5e Ninja Prestige Class

[Souplex]

So I've seen some Ninja Rogue Archetype homebrews floating around for the Rogue. They all incorporate Ki and feel like half-ass Monks. Others argue that the Way of Shadows is the new Ninja. I don't think it goes far enough. This Prestige class is built around bridging the two.

Ninja Prestige Class:
Requirements: You must be a Way of Shadows Monk, and Assassin Rogue. You must find a Ninja to tutor you, (Generally by performing a small quest for their Ninja clan) and can train up to their Ninja level.
Hit Dice: D8.
Saving Throws: Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence.

Abilities by level:
1: Ninja levels count as Rogue levels for determining how many dice are rolled in Sneak Attack, and count as Monk levels for determining Ki and Martial Arts dice. Your Monk Weapons/Martial arts can now trigger Sneak Attack.

2: When you attack with a thrown weapon you can make an attack with a thrown weapon as a Bonus Action. You may spend a Ki point to make two bonus attacks with thrown weapons. Gain the next feature from the Assassin and Way of Shadows subclasses.

3: When you trigger Sneak Attack by attacking from stealth increase the size of your Sneak attack dice by one. (D6 becomes D8 Becomes D10 becomes D12)

4: You use your Martial Arts dice for Sneak Attack. (The number of dice doesn't change, only the size) When you make an attack with a Monk Weapon with advantage, roll your damage dice with advantage. (I know advantage is normally only for D20 rolls, but I feel this works)

5: Rogue levels count as Monk levels for determining Ki and Martial Arts dice. Monk Levels count as Rogue levels for determining how many dice are rolled in Sneak Attack. You may use Sneak Attack multiple times per turn. For each Sneak Attack, spend a Ki equal to the number of Sneak Attacks beyond the first. (Second SA is 1 Ki, third SA is 2 etc.) Reduce the number of Sneak Attack dice by one for every attack beyond the first.

Let me know what you think.

[CunningKindred]

Small world; seems everyone is trying to do something like this at the moment. If you are interested, I've built something similar on my multiclass archetypes (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?506972-Multiclass-Archetypes-PEACH)thread.

As for your build, I think there are some issues with power here. I can see you want to go for something highly offensive (which is more than fine) but in this case I think some of the levels of the class are a little too much bang at once.


1: Ninja levels count as Rogue levels for determining how many dice are rolled in Sneak Attack, and count as Monk levels for determining Ki and Martial Arts dice. Your Monk Weapons/Martial arts can now trigger Sneak Attack.

This is very powerful in and of itself. At first I thought it might be too much but depending on how the prestige class played this might just be on the ok side power-wise. Considering that its the starting point of a whole prestige class, though, it might be a little dull. You get a little more power but you don't get to do anything now that you couldn't do before you finished your training with your ninja master.


2: When you attack with a thrown weapon you can make an attack with a thrown weapon as a Bonus Action. You may spend a Ki point to make two bonus attacks with thrown weapons. Gain the next feature from the Assassin and Way of Shadows subclasses.

This is very abuse-able. Extending FLurry of Blows to thrown weapons seems quite sufficient I would have thought. With both options, you are liable to start to exceed the fighter in damage output.

The last part, however, is far too much. You get two very good features at once. Each alone would be more than sufficient for a single level since the class is already handing out ki, sneak attack and damage die, on top of this.


3: When you trigger Sneak Attack by attacking from stealth increase the size of your Sneak attack dice by one. (D6 becomes D8 Becomes D10 becomes D12)

Thematically, this would probably make a better level one ability but I would think it should probably cost a point of ki. This is going to be a totally doozy at high levels.



4: You use your Martial Arts dice for Sneak Attack. (The number of dice doesn't change, only the size) When you make an attack with a Monk Weapon with advantage, roll your damage dice with advantage. (I know advantage is normally only for D20 rolls, but I feel this works)


My inner DM rejects this out of hand. Far too power, far too mixable with other features, and the advantage on damage far exceeds anything even the champion fighter gets (and on so many dice). No. It also doesn't fit well with the level 3 ability, which it seems to render redundant (but then it kind of renders almost everything else about the class redundant because this alone would be worth five levels of nothing to reach).


: Rogue levels count as Monk levels for determining Ki and Martial Arts dice. Monk Levels count as Rogue levels for determining how many dice are rolled in Sneak Attack. You may use Sneak Attack multiple times per turn. For each Sneak Attack, spend a Ki equal to the number of Sneak Attacks beyond the first. (Second SA is 1 Ki, third SA is 2 etc.) Reduce the number of Sneak Attack dice by one for every attack beyond the first.


Any one sentence of this would probably be too power in its own right. All together its far too much. Most Rogue levels should not grant ki and martial arts - they already do so much (Rogue is an amazing class with some amazing abilities). Similarly, monk levels already grant you way too much to then also be granting the Rogue's primary ability. Sneak attack more than once per turn would push your damage output far beyond any other class in the game and render every rogue, fighter and barbarian in the group with your totally redundant. Even the ki cost can't really off-set the advantage of being able to throw out more damage than a fireball in the first round of combat.

My suggestion would be to remove 4 and 5 completely and re-space the level 1, 2 and 3 abilities throughout the five levels. I think you have a lot of interesting ideas for abilities but your desire to put them all into too few levels makes the over-all class far too powerful when compared to its peers.