[DL] d20 Martial Artists

[Doug Dawson <dddawson@lpl.arizona.edu>]

Well, my group's played twice now, and while they seem to have enjoyed
themselves, many of them don't like the complexity of the system.
("So, she rolls dice to see how many cards she draws to see how many
 dice she gets to roll for damage?")  Thus, we are considering switching
over to d20.  We understand that we'll lose a lot of the flavor, but
especially considering that we may only play once every month or two,
the familiarity of the base system is a big advantage (we have about
five or six different campaigns running simultaneously: 2 D&D games,
1 d20 Star Wars, Feng Shui, Deadlands, and the very occasional Heavy Gear
game).

All that prologue aside, has anyone looked at the issue of martial
artists in d20 Deadlands?  The obvious possibilities that came to mind
were simply using the Rowdy, with careful feat selection or adding
some additional feats of my own.  The more interesting possibility
would be to simply import the monk class.  Does anyone have any idea
how well-balanced that might be?

More generally, anyone have any suggestions for converting starting
Deadlands characters into d20, as in, what level would they be?  The
party Agency Operative will be rather disappointed if she loses that
status, so I was considering 6th level or so...not to mention that
the party _did_ manage to kill a wendigo (while taking losses themselves).

Thanks for any help.