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 archetype 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.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

There are two major barriers to creating a new official class in 5e D&D. One is that to run smoothly the game basically requires that a DM have a rough understanding of the basic abilities of each class, which means that while occasional new classes might get to come to the table, there is a strong bias against adding a whole bunch. The other barrier is that it has to come with at least 3 (by 2024 rules) subclasses with at least the sense that there is juice for a bunch more.

So I'm sorry ninja megafans, I don't want a Ninja class. I'm sure the base class could be cool, but I just don't think the subclasses would be well executed (they would of course initially be the Dragon Ninja, the Shadow Ninja, and the underwhelming nonmagical Ninja, followed by a Feywild Ninja, the vaguely clericy Ninja, and the Psionic Ninja). I'm not interested in playing any of them, so it's just more crap I have to learn to run the game.

It could make a cool subclass though.

 

[Eric V]

There are two major barriers to creating a new official class in 5e D&D. One is that to run smoothly the game basically requires that a DM have a rough understanding of the basic abilities of each class, which means that while occasional new classes might get to come to the table, there is a strong bias against adding a whole bunch. The other barrier is that it has to come with at least 3 (by 2024 rules) subclasses with at least the sense that there is juice for a bunch more.

So I'm sorry ninja megafans, I don't want a Ninja class. I'm sure the base class could be cool, but I just don't think the subclasses would be well executed (they would of course initially be the Dragon Ninja, the Shadow Ninja, and the underwhelming nonmagical Ninja, followed by a Feywild Ninja, the vaguely clericy Ninja, and the Psionic Ninja). I'm not interested in playing any of them, so it's just more crap I have to learn to run the game.

It could make a cool subclass though.

You could always just forbid ninjas in your game.

 

[Maxperson]

Back in 3e, Complete Adventurer had a 20-level Ninja class. If WoTC brought the Ninja class into 5e (for a possible 5e Kara-Tur setting? ), would it be its' own class or would it be a subclass of another class (such as the Monk or the Rogue)? And if it was its' own class, what would everyone like to see in it? Ditto for subclasses.

My preference would be to see it as a full class, but WotC is allergic to creating new classes, and only does so when the concept is sufficiently different from other classes. See the Artificer and the attempted Psions. So there's no way they do it as anything other than a subclass.

As for the subclass, while both Monk(martial arts) and Rogue(sneaky assassin) fit aspects of the Ninja, I feel that the sneak attack and stealth of the Rogue fit the Ninja better than Monk does.

To answer what I'd like to see it in, that would be whatever book has Kara-Tur or Rokugan in it. They may one day do an Asian themed book and the Ninja would likely be in there.