As powerful as the mind is when conscious, it is often believed that its truest potential lies within the depths of the subconscious.  Monks following the Way of the Subconscious Mind seek to harness this potential as a way to maximize their physical and mental abilities.  This is achieved through training in trance fighting that allows the subconscious to take complete control of both mind and body.  Those adept in the Way of the Subconscious Mind are able to improve their combat prowess, heal their wounds, and even link their minds with others to aid allies or deal devastating psionic strikes against their foes-- all while in a tranquil state of zen.

Trance State

Starting at 3rd level, you are able to completely clear your mind even during the heat of battle.  As a bonus action, you can enter your trance state.  In this state, you are resistant to bludgeoning, piercing, slashing, and psychic damage and have advantage on saving throws against being charmed, frightened, or put to sleep.  You also gain additional physical and mental abilities as you level up.  The trance state ends after 1 minute, if you become charmed, frightened, or incapacitated, or can be ended with a bonus action.

Combat Trance

At 3rd level, your trance state enables your mind to have enhanced control over your body.  During your turn, you can spend 2 ki points to enable one of the following effects:

• Instinctive Strike: your subconscious guides your attack to heightened accuracy. You gain advantage on your next melee attack.
• Armor Focus: your subconscious reacts with precision to the location of enemy melee strikes and instinctively braces for impact.  For the next round, add your proficiency modifier to your unarmored AC against incoming melee weapon attacks.
• Forceful Blows: your subconscious allows you to tap into dormant stores of physical strength.  For the next round, your successful unarmed strikes deal an additional 1d4 damage.

As with traditional monk features, these can be repeated or stacked as long as you possess the required number of ki points.

Healing Zen

Starting at 6th level, your mastery of your trance state allows you to recover from both physical injury and mental impairments in the middle of combat.  You gain the following traits:

• Enduring Trance: Your training has strengthened your ability to concentrate on your subconscious state.  The duration of your trance state increases to 6 minutes and no longer ends if you become charmed or frightened.
• Restoration of Mind: In addition to increased mental concentration, your training has enabled you to overcome certain mental impairments.  In your trance state, you may spend 1 ki point to instantly resolve the charmed or frightened condition, bypassing any required saving throws.
• Restoration of Body: As your trance state has strengthened, you have learned how to expedite your body's natural healing process even while in the midst of combat.  In your trance state, you may spend 1 ki point and a full action to restore hit points as you would during a short rest (hit die up to 1d8 + CON per level).  Doing so counts as spending these hit die, following the same rules as a short rest.  You may repeat Restoration of Body for the same cost as long as you have hit die available.

Subconscious Resonance

Your training has allowed you to master your subconscious mind down to specific brainwave function.  In harnessing these brainwaves, you gain the ability to tap into the subconsciousness of others in order to hinder or aid them.  Your control of brainwave function acts similarly to psionic magic, tapping into the emotion and psychic energy of other intelligent creatures.  However, unlike spellcasting, a monk following the Way of the Subconscious Mind exerts this energy through ki rather than magical energy.  This extension of ki resonates within the target's subconscious and produces the effect.

At 11th level, you gain access to the following pool of spells: calm emotions, compulsion, confusion, detect thoughts, dissonant whispers, dominate person, dream, enemies abound, enthrall, fear, heroism, hold person, mind spike, modify memory, phantasmal force, phantasmal killer, sleep, suggestion, tasha's hideous laughter, and vicious mockery.  These spells can only be cast while in your trance state, and the ki-empowered nature of these spells alters their nature slightly.  The effects of any scalable spells are capped at 5th level, and spells that target multiple foes are instead limited to one target.  Additionally, these spells are cast using ki points rather than traditional spell slots.  Spells cost a number of ki points equal to their spell level.  You can prepare spells from this pool equal to 1/2 your monk level (rounded up).  Your spellcasting modifier is WIS with a save DC of 8 + PRO + WIS.

 

Complete Trance

At 17th level, you have mastered your subconscious connection of mind and body giving you access to a perfect trance state.  You find harmony with your subconscious self and are no longer burdened by conscious desires.  This state of completeness greatly heightens the power of your previous training, granting you access to the following traits:

• Perpetual Trance: Your subconscious focus have become absolute.  You can now enter your trance state as a free action rather than a bonus action and remain in this trance indefinitely and it will no longer end if you become incapacitated.
• Complete Combat: With your mind and body perfectly linked, you are able to fight with heightened efficiency.  The effects listed in the Combat Trance feature now only require 1 ki point to activate, and unarmed strikes made with Forceful Blows now deal 1d6 additional damage instead of 1d4.
• Resolute Mind: Your control over your subconscious becomes stronger than your conscious emotions.  In your trance state, you have immunity to being charmed or frightened.
• Resolute Body: Your mastery of your subconscious allows you to exert your body above physical limitations.  In your trance state, you have immunity to the first 5 levels of exhaustion and can spend 1 ki point to instantly end the blinded, deafened, paralyzed, or stunned condition.
• Healing Link: You have mastered the ability to resonate your zen state to others.  When using your Restoration of Body feature, you may spend 1 ki point per target to give them the option to utilize this feature on their next turn.  Hit point recovery is based on the target's available hit die.
• Amplified Resonance: You have honed your brainwave function to become more efficient and powerful.  The level cap for your Subconscious Resonance feature is increased to 8th level and you gain access to the following spells: geas, mental prison, and telepathy.  Additionally, your spells now cost 1/2 ki point per spell level (rounded up), and spells can effect multiple targets if able.