The Way of the Radiant Tempest Class for Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) Fifth Edition (5e)

Base Class: Monk

Philosophy of the Radiant Tempest

The Way of the Radiant Tempest teaches that divinity is not stillness. It is motion with purpose.

The first lesson is ascent. The monk learns to lift the body beyond fear, hesitation, and the gravity of despair. Every leap is a prayer. Every controlled fall is an act of trust.

The second lesson is illumination. The monk does not shine to be seen. They shine so others may see the way out.

The third lesson is impact. Mercy is not passivity. When the dead rise, when fiends bargain, when aberrations wear the faces of the lost, the storm must break.

A master of this path is not merely radiant. They are a weather system with a vow.

Way of the Radiant Tempest Features

Monk Level	Feature
3	Tempest Spellcasting, Radiant Tempest Technique
7	Skyward Sutra
11	Storm of Benediction
14	Avatar of the Radiant Tempest

Level 3: Tempest Spellcasting

When you choose this subclass at Monk level 3, you learn to channel divine magic through breath, movement, and martial discipline.

Cleric Spell List

You prepare and cast spells from the Cleric spell list. These spells count as Monk spells for you.

Cantrips

You know two cantrips of your choice from the Cleric spell list. You learn one additional Cleric cantrip of your choice at Monk level 10.

Spell Slots

The Way of the Radiant Tempest Spellcasting table shows how many spell slots you have to cast your Monk spells. To cast one of these spells, you must expend a slot of the spell’s level or higher. You regain all expended spell slots when you finish a Long Rest.

Prepared Spells

You prepare a number of spells from the Cleric spell list equal to your Wisdom modifier + one-third your Monk level, rounded down, minimum of one spell. The spells must be of a level for which you have spell slots.

You can change your prepared spells when you finish a Long Rest, representing prayer, breathwork, martial forms, and storm-meditation.

Spellcasting Ability

Wisdom is your spellcasting ability for your Way of the Radiant Tempest spells.

Spell Save DC = 8 + your proficiency bonus + your Wisdom modifier

Spell Attack Modifier = your proficiency bonus + your Wisdom modifier

Spellcasting Focus

Your body is your spellcasting focus. You do not need a holy symbol or material component for your Way of the Radiant Tempest spells unless the component has a listed gold cost or is consumed by the spell.

Way of the Radiant Tempest Spellcasting

Monk Level	Cantrips Known	1st-Level Slots	2nd-Level Slots	3rd-Level Slots	4th-Level Slots
3	2	2	—	—	—
4	2	3	—	—	—
5	2	3	—	—	—
6	2	3	—	—	—
7	2	4	2	—	—
8	2	4	2	—	—
9	2	4	2	—	—
10	3	4	3	—	—
11	3	4	3	—	—
12	3	4	3	—	—
13	3	4	3	2	—
14	3	4	3	2	—
15	3	4	3	2	—
16	3	4	3	3	—
17	3	4	3	3	—
18	3	4	3	3	—
19	3	4	3	3	1
20	3	4	3	3	1

Level 3: Radiant Tempest Technique

Also at Monk level 3, your divine training changes the way you move through battle.

Radiant Strikes

Once on each of your turns, when you hit a creature with an Unarmed Strike or Monk weapon, you can cause the strike to deal Radiant damage instead of its normal damage type.

If the target is an Undead or Fiend, the strike deals extra Radiant damage equal to one roll of your Martial Arts die. You can deal this extra damage only once per turn.

Tempest Casting

When you use your Action to cast a Cleric cantrip, you can make one Unarmed Strike as a Bonus Action.

If the cantrip deals Radiant or Thunder damage, you can instead make that Unarmed Strike as part of the same Action, either before or after the cantrip is resolved. Once you do so, you can’t do so again until the start of your next turn.

Lift of the First Storm

Your jump distance is doubled, and you can reduce any falling damage you take by an additional amount equal to five times your Wisdom modifier, minimum of 5, after applying your normal Monk features.

When you reduce falling damage to 0, you can land in a flash of compressed air and pale light. Each hostile creature of your choice within 5 feet of you must succeed on a Strength saving throw against your Spell Save DC or be pushed 5 feet away from you.

Level 7: Skyward Sutra

At Monk level 7, your movement becomes a disciplined storm-prayer, allowing you to cross broken terrain and carry divine force into impossible angles.

Radiant Ascent

When you take the Dash, Disengage, or Dodge action, you can spend 1 Focus Point to gain a Fly Speed equal to your Speed until the end of the current turn. If you are airborne when this movement ends, you descend harmlessly up to 60 feet. If you do not reach a surface at the end of that descent, you fall as normal.

While this movement lasts, your body sheds dim golden or white light in a 10-foot radius, and you do not provoke Opportunity Attacks from creatures you damage with Radiant or Thunder damage during the same turn.

Storm-Borne Rescue

When you use Radiant Ascent, you can carry one willing creature within 5 feet of you, provided the creature is your size or smaller and isn’t Incapacitated. The creature moves with you until the end of the movement or until you release it into an unoccupied space within 5 feet of you.

