Warrior of Shadow — Monk Subclass

The Warrior of Shadow learns to treat darkness not as an absence but as an ally — a medium to move through, a cloak to wear, a weapon to conjure. These monks train in the spaces between torchlight, drawing their ki into the gloom until it answers them: pooling into a sphere of manufactured night, carrying them from one shadow to the next in a single silent step, and finally folding around them so completely that they slip out of the world's sight entirely.

It is the tradition of the infiltrator and the assassin, though not always the villain. A Warrior of Shadow can walk unseen through a guarded hall, strike from a darkness of their own making, and be three rooms away before the body is found. Where the open-hand monk overwhelms and the elemental monk dazzles, the shadow monk simply is not there — until, for one fatal instant, they are.

Tradition Features

Monk Level	Feature
3rd	Shadow Arts
6th	Shadow Step
11th	Improved Shadow Step
17th	Cloak of Shadows

3rd Level

Shadow Arts

You learn to bend darkness to your will in three ways. Darkness: you can expend 1 Focus Point to cast the Darkness spell without components — seeing within its area, and shifting it up to 60 feet at the start of each turn. Darkvision: you gain 60 feet of Darkvision (or extend what you have by 60 more). Shadowy Figments: you know the Minor Illusion cantrip, cast with Wisdom.

6th Level

Shadow Step

You slip through the dark from one place to another. While you are in Dim Light or Darkness, you can use a Bonus Action to teleport up to 60 feet to an unoccupied space you can see that is also in dim light or darkness. You then have Advantage on the next melee attack you make before the end of the turn — a strike out of nowhere, from the shadow the enemy forgot to watch.

11th Level

Improved Shadow Step

The shadows follow you even into the light. You can expend 1 Focus Point to use Shadow Step in any lighting, no longer needing to begin or end in darkness. And immediately after the Shadow Step Bonus Action, you can make one Unarmed Strike — the teleport and the blow arriving together, before the eye can follow either.

17th Level

Cloak of Shadows

You wrap yourself in living night. As a Magic action, you expend 3 Focus Points to shroud yourself for 1 minute (ending early if you're Incapacitated or end a turn in Bright Light). While shrouded you are Invisible; you become partially incorporeal, moving through occupied spaces as Difficult Terrain (shunted out, taking 1d10 Force, if you end your turn in one); and through Shadow Flurry you can take a Flurry of Blows without spending a Focus Point — an unseen storm of strikes from a warrior made of dark.