class abilities: Martial Secrets, Bonus Feats, and Finishing Moves.

Martial Secrets are a list of class abilities that the Martial Artist may select from as they progress. The abilities are somewhat similar to feats, and give the player a tool to customize the martial artist's style. The first such secret is gained at third level, and the Martial Artist gains an addition secret every four levels thereafter.

Bonus feats are granted from a list martial arts feats. Some of these feats existed in the PHB, though many are new feats introduced in this book. The first bonus feat is gained at 5th level, and one more is gained every fourth level.

Finishing Move is a spin on the Sneak Attack ability. Like the Sneak Attack, the Finishing Move inflict one or more additional dice of damage. However these dice don't depend on the target being flat-footed of flanked. Rather, the character sacrifices all of their own dodge and dexterity AC bonuses until their next turn. Further, the ability can only be used once per round. The first dice of Finishing Move damage is acquired at second level, and an additional dice of damage is gained every 4 levels thereafter.

The Martial Artist also gain some other minor abilities, such as Iron Palm (improves damage of attacks against objects) and an improvement of the number of times per day the character can use the Surge ability.

The Martial Artist does seem a little strong to me compared to the monk, though its class abilities seem to be less defensive. I have a hard time picturing shoehorning an existing campaign where the Monk already exists and is serving the role of a Martial Artist. However, I think it would be an interesting and flexible class that could serve as the basis or a highlight in a fresh martial arts related game.

The Martial Artist provides a martial artist starting package, in keeping with the core classes in the PH. The package has a singular error: it lists a Martial Arts Secret for the character although the class does not get such abilities until third level. One of the contributors says that this is an error; the package should not have a Martial Secret.

There are ten new prestige classes introduced in the chapter. Even if the Martial Artist wasn't your cup of tea, most of these are useful without the Martial Artist class, being usable with the Monk or other classes. The prestige classes are:

- Armor Pugilist: The Armor Pugilist is a class that hones the body to become more resilient. As the Armor Pugilist gains levels, it gains a natural armor AC bonus, energy resistance, DR, and resistance to critical hits.
- Blade Artist: At last, a class specializing in fighting with daggers. I had expected to see something like this some time ago from somebody! The Blade Artist wields a signature dagger as a natural weapon and gains special attacks with it. Their blade eventually becomes sentient.
- Blood Hunter: Somewhat unusual, the Blood Hunter is the disciple of a vampire that learns an unusual style from their undead master called Cruorsh Style. The Blood Hunter gains several hideous combat maneuvers, including a faster advancing version of the Martial Artist's Finishing Move ability, a Wounding Strike (acts like a Wounding Weapon), a Vampric Strike, (restores damage to the character) and the dreadful Heart Strike (attempts to extract an opponent's heart.)
- Crooked Monk: The Crooked Monk is a rather unorthodox monk with some strange characteristics. Many of their class abilities are similar to those of a monk, but gains more contortion related abilities and a few other abilities, such as the ability to charge in a crooked line and use choas related spell like abilities.
- Ghost Killer: The Ghost Killer is a character with a connection to the spirits of his ancestors, and a penchant for eliminating ghosts. The Ghost Killer gets bonuses to knowledge skills derived from the knowledge of his ancestors. The character can channel positive energy through his unarmed strikes; these strikes can act as turning attempts, and gains other abilities for dealing with undead.
- Ki Blaster: I'm not too impressed with the class name, but the Ki Blaster seems to be inspired by the likes of Dragonball Z and Streetfighter, where ki energy becomes a visible tangible force. The Ki Blaster can project bolt of energy using their ki, and is a short (5-level) prestige class.
- Psynergist: Once again not my favorite name, the Psynergist is a martial artist that combines martial arts and psionic powers. The psynergist only slowly gains psionic powers, but may enhance their psionics with ki energy, and can improve their saves and AC due to their focus.
- Storm Lord: The storm lord is a spellcaster with an affinity for storms that combine their art with martial arts. The storm lord receives electrical and cold resistance, weather sense, and spell like abilities related to storms.
- Sylvan Monk: The sylvan monk is a martial artist that studies nature and learns to avoid attacks by not being where the attack is. A very defensive martial artist.
- Tanterist: The Tanterist is an expert in the human anatomy who can manipulate nerve centers to great effect. The Tanterist can weaken or paralyze opponents with its strikes.

