Ninja

Quote from EveIynn >>

"lethal damage if you wish" KILLED ME

The ninja rogue did his wished-for lethal damage on you didn’t he

"lethal damage if you wish" KILLED ME

Shadow Stalker and the first half of Ghost are basically just regular stealth + sneak attack. Much simpler to just add a bonus to stealth and have players read stealth rules.

hey, instead of the 17th level ability, give them passive stealth equal to 10 + stealth

My god this is terrible, Distract enemies shouldn't have a set DC it should be something that would make more sense and also scale like having it be 8+dex+prof bonus. On top of not really making any sense mechanically, it just doesn't make sense why a ninja would have this. This is just something an average joe could do. Shadow Stalker, is just hot garbage as well. It basically gives truly terrible buff to sneak attack damage, while also giving you an advantage on the strike, which if you were hidden you would have had anyway. And 3/4 of the paragraph is just explaining how a hostile creature will try and find you, which is not something that would really warrant a class feature since being able to hide is something literally every class can do. Martial Artists is also a really strange feature. Sure having a buff to unarmed strike damage isn't bad, but it's a rogue, it's not like the monk where that's one of its gimmicks, and it's even stranger that if the author wanted to just sorta slap an unarmed damage buff because they read the monk class features and though it was cool, then why not let you use your dex modifier instead of your strength mod? The advantage on athletics and acrobatics checks isn't bad, but for a 13th level feature, it just isn't that good. And finally the worst shit I have ever seen, Ghost is basically just a really terrible description for how to take the hide action, along with 2 very strange and specific buffs. Advantage on pulling yourself onto a ledge 2.5 times your height. And taking no falling damage if you fall up to 3 times your height. This makes 0 sense and you really don't need that many brain cells to understand why. Then for the final part of this terrible homebrew, you get an advantage when taking the hide or disengage action. First off this is really shitty for level 17, where you should have a lot of magic items. Also, you don't have to roll to disengage, this really makes me think that some 11-year old saw DnD Beyond being advertised from Critical Role, had never played any edition of D&D in their life, and thought they would make edgy homebrew based on ninjas because they watch Naruto. Seriously if you want to play a ninja that bad then take the Shadow Monk or the Assassin Rogue. 

pocket sand

This is just some constructive criticism. But when designing a subclass such as this you gotta look at what's already available and how to make this stand out to consumers. So my question is this; What would make someone want to play this class over a Way of the Shadow Monk?

Why...

I'm so glad I reached level 17 on my ninja rogue so I now I get to use the subclass' built-in tutorial for how basic stealth checks work!!!!

Shadow Stalker is pointless, because darkness is considered to make you heavily obscured...i.e. everything in that area can't be seen automatically by things inside and outside of the heavily obscured area. So since everything is automatically hidden visually, all you need to do is make sure the aural portion is covered, by using the hide action. Basically investigation relies on sight, and as such automatically fails so per RAW nothing could ever find your Ninja...perception checks don't, since you perceive with multiple senses, meaning that you could be found but there are still ways to hide. Since hiding confers advantage, and the only effect of everything being blind to one another is that they can't see one another (the advantage/disadvantage granted to the attackers that are heavily obscured cancels out) your Ninja Rogue can actually gain a benefit by hiding per RAW to get advantage on the roll.

So basically, the idea is cool but unnecessary because it is covered by other rules,  making the only bonus an extra 1d4 for your ability...which is super weak.

Make it the 9th level ability, grant a free use of the Darkness spell once per short rest, and give it something thematic like "While heavily obscured, any attack made with advantage that hits is automatically a critical hit." Give it something to make it feel strong since as written your feature is basically something all characters get already (but better because things are blind to you automatically) and maybe to really sell it, give the Ninja Blindsense(30)

Cool story, Elo.

welcome, by the way i didn't read the class at all so who am i to judge. and also that name is wrong its supposed to be Elfo not Elo! have a great day.

Thank you for your input Elo_The_Ranger

this sucks NOT or i don't know some guy is whining about "this sucks" so idk

so the ghost feature is you get to roll stealth? and you can climb a little better, terrible compared to other level 17 rogue abilities

This is missing an archetype feature for level 9.