An idea for balancing dragon monk worshipping Gaea

[SilverNexus]

I know there has been a bit of discussion on how to balance the combination of a Gaea-worshipping dragon monk. I haven't heard as much recently, but I haven't seen anything that decisively led to its resolution. Most of the discussion has involved prevention of dragons from becoming monks, which is in direct contradiction to the openness of Crossfire's class/race selection and development. I think I may have found a way to balance the combination without preventing any class/race combos. Since most normal races can't use weapons as a monk, maybe dragons who are monks can't use their claws for combat for similar reasons. In function, their claws are as lethal as forged weapons; they are just part of the their bodies.

In essence, dragon monks refuse to use their claws to further a combat advantage. Their default attack becomes karate and they lose quite a few advantages, to be honest. They don't gain the extra attacktypes in their claws (well they do, but they can't use them), making a heavier reliance on magic an important factor for dragon monks. This should better offset the extra stat bonuses granted by the monk class.

Worshipping Gaea would still stack the no-weapons effect, but a dragon monk would not be able to just run over whatever stood in their way because of numerous attacktypes in their claws and the overall boost in stats from selecting the monk class. It would encourage a wider use of various skills to achieve different attacktypes, rather than just using clawing like nothing is different from normal.