Sample NPCs are provided for some of the classes.

Chapter 2: Martial Arts Feats and Styles

The feats chapter is divided into two basic sections. The first is new feats, mostly describing various martial arts techniques. There is a new category, Ki feats. Ki feats involve mastery of supernatural ki energy, and many of these feats lean on the Stunning Fist feat or class ability.

There are by my count 80 feats in this section. Given that many feats, I haven't analyzed all of them for balance, but so far I can actually say a fair amount of them fail on the weak side. A few samples are in order:
- Back to Back Fighter: If you are within 5 feet of an ally, opponents do not get a flanking bonus to hit you. If two characters have this feet and are within 5 feet, neither can be flanked.
- Charge Throw: If charged, you get an attack of opportunity that can only be used to trip. If the trip succeeds, the charge attack automatically fails.
- Expert Disarm: If you successfully disarm an opponent, you may grab the weapon instead.
- Far Strike (Ki): You can use up a stunning attack to perform an unarmed strike as a ranged attack.
- Foot Sweep: You can perform a trip attack that does one half your normal damage (um, I always assumed Improved Trip performed unarmed was a foot sweep.)
- Improved Deflect Arrows: You can deflect up to 1 plus your Dexterity bonus arrows per round.
- Ki strength (Ki): By giving up a stunning attack, you may substitute your wisdom bonus for your strength bonus for one round. (For giving up a stunning attack, that seemed a little weak to me; perhaps it should have been add your wisdom bonus to your strength bonus.)
- Master: A spin on the Leadership feat that lets you take cohorts as PC classes, namely Fighters Monks, or Martial Artists, at one level lower. The bit I don't like about this is that 1st level followers become followers with "no levels and d4 hit dice." This is an extremely bent way of doing things. I'd just stick with warriors for the 1st level followers.
- Melee Spell (Metamagic): By taking a spell slot at one level higher, you can launch an unarmed attack after casting the spell.
- Perfect Reflexes: You can make more than one attack of opportunity against a single target per round, provided they provoke each such attack.
- Pounce: You can take a full attack action with a charge, provided this is your first attack or you did a refocus. This feat is the only one right off the bat that struck me as possibly overpowered, and if not that, overcomplicated.
- Somersault Charge: If you make a tumble check (DC 20) during a charge, you ignore the -2 AC penalty.

The feats are easily the most worthwhile aspect of the book. There seem to be very few outright flawed feats, and most of them seem rather interesting. Not to mention there are so many of them.

The next section is entitled Style Mastery Feats. Style Mastery Feats are a not-so-well-disguised re-invention of the style mastery abilities in Oriental Adventures. Basically, if you have the right combinations of feats and other prerequisites, you get the style mastery feat for free. I don't like this for the same reasons I don't like the style mastery abilities in Oriental Adventures. Basically, I really didn't see the point of not making them feat chains or prestige classes. Further, it seems like you would be limited in how many styles you can make before you get a number of styles with minimum investment. Ironically, Beyond Monks lists this last point as a point to watch out for.

That said, inasmuch I don't like the general idea, the benefits do look fairly balanced compared to the style abilities in Oriental Adventures.

Chapter 3: Building a Master

The third chapter is split into two sections. The first section consists of multiclass archetypes. These are very similar to the multi-class combo character concepts by James Wyatt and others in various Dragon magazines. All of the multi-class archetypes include Martial Artist as one of the classes. The archetypes are beast observer (a Barbarian/Martial Artist that learns her style from animals), mystic warrior (a wuxia style warrior with inexplicable powers, modeled as a Martial Artist / Sorcerer), Ninja (Martial Artist / Rogue as a member of a secretive guild of puissant assassins), Temple Guardians (Cleric/Martial Artist) and Weapon Master (Fighter/Martial Artist.) Each of these has a table describing the progression and abilities from 1st to 20th level.

