Base Class: Barbarian
Those who travel down the Path of Madness forfeit control for power. Their minds explode in a fit of rage when overcome with joy or anger due to their own failures or successes in critical moments of combat.
Barbarians under the Path of Madness are not like any other of their class. They can not control when they rage, instead fate decides for them. Should they fumble or get a critical roll, a switch flips in their head and forces a rage. For this exchange they are granted stronger rages, as well as different bonuses and immunities, strengthening both their mind and body.
Rages of Insanity
Starting when you choose this path at 3rd level, your rages become immensely powerful and uncontrollable. Your skin turns a bloody red and your rage damage is +4 instead of what’s shown on the barbarian table. Your rage damage becomes +6 at 9th level and +8 at 16th level ignoring the barbarian table.
In addition, you no longer decide when you rage. You must use a rage, if you're able to do so, when you roll a d20 in combat and it lands on a 1 (low roll) or 20 (high roll). If you roll a 20 you begin your rage as normal. If you roll a 1 you rage and give in to your madness.
While raging from a 1, you cannot tell the difference between ally and foe, treating all creatures as enemies. Allies wishing to cast a beneficial spell that requires a touch on you must succeed on an attack roll. If you are attacked, you must attack the creature that last attacked you until that creature is dead or out of sight.
If you do not have a mandatory target, roll on the table below at the beginning of your turn to decide how you spend your turn.
- Spend Your Turn
- d4 Action
- |1| Attack nearest ally.
- |2-3| Attack nearest creature.
- |4| You can decide your action as normal.
At 6th level, a confused rage occurs at a roll of 1-2 a normal rage occurs at a roll of 19-20.
At 10th level, a confused rage occurs at a roll of 1-3 and a normal rage occurs at a roll of 18-20.
At 14th level, a confused rage occurs at a roll of 1-4 and a normal rage occurs at a roll of 17-20.
Calming Allies
At 3rd level, your allies may attempt to calm you down in moments of rage. If you're raging from a 1, an ally may attempt a Charisma check. If they succeed (DC: 8 + your proficiency bonus + your Constitution modifier - your Wisdom modifier), you come out of your rage.
At 6th level, your allies can make this check with disadvantage to turn your rage from low roll as if you had raged from a high roll.
At 10th level, your allies no longer have disadvantage on checks to turn rages.
Maniacal Body
At 3rd level, your insanity forces your body to push through physical strain on your body. If you have any points of exhaustion when you enter a rage, the effects of exhaustion are suspended until your rage ends. While raging, you cannot gain any more points of exhaustion.
At 14th level, entering a rage resets your exhaustion counter to 0.
Mind of Lunacy
Beginning at 6th level, you’ve given up even more control of your mind that even your enemies have trouble affecting it. You are unable to be charmed by magic or put to sleep by magic, and you have resistance to Psychic damage while not raging, and immunity to Psychic damage while raging.
Mind and Body
At 6th level, your insane mind begins to affect your nervous system, helping you feel less and less pain. At the end of each rest, you gain temporary hit points equal to 2d4+your barbarian level.
The die changes to a d6 at 9th level, and d8 at 16th level.
Rage Over Matter
Upon reaching 10th level, you have become more accustomed to your madness, able to utilize it in some key moments. After you make a Wisdom saving throw, you can instead expend one of your rages and choose to succeed on the saving throw. You can choose to use this ability after seeing the result, but before the DM tells you if you pass or fail.
Hint of Sanity
At 14th level, you are able to gain some control over your rages. If you would go into a rage stemming from a low roll, you can choose to expend an additional rage to rage as though you had rolled high.
Previous Versions
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2/4