Monks and Swashbucklers

In giving further thought to warrior monks it came to me that they are really not all that different to swashbucklers.

Both are fighters who dedicate themselves to perfecting their art. Both wear little if any armour. Both adhere to a code of proper conduct, even when it works to their disadvantage. Both have martial and acrobatic abilities beyond those of common warriors.

This makes me think that perhaps what I am actually trying to capture is the flashy, lightly armed fighter, who dedicates himself to training. So i think I will abandon Chi powers and magic for my monks and instead concentrate on their martial abilities.

I am thinking of a Talent for acrobatic fighting based on the highest of Speed, Dexterity or Luck. This talent would allow for dodgeing blows, fighting while balancing on furniture, tightropes, beams etc, swinging down into melee, disarming opponents etc. SR level would be the opponent's level or 1/10 MR.

Other options I am considering include a weapons type specialization allowing for parrying, disarming opponents and increased Adds when using weapons of that type.

The unarmed and unarmoured combat options I outlined previously still seem to work reasonably well.

I still am not absolutely convinced that this needs to be a new character type, it may evolve into a package that can be added to one of the existing types to produce a swashbuckler or martial artist.

Game design is ever a fluid and evolving thing.