How do you spice up playing a monk/martial arts character?

How do you spice up playing a monk/martial arts character?
I'd like to play as a martial arts kind of character, but I just find playing monk to be really boring

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Play a system which supports interesting, varied combat, like Legends of the Wulin

Come up with a character who is more than just a set of mechanics, become emotionally invested in his/her survival and have fun?

This is nu/tg/ user, not Veeky Forums.

1. Your profession doesn't have to be the same as your in game class. You can be trained in the ways of the monks, you could have had a tutor, it could just be something your character discovered naturally. Your character could just be applying martial arts techniques from a book he found.

2. Monks IRL spend their time contemplating profound spiritual questions and have to become masters of their minds and bodies. They literally challenge every aspect of their being. Somehow, you can't think of how to make that interesting.

Have you considered you're just shit at making characters?
Everyone is bad at something in the beginning, but improvement requires you realize your actual skill level.
Realistically, you just copy popular depictions from your favorite media and don't really consider their implications or how they tie in to the world you make.

I find physical combat character, at least in D&D, really easy to fit into new characters I want to play.

Last time I played a monk I was a big fat chef on a pirate ship, and I basically just had a big ol' chefs apron of knives I'd use in combat.

If you can explain why you could be considered to have a monk skill set than you can play it. that's usually how I do thins in my games.

Ludonarrative dissonance.

Off the bat monks are more interesting to describe battling than any other martial. I'm not saying you can't describe combat in an interesting way as other martials but think about it: with any martial you have to hit with your weapon; as a monk your whole body is your weapon.

You can headbutt, punch, kick, elbow, poke with finger, jump kick, sweep, uppercut, jab, chop, etc. And thats just off the top of my head. Not to mention all the places you can hit on your opponent, "i punch him in the sarcophagus", etc.

Basically you must be pretty fuckin uncreative.

>"I punch him in the sarcophagus"

Where do I go to become a monk in real life?

I have space monks that use power armor to defend their monasteries. because of the suit and the low gravity of the moon they're on they can basically go full one punch man on any intruders.

A monastery.
They'll probably not take you.
They only accept people who have things to lose by joining. You have to have your life together.
It's a difficult life, full of prayer and labor. You also gotta be smart.
Just go to one near you. There's bound to be a few. There was a sort of field trip we'd go on every year with the class. I didn't exactly make friends with the monks, but we knew each other. Real nice people. Obviously high level. Probably can do magic but choose not to.

You could do some research into actual martial arts styles, how a character fights can say a lot about them. Find a real-world fighting style that suits the kind of person you imagine your character being, look up forums about it, watch videos of forms and sparring sessions, really get a feel for how your character moves and approaches combat.

Any person, event or story is instantly rendered better (or spicy) by the inclusion of bagpipes.

did he kick his leg off?

If you aren't having fun, you're doing it wrong. Monks aren't there to deal damage and such, but they're the kinds of guys that fight unfairly.
Swing from a chandelier, push guys off of a ledge, trip people. Use your imagination.

This
Watch some Samurai Champloo and see how Mugen moves around in a fight. That's how monk should move, always in a flow, using the environment and doing dumb-cool shit.
youtube.com/watch?v=csvfN3rLos8

>Swing from a chandelier, push guys off of a ledge, trip people. Use your imagination.
I find it amusing how you say to use your imagination yet give the same swinging from chandeliers example everyone has used since first edition. You'd think it'd get stale after thirty years.

You know these cinematic instances never translate well to turn based tabletop, especially if there's no mechanics to actually support it. Saying "I jump off the wall to get more momentum" just to deal the same basic attack you would've otherwise is both boring and disappointing.

or at the very least listen to it's soundtrack
Make a Monk who's all about the flow and the soul and shit
youtu.be/OJNWvjGhBxs
youtu.be/wnr3wZPf18A
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work it out with your dm to give you some tiny bonuses if you can think of something fun
it's a game build on words and imagination, I dunno why everybody always trying to make it more like a rigid video game, what's even the point then

Because people are very bad at creating rules on the fly and will either make a thing way too powerful or way too weak, and rarely want to put in the added effort of a thought out homebrew just so one character playing a known to be shitty class can have fun.

a single player makes up to 25% of the whole game experience. What's the point of trying to make what supposed to be a rather intimate creative experience between a very small number of people into something more generic
>Because people are very bad at creating rules on the fly
+1 to X value
easy

That's a pretty dull houserule, 3/10 would not play game with

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