D&D General The 5e Ninja, would it be a class or a subclass?

[Davy Greenwind]

Adventures in Rokugan 5e has a Shinobi class. Focuses on stealth and gadgets. It's pretty neat

 

[Sacrosanct]

Everyone talks about stealth and assassination, but often overlooked is disguise and improvised tools/weapons. That doesn't need a class for that. Make it a background, with a Shadowmonk, and you're good.

 

[Stormonu]

I'm going to be boring and say Ninja should be a background, with proficiency in Acrobatics, Stealth, the clan secret language/hand signals, and either Poisoners kit or Disguise kit. Maybe each clan could offer a different feat? Alert, Lucky and Skilled all fit, and Magic initiate goes a long way with minor illusion.

Between various monk and rogue subclasses I think the mechanical fantasy is actually pretty well covered. The assassin covered the murder ninja and the thief's fast hands covers the smokebomb tossing ninja that climbs around.

The background also allows for wizard ninjas, fighter ninjas, etc without making a subclass for each class.

My initial thought too was make it a subclass, but honestly having it as a background is probably the better way to go. Then depending on the ninja's specialty you can use various classes - Rogue (infiltration and assassination), Fighter (highwaymen, ambushers), Ranger (sniper assassin), Sorcerer (mystical ninja abilities), Monk (unarmed assassin) and so on. Could do an entire Ninja campaign that way and still have class variety.

 

[Clint_L]

Shadow monk + poisoner and actor feats seems like it would cover the movie ninja archetpye pretty well.

 

[CreamCloud0]

multiple subclasses across multiple classes.

 

[Silam]

I agree with the sentiment that it should be a background (or several, maybe one per clan or region). Dex/Wis/Cha is fine, but I would also consider throwing in Con instead of any of those. "Ninpo Ikkan" which roughly translates to "keep going" or "keep playing" is a ninja maxim, capturing their ethos of endurance.

If answering the question of class or subclass: I would say a multi-class character is the best way to represent a ninja.

If we look at real world martial arts, ninjutsu is the most complete. It includes basically every other Japanese martial art (Karate’s strikes, Judo and Aikido’s throws, Jiujitsu, all simple and martial weapons…). Basically, every other Japanese martial art is a specialized branch of ninjutsu. So already if you wanted to do "just" the martial arts part you would need to be quite spread out, mastering unarmed strikes, weapon technique and grappling.

If you look at pop culture (e.g., Naruto) then ninjas include even more stuff (namely, magic).

So, yeah… basically has to be multi-classed, IMHO.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

The Shadow Monk covers 90%+ of the pop-culture ninja themes quite well. Stealthy, shadow teleporting, surprise attacks, nerve cluster poke disables, martial weapon use (monk dedicated weapon), wall-running, etc. The only thing it doesn't really provide is the ability to do disguises or poison, but most pop-culture ninjas prefer to wear ski masks and black gis instead of looking like "just another peasant in the field when the samurai walk past."

Can you make at least 4 subclasses for Ninja? If not, I'd say it should be a subclass and Shadow Monk covers this niche very well.

By same logic if Pugilist didn't come with multiple subclasses to show range of this class, I'd argue it should be subclass for Monk, Barbarian or Fighter.