The Monk in 1E

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In AD&D 1E, the monk is a subclass of the thief.  It is extremely difficult to qualify as a monk.  Characters must have a minimum strength, wisdom, and dexterity of 15 each along with a constitution of at least 11.  Even though TSR eventually came out with the book Oriental Adventures and the modules attached with it, I think this character was always meant to emulate Shaolin monks from all those kung fu movies that were out around the time this game was being developed.

Let's start with some information on the monk character class.  First it can get to a maximum of 17th level.  It uses 4-sided die for hit points, although it starts with 2 four-sided die for hit points at first level.  Monks attack and make saving throws on the thief table.  They must be of lawful alignment although it can be good, neutral, or evil.  They may not use armor and are restricted to using one of the following weapons: bo sticks, clubs, crossbows, daggers, hand axes, javelins, jo sticks, poke arms, spears, or staves.

In addition to weapons and armor, there are a ton of restrictions for monks:
1. No dexterity bonuses for armor class
2. No strength bonuses to hit or for damage
3. No experience point bonuses for superior ability scores
4. Monks may only retain enough money to support henchmen and their modest needs, all else must be given away.
5. Monks may have two magic weapons and three other magic items (restricted to rings and those magic items usable by thieves - none others)
6. Monks cannot hire hirelings until the 6th level and then only two for the duration of an adventure
7. There can only be a certain number of monks beyond the seventh level
8. Due to their training, at the first level monks have an armor class of 10, which improves by 1 for every level gained after that.  Remember, they can't use their dexterity bonus on their armor class.

So why would anyone want to be a monk?  Here's where that gets interesting:
1. For each level of the monk, they add +0.5 hit points of damage when using a weapon
2. Ability to save versus petrification to dodge missiles
3. Open handed combat, which can stun or kill opponents.  
4. Multiple open handed attacks per found.  Eventually 4 per round each doing 8-32 hit points of damage with a great chance of stunning or killing an opponent!
5. Tremendous movement speed.  Starts at 15" for first level and can advance to 32" by 17th level.
6. Armor class starts out terrible (10 at first level) but could become -3 by 17th level.
7. Thief abilities (open locks, find/remove traps, move silently, hide in shadows, hear noise, climb walls) as a thief of the same level.
8. At 4th level a monk can survive a fall from 20' high without damage, 6th level it's 30', and 13th level it's any distance.
9. Special abilities that begin at level 3 and are added to for subsequent levels until level 13.  These include speaking with animals, mask the mind, immune to disease/haste/slow spells, appear dead, heal damage to themself once per day, speak with plants, beguiling/charm/hypnosis/suggestion spell resistance, resistance to telepathic and mind blast attacks, immune to poison, resistance to geas/quest spells, and quivering palm.  

So as you can see, if a monk can survive the first few levels there is a lot of potential and power in this class.  However, it's important to play it with all the strictures and to weave that in the story.  For example, monks would be part of an order, that order might have its own agenda, and monks may be acting on instructions from their order.





 

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