Way of the Cloud Dancer [PEACH]

[Amechra]

Way of the Cloud Dancer (Monastic Tradition)

3 :- Lightfoot Techniques
Starting at 3rd level, you may use your Dexterity in place of your Strength when determining how far you can jump. In addition, you may make a Dexterity (Acrobatics) check in place of a Strength (Athletics) check when attempting to jump further.

3 :- Racing Shadows
At 3rd level, you may Dash and Disengage as part of the same bonus action when you use Step of the Wind. If you Dash two or more times in the same round, add your Unarmored Movement bonus to your final speed an additional time.

6 :- Kicks Like Thunder
At 6th level, whenever you take the Dash action or use Step of the Wind, you may make an unarmed strike as part of your movement this turn. This benefit is cumulative — dashing and then using Step of the Wind would allow you to make two unarmed strikes that turn.

11 :- Dancing Between Raindrops
At 11th level, whenever you take the Dash action or use Step of the Wind, you may ignore any effect that triggers whenever you enter a particular space; you effortlessly evade caltrops, dance through walls of flame, or incorporate a patch of grease into your forward movement. More generally, you gain the ability to move across fragile or shifting surfaces on your turn without falling during your move or disturbing the surface you moved on, regardless of whether or not that surface could normally bear your weight. This ensures that your movement does not trigger traps.

17 :- Outracing The Sun
At 17th level, whenever you use Step of the Wind, you may Dodge as part of the same bonus action.

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Personally, my favorite ability here is Dancing Between Raindrops. Go ahead — kick off of someone's hanging laundry for more height, or run into a Sleet Storm to drag out one of your allies.

And yes, this does​ stack with all of the benefits of the Mobile feat.

[sandmote]

Go ahead — kick off of someone's hanging laundry for more height,

I would maybe specify the feature allows you to walk on surfaces or materials that wouldn't normally hold your weight. It took me a second to realize you meant you were jumping off objects in the air rather than simply across a clothesline.

[Amechra]

Alright, that has been specified. Do you notice anything else?

[Garfunion]

I like what you were trying to create.
This is how I would write the archetype.

3 :- Lightfoot Techniques
Starting at 3rd level, you may use your Dexterity in place of your Strength when determining how far you can jump. In addition, when you perform a jump on your turn you may increase the distance of the jump by a number of feet equal to your unarmored movement.

3 :- Cloud Step
At 3rd level, you may spend 1 Ki and use your reaction to perform a jump in mid air. The distance of this jump is equal to your unarmored movement and does not count against your total movement.

6 :- Kick Of The Wind
At 6th level, anytime you take the dash or disengage action on your turn, you may make an unarmed strike as part of the same action.

11 :- Dancing Between Raindrops
At 11th level, whenever you use Step of the Wind, you may ignore difficult terrain and immediately succeed on any dexterity saving throw required of you during your turn.

Spoiler

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Remember monks get evasion.

11 :- Improved Lightfoot Techniques
Your footsteps do not leave any disturbance or trail and do not trigger any traps that requires a creature to step on the trap.
Additionally, you gain the ability to move across fragile or shifting surfaces on your turn without falling during the move, regardless of whether or not that surface could normally bear your weight.

Spoiler

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Remember monks already get a form of enhanced movement at 9th lvl that allows them to walk on water this simply adds to it.

17 :- Outracing The Sun
At 17th level, whenever you use Step of the Wind, you may also use your reaction and spend 2 Ki to take the dodge action.

[Amechra]

That's nice, but it's pretty much an entirely different subclass.

[Garfunion]

That's nice, but it's pretty much an entirely different subclass.

Seems pretty close to being the same to me. I just cleaned up some of the wording and made some balance changes.
I’ve also made multiple edits to it before seeing your post.

[JNAProductions]

Seems pretty close to being the same to me. I just cleaned up some of the wording and made some balance changes.

You nerfed it pretty hard, which feels unfair, given that this subclass really doesn't strike me as strong. Flavorful for sure, but I'd put it roughly on par (power-wise) with 4E at best.

[Garfunion]

You nerfed it pretty hard, which feels unfair, given that this subclass really doesn't strike me as strong. Flavorful for sure, but I'd put it roughly on par (power-wise) with 4E at best.

Which parts did I nerf?

[JNAProductions]

Ah, you've edited it since then.

It still feels worse than Amechra's version, though.

[Garfunion]

It seems like my recreation of the archetype didn’t go over well so I will simply critique the original version.

