Rolling Rock Style

OThe initiate removed the dirty, shredded wraps from his hand. He used his teeth to tear a fresh strip from the long roll, lacing quickly around gnarly sinewed knuckles. Again on forefeet, continuing apace: 1-2... 1-2... 1-2-3...
Fists strike drab grey rock face in staccato against nearby laboring students. Finally a crack, a fist sized stone knocks to the ground. With a kick, it joins a mound of its siblings. His instructor would not find such a small morning's work impressive. 1-2... 1-2...1-2-3...

School of Stone

A monk may select this Monastic Tradition at 3rd level.

Monks of the Rolling Rock train body and spirit through a punishing form of physical meditation. With fist, knee, and even forehead, an adherant strikes solid stone for hours. Ki can be formed to absorb some of each blow, but the bone-hardening effects of this regimen aren't acheived pain-free.

This discipline developed in pits and mines by enslaved and exploited laborers. An expression of frustration and rage, punching an unplussable stone face, could be focused through meditation and discipline into a potent, explosive style. Hours laboring to exhaustion leave the rigors of battle a kinetic ballet in comparison; how easy to punch through foe and spring to the next when compared to boxing with basalt?

Rock Shot

A training discipline that relies exclusively on breaking stones through bone crunching strikes creates an awful mess of rubble and scree. A Monk of the Rolling Rock is taught to use their ki to speed removal of waste stone from their training site. While the exercise is intended to facilitate a neat and clean workplace, the act of rapidly flinging chunks of cracked mortar and hand-hewn granite makes for a potent attack.

  • Starting when you choose this style at 3rd level, you can hurl rocks, cobble, or weights with astounding force. You are proficient with improvised thrown weapons.

  • You gain a new attack option that you can use with the Attack action. This special attack is a ranged weapon attack with a range of 20/60 feet. The attack requires a rock or other suitable missle for ammunition. Its damage is force, and its damage die is a d4. This die changes as you gain monk levels, as shown in the Martial Arts column of the Monk table.

  • When you take the Attack action on your turn and use this special attack as part of it, you can spend 1 ki point to make the special attack twice as a bonus action.

  • When you gain the Extra Attack feature, this special attack can be used for any of the attacks you make as part of the Attack action.

Quarry Footing

A priory of the Rolling Rock soon resembles a large bowl shaped quarry or sheer wall as the efforts of acolytes carve its every surface. Paths are winding, steep and treacherous but instill a surefootedness earned between tumbles.

  • When you choose this style at 3rd level, you gain the ability to climb faster than normal; climbing no longer costs you extra movement.

  • In addition, whenever you make an Athletics check related to the climbing, you are considered proficient in the Athletics skill and add double your proficiency bonus to the check, instead of your normal proficiency bonus.

A Stone with no Moss

Rolling Rock Style is an itinerant order. Populated areas poorly tolerate the wear such training has on structures, so cloisters are established well away from settlements. An abbot founds a remote cenobium that soon produces large rough-hewn rocks suitable for construction. Woe to the tyrant who employs the abbey through construction of some stone stronghold; they will find they have patroned a peasantry uniquely suited to pulling his stronghold down atop of him.


One can find evidence of such monastic tradtions through a study of geography:

  • Subtle are spring-filled craters left forfeit to ground water and soon overgrown with vines and grasses.
  • Confounding is a mountain that, on older maps, was clearly surveyed a mile or so removed from its current site.
  • Obvious-- a cliff face carved into the likeness of a celestial patron, carved handful by handful at the direction of visionary devotees and their dozens of exhausted students.

A true scholar will seek the hallmark of the Rolling Rock style; a foot or hand imprint of each student who attained their degree, pressed by some power into smooth stone.

Rock Volley

Quarries are iconic falling rock hazards, so Monks of Rolling Rock hone reflexes against such peril by an ingenious game. Initiates volley a stone, curving it with supple movements. Able monks add momentum bluring stones through the air.

  • When use Deflect Missile against an attack, the damage you take from the attack is reduced by 1d10 + your Dexterity modifier + two times your monk level.

  • If you reduce the damage to 0, you can turn the missle harmlessly aside or redirect and add to its force. You do not need a free hand.

  • If you redirect the missile, you can spend 1 ki point to use Rock Shot as part of the same reaction. Damage from the missile is the type and amount you reduced with Deflect Missle plus your Rock Shot damage die in force damage.

Adamantine Fists

Stone and metal bear lines of forge. Like a sword folded by its smith, earth was marked by its creator. By observing how ki through these seams, you can cleave through even the strongest materials as if your fists were adamantine.

  • At 6th level, your unarmed strikes gain siege property (attacks deal double damage to objects and structures).

  • Your unarmed strikes made against creatures with the construct type deal an additional Martial Arts damage die.

Relieve Weariness

Weariness can weaken deeper than wounds. Recovery is essential to a discipline earned through labor and fortitude. Ki fuels your stamina and you can alleviate fatigue by a touch.

  • At 6th level, you can use an action to touch a creature and reduce the target's exhaustion level by one.

  • You must finish a long rest before using this feature again. At 11th level, you can Relieve Weariness twice between rests. At 17th level, you can use it 3 times between rests.

Pulse of the land

The ground exerts an opposite static force, unyielding. It pulls against itself to resist pressure like a web strained against force. You can read this ebb and flow of earthen anima.

  • At 11th level, you gain Tremorsense 10 ft. when in contact with the ground. The range increasts by 10 ft. for every 2 levels gained above 11th, to a max of 50 ft. at 19th level.

Earthen Sanctum

You can meld into bones of the earth for protection. Your ki may intertwine with the anima of stone and widen space between motes with vibrations of spiritual energy.

  • At 11th level, as an action you can spend 4 ki points to magically enter minerals per the Meld into Stone spell.

  • Entering the Sanctum causes a tremor in a 10' radius. Each creature other than you in that area must make a Dexterity saving throw. On a failed save, a creature takes 3d6 bludgeoning damage and is knocked prone. The ground in that area becomes difficult terrain.

Boulder Ballista

A mountain can be moved by starting with the small rocks. Soon though, only boulders remain.

  • At 17th level, you gain the ability to heave boulders through the air. As an action, you can spend a ki point to hurl a boulder of suitable size and shape at a point you choose between 60 and 120 feet, where it impacts the ground with tremendous force.

  • Each creature in a 10-foot-radius sphere must succeed on a Dexterity saving throw or take 4d6 force damage.

  • You can increase the boulder's damage by spending additional ki points. Each point you spend, up to a maximum of 3, increases the damage by 4d6 (12d6 maximum).

  • If you are in an elevated location, you can instead use this ability to push the boulder and make the attack as a 60-foot line.