Base Class: Monk
All too often, even among prosperous nations, their are many people forced to live on the fringes, forming the masses of beggars and homeless vagabonds so often seen in large cities or in hidden encampments where authorities are less likely to look. Often unseen and seldom heard, it is a horrible truth that most do not actively seek to aid such souls. Some reason they cannot assist such people, reasoning that they barely have enough for themselves and those they care for. Others cruelly believe they have no obligation to help, believing these beggars will ultimately spend the coin they panhandle for booze or substances rather than seeking to better themselves. Still more desperately ignore them out of a ill-begotten desire to avoid the uncomfortable truth that their way of life has ruined the lives of others.
Whatever the case, in nations and cities around the world, the less fortunate are often sequestered into cramped, unsanitary conditions in wards where the authorities - and the well-to-do - seldom go, congesting slums and forgotten sewers or canalworks with encampments that often do not benefit from the visitation of healers or doctors, as the people here do not possess coin for services or exist in a state where the temples of merciful deities are already stretched then. The absence of such specialists means that such communities often run rampant with diseases and all sorts of vermin, from biting flies, to skittering centipedes, and even rats infected with all sorts of maladies. Such conditions often periodically create an epidemic that destroys much of the homeless community, leading to scores dead which take weeks, if not months, for cities to wholly inter or burn.
However, death is not the only assured result of such maladies. Now and then those who bear the hardiness required to whether such an epidemic arise, surviving the long periods of sickness forever changed. Among these survivors a few experience a changing viewpoint of the illness that attempted to fell them. They begin to see that sickness is what aids a society in being strong. Good health is forged in pestilent fire and, even more than this, disease thrives where other forms of live cannot. Disease, in its own way, purifies the people, ensuring the strong survive and that those too weak to persevere still bear a purpose in propagating life in the form of viral and bacterial infection.
THose who delve too deeply into these thoughts often eventually find likeminded individuals who practice the Putrid Creed, a series of tenets which calls upon its followers to nurture disease and craft new pandemics for another eventual purge of life. The truly devoted learn to use disease and the vermin with whom they share their homes to their advantage, becoming Vermin Lord rangers, paladins dedicated to an Oath of Pestilence, clerics or mages who deal in poison and death, and even rogues who coat their blades with the toxic gifts of the downtrodden. A few though, adopt a more ascetic approach.
Eschewing most material goods and dressing in rags, these pockmarked persons work to immerse themselves in pestilence and decay. They sit for hours in offal, meditating over the complexity of disease even as their stomachs churn in the wriggling dance of parasites. They spar with one another as festering boils rupture, coating their skin in foul smelling pus. In time, they even learn to develop a miasma of decay itself, which seems to respond to their very whims. To the outside observer, these people are simply the most unfortunate persons of their home, often being the most physically diseased and visually ill, but those who follow the creed know the truth and speak in whispered awe of these figures, who they simply call the Putrid Ones.
Putrid Ones are monks.
Whereas Warriors of Mercy contemplate the complexities of life and death or Warriors of Shadow focus on the nature of darkness, Putrid Ones instead meditate on the terrible fecundity of disease and its purpose as decay as a form of extant life.
Level 3: Fecund Ruin
At the start of your turn, you can expend 1 Focus Point to imbue yourself with Pestilence. The energy lasts for 10 minutes or until you have the Incapacitated condition. You gain the following benefits while this feature is active.
Reach. When you make an Unarmed Strike, your reach is 10 feet greater than normal, as pestilent energy extends from you.
Pestilent Strikes. Whenever you hit with your Unarmed Strike, you can cause it to deal your choice of Necrotic or Poison damage rather than its normal damage type. When you deal one of these types with it, you can also force the target to make a Constitution saving throw. On a failed save, your target gains the Poisoned condition until the end of your next turn.
Fecund Ruin
At the start of your turn, you can expend 1 Focus Point to imbue yourself with Pestilence. The energy lasts for 10 minutes or until you have the Incapacitated condition. You gain the following benefits while this feature is active.
Reach. When you make an Unarmed Strike, your reach is 10 feet greater than normal, as pestilent energy extends from you.
Pestilent Strikes. Whenever you hit with your Unarmed Strike, you can cause it to deal your choice of Necrotic or Poison damage rather than its normal damage type. When you deal one of these types with it, you can also force the target to make a Constitution saving throw. On a failed save, your target gains the Poisoned condition until the end of your next turn.