This movement does not provoke Opportunity Attacks for the carried creature.

Rebuke the Unclean

When an Undead, Fiend, or Aberration you can see hits a creature within 30 feet of you with an attack, you can use your Reaction and spend 1 Focus Point to force the attacker to make a Wisdom saving throw against your Spell Save DC.

On a failed save, the attacker takes Radiant damage equal to two rolls of your Martial Arts die + your Wisdom modifier, and it has Disadvantage on the next attack roll it makes before the end of its next turn.

On a successful save, it takes half as much damage and suffers no additional effect.

Level 11: Storm of Benediction

At Monk level 11, your spellcasting and martial discipline fuse into a single radiant rhythm. You become most dangerous when moving between harm and healing, wrath and rescue.

Tempest Benediction

When you cast a Cleric spell of 1st level or higher using a spell slot, you can spend 1 Focus Point to create a burst of protective radiance around yourself or one creature affected by the spell.

Choose one of the following effects:

Guiding Wind

The chosen creature can immediately move up to 10 feet without provoking Opportunity Attacks.

Burning Mercy

The chosen creature gains Temporary Hit Points equal to one roll of your Martial Arts die + your Wisdom modifier. Until the start of your next turn, a creature that hits it with a melee attack takes Radiant damage equal to your Wisdom modifier, minimum of 1.

Clean Light

The chosen creature can immediately repeat one saving throw against being Charmed, Frightened, Poisoned, or affected by a disease or curse. On a success, the effect ends on that creature.

You can use only one Tempest Benediction effect per spell.

Thunder After Prayer

Once on each of your turns, when you cast a Cleric spell of 1st level or higher, your next Unarmed Strike before the end of the turn deals extra Thunder or Radiant damage, your choice, equal to one roll of your Martial Arts die.

If the spell restored Hit Points to another creature or dealt Radiant damage, this extra damage increases to two rolls of your Martial Arts die.

Level 14: Avatar of the Radiant Tempest

At Monk level 14, you can become the full expression of your path: a storm of light, breath, and divine force.

As a Bonus Action, you can spend 4 Focus Points to enter your Radiant Tempest form for 1 minute. The form ends early if you are Incapacitated or if you dismiss it, no action required.

While in this form, you gain the following benefits:

Wings of Living Weather

You gain a Fly Speed equal to your Speed, and you can hover. Your movement does not provoke Opportunity Attacks from Undead, Fiends, or Aberrations.

Body of Sacred Storm

You shed bright light in a 20-foot radius and dim light for an additional 20 feet. You have Resistance to Radiant and Necrotic damage.

Tempest Mercy

Once on each of your turns, when you hit a creature with an Unarmed Strike or Monk weapon, you can choose one creature you can see within 30 feet of you. That creature regains Hit Points equal to one roll of your Martial Arts die + your Wisdom modifier.

A creature can benefit from this healing only once per turn.

Falling Star Rebuke

When a creature starts its turn within 10 feet of you, you can force it to make a Constitution saving throw against your Spell Save DC, no action required. On a failed save, the creature takes Radiant or Thunder damage, your choice, equal to one roll of your Martial Arts die. On a successful save, it takes no damage.

You can use this effect a number of times during the form equal to your Wisdom modifier, minimum of once.

Once you use Avatar of the Radiant Tempest, you can’t use it again until you finish a Long Rest unless you spend 5 Focus Points to use it again.

Roleplay Flavor and Philosophy

Monks of the Way of the Radiant Tempest often appear serene until motion begins. They are trained to speak softly, breathe deeply, and strike like weather losing patience. Their magic is not usually accompanied by long prayers or formal sermons. Instead, divine power moves through stances, leaps, open-palmed strikes, spiraling kicks, and sudden descents from above.

Many practitioners view themselves as rescue-warriors. They are not simply executioners of undead and fiends, though they are very good at that work. Their highest calling is to reach the person everyone else cannot reach: the ally surrounded by monsters, the wounded scout on the wrong side of a ravine, the child trapped beyond a broken bridge, the soldier being dragged into the dark.

Their training often includes cliff-leaping, aerial forms, controlled falling, liturgical breathwork, meditation beneath stormwinds, and combat drills in rain, snow, smoke, and darkness. Advanced students practice healing an ally without losing offensive rhythm, striking an enemy without surrendering compassion, and retreating without abandoning anyone.

A Radiant Tempest monk is not taught to be the brightest thing in the room.

They are taught to be the way out.

Monastic Orders and Traditions

Kurogane Hollow Practitioners

At Kurogane Hollow Monastery, Radiant Tempest monks are trained for vertical battlefields, chasm rescues, undead suppression, and sudden assault against enemies clinging to cavern ceilings, bridgeworks, fungal towers, and cliffside ruins.

These monks are often paired with scouts, breachers, or Ghostslayer Bloodsworn. Their role is to break enemy momentum, retrieve the wounded, and bring cleansing light into spaces where ordinary lanterns fail.