The second part covers the customizing of the Monk class. The chapter provides suggestions for creating different orders of monks such that they are not so pidgeon-holed. As with the Oriental Adventures book, it suggests allowing the character to swap out the Monk's class abilities. However, it suggests that you might even go further when it comes to customizing the Monk. It has suggestions for trading martial arts feats for other class abilities, for sacrificing the Monk's good will saving throw, or by giving up the movement and slow fall abilities.

In addition to these general guidelines, some ideas are provided for making custom monk orders to fit the campaign, along with a "standard" package of changes to monks that are members of the order.

Chapter 4: New Options

The last chapter provides new ideas, options, and rules variants for running a campaign filled with martial arts mayhem.

The first such section contains options aimed at making combat more cinematic. This includes techniques like limiting time for player decisions, making all parties "take 10" on initiative and seating characters in initiative order, minimizing bookkeeping, enlisting player help when you need to look up rules, glossing over details like item identification, making the possibility of fubles, or giving PCs and important NPCs one reroll per day, and so forth.

The second section discusses using improvised weapons and means of getting players to use such weapons. This includes variant rules to encourage their use such as making it hazardous to attack creatures with armor or natural armor with unarmed attack, or by reducing the effectiveness of the improved unarmed strike ability. It also provides GM techniques for facilitating the environment, such as making descriptions vivid enough to suggest what might be used as improvised weapons. Rules are provided for improvised weapons, along with equivalent weapons for a variety of improvised weapons.

A section called drinking and fighting provides rules for drinking, including some fairly straightforward rules for drunkedness. Three new drinking feats are also introduced: Down the Hatch, Hard Drinking, and the Drunken Boxing Style Mastery Feat.

The next section is entitled new options for skills. This includes a short "new uses for existing skills" section for balance and concentration, and a section on simplifying jump checks.

There is also a section providing optional effects of characters with high speed. If the character's speed is sufficient, the character may make tumble checks to do things like run up walls or across water.

Finally, the chapter has a decent selection of new magic items. As you might expect, many of the new items are weapons. There are several new weapon abilities such as blinding, indestructable, matched pair (removes two handed penalties when created as a pair and both weapons have this ability) or stunning. The author is even sharp enough to not require abilities that do not directly impact the weapon's combat effectiveness a market price modifier that is applied as a bonus to the weapon's plus for cost purposes.

Other interesting items include the braid blade (a blade that can be wielded when worn in a long braid of hair; it seemed like this one deserved an exotic weapon proficiency), Belt of the Monkey (once per day allows the character to imitate another feat the character sees used), and the Cloak of Shadow Boxing (allows you to conujure a weaker duplicate of yourself from your shadow that can engage in combat.)

Appendix and Index

The appendix contains statistics for a stock Martial Artist NPC, with statistics for characters from 1st to 20th level. It was nice to see this bit of support, but it is slightly flawed. Unlike the NPCs in the DMG, the stock martial artist doesn't use the default array. Also, the stock martial artist lists a speed increase, which was not included in the final version of the Martial Artist.

The index contains a listing of all the classes, feats, and other options in the book. Each option has a little circle with which the GM can indicate which of these is being used. This is a minor enhancement, but potentially useful.

Conclusion

Although I felt this book was a bit on the expensive side for a PDF, if you have a taste for Asian style martial arts, this book is definitely worth a look. Though I have some reservations about the Martial Artist class, in the right sort of campaign, it should fill the bill of a martial arts flick style warrior rather well. Further, the fact that they support the book with such details as class combos, starting packages, and stock NPCs support it well.

The real strength of the book is the feats. If you have a hankering for exotic fighting styles in your game, it is hard to go wrong. Though there are a few feats I wouldn't use in my game, I found the hit/miss ratio of the feats to be higher than most print products.

All this is shored up by a nice selection of options and ideas that you should definitely consider if you are thinking about making a wild martial arts style campaign.

-Alan D. Kohler

 

[Nail]

'Fraid I didn't understand yer comment here:

"The author is even sharp enough to not require abilities that do not directly impact the weapon's combat effectiveness a market price modifier that is applied as a bonus to the weapon's plus for cost purposes."

Duh.......Huh??