Activate Fecund Ruin
At the start of your turn, you can expend 1 Focus Point to imbue yourself with Pestilence. The energy lasts for 10 minutes or until you have the Incapacitated condition. You gain the following benefits while this feature is active.
Reach. When you make an Unarmed Strike, your reach is 10 feet greater than normal, as pestilent energy extends from you.
Pestilent Strikes. Whenever you hit with your Unarmed Strike, you can cause it to deal your choice of Necrotic or Poison damage rather than its normal damage type. When you deal one of these types with it, you can also force the target to make a Constitution saving throw. On a failed save, your target gains the Poisoned condition until the end of your next turn.
Level 3: Wretched Form
Putrid Ones are hosts with a myriad of diseases, parasites, and infections. They possess a supernatural immunity to their maladies... but the stench and sight of such ruin begets disgust in most living beings.
Disease Host. You are immune to the Poisoned condition, but not Poison damage. Further, you are a carrier of a multitude of diseases. While you bear no pain or discomfort, your body showcases the diseases within quite readily. You might be covered in festering boils, oozing wounds, cancerous growths, or other signs of obvious illness.
Wretched. Your appearance is more than most people can stomach, especially up close. You gain Disadvantage on any Charisma (Persuasion) checks made to influence Indifferent creatures/characters within 10ft.
Level 6: Putrefying Burst
As a Magic action, you can expend 2 Focus Points to cause elemental energy to burst in a 20-foot-radius Sphere centered on a point within 120 feet of yourself. Choose a damage type: Necrotic or Poison.
Each creature in the Sphere must make a Dexterity saving throw. On a failed save, a creature takes damage of the chosen type equal to three rolls of your Martial Arts die. On a successful save, a creature takes half as much damage.
Level 11: Herald of Pestilence
Ruined Wings. While Fecund Ruin is active, you gain fly-like wings. You have a Fly Speed to your Speed.
Enhanced Ruination. Additionally, your Putrid One abilities now Ignore Necrotic and Poison Resistance.
Herald of Pestilence
While Fecund Ruin is active, you also have a Fly Speed to your Speed.
Additionally, your Putrid One abilities now Ignore Necrotic and Poison Resistance.
Scion of Decay
While your Fecund Ruin is active, you also gain the following benefits.
Ruined Body. You gain Necrotic Resistance and are Immune to Poison.
Pestilence Stride. When you use your Step of the Wind, your Speed increases by 20 feet until the end of the turn. For that duration, any creature of your choice takes damage equal to one roll of your Martial Arts die when you enter a space within 5 feet of it. The damage type is your choice of Necrotic or Poison. A creature can take this damage only once per turn.
Enhanced Strikes. Once on each of your turns, you can deal extra damage to a target equal to one roll of your Martial Arts die when you hit it with an Unarmed Strike. The extra damage is the same type dealt by that strike.
Scion of Decay
While your Fecund Ruin is active, you also gain the following benefits.
Ruined Body. You gain Necrotic Resistance and are Immune to Poison.
Pestilence Stride. When you use your Step of the Wind, your Speed increases by 20 feet until the end of the turn. For that duration, any creature of your choice takes damage equal to one roll of your Martial Arts die when you enter a space within 5 feet of it. The damage type is your choice of Necrotic or Poison. A creature can take this damage only once per turn.
Enhanced Strikes. Once on each of your turns, you can deal extra damage to a target equal to one roll of your Martial Arts die when you hit it with an Unarmed Strike. The extra damage is the same type dealt by that strike.
Level 17: Scion of Decay
While your Fecund Ruin is active, you also gain the following benefits.
Ruined Body. You gain Necrotic Resistance and are Immune to Poison.
Pestilence Stride. When you use your Step of the Wind, your Speed increases by 20 feet until the end of the turn. For that duration, any creature of your choice takes damage equal to one roll of your Martial Arts die when you enter a space within 5 feet of it. The damage type is your choice of Necrotic or Poison. A creature can take this damage only once per turn.
Enhanced Strikes. Once on each of your turns, you can deal extra damage to a target equal to one roll of your Martial Arts die when you hit it with an Unarmed Strike. The extra damage is the same type dealt by that strike.
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