Monastic Tradition: Way of the Kidney Punch

There exists a monastic path centered around a controversial belief. These monks hold that the road to perfection is stifled by dusty texts and the half-remembered mumblings of dead masters. There exists another Way, splintered from the centuries of wisdom held in reputable monasteries. Their open hands are closed, one around a bottle of cheap booze and the other around the collar of a naysayer. When you strip away the spiritualism and false serenity of meditation, they say, a monk is born to become the master of a single pursuit: Winning fights.

Kidney Punch

When you choose this tradition at 3rd level, you learn to shock an enemy’s system with ki, leaving them gasping for breath. When you hit another creature with an unarmed strike, you can spend 1 ki point to attempt a Kidney Punch. The target must make a Constitution saving throw. On a failed save, the target suffers one level of exhaustion.

Cheap Shot

At 6th level, you’ve been in enough fights to know how to fall away from an enemy’s attack and into a position to break fingers. As a reaction to being hit with a melee attack, the damage you take from the attack is reduced by 1d10 + your Dexterity modifier + your Monk level.

If you reduce the damage to 0, you can exploit their overextension and spend 1 ki point to make an unarmed strike against the attacker, as part of the same reaction. On a hit, if the attacker used a weapon, it must succeed on a Dexterity saving throw or drop the weapon in the nearest unoccupied space 15 feet away.

Run Them Ragged

At 11th level, the spiritual aspects of your monastic training focused on making the most of every opening, and you have put this lesson into practice with unsettling ferocity. You can attempt a Kidney Punch without spending ki when you hit a creature with the first unarmed strike granted by your Flurry of Blows.

Gutter Master

At 17th level, you have achieved an enlightened understanding of using your body for unfair fighting. Your fists move as fast as your ejections from the bars you frequent. When you take the Attack action, you can spend some of your ki to continue attacking. For every 3 ki points spent in this way, make an additional unarmed strike.