Monk, Way of Shao Kung

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The Warriors of Jian-tu-di

Warriors of the Jian-tu-di Kingdom have honed and perfected the skill of their martial arts in all forms of combat.

Way of Shao Kung

Monks are famous for their skills as warriors and martial artists. The monks that follow the Way of Shao Kung devote themselves to the study and perfection of forms of different animals and creatures. These forms give a monk powers and abilities by channeling ki through the movements and style of a creature.

The Forms of the Wild

When you choose this tradition at 3rd level, you learn martial stances that harness the power of animals in the wild. A stance may be activated when you roll initiative and as a bonus action on your turn, and only one stance is usable at a time. You must leave a stance in order to regain the benefit of a stance activation affect. For example, you cannot be in Crane stance and use your bonus action to change to Crane stance to regain the activation bonus.

You learn two stances at 3rd, 6th, and 11th levels. You learn one stance at 17th level. When a form stance ability requires a saving throw the DC for the save is set the same as your Ki saving throw calculation.

At 6th level, when you start your turn in a stance and change to a different stance during your turn, you gain a bonus of 10 feet to your movement speed for the current turn.

At 11th level, you may use your reaction, triggered by an attack targeting you, to change your stance. You gain the benefit of the new stance immediately and for the triggering attack.

At 17th level, you may change your stance after making two attack rolls on your turn. You cannot use the same stance more than once on a turn.

Form Stances

The stances are presented in alphabetal order. If a stance requires a level, you must be that level in this class to learn the stance.

Bear (11th Level Required) When you activate this stance you gain a bonus to your movement speed of 20 feet until the end of the turn. While you have this extra movement, you may move through another creature's space as normal.

While in this stance, if you hit a target with both attacks granted by your Flurry of Blows, the target must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw or be considered slowed until the end of the targets next turn. While slowed, the creature's speed is halved, it takes a -2 penalty to AC and Dexterity saving throws, and it can’t use reactions. On its turn, it can use either an action or a bonus action, not both. Regardless of the creature’s abilities or magic items, it can’t make more than one melee or ranged attack during its turn.

Cobra When you activate this stance, you gain a bonus to the range of your unarmed strikes of 5 feet until the end of your next turn.

While in this stance, if you hit a target with both attacks granted by your Flurry of Blows, the target must succeed on a Constitution saving throw or be blinded or unable to speak, your choice, until the end of its next turn.

Crane When you activate this stance, ranged attacks made against you are made at disadvantage until the end of your next turn.

While you are in this stance, your Flurry of Blows changes to allow you to attack with ranged or thrown monk weapons. If you hit a creature with both attacks granted by flurry of blows in this way, the creature must succeed on a Constitution saving throw or have a penalty to its attack rolls equal to your Wisdom modifier until the end of its next turn.

Dragon (17th Level Required) When you activate this stance, each creature that you choose within 30 feet of you and aware of your presence must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw or become frightened of you for 1 minute. A creature can repeat the saving throw at the end of of each its turns, ending the effect on itself on a success. A creature that successfully saves is immune to this fear affect for 24 hours.

While you are in this stance, you gain a bonus to your armor class equal to your Consitution modifier. Also, while in this stance you can spend three ki points when you hit a target with an attack to empower it. When you spend these points, the target looses six of its hit dice, and takes the damage rolled from those hit dice. You heal half of the damage caused by this empowerment to your hit points. You can only empower one hit in this way once per turn.