-Nail

 

[Psion]

Okay,

Basically, weapon abilities that affect the combat effectiveness of the weapon directly are added to the weapons total "plus" for the purpose of cost, and this number is used on the cost table for weapons in the DMG. For example, the "blinding" ability is add +2 to the weapon's plus for determining its cost. Thus a +3 blinding weapon is treated as +5 for the purposes of cost, which costs 50,000 gp plus the base price of the weapon.

OTOH, the indestructable weapon special ability doesn't directly affect the weapon's combat ability. Instead of a modifier to the weapon's plus, it has a cost modifier of 30,000 regardless of the base plus of the weapon. This is the FIRST third party product that I have seen to do that right; most such publishers treat such abilities as adding to the plus of the weapon.

 

[Chainmail Bikini]

Thanks for the detailed review!

I just want to add that there is an errata and FAQ file now that addresses a few minor problems, including the ones brought up by Psion. You can get it from our web site at http://www.chainmailbikini.com/products.html or download it directly from http://www.chainmailbikini.com/files/bm-errata-faq.pdf . We're going to get it added to the product download at rpgnow.com as soon as possible, and will apply the errata to the main PDF at some later date.

James Garr
Chainmail Bikini Games, Ltd.
http://www.chainmailbikini.com

 

[Bob]

This is an excellent product! The content is very useful, and the rules are well balanced.
The best part of it is the Martial Artist class. The Martial Artist is the kind of class I've
been looking for, the game has been lacking in unarmored,more skill oriented warriors.
There are many new feats that add flavor and variety to combat. It's impressive to see
new feats that aren't redundant considering the multitude of sources out there for feats.
Even if you don't run an oriental campaign the material is all still perfectly usable. I expect
much use of this book in my usual medieval D&D game.
In closing I'd like to say that I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS BOOK!!!

 

[Messageboard Golem]

This comment is directed to Chainmail Bikini's last comment. Where can potential customers find out when you have made the changes to the main PDF product? If I was to purchase this, it would definitely be after the download is updated.

BTW, Any similarity to of my User Name to anyone else's User Name is *purely* coincidental.

 

[Chainmail Bikini]

Chainmail:

There will be an announcement on our website at http://www.chainmailbikini.com.

Our current plan is to release a large web enhancement for Beyond Monks for free on our website at some future date, probably late this year. After that, we'll apply the errata to Beyond Monks and add the web enhancement to the main PDF and release it as a revised edition. My best guess is next year. We may also release it as a printed product next year, but that is up in the air. Sorry to be so vague, but right now we're focused on our next product, Call of Duty, and honestly don't know.

For further inquiries, please e-mail us at help@chainmailbikini.com or post at The Obligatory Tavern at our website, http://www.chainmailbikini.com , since we don't check the review posts for questions frequently.

 

[RangerWickett]

I received a free copy of Beyond Monks from James Garr, the author, in exchange for the review and the chance to use the OGC drinking rules in one of my company's products. Though we decided to use our own original rules for alcohol, I'm still keeping up my end of the bargain, albeit belatedly.

Since other reviewers have already covered some of the necessary details of outlining what's in the book, I'll focus more on my comments about the book. Look to Psion's review if you want a more thorough listing of the exact classes, feats, and so on.

My overall impression is that this is a nice book, but that it could have done better. The introduction by the author made me anticipate that there would be a lot of detailed suggestions on how to run wuxia campaigns. For those of you unaware, wuxia is a genre of Asian film which showcases extravagant martial arts abilities that are impossible in real life, sort of like the popular "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" (flying, running across tree tops, grabbing people's spears and flipping the person holding them into the air, etc.). It's a very flashy and dramatic form of storytelling, and I was hoping Beyond Monks would be filled with not just rules, but advice for running such games. Since the introduction emphasized not just cool martial arts, but particularly the wuxia genre, I read this book with the expectation that it would have a lot of information on that genre.

By the way, that's pronounced Woo-shya, not Wuks-ee-a.

*Visual Style, Design, and Layout*
As is the case with many pdf releases, this book is not particularly impressive visually. The cover image has a non-dramatic image of a woman martial artist kicking a foe in one direction while swinging a small table at another foe in the opposite direction. In addition to being an awkward pose, the scene lacks energy, which is something vital to the wuxia genre, and to martial arts in general. Similarly, the interior art is fairly bland. None of it is bad, but most of the images lack the dynamism you'd expect for a topic that shares a lot of flavor with anime and manga. This art doesn't detract from the book, but it does fail to generate any sort of vigorous intensity that makes you want to make a character and have him wail on a few NPCs.

