Base Class: Monk
Monks that follow the Way of the Zen Archer find serenity in the perfect, precise arc of an arrow's flight. You have been trained in archery on horseback, to fire a bow while blindfolded, and to pinpoint the wings of an insect in flight. As you attain peace and oneness with your arrow, no feat of archery will prove to be beyond your grasp.
"The arrow belongs in the target. By drawing my bow, I open my eyes to the truth!"
Bow Arts
Starting when you choose this tradition at 3rd level, you become proficient in use of the Longbow. Additionally, Shortbows and Longbows now count as monk weapons (monks of this order tend to prefer Hankyū and Daikyū), and you can use your Wisdom instead of Dexterity for your attack and damage rolls with Bows.
Martial Arts and other Monk Class features that reference Unarmed Strikes can now be applied to ranged attacks with a bow. In these instances, the ranged attack uses the Martial Arts damage die where applicable and consumes ammo as normal.
Serenity of Wind
Starting at 6th level, you can listen to the wind to see the otherwise invisible. As a bonus action, you may spend 1 ki point to gain blindsight with a range of 120 feet until the end of your next turn.
At 11th level, you always have blindsight out to 30 feet.
Additionally, the Stunning Strike and Ki-Empowered Strike features are now fully applicable to all your ranged bow attacks.
Catch and Release
Starting at 11th level, when you catch a projectile through the use of Deflect Missiles, you can make a ranged bow attack as part of your reaction against any number of creatures within 10 feet of a point you can see within your weapon's range. You must have ammunition for each target, as normal, and you make a separate attack roll for each target.
Zen Archery
Starting at 17th level, the bow has become an inseparable part of your Ki. Your Bow attacks score a critical hit on an attack roll of 19 or 20.
Additionally, you can spend 3 Ki Points and an Action to perform a Ki-empowered trick shot: This attack grants double range for your weapon, has advantage, and ignores all damage resistance, immunity and cover. The attack does not have to follow a direct trajectory and can freely travel around corners or through openings, but must still be able to physically reach a target. A target inside a fully enclosed space with no arrow-sized openings can’t be hit.
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Posted Aug 23, 2022This is easily my favourite archer monk subclass, by FAR. Leans beautifully into the Monk flavour, capitalises on existing abilities and synergies - absolutely building my Owlin Monk with this. My only balancing suggestions are as follows;
Otherwise, congratulations and thank you for making quite literally my favourite EVER homebrew subclass I've seen in eight years of playing D&D. BEAUTIFUL work.
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Posted Jan 23, 2021Hey guys! I hope you like what I made. It's shamelessly stolen and cobbled together from a bunch of different sources from the internet, but I tried to make it as mechanically sound as possible.
I'm gonna try to explain my reasoning as to why and how I wanted the mechanics to interact and such.
Feel free to tear into anything that's abusable.
Bow Arts
Somewhat ambiguous wording here, but the basic idea is that you get to use Flurry and Martial Arts to perform additional bow attacks as bonus actions, albeit at lower damage initially to compensate for the fact that they're ranged. Wisdom mod as a substitute for bow attack and damage rolls might be a bit superfluous since most Monks will have high Dex anyway, but I felt like that's kind of a cool flavoring to add on, and I didn't see how it could hurt.
Serenity of the Wind
The blindfight aspect is something that I mostly like from a fluff perspective, and should interact nicely with Zen Archery. I guess I could change it to tremorsense, but it's basically the same thing. I think the real kicker here is the access to a ranged Stunning Strike. I'm still undecided on if I should make it more prohibitive to use by upping the Ki cost or making it a once-per-turn kind of deal, but I feel like multiple ranged stuns per turn could be too strong.
Catch and release
The Zen Archers' only true AoE. I love the Deflect Missiles feature from the base class, so making an upgraded version of it felt like a no-brainer. It's a more conditional (and therefore objectively inferior) version of the rangers Volley, but I feel like it's in a good position given the Zen Archers other skills.
Zen Archery
Subclass capstone. I think it rounds out the archetype quite well. You get a passive damage boost in the form of 10% Crit chance, and spend 3 Ki to fire a
ICBMhoming arrow with automatic advantage. Nicely synergizes with the Serenity of the Wind feature. Takes up an Action so you're sacrificing an additional attack and it can't be used as part of Flurry/MA Bonus Actions, but it should allow for a lot of creative uses (Ring of X-ray vision, Divination Wizard spotter).