Monk — Core Class

The monk turns the body itself into the weapon and the discipline into the edge. Where others armor up and take up steel, the monk strips both away, trusting instead to years of relentless training and an inner energy they have learned to spend like breath. A monk crosses a battlefield in a blur, lands a flurry of strikes before an enemy has finished their first, and is gone again before the counterblow arrives.

It is a path of control above all — over the body, over the breath, over the wellspring of power the tradition calls ki. That mastery buys extraordinary things: leaps that shrug off gravity, blows that stun a foe mid-swing, a stillness that shakes off poison and fear. The monk asks for nothing from the world but time to train, and gives back a fighter who is everywhere and untouchable.

Signature Feature · Level 1

Martial Arts

Your unarmed training is a fighting art in its own right. You can use Dexterity for your Unarmed Strikes and monk weapons, your damage scales up your own Martial Arts die as you grow, and once each turn you can make an extra Unarmed Strike as a Bonus Action — the seed that later blooms into a full Flurry of Blows.

Everything the monk does is built on this: no armor, no blade, just hands and feet honed into something faster and deadlier than either.

Class Features

Level	Feature
1st	Unarmored Defense, Martial Arts
2nd	Ki, Unarmored Movement
3rd	Monastic Tradition
5th	Stunning Strike
20th	Perfect Self

1st Level

Unarmored Defense

Stillness is its own armor. While you wear no armor and wield no Shield, your Armor Class equals 10 + your Dexterity modifier + your Wisdom modifier — poise and perception standing in for plate, and leaving you free to move as the art demands.

2nd Level

Ki

You cultivate a pool of ki points — your inner Focus, equal to your Monk level — to spend on signature techniques: Flurry of Blows (two Unarmed Strikes as a Bonus Action), Patient Defense (Disengage and Dodge), and Step of the Wind (Disengage and Dash, with a longer leap). Your pool refills on a Short or Long Rest, the wellspring every monastic tradition draws upon.

2nd Level

Unarmored Movement

You move like water finding its level. Your Speed increases while you wear no armor — by 10 feet to start, climbing higher as you advance — until, in time, you run across the surface of water and straight up vertical walls without falling. The monk is never where the enemy expects, because the monk is already elsewhere.

3rd Level

Monastic Tradition

You commit to a Tradition that shapes how you wield your ki, gaining features at 3rd, 6th, 11th, and 17th level. The four traditions — the Warrior of Mercy, the Warrior of Shadow, the Warrior of the Elements, and the Way of the Open Hand — are gathered below.

5th Level

Stunning Strike

You learn to strike the body's own switches. When you hit a creature with a melee attack, you can spend a ki point to force a Constitution saving throw — on a failure, the target is Stunned until the end of your next turn, unable to act while your allies close in. Few tricks in any class swing a fight so hard.

20th Level

Perfect Self

Your wellspring never truly runs dry. When you roll Initiative and have no ki points remaining, you immediately regain 4 of them — so you never begin a battle empty-handed, and the discipline of a lifetime is always there when the first blow falls.

Monastic Traditions