The monk (also mystic) is a playable character class in most editions of the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game. A D&D monk is a fantasy martial artist, specializing in unarmed combat. Publication history Original Dungeons & Dragons In the Men & Magic (1974) booklet from the original Dungeons & Dragons set, "clerics with the right combination of attributes could become monks — implying a religious calling for the monk class. [...] The pinnacle of the monk's power was the quivering palm". The monk as a character class was introduced in 1975's Blackmoor supplement. Shannon Appelcline, author of the Designers & Dragons series, wrote that "Brian Blume is believed to have contributed to Blackmoor, primarily due to one statement by Gary Gygax. In his forward to Oriental Adventures (1985), written ten years after the production of Blackmoor, Gygax claimed that the monk character class was 'inspired by Brian Blume and the book series called The Destroyer'''. Tim Kask offers a more nuanced origin, saying that the monk definitely originated with Dave Arneson, but Brian Blume heard of it and may have adapted it on his own. Kask 'could not tell you how much of what [he] was given for the editing of [Blackmoor] about the Monk PC was Dave's or Brian's'." Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st edition The monk was a main character class in the first edition Players Handbook. The monk was presented as one of the five core classes in the original Players Handbook. In 1981, Philip Meyers argued that "the monk is the weakest of the character classes" in an article published in Dragon Magazine #53 (later reprinted in Best of Dragon, Volume III). Meyers offered an extensive unofficial revision to the class, expanding and strengthening many of its game abilities (for example, increasing the monk's hit dice by 50%, raising the maximum level from 17 to 21, and adding class abilities as a "form of psionic power"). In 1985, the next official revision of the monk appeared as a character class in the first edition Oriental Adventures rulebook, by Gary Gygax and David Cook.E. Gary Gygax, "Preface", Oriental Adventures (1st edition, 1986): "In its early development, the D&D game was supplemented by various booklets, and in one of these the monk, inspired by Brian Blume and the book series called The Destroyer, was appended to the characters playable. So too was this cobbled-together martial arts specialist