Whether they protect towns, religions, families, empires, or more abstract goals the spirits of your ancestors often seek to influence the mortal realm.  Through ritual and meditation, you have gained the ability to commune with these spirits and call on them to aid you in and out of battle.

You should work with your DM to determine the nature of your spiritual helpers, their goals, and what happens if you act counter to their goals.  Perhaps you have to form a new relationship with other spirits who are more in line with your actions, perhaps the spirits leave you for a time and thereby prevent you from using the features of this class until you complete a long-rest, or perhaps you have to undertake a difficult quest in order to atone for your mistakes before you can use the features of this class again.  Either way, the spirits with whom you work are not omniscient and can make mistakes in interpreting the mortal realm or may simply disagree with your approach even if you share the same goals.  These are role playing opportunities and are intended to provide a means for building your character's story and provide you with interesting opportunities for role playing.  They are not expected to be permanent limits, nor to affect alignment.

Spiritual Spells

Your relationship with the spirit realm allows you to cast some spells. See the Spellcasting section for the general rules of spellcasting. To cast one of these spells, you use its casting time and other rules, but you DO NOT need to provide material components for it.

Spiritual Helper

You can cast the Find Familiar spell as a ritual. Your familiar has a subtle insubstantiality. This is not noticeable passively, but an active DC 15 Perception or Investigation check will reveal that your familiar is not a normal animal of its type. In all other ways your familiar follows the rules of the Find Familiar spell.

Whispered Secrets

As an action, you can cast the Borrowed Knowledge spell. You do not need material components to cast this spell. You may use this ability once per long rest. This increases to twice per long rest when you reach 13th level.

Summon Spirit

As an action you can spend 4 Ki points to cast the Summon Undead spell.  You can cast this spell without using material components, but the only type of undead you can summon is a ghostly spirit.

Protective Spirits

As a bonus action you can spend 4 Ki points to cast the Spirit Shroud spell.

Casting Spells at Higher Levels

Once you reach 6th level in this class, you can spend additional ki points to increase the level of a Way Of The Spirits spell that you cast, provided that the spell has an enhanced effect at a higher level.  The spell’s level increases by 1 for each additional ki point you spend. 

The maximum number of ki points you can spend to cast a spell in this way (including its base ki point cost and any additional ki points you spend to increase its level) is determined by your monk level, as shown in the Level and Maximum Ki Points table.

Level and Maximum Ki Points

Whispered Warning

Starting at 6th level, your protective spirits whisper a warning when a creature plans hostile actions against you.  You cannot be surprised. Immediately prior to rolling initiative you can spend 1 Ki Point to gain advantage on your initiative roll. 

Spiritual Community

Starting at 11th level, your relationship with your spirits has strengthened, and you can cast the Commune once per long rest.  You do not contact a divine being using this spell but instead you can contact the spirits with whom you have bonded.  These spirits are not omniscient and in general have knowledge of the history of the community, or people, they protect and the state of the world as it currently exists within their area of interest.  Unlike the normal use of the Commune you do not need material components and if the spirits do not know the answer to your questions, they will state this unequivocally.

Spirits Sight

Starting at 17th level, as a bonus action, you summon a helpful entity from the spirit realm.  This entity interposes itself into your vision; allowing you to see as it sees.  For the duration of this ability, you have all of the following benefits:

• Truesight
• You can see secret doors hidden by magic
• You can see into the Ethereal Plane

To use this ability, you use your action to focus your mind, and spend 7 Ki points.  As long as you maintain concentration, up to a maximum of five minutes, you may use the benefits of spirit vision.  The maximum range of your vision is 60 feet.