In your darkest hour, you pleaded for the strength to take what you wanted from the world and a dread power took notice. At first, you may have relished the cathartic rush that came with channelling your dread power to claim what you felt you deserved. This pact, however, came with strings attached. In times of distress you hear the entity whispering in the back of your mind, encouraging you to indulge your most base impulses.

A dread power can be any powerful malevolent entity capable of bestowing a portion of its power onto a mortal. Archdemons, fey royalty, ancient liches, and unfathomable intelligences from beyond space and time are all possibilities.

Enhanced Form

Dark energy suffuses your form, granting enhanced strength and vitality. While you are wearing no armour and not wielding a shield, your AC equals 10 + your Strength modifier + your Constitution modifier. In addition, your Ki save DC = 8 + your proficiency bonus + your constitution modifier.

Dread Hand

Also starting when you choose this tradition at 3rd level, you can use a bonus action on your turn to manifest the evidence of your foul pledge. When you do, one of your limbs (often an arm) trans-mogrifies into a monstrous appearance reminiscent of your dread power for 1 minute, granting you the following benefits:

• Your unarmed strike damage die increases size by one.
• Upon using patient defence, you gain temporary hit points equal to a roll of your unarmed strike die + your constitution modifier.
• When you flurry of blows, you can spend 2 ki points to make 3 unarmed strikes instead of 2. 

Bloodied but Unbowed

At 6th level, when an attack reduces you to half hit points or less, you can choose to gain resistance to that damage type for a minute, and automatically activate furious tenacity (patient defence). Once you use this feature, you can’t use it again until you finish a short or long rest.

Grotesque Growth

Starting at 11th Level, when you use your Dread Hand feature, you can choose to grow into a towering misshapen form for one minute. When you do, your size increases by one category — from Medium to Large, for example. If there isn’t enough room for you to grow to that size, you grow to the maximum possible size the space will allow. While enlarged in this way, you have advantage on Strength checks and Strength saving throws, your reach becomes 10 feet, and your melee weapon attacks deal 1d4 extra damage. When the minute is over, you suffer one level of exhaustion.

Fountain of Viscera

Starting at 17th level, you can use an action and expend 6 ki points to attempt to execute a creature of your choice within reach by magically burrowing your hand into its body and extracting its innards. The creature must make a Dexterity saving throw (DC equal to 8 + your proficiency bonus + your Strength modifier). On a failure, the creature takes 100 piercing damage. On a success, the creature takes 50 piercing damage instead.

If this damage reduces the target to 0 hit points or less, it immediately dies as you rip a hole through it, creating a stomach-turning fountain of viscera. When this happens, each creature within 30 feet of you who can see you must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw (DC equal to 8 + your proficiency bonus + your Strength modifier) or be frightened of you for 1 minute. A creature who fails the saving throw can make the Wisdom saving throw again at the end of each of its turns, ending the frightened condition early on a success.

Once you use this feature, you must finish a long rest before you can use it again.