Quote:
Originally Posted by tbone
Friar Tuck is a pretty good inspiration for a martial artist character who's not a knight, gladiator, etc.
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I seem to recall that St Benedict promoted the idea of teaching boxing to youths so they'd have a way of defending themselves, and if they really insisted, settling disputes, without carrying and habitually drawing knives - teenage male groups with a lot of knives having a rather tragic death rate. One could imagine an alternate history where that led to a legend of monasteries full of fist-fighting monks in the (Swiss) mountains.
I forget where I saw the idea, but
gladiators might be the best candidates to take the role of monk-substitutes in quasi-classical dungeon bash campaigns. Continual combat training, check; enforced ascetic lifestyle, check; lighter armour than is available to close combat fighters in their setting, check; gratuitously weird and exotic combat styles compared to the run of sword-and-board fighters around them, check...
For mystical powers combined with and related to combat training, I guess there's the relationship that apparently existed between Spanish fencing schools and the Hermetic tradition - all very formal and ritualistic. And for that matter,
candomblé and
capoeira may have some links, I understand.