Path of Madness

Some barbarians draw their rage from the primal fury of the wilds, the burning blood of ancient ancestors, or the unyielding spirit of the storm. You are not one of them.

Your rage comes from something far darker — a fractured mind that was never meant to contain such power. Long ago, something broke inside you: perhaps a curse from an elder god of chaos, a mind-shattering encounter with aberrant horrors from beyond the stars, a ritual gone wrong in a forgotten temple of madness, or simply the weight of too many battles that left your sanity in tatters. Whatever the cause, the fracture never healed. Instead, it became a wellspring of terrifying strength.

The more you surrender to the madness, the stronger you grow. Your body surges with unnatural vitality, your strikes land with impossible accuracy, and the world around you bends under waves of contagious insanity. But every descent comes at a cost. Allies become indistinguishable from foes. Reason dissolves into raw instinct. The line between warrior and monster blurs until only the next target matters.

Fractured Mind

3rd-level Path of Madness feature

At 3rd level, your mind permanently fractures under the weight of uncontrolled rage. You immediately gain one form of indefinite madness as a flaw (roll or choose from the Indefinite Madness table below). This flaw cannot be removed by any means, including greater restoration, heal, wish, or divine intervention. It influences your roleplaying even outside of combat.

When you enter your rage, you may choose to enter a Mad Rage instead of a normal rage. While in Mad Rage, you gain the following benefits in addition to your normal Rage features:

• You have advantage on all attack rolls.
• All damage you take is halved (you have resistance to all damage types).
• You can make one weapon attack as a bonus action.
• You are immune to psychic damage, being charmed, frightened, being put to sleep (or rendered unconscious by non-damage effects), and any effect that would end, suppress, or prevent your rage or madness.
• Your speed increases by 10 feet.
• You cannot distinguish allies from enemies and cannot reason. On your turn, if any creature is within your reach, you must use your action to attack the nearest creature. If no creatures are in reach, you must move toward the nearest visible creature before attacking if possible. You cannot take other actions beyond taking the dash action towards the target if you aren't already within range of the creature, speak coherently, or voluntarily end the rage until you gain your Persistent Rage feature.

When you enter Mad Rage, you also gain temporary hit points equal to your barbarian level + your Constitution modifier. These last until your rage ends.

Berserk Assault

6th-level Path of Madness feature

While in Mad Rage, your frenzy intensifies:

• You can make two weapon attacks as a bonus action.
• You gain one extra attack as part of the Attack action (for a total of three attacks with the Attack action, in addition to the Extra Attack feature gained at 5th level).
• Your walking speed increases by 20 feet.
• When a creature moves into your reach or makes an attack against you, you can use your reaction to make two melee weapon attacks against it. You must do so if able.
• On any turn that is not your own (such as reactions or opportunity attacks), you make three melee weapon attacks against creatures within reach instead of one.

Additionally, when you reduce a creature to 0 hit points while in Mad Rage, you can immediately move up to half your speed toward another creature without provoking opportunity attacks and make one additional melee weapon attack against it if it is now in reach.

Aura of Insanity

10th-level Path of Madness feature

While in Mad Rage, you emanate a 30-foot-radius aura of chaotic madness. This aura only affects creatures that are hostile toward you (enemies actively trying to harm you). Allies and neutral creatures are completely unaffected.

Any hostile creature that starts its turn in the aura or enters it for the first time on a turn must make a Wisdom saving throw against your save DC (8 + your proficiency bonus + your Constitution modifier).

On a failed save, the creature is affected by the confusion spell (no concentration required).

Additionally, look at the natural d20 roll of the saving throw (before modifiers):

• 10 or lower — the creature also gains a short-term madness effect.
• 5 or lower — the creature gains a long-term madness effect.
• Natural 1 — the creature gains an indefinite madness effect.

Madness effects last their normal durations. Any creature that gains madness from this feature takes the extra psychic damage (2d6 at this level).

Contagious Chaos: Creatures affected by your aura have disadvantage on saving throws against it for the rest of the rage. While you are inside your own aura, attack rolls made against you by creatures in the aura are made with disadvantage.

d100	Effect (lasts 1d10 minutes)
01–20	The character retreats into his or her mind and becomes paralyzed. The effect ends if the character takes any damage.
21–30	The character becomes incapacitated and spends the duration screaming, laughing, or weeping.
31–40	The character becomes frightened and must use his or her action and movement each round to flee from the source of the fear.
41–50	The character begins babbling and is incapable of normal speech or spellcasting.
51–60	The character must use his or her action each round to attack the nearest creature.
61–70	The character experiences vivid hallucinations and has disadvantage on ability checks.
71–75	The character does whatever anyone tells him or her to do that isn’t obviously self-destructive.
76–80	The character experiences an overpowering urge to eat something strange such as dirt, slime, or offal.
81–90	The character is stunned.
91–100	The character falls unconscious.

 

Long-Term Madness

d100	Effect (lasts 1d10 × 10 hours)
01–10	The character feels compelled to repeat a specific activity over and over, such as washing hands, touching things, praying, or counting coins.
11–20	The character experiences vivid hallucinations and has disadvantage on ability checks.
21–30	The character suffers extreme paranoia. The character has disadvantage on Wisdom and Charisma checks.
31–40	The character regards something (usually the source of madness) with intense revulsion, as if affected by the antipathy effect of the antipathy/sympathy spell.
41–45	The character experiences a powerful delusion. Choose a potion. The character imagines that he or she is under its effects.
46–55	The character becomes attached to a “lucky charm,” such as a person or an object, and has disadvantage on attack rolls, ability checks, and saving throws while more than 30 feet from it.
56–65	The character is blinded (25%) or deafened (75%).
66–75	The character experiences uncontrollable tremors or tics, which impose disadvantage on attack rolls, ability checks, and saving throws that involve Strength or Dexterity.
76–85	The character suffers from partial amnesia. The character knows who he or she is and retains racial traits and class features, but doesn’t recognize other people or remember anything that happened before the madness took effect.
86–90	Whenever the character takes damage, he or she must succeed on a DC 15 Wisdom saving throw or be affected as though he or she failed a saving throw against the confusion spell. The confusion effect lasts for 1 minute.
91–95	The character loses the ability to speak.
96–100	The character falls unconscious. No amount of jostling or damage can wake the character.

Abyss of Madness

14th-level Path of Madness feature

Your Aura of Insanity becomes truly apocalyptic. In addition to the normal confusion and madness effects from 10th level, the d20 roll of the saving throw now triggers these enhanced effects:

• Natural 1 — the creature also suffers the feeblemind spell.
• 5 or lower — the creature also suffers from modify memory. The DM permanently alters one random memory from the last 24 hours that lasted at least 10 minutes.
• 10 or lower — the creature also suffers the simultaneous effects of hideous laughter and bane (no concentration).

While in Mad Rage:

• Your walking speed increases by an additional 10 feet (total +30 feet).
• You gain one more extra attack as part of the Attack action (for a total of four attacks with the Attack action while mad).
• Once per long rest, when you enter Mad Rage you can immediately force every hostile creature currently in your aura to make the Wisdom saving throw (applying all 14th-level enhancements).

The extra psychic damage from madness effects increases to 3d6 at this level.