3 :- Lightfoot Techniques
Starting at 3rd level, you may use your Dexterity in place of your Strength when determining how far you can jump. In addition, you may make a Dexterity (Acrobatics) check in place of a Strength (Athletics) check when attempting to jump further.

Requiring a roll to determine additional jump distance seems a little wonky to me when there are no clear rules within the players handbook that provide such a bonus, it’s up to the DM.
Giving a clear flat bonus to your jump distance is far simpler to calculate.

3 :- Racing Shadows
At 3rd level, you may Dash and Disengage as part of the same bonus action when you use Step of the Wind. If you Dash two or more times in the same round, add your Unarmored Movement bonus to your final speed an additional time.

To me all I’m seeing is step of the wind will always equal the dash action, I don’t see any reason why you would use step of the wind for the disengage action when this feature will also provide you with the disengage action.

If I were to make a change I would probably say that when you use step of the wind you may increase your movement by number of feet equal to your unarmored movement. If you choose to take the dash action with your step of the wind feature this bonus unarmored movement is doubled. (I may word this a bit differently).

6 :- Kicks Like Thunder
At 6th level, whenever you take the Dash action or use Step of the Wind, you may make an unarmed strike as part of your movement this turn. This benefit is cumulative — dashing and then using Step of the Wind would allow you to make two unarmed strikes that turn.

My version still provides the same benefit, I just cleaned up the wording.

11 :- Dancing Between Raindrops
At 11th level, whenever you take the Dash action or use Step of the Wind, you may ignore any effect that triggers whenever you enter a particular space; you effortlessly evade caltrops, dance through walls of flame, or incorporate a patch of grease into your forward movement. More generally, you gain the ability to move across fragile or shifting surfaces on your turn without falling during your move or disturbing the surface you moved on, regardless of whether or not that surface could normally bear your weight. This ensures that your movement does not trigger traps.

My version still provides the same benefit, I just cleaned up the wording.

17 :- Outracing The Sun
At 17th level, whenever you use Step of the Wind, you may Dodge as part of the same bonus action.

I feel that this is a bit too powerful which is why I changed it to a reaction and Ki cost.

[sandmote]

Alright, that has been specified. Do you notice anything else?

I'm not sure how much you want.

For instance, I'd crib Standing Leap from the frog statblock. Just making jumps entirely Dex based feels neither like enough of a buff nor consistent enough that I'd be able to depend on it when playing such a monk.

"Racing Shadows" doesn't feel relevant as a name (maybe "Billowing Step"?) and the second half feels fiddly as a DM. Normally I just track how many times a player needs to move their speed to get somewhere and if a particular player's speed boosts increase or decrease that figure. So, a wood elf with the mobile feat usually only needs to move two times when the rest of the party needs to move three times, and occasionally the dwarf/whatever slower PC needs an extra move. I'm worried that it might get cumbersome calculating the monk's movement as (base+bonus)*3+bonus.

And I'd add some ribbons that involve doing other things with weather besides movement and speeds. Perhaps a way to predict the weather at 3rd level and a passive ability to use Control weather at 17th level?

Ex:

Glimpse of the Weather
By 6th level, you are in tune the weather that you can inherently divine what it will be. As an action, you can predicts what the weather will be at your location for the next 24 hours. If you use the same action on the next turn, you can extend the time period you are able to predict by 24 hours, up to a maximum of 1 week into the future. You discern one primary reading of the weather for each 24 hour period.

Meditation of Rain and Shine
By 17th level, your mere presence manipulates the weather in a manner of your choosing. Whenever you have a clear path to the sky, you can choose to change the weather conditions as if casting the Control Weather spell affecting a radius of one mile, without requiring concentration. You can change current conditions by up to one step, and the change remains until you no longer have a clear path to the sky or choose a different change.

I like what you were trying to create.
This is how I would write the archetype.

I saw the 08:56 PM 4/10/21 version, and I still think it is distinctly weaker. The original also lets you evade spell effects based on other saving throws (which now that I write it out might be a bit much), and at 17th doesn't consume your reaction. If the original had the Satire Bard's problem where its very strong as a 3 level dip I'd say this was warranted, but I don't think it does.

[KragBrightscale]

So monk subclasses are my favorite to play around with due to their awesome flavor potential.

I like what you’ve got so far. The high speed monk built around step of the wind and dashing. Great choice for a direction to focus.