The actual layout of the text is fine. A few times the font is a little too small to read on screen, which is what I usually do, but when printed I'm sure it would look fine. I think a few more visual elements could have made the text a little more readable; as it was, nothing really made me want to keep looking at any given page, so I was apt to skim a lot until I forced myself to read passages. Much of the layout is just text with plain, thin-line boxes for sidebars. Though this certainly cuts down on the effort of printing the text, the sparseness of visual designs fails to take advantage of the pdf medium. The book could just as well have been a simple .rtf or .doc file.

The final point I’d like to make about the presentation is that it was difficult, on the first read-through, to know what many of the classes were talking about. The martial artist class and the prestige class section often referenced the feats that appeared much later in the book. It would have made an easier read if the feats had come first.

Presentation Score: 2. Though the book itself states it is mostly bare-bones rules, for the subject matter it certainly would have benefited from a more detailed visual design.

*Rules Material*
Beyond Monks does a fine job handling just martial arts; the martial artist class is a fine addition to your game, and is generally well-balanced with other classes. I personally would not have made a new class, and instead would have just made most of the class abilities and martial arts secrets be available as fighter feats that require the character to be unarmored, but there's no reason not to use the martial artist.

Similarly, the prestige classes are great. I haven't watched nearly as many wuxia movies as I'd like to have, but I can imagine that most of these classes were inspired from impressive characters in those films. My personal favorite from the group is the Blood Hunter, a character who makes a pact with a vampire to gain power, and who eventually has the option to kill his master and gain even greater power. The concept of a tainted character who draws power from dark forces is classic in wuxia and anime, and I loved seeing it here. I'm also intrigued by the Ghost Killer, a sort of undead-turning monk who is bonded with spirits. Some of the prestige classes are a little lumpy, in that there are spans of several levels where no powers are gained, or some of the powers are explained poorly when they could've been streamlined to make for faster play. Again, in a style of play that emphasizes speed and drama, I think this is a strike against the book. The rules design is well-inspired and quite creative, but not quite refined enough to seem wholly professional. However, though the rules are still a little rough around the edges, the classes are certainly usable in play, and I'm sure future products by Garr and Chainmail Bikini Games will just get better.

The feats section is the main flair of this book, as I _did_ actually want to make a character and use some of these feats, because they're very cool. Like Psion said in his review, a few seem kind of pointless or excessively weak (Expert Disarm lets you do something you already can do with the core rules), some of them are quite inspiring, especially those that are animal-based. Things like Eagle Strike or Mongoose Strike capture that dramatic feel of high-flying martial arts, and certain ones like Drunken Stance are straight out of wuxia. Anything that is so impossible that only someone in The Matrix could pull it off (like moving so fast you give yourself concealment from your own blur) is okay in my book. Now, some of the feats should've been taken out, or just listed in a section on Unorthodox Fighting, or some such, but a lot of them are a great hook to base your martial artist character on.

The martial arts styles. . . . I'll agree with Psion and say that it would be better to have high-end feats that require lots of prerequisites but provide a cool bonus, than to have a free bonus you get just from synergy from other feats. I definitely like the concept of a lot of the styles, and many of them are really impressive (things like Elvish fencing, which let you make an attack of opportunity against a foe if he misses you badly), but they should've just been normal feats. The idea is sound, though, and I'm thinking of doing something similar myself based on spell synergies, where knowing enough spells of a particular type qualifies you for special mastery feats.

Finally, there's the New Options section, which I'll cover half here, and half in the *Game Running Advice* section below. There are things here like variant improvised weapons, rules for drunken fighting, and new uses of skills. Most of them are fairly interesting (Monty Python fans, pay special attention to the note about using a herring as an improvised weapon), and even the drunken fighting section is good, despite the fact that I use a different system for alcohol. This is a more dramatic and flashy type of drinking, which works for the needs of this book. The new items are especially cool, inspiring me to make villains who use some of these things in future games, if for no other reason than to show PCs that it's much cooler to use Elvish Fighting Sticks (think tonfas) instead of just a standard longsword. There's not that many, sadly, and I think that if CBG ever decides to release an add-on, they should rent about 90 wuxia films and make sure to have rules for every type of freaky weapon they see. I'd love to see more.