Vigil’s End Practitioners

At Vigil’s End Monastery, the Way of the Radiant Tempest is more openly spiritual. Its students serve as funeral guardians, exorcist-monks, battlefield healers, and defenders of chasm shrines. Their style is less secretive than Kurogane Hollow’s version, but no less dangerous.

Sky-Cloister Practitioners

Some remote mountain monasteries teach a high-altitude form of the path focused on wind meditation, gliding movement, weather-reading, and divine endurance. These monks are often messengers, mountaintop wardens, or guardians of sacred passes.

Foreign Practitioners

Beyond Helbrann, the path appears in scattered forms among temple bodyguards, storm pilgrims, Godborn martial orders, and wandering healers who believe divine mercy must be fast enough to arrive before death.

Suggested Appearance

A Radiant Tempest monk often wears layered travel robes, sleeveless martial wraps, storm-cloaks, prayer cords, and reinforced sandals or boots suited for mountain terrain. Their clothing is usually pale, storm-grey, deep red, white, gold, or rain-dark blue, often marked with sutras, small feathers, lightning patterns, sunbursts, or spiral wind motifs.

When their magic awakens, their eyes may flare with white-gold light, their breath may steam even in warm air, and faint rings of luminous wind may spiral around their wrists and ankles. Masters of the path often appear weightless for a heartbeat before they move.

Their weapons are usually simple: staves, spears, short blades, handwraps, or prayer-weighted cords. The body remains the true instrument.

Using the Way of the Radiant Tempest in Aetheris

The Way of the Radiant Tempest fits characters who want to combine Monk mobility with Cleric spellcasting, divine rescue, anti-undead force, and aerial battlefield control.

It is especially appropriate for:

chasm-facing monks
Godborn martial mystics
Vigil-aligned rescue warriors
undead hunters
temple guardians
storm pilgrims
battlefield healers
exorcist-monks
aerial skirmishers
Bloodsworn multiclass characters
members or allies of the Hollowdeep Twelve

This subclass pairs especially well with backgrounds such as Sanctified Defender, Witch Hunter, Greypeak Sentinel Initiate, Mountain Wanderer, Frontier Warden, Dark Hunter, Acolyte, Soldier, or any background tied to sacred defense, dangerous terrain, or rescue work.

Playstyle and Mechanics

The Way of the Radiant Tempest is a spellcasting Monk subclass with strong mobility, rescue utility, and anti-corruption pressure. It is not meant to out-heal a Cleric or out-damage a dedicated striker. Instead, it lives in the crackling middle space between them.

At low levels, the subclass adds Cleric cantrips, limited spellcasting, radiant strikes, better falling and jumping, and a smoother cantrip-to-strike rhythm.

At mid levels, it gains short bursts of flight, ally extraction, and a focused rebuke against Undead, Fiends, and Aberrations.

At higher levels, it begins blending spellcasting and martial arts more freely, rewarding turns where the monk heals, protects, moves, and strikes in one flowing sequence.

At its peak, the subclass becomes a flying radiant storm: mobile, protective, punishing to corrupt creatures, and able to carry allies through the worst part of a battlefield.

A Radiant Tempest monk is strongest when the field has height, danger, wounded allies, clustered enemies, cliffs, bridges, flying creatures, undead, fiends, aberrations, or any situation where standing still would be rude to destiny.

Suggested NPCs

The Lantern-Fall Adept

A young monk at Kurogane Hollow who specializes in dropping through vertical shafts to rescue wounded scouts. They are brave, brilliant, and far too willing to become the first body through a hole.

The White Storm Abbess

An elderly master whose body seems frail until she moves. She teaches that healing and violence are both forms of interruption: one interrupts death, the other interrupts cruelty.

The Chasm Saint’s Courier

A radiant monk-messenger who travels between Vigil’s End, Chasmwatch posts, and high mountain shrines during storms. They claim lightning never strikes them because “it recognizes family.”

The Fallen Sun Disciple

A former Radiant Tempest monk whose light now burns too hot. They still destroy undead, fiends, and aberrations, but have forgotten the difference between cleansing corruption and punishing fear.

Adventure Hooks

The Broken Descent

A Radiant Tempest initiate vanishes during a rescue drill above the Blackroot Shelf. Moments later, their light is seen rising from below the chasm instead of falling into it.

The Saint Who Would Not Rest

An undead guardian at an old Helbranni shrine can only be approached by someone who bears both radiant magic and monastic discipline. It attacks priests and soldiers, but kneels to monks.

The Storm Below

Thunder begins sounding from deep underground. Kurogane Hollow believes something beneath the Blackroot Stair has learned to mimic divine weather.

The Mercy Trial

A monastery asks the party to escort a Radiant Tempest student through a battlefield where their task is not to kill, but to save five marked survivors before the enemy does.

The Light That Lied

A ward-lamp burns gold-white around a creature the party knows is corrupted. The Radiant Tempest masters fear that something has learned to counterfeit cleansing light.

“The storm does not ask whether the dark is ready. It opens the sky, finds the fallen, and teaches the dead to lie still.”

Radiant Tempest Technique