The attack when you dash feature is sweet! No need to stop ever! For clarity: when do you make that attack? Is it right before you move (like you kick off someone to start your dash)? At any time along the distance traveled (drive by)? Or at the end of your move (like a charge)? Or are all fine? Should this cast 1 ki when using a normal dash (not step of the wind)?

I agree with some of the other feedback given regarding the lvl 3 jumping features. Simplicity is desirable, so making use of bonuses like the unarmed movement (which grows independently) ties things together nicely.

The lvl 17 ability isn’t super exciting however. Consider giving some wind related magic x/rest such as tornado or wind wall, or some effect such as thunder damage when you double dash. Weather related abilities mentioned above would be cool too.

Finally, the name.

Dancer part is fine, but cloud doesn’t feel right.

Cloud to me communicates: soft, reactive, elusive, yin.
Wind on the other hand seems more like: hard, active, destructive, yang.

I think the name could be changed to way of the raging wind, or way of the howling gale, etc. basically something wind related. Way of the dancing wind or way of the gale dancer?

[Amechra]

Sorry for not getting back to people sooner - my laptop was being repaired.

First of all, in terms of the flavor, I called them "Cloud Dancers" because they've mastered lightfoot techniques to the point where they can "walk on clouds", not because they have any particular elemental affinity. I'm amenable to giving them some more ribbons, though — third level in particular is a bit light — I might actually move the "you don't trigger traps that rely on pressure plates" thing to a 3rd-level feature.

Mechanically...

• Personally, the main reason I went for Dex-based jumps with Lightfoot Techniques instead of setting their jump distance is that I dislike static jump distances. Effectively doubling your jump distance and getting to use a skill you probably have a better bonus for when your DM bothers to ask for a jump check is a pretty solid ribbon, in my opinion. I say "effectively doubling" because in my experience Monks tend to start off with an 8-10 Strength and a 15-16 Dexterity, and they have an incentive to increase their Dexterity. An 8th-level Cloud Dancer can very well have a 20ft horizontal leap and an 8ft vertical leap, with the possibility to double that by spending a ki point.
• Originally, Kicks Like Thunder just gave you unarmed strikes as part of Dashing or using Step of the Wind — however, I changed it to being part of movement because I got hung up on the idea that sometimes you might need to take the Dash action while people aren't adjacent to you. I can probably safely go back to the original wording.
• I don't think that the fact that Dancing Between Raindrops lets you auto-succeed on saves against stuff like Wall of Fire when you dash through those spaces is that excessive. It's an incredibly narrow immunity, and it doesn't apply if you end your movement in those spaces or are shoved into them against your will. I think I can clean it up a bit, though.
• Outracing The Sun is a little boring, I'll admit.

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OK, second draft:

3rd Level

Light-Foot Techniques
At 3rd level, you've begun to master the techniques of your tradition that allow you to better control your weight. This gives you the following benefits:

• You may use your Dexterity in place of your Strength when determining how far you can jump. If your DM asks you for a Strength (Athletics) check to jump further, you may roll a Dexterity (Acrobatics) check instead.
• When you take a running jump, the distance you cover increases by a number of feet equal to your Wisdom modifier.
• Your step is so light that you do not trigger traps that rely on weight.

Racing With Shadows
Whenever you use Step of the Wind, you gain the benefits of both the Dash and Disengage actions. In addition, the first time you Dash each turn also increases your walking speed by your Unarmored Movement bonus until the end of the current turn.

6th Level

Kicks Like Thunder
Whenever you take the Dash action or use Step of the Wind, you may make an unarmed strike as part of that action.

Outracing The Sun
You no longer find walking or running tiring. As a result, you gain the following benefits:

• You may take a short rest while moving at a normal or slow travel pace without stopping.
• You may cover twice the normal distance when moving at a fast pace, just like galloping mount.
• You do not have to make saving throws due to a forced march.
• In a chase, you never need to make Constitution checks to avoid exhaustion due to Dashing.

11th Level

Dancing Between Raindrops
By 11th level, your light-foot techniques verge on the inhuman, granting you the following benefits:

• When you take the Dash action or use Step of the Wind, you may ignore any effect that would trigger due to your entering a space using your own movement that turn.
• You gain the ability to move across fragile or shifting surfaces on your turn without falling during your move or disturbing the surface you moved on, regardless of whether or not that surface could normally bear your weight.
• You may use your incredible speed and control over your weight to perform harmless tricks, such as staying bone dry during a rainstorm by dodging raindrops or balancing entirely on a single index finger.

