Way of the Animal Kingdom

The Way of the Animal Kingdom teaches its students to move with the ferocity of its animal counterparts, slashing like a tiger, being evasive like a crane, be cunning like a monkey. This style is designed to adapt to any foe, striking fear into their hearts and unleashing the primal force of nature upon enemies.

Even though the fighting style is informed by animalistic movements, it requires a great deal of precision, training and restraint to execute succesfully. A Master of the Animal Kingdom is an incredibly rare sight, as it requires training not by humanoids, but by observing nature itself.

At the beginning of each of your rounds, you choose the benefits of one of the available stances.

Tiger Stance

Beginning at 3rd level when choosing this tradition, you assume the stance of a tiger while fighting. This style focuses on prowling among the underbrush, tracking your prey and pouncing on them when least expected. After assuming this stance, whenever you move at least 10 feet straight toward a creature and then hit it with a claw attack on the same turn, that target must succeed on a Strength saving throw or be knocked prone. If the target is prone, you can make another attack against it as part of the action.

When you choose this tradition at 3rd level, you gain proficiency in the Stealth skill if you don’t already have it. Your martial arts technique mixes combat training with the ferocity of a tiger. You also gain proficiency with Athletics if you don’t already have it.

In addition to that, you can attempt to hide even when you are only lightly obscured by foliage, heavy rain, falling snow, mist, and other natural phenomena.

Bonus Proficiencies

Your martial arts technique is informed by your connection to nature. When you choose this tradition at 3rd level, you gain proficiency in the Nature skill if you don’t already have it. You also gain proficiency with the Survival if you don’t already have it.

Stance Dance

At 6th level, you learn how to dance between different fighting styles with a fluid motion. Whenever you use Flurry of Blows, you can choose the attack benefit of any other Animal Kingdom stance for these attacks.

The Crane Stance

Starting at 6th level, you can use the elegant movement of the crane to attack from afar.

Crane Kicks. You gain an additional 5 feet of reach for your attacks. You can use the momentum of the attack to jump back 10 feet after the attack.

Retribution Attack. When a creature misses you with a melee attack roll, you can spend 1 ki point as a reaction to immediately make an unarmed melee attack against that creature.

The Monkey Stance

Starting at 11th level, you can assume the stance of the cunning monkey. This stance includes running on all fours (i.e. the hands and feet), various difficult acrobatic movements such as flipping sideways in the air, front flips, back flips, walking on the hands, forward lunges/dives, backward lunges, spinning on the back and many kicks and strikes. Most of the attacks are aimed at the knees, groin area, throat or eyes of the opponent.

When hitting an enemy, you can spend two ki points to choose to either give attacks against the creature advantage until the beginning of your next round, or to give the enemy disadvantage on attack rolls until the beginning of your next round.

In addition to that, you gain proficiency on Acrobatics checks and gain a climbing speed equal to your walking speed.

 

The Dragon Stance

At 17th level, you learn to copy the ways of the most noble of creatures.  In learning the moves, the student will strike hard, block hard and rush into each position, with the idea of learning the proper place to be once each movement is complete. In turn, this dragon-like smoothness helps disguise the attack, making it extremely difficult for an adversary to effectively counter.

When you use assume this stance, you can spend 4 Ki points to strike with the strength of a dragon. Every succesful attack against your opponent until the beginning of your next round is an automatic critical hit.