The World of Avlis

I was looking through the DnD 3rd Ed. Players Handbook the other day, and noticed there are a few special abilities obtained by monks that do not exist in NWN.

Now I know that NWN will never be the same as PnP, and that these abilities wouldn't really be usable in outside of some DM lovin', but do monks in Avlis gain any of these? Just curious, and thanks in advance

-A

Slow Fall: at lvl 4 you can use a wall within arms reach to slow a fall and take damage as if it were 20 ft lower. At 18th lvl no harm is done.

Abundant Step: at lvl 12 use dimension door 1/day, using 1/2 the monks level as the caster level. (hey, had to ask )

Tongue of the Sun and Moon: at 17th lvl the monk is able to speak with any living creature.

Coding another feat into an existing class, like we did with the detect evil ability for paladins, is not that easy. And since we don't go into cheesing this stuff, there better be both: a good reason and way to do this.

Achm3d wrote: Slow Fall: at lvl 4 you can use a wall within arms reach to slow a fall and take damage as if it were 20 ft lower. At 18th lvl no harm is done.

NWN has no z-axis; up or down doesn't really exist scriptwise, so there is no way to animate this. There is also no way for a PC to jump or fall of a cliff or something to use this power, unless a scripter somehow codes it into a certain area and then it would only work for that area. So I don't think this will be useful in NWN, even if you would have that power.

Achm3d wrote: Abundant Step: at lvl 12 use dimension door 1/day, using 1/2 the monks level as the caster level. (hey, had to ask )

Ok, you code a universally working and balanced teleport spell for NWN and we'll consider giving it to the monk class as an ability.

Achm3d wrote: Tongue of the Sun and Moon: at 17th lvl the monk is able to speak with any living creature.

You can already do this. Everbody on Avlis usually speaks common, so it's no real issue. The rest would just need to be worked out among players. No way you can effectively code this without loading complete glossaries into the Avlis DBase, and we're not about to go there.

I think the question was not whether they could be scripted. The question was whether monks get them at all. EG, would it be appropriate for a 20th level monk to send a tell to somebody speaking elvish asking them for a quick translation to reflect the Tongue of Sun and Moon... etc.

Well, I'm not staff, but I have some strong feelings about this, so I'll respond anyway:

1) The Tongue of Sun and Moon ability says that the monk can speak to any living creature, not that he can understand any living creature. This may not be how the rule is intended to be, but that is what it says. Additionally, since they don't get it as a feat, I'm likely to tell the monk asking about elvish in your example nothing unless the monk was also elvish.

2) Falling isn't possible in NWN...therefore, anyone who says, "I push you off a cliff!" is ignorable without any special feat.

3) The dimension door spell doesn't exist in NWN, so nobody loses by not having it as a spell or special feat.

Just my thoughts, like I said, I'm not staff.

Hmm...seems there is some confusion. I wasn't asking for scripted feats or anything crazy like that, because the mentioned feats do not blend well with the game system.

What I meant was, like Brick stated, if a DM or a PC came up and started speaking in another language would the monk understand? It says "can speak with any living creature", which seems to imply full communication. As for the Slow Fall and Abundant Step, I know it will never be implemented short of a Z axis and teleportation, but I had to ask for the sake of principle alone.

Thanks anyway, and I'm working on that flawless and balanced teleportation code*

-A

*thats a lie, I have no knowlege of code, nor am I a programing student.

Malathyre wrote:1) The Tongue of Sun and Moon ability says that the monk can speak to any living creature, not that he can understand any living creature.

This sounds a little too simple to me. If you ask someone whether they speak french, you don't ask them whether they also understand french; you take speaking and understanding into one package. How can one speak a language without understanding it. Ergo, how can one speak to any creature without understanding it. It would be a VERY one-sided conversation, don't you think?

I'd say it would be very logical for a high-level monk to be able to get at least a grasp of the drift of the conversation, if not the whole translation. That is the SPIRIT of the ability, if not the LETTER.

