D&D 5E Way of Natural Purity

I always found it strange that D&D always has wizards and lunatics using magic to destroy the world, but there was never any backlash against magic itself by those who are not privileged enough to use it. That's why I created the anti-magic monk tradition, to crusade against the evils of magic and those who use it.

Way of Natural Purity
- When you choose this tradition at 3rd level, you embrace the purity of your natural life energy and reject the impurity of magic. You implicitly understand the ways that magic corrupts and distorts the world around you, leading to madness in the pursuit of its unexplainable power. Your life energies repel magic, allowing you to seek out destroy magic of all kinds.

- Spell Bane: Starting at 3rd level: You can spend 2 ki points to dispel magic, detect magic or counterspell. Dispel Magic: Any spell of 2nd level or lower on the target ends, for each spell of 3rd level or higher on the target, make an ability check using your spell casting ability (your proficiency bonus + wisdom modifier). DC equals 10 + Spell level. Counterspell is also altered to require check on 3rd level or higher.

- Shrug it Off: At 6th level you learn how magic can affect you. You gain Magic Resistance, advantage on all saving throws against magic and magical effects.

- Punish the Impure: At 11th level you can use Ki points to drain energy from those whose life-forces are intertwined with magic. This includes spellcasting humanoids and creatures. For humanoids, they must be a “Full Caster”, for other creatures, they must cast at least one spell. Once per turn, after a successful touch attack (any non-weapon attack) you can spend 2 ki points to give the spellcaster a level of exhaustion. The target gets a constitution save, DC equal to 8+Proficiency+Wisdom modifier. Made save equals no effect.

- No Mercy: At 17th level you become poisonous to the impure. On each successful attack against any spellcaster, you do additional necrotic damage equal to half your monk level. This damage drains away the life force of those who have chosen to intertwine their life force with the disease of magic.

what do you guys think?

Thanks!!

It would be a little odd in the default settings, because Monks do use magic: its what Ki is.
Having the order opposing specifically the magic of Wizards and Sorcerors (what used to be considered "Arcane magic") might make more sense.

ki is not defined as magical (not that it matters for the purposes of this subclass as it simply uses the monk mechanics to create an anti-magic sub-class)...even if every other monk's ki was magical, this monk's ki is not magical...



still ki is not defined as magical:
https://twitter.com/JeremyECrawford...is-not-a-magical-effect-for-magic-resistance/

oppressed by sun said:

I always found it strange that D&D always has wizards and lunatics using magic to destroy the world, but there was never any backlash against magic itself by those who are not privileged enough to use it. That's why I created the anti-magic monk tradition, to crusade against the evils of magic and those who use it.

Click to expand...

That's because Magic is the Physics of the D&D world. Every time The Weave is messed with, worldwide catastrophic events happen. Fortunately, only gods really mess with it and succeed in blowing everything up. Random mortals or undead trying to destroy the world end up put to the blade by whatever adventuring party happens to be handy.

Alternatively, you should play Dark Sun.

Even though Ki is defined as magical, I think there are categories of magic. Ki is not like spellcasting. Still, I suppose the fluff could be tweaked to mitigate some of the dissonance.

Spell Bane: Detect Magic should not have the same Ki cost as Dispel Magic and Counterspell.

Punish the Impure: imposing levels of exhaustion gets points for being creative, but I don't think it works here. Are full casters somehow different from partial/non-casters, so that this works only on them? It doesn't make sense to me.

How about, instead, beating spell levels out of people? You punch them so hard they lose spell slots. Not sure what mechanic could be used to determine which spell slots. I feel like it should be somewhat random, but also scale with monk level.

Also, usually at least one (if not more) of the 4 sub-class abilities is more utility and not so much combat oriented. Magic resistance is at least defensive, but it's still basically a combat skill.

Elfcrusher said:

Even though Ki is defined as magical, I think there are categories of magic. Ki is not like spellcasting. Still, I suppose the fluff could be tweaked to mitigate some of the dissonance.

Spell Bane: Detect Magic should not have the same Ki cost as Dispel Magic and Counterspell.

Punish the Impure: imposing levels of exhaustion gets points for being creative, but I don't think it works here. Are full casters somehow different from partial/non-casters, so that this works only on them? It doesn't make sense to me.

How about, instead, beating spell levels out of people? You punch them so hard they lose spell slots. Not sure what mechanic could be used to determine which spell slots. I feel like it should be somewhat random, but also scale with monk level.

Also, usually at least one (if not more) of the 4 sub-class abilities is more utility and not so much combat oriented. Magic resistance is at least defensive, but it's still basically a combat skill.

Click to expand...

Yeah “Punish the Impure” was the one that struck me as messiest. I had a similar thought that it should just eat spell slots or uses. Maybe spellcasters make a save. If they succeed they lose one of their lowest remaining spell slots. If they fail they lose one of their highest remaining spell slots?

Another simple but fun thing might be imposing disadvantage on concentration checks resulting from the monk? Pretty situational but it could maybe be tied to something else.

As for non-combat stuff, I had a similar gut reaction, but honestly a PC who has magical resistance and is really strong at saves is gonna naturally circumvent a lot of magical puzzles and obstacles.

Though it might be interesting to have some effect where a monk could meditate in an area and cleanse it of magical effects. Tsomerhung like that would probably break a campaign though.