Just a few final notes. What's OGC and what isn't is not very clear, since it is up to the reader to decide what they mean by "text descriptions of the prestige classes." Does that mean the whole description? Just the flavor text? How much is description and how much is rules. Also, a few of the powers are contradictory (e.g., surge increases your speed, but says you cannot increase beyond 50 ft. per round, so this power is meaningless for certain characters, like multiclassing monks or certain races).

Rules Score: 3.5. Some cool pieces here and there, marred by a few real clunkers. Nothing is truly innovative enough to rate higher than a 4, and even the good stuff could have used a rewrite to make it clearer.

*Game Running Advice*
This is where the book most disappoints me. Though Chapter Four does have advice for running fast games and speeding along the story instead of worrying about minutiae, it doesn't provide enough information on how to do things like create wuxia-style adventures, what the main themes and cliches of martial arts stories are, examples of fast-paced martial arts adventures, or coming up with dramatic fight locations. Beyond Monks has the rules for creating characters to fill these stories, but not enough advice or examples of how these types of stories differ from standard D&D fare. I would have liked to see guidelines for running anime-inspired games, or techno-modern adventures like The One or The Matrix, and at least some information on how the myths of Asia differ from the myths of Europe.

Application Score: 2.

*Conclusion*
Beyond Monks tells you clearly that it is going to be more of a rules sourcebook than a campaign guidebook, and I think that's where it falls short. You can't have a thorough book about dramatic martial arts without providing the flavor of those martial arts. On rules alone, I’d give the book about a 3.5, since there's no really new concepts here, just new feats, classes, and prestige classes, and what is there is occasionally rough and unpolished. Taking into account the price of the book, and the fact that it doesn't really provide a sense of the type of game it is trying to help you play, I have to drop the rating to slightly below a 3. Since it's a pdf, though, and many pdf-buyers prefer to get content over form, I don't want to criticize its design too harshly.

Though many people just want crunchy bits, I think any book for a game based on storytelling and adventure should be a dramatic work of art in and of itself, and Beyond Monks just is too bare. Even pdfs do not have the excuse to sacrifice style, and for the price, I think CBG could have done better. However, since I know many people won't be as nitpicky as I am over some of these details, I'll rate the book as average.

 

[Simon Collins]

This is not a playtest review.

Beyond Monks is a d20 martial arts accessory, the first release from Chainmail Bikini Games.

Its not cheap for a .pdf release - $8 for 67 pages, which includes a completely blank page. Its 2.41 MB reflects the limited art in the product and it is limited in both amount and quality. Though the 'front cover' (showing a woman connecting with fist and foot against two enemies) is average, the remainder of the art would have been better left out altogether. I found the quality of writing to be mediocre, particularly when discussing non-rules issues, but the editing seems fairly good.

Beyond Monks begins with the new Martial Artist full class, designed to be the physical combat equivalent to the more spiritual Monk class and exemplify the wuxia genre. I thought the class very playable, though the class features did include some spiritual abilities and supernatural powers that the initial description had implied would be missing. However, the class does concentrate on physical abilities and martial arts weapon skills. I particularly liked the fact that there are no alignment or multiclassing restrictions so the martial artist can be multiclassed freely with other classes. Like the fighter, the martial artist is strengthened by bonus feats, though they are restricted to martial arts style feats described later in the accessory.

Ten prestige classes are presented:
* Armor Pugilist - extreme training hardens the natural armour class and helps resist energy damage.
* Blade Artist - dagger specialist combined with martial arts, obsessed with personalised weapon.
* Blood Hunter - learns a martial arts style from a vampire, must be evil.
* Crooked Monk - spends his life attempting to experience something new as often as possible, very chaotic and probably very annoying in a group. Can also stretch limbs.
* Ghost Killer - aims to put undead to rest with the advice of a patron ancestral spirit.
* Ki Blaster - uses ki as a remote energy attack.
* Psynergist - combines psionics and ki use.
* Storm Lord - learns to harness the raw power of nature in terms of lightning, rain, wind and frost.
* Sylvan Monk - learn to avoid attacks by bending reality such that the attack was never going to hit them. Practice in natural settings, hence the name.
* Tanterist - uses specialised knowledge of the human anatomy to heal or attack.
The prestige classes use a mixture of 5 and 10 levels. Some of the prestige classes have a nice touch by giving an example NPC for them.