M.

I think the reason Sindol was talking about scripting was to point out that character feats that aren't in the game would have to be cheesed, and the Avlis staff doesn't want to get into regulating that. For example, with Tongue of the Sun and Moon, it would be tough for the DMs to keep track of which characters are monks and of those, which are of sufficient level to have that feat, and then monitor conversations to see which characters behave properly. I'm sure that wasn't what you had in mind anyway, but basically, if the team can't regulate something, they won't post a ruling on it.

A somewhat related example, is (rarely) you'll see folks with characters typing something along the lines of /dwarvish/ and then dialog to simulate their character speaking in the dwarvish language. This is also cheesing, but in general a good kind, and folks are usually willing to keep in the spirit of role-play - some folks play as if they don't understand it, and some do. But I doubt the staff would try to force people to react to that type of dialog one way or another and would leave it up to the players to work it out. I'd suggest you work with the feat "Tongue of the Sun and Moon" in a similar way. Once your monk is high enough level, and you think he should be able to understand everything, I'd feel free to let him understand all the text that appears around him. I've also seen quite a few rangers and druids use "animal messengers" for in-game tells and out-of-game PMs - another bit of harmless cheesing that adds some flavor, and would also be in line for monks with that feat. But like I said, it's a kind of cheesing, and certainly players aren't forced to ignore dialog they see around them, and I don't be surprised if the staff does not make an official statement as to whether or not monks have that ability.

The other feats stray into a different catagory - cheesy things that would be expected to actually affect game-play. A dimension-door-like ability would allow your monk to get out of combat situations, for example, that the NWN engine wouldn't allow. We all do this from time to time with simple things, like *I tie the unconcious bandit's hands behind his back*, and generally everyone will play along with that. A good guideline to follow is that if you're trying to cheese a standard action that anyone could do, it's probably okay to do it (like example above). But if it's an action that's extraordinary, expecially if it requires fairly intimate knowledge of D&D rules that aren't present in NWN, then I wouldn't do it. It'd be too easy for other folks to declare abilities that have no basis in rules, and with the abundance of D&D rules out there, it would be way too much work for DMs to enforce.

Now, if you could encode a good teleport...

Just my (really long-winded) two cents.

Question: PnP monks cannot continue to level as monks once they take level in other classes. In NWN they can. Does Avlis frown on this or not care at all?

Was thinking of having my epic cleric train as a monk for a while, but I'd also like to take all the epic spells. In PnP, this wouldn't be an issue. In NWN, I can only gain epic spells every 3 levels on a general feat. So if I wanted to get them I'd need to take no more than 2 monk levels before switching to a cleric level to get the epic spell.

keikobad wrote:Question: PnP monks cannot continue to level as monks once they take level in other classes. In NWN they can. Does Avlis frown on this or not care at all?

Was thinking of having my epic cleric train as a monk for a while, but I'd also like to take all the epic spells. In PnP, this wouldn't be an issue. In NWN, I can only gain epic spells every 3 levels on a general feat. So if I wanted to get them I'd need to take no more than 2 monk levels before switching to a cleric level to get the epic spell.

They claim to frown on it, but I've seen many people do it with no problems. Fact of the matter is, there's no way for a DM to really tell at a glance if you did or not, based on the spread of your levels. If a DM just so happened to take the initiative to track your career over several levels and noticed, MAYBE they'd do something, but I really doubt it.

Personally, I stick to that PnP rule, thus my main char is a straight monk.

Another side-rule in PnP is that after level 18, Monks stop aging. They will die when their racial life expectancy runs out, but up until that time, they will retain their physical appearance and spryness from whenever they hit level 18, thus you could have a 500 year old Elven monk that looks like he's 40, or a 90 year old human monk that looks like she's 24.

... gotta envy any guy with a high-level monk wife... that's a nice deal right there.

/me waits for all the women players to harangue him...