Assassins & Monks

[oldkat]

I seem to recall hearing from several old timers (perhaps the Kask, Ward, Mornard or even EGG himself) that the Monk class that eventually appeared in Blackmoor, was pretty much the dream and concoction of Brian Blume.

I don't seem to recall hearing anything about the Assassin.
The BM assassin class is, imo, more useable than the one that eventually manifested in AD&D; as far as players go.
Debatable or not, a couple of things have me wondering:

1) Did D.A. actually cook this thing up for his campaign, or not?
2) Was the Apprenticesupposed to be considered 0-level? Perhaps its just bad editing, but the tables show some contrary data. (i.e., Maximum HD Number, p.6 shows a cap of 13, but when assigned 1 HD per level, there should be 14 at Guild Master. Also, p.4 states that "Any 12th level assassin (Prime Assassin) may challenge the Guildmaster..." but a 12th level assassin as shown would be the Chief; or else, as I suspect, the tables/data are riddled with minor mistakes.)

[Finarvyn]

I think the monk was also inspired by the DESTROYER book series by Warren Murphy and Richard Sapier. The first book (Created, the Destroyer) was written in 1971, which would make this feasable.

I hadn't noticed any inconsistencies with the Assassin tables, but I don't have folks play Assassin characters much. I'll have to go re-read those passages.

[aldarron]

Eh. I still don't know.

Have a look at this thread and scroll down to the post by Cedgewick, where he quotes a question I asked Kask.
link

Dave said (on this board actually) that there were monks in Blackmoor. There certainly are "monks" in the Temple of the Frog, but they are nothing like the Supp II class. Dave may have submitted some kind of monk material but the class is probably mostly, and perhaps completely, Brian Blume's.

Judging from Arneson's class list in the FFC, two classes Dave submitted for the supplement were the Sage and the Assassin. I've never heard of anybody playing/playtesting these classes in early Blackmoor, so I think they were largely thought experiments on Arneson's part. The closest thing I know of is that Dave Megarry played a character who was a "thief", but that was before the Greyhawk thief class and I doubt it is really related. Merchants are another FFC class, and who knows, maybe merchant got switched into monk by Blume.

Sage, as you know, was turned into an NPC by someone (prolly Kask) at TSR.

Assassin was no doubt inspired by "Assassins of Gor".

Kask claims to have substantially rewritten both Sage and Assassin, but then takes no responsibility for Monk, curiously enough. For what it is worth, I think Assassin saw more of Kask's tinkering than Sage (He created the assassination table, he says), and that may have something to do with the discrepancies you noted. In other words, info he changed in the description, he may have neglected to change in lists elsewhere.

[Stormcrow]

Figure out which of them liked watching Kung Fu and you figure out who invented the monk class, I bet.

[Starbeard]

Raising the dead here.

Blackmoor (Suppl 2), page 1 regarding the monk's open hand damage:

"2. damage otherwise done is determined on a special table (see STATISTICS REGARDING CLASSES), and monks of higher levels may make multiple attacks during a melee round (see STATISTICS REGARDING CLASSES) - for example if a Grand Master (6th level) is fighting without weapon against an opponent whose dexterity is not of the highest or who is not magically aided the monk will attack twice for each attack his opponent is allowed."

Does anyone know what Brian Blume was referring to regarding the bold part? I'm not even sure I understand it, or even if he's inferring a rule or absentmindedly referring to the house rules of someone's particular game (Gary's? Dave's?).