The next section includes over 80 new feats related to martial arts. As noted in previous reviews, and by the author himself, not all these are comparatively balanced, with some weak and some strong. However, there is a useful index at the back of the book that allows a GM to tick which feats will be allowed in her campaign, which can be shown to the players. This is based on the premise that the GM should limit the available feats to those which she feels happy with.

Further to the feats is a section entitled Style Mastery Feats. These are specialised martial arts styles with other feats as prerequisites. For example, the 'One Against Many' style mastery feat grants free access to the Whirlwind Attack feat, but requires Combat Reflexes, Dodge, Expertise, Flash Attack, Improved Dodge, Improved Unarmed Strike, and Mobility first. Once these feats have been gained, the character can automatically take the style mastery feat without using a slot for it. There is also advice for designing your own style mastery feats.

The next section gives advice on multiclass archetypes, something which I first came across in Star Wars Gamer magazine, and I like the idea. It uses the freedom of being able to multiclass classes from the PHB with the martial artist class, to produce an archetypal character concept. For example, mixing levels of Sorcerer and Martial Artist gives you the Mystic Warrior archetype, who can perform feats of flying (similar to that in 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon') as well as benefiting from other spells mixed with the toughness of the martial arts class. Good advice regarding the advantages and disadvantages of the archetype, as well as ways to power-up the archetype are give. To a certain extent for munchkins, but shows a good understanding of the d20 rules and gives some neat ideas for realising a character concept, which could enhance roleplaying. Other archetypes include the Beast Observer (Barbarian/Martial Artist) which uses fighting styles that mimic animals, Ninja (Rogue/Martial Artist), Temple Guardian (Cleric/Martial Artist), and Weapon Master (Fighter/Martial Artist).

The next section gives advice on customising the Monk class. Most of the tweaking that is recommended is sacrificing one or more of the Monk's class features for bonus feats from the Martial Artist lists. Advice is also given for designing monk organisations in your campaign and an optional rule is discussed for relaxing the multiclassing rule for Monks.

The next section aims to give rules and advice for speeding up game play to approximate the films that the accessory uses as its source material. This is all fairly general stuff and some of it is probably being used by most DMs already, such as pacing, reduced bookkeeping, and getting players to help whilst other such as instant magical item identification, rapid healing and maximum hit points are probably best left for the combat-orientated martial arts game only.

There are also rules for using improvised weapons with plenty of advice for ways to encourage the use of these to enhance combats. There is a table with the approximate weapon from the PHB to be used as guidelines for stats with some notes on tweaking to better reflect the individual item.

There follows some basic rules for drunken fighting, and some ideas for new uses of old skills and speed special effects, such as running up a vertical surface and across water.

Finally, there are a number of magical items and martial arts weapons described, as well as some new weapon special abilities. An appendix gives tables and stats for quickly throwing together an NPC Martial Artist.

Conclusion:
This accessory is short on presentation, in terms of art, quality of writing and background/setting information. I know very little about wuxia films and I didn't learn a lot more about the themes and settings, or gain many adventure ideas from this accessory.

However, thats not what Beyond Monks is about. Its about rules expansions and allowing martial arts to become playable in any campaign setting. And to this end, it achieved much of what it set out to do. Much of the atmosphere in martial arts films comes from the fighting styles and stunts, and the rules provided here allow those aspects to be recreated using the d20 rules.

If you want to introduce a detailed martial arts system into your campaign I highly recommend this accessory. If you want to create a wuxia campaign, Beyond Monks gives you the combat rules but none of the setting or themes to do it (and it would have been better for doing so). In tandem with another setting accessory, Beyond Monks could also be a worthwhile purchase. Hopefully, Chainmail Bikini Games will give a little more thought to their presentation in their next release.