17th Level

Moving Beyond Adversity
Whenever you use Step of the Wind, you also gain the benefits of the Dodge action.

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I thought of Outracing The Sun, and it was just too awesome of a ribbon for me to leave out.

[KragBrightscale]

Spoiler: flavor+lvl3

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First of all, in terms of the flavor, I called them "Cloud Dancers" because they've mastered lightfoot techniques to the point where they can "walk on clouds", not because they have any particular elemental affinity. I'm amenable to giving them some more ribbons, though — third level in particular is a bit light — I might actually move the "you don't trigger traps that rely on pressure plates" thing to a 3rd-level feature.

ah, gotcha. Yeah that works. Guess I was too focused on “step of the wind”. Light foot technique makes me think of Qing Gong which is totally that running in air thing, running up walls and “flying” while your legs run that I love from some Kung fu movies.

3rd level has definitely sweetened up with being able to avoid pressure plates.

Spoiler: Mechanics

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• Personally, the main reason I went for Dex-based jumps with Lightfoot Techniques instead of setting their jump distance is that I dislike static jump distances. Effectively doubling your jump distance and getting to use a skill you probably have a better bonus for when your DM bothers to ask for a jump check is a pretty solid ribbon, in my opinion. I say "effectively doubling" because in my experience Monks tend to start off with an 8-10 Strength and a 15-16 Dexterity, and they have an incentive to increase their Dexterity. An 8th-level Cloud Dancer can very well have a 20ft horizontal leap and an 8ft vertical leap, with the possibility to double that by spending a ki point.
• Originally, Kicks Like Thunder just gave you unarmed strikes as part of Dashing or using Step of the Wind — however, I changed it to being part of movement because I got hung up on the idea that sometimes you might need to take the Dash action while people aren't adjacent to you. I can probably safely go back to the original wording.
• I don't think that the fact that Dancing Between Raindrops lets you auto-succeed on saves against stuff like Wall of Fire when you dash through those spaces is that excessive. It's an incredibly narrow immunity, and it doesn't apply if you end your movement in those spaces or are shoved into them against your will. I think I can clean it up a bit, though.
• Outracing The Sun is a little boring, I'll admit.

so basically, running through wall of fire doesn’t hurt because the time spent in it is too short to even start feeling the heat? I can be ok with that.

As for dodging the effects that include objects with significant mass, I guess I’m imagining a layer of air being compressed in front of the monk due to the high speed (or maybe just ki) pushing things out of the way. Basically ignoring collision damage.


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Spoiler: Outracing The Sun

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...
You may take a short rest while moving at a normal or slow travel pace without stopping.
...

This is my only concern with this ability. Potentially infinite Ki, even just an extra 2 “rests” while walking in a day is huge. The other benefits sound good to me. Nice ribbon.

Spoiler: lvl 17 ability

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Moving Beyond Adversity
Whenever you use Step of the Wind, you also gain the benefits of the Dodge action.

still not a big fan of this. Kind of hoping for something more interesting to work towards. Something less passive. Shadow gets reaction attacks, long death and open hand get sweet signature attacks. Deserve something nice, as a reward for not multiclassing out during T3

Overall, it’s looking good.

[Amechra]

Remember that taking a short rest just refills your ki pool - you don't get to keep any extra ki you might have. Honestly, the major outcome is that you'll effectively get a short rest whenever your party takes a short trip and a long rest if you're traveling all day. I'm honestly not too worried about it personally, since in my experience it's not too hard to take a short rest while traveling, and level 6 is roughly when other subclasses get "you can take short rests safely" features.

As for the 17th level feature... I'm legitimately blanking on more active "you are really fast" features.

[sandmote]

First of all, in terms of the flavor, I called them "Cloud Dancers" because they've mastered lightfoot techniques to the point where they can "walk on clouds", not because they have any particular elemental affinity.

Whoops, my bad.

For 17th level, what about stealing the eagle totem barbarian's thing?

While raging, you have a flying speed equal to your current walking speed. This benefit works only in short bursts; you fall if you end your turn in the air and nothing else is holding you aloft.

Since you have higher movement speed, maybe grant it if you spend 2-3 ki points?

Ex:

Bounding Step
You can expend 2 ki points to gain a flying speed equal to your current walking speed (no action required). This benefit lasts until the end of your turn; you fall if you end your turn in the air and nothing else is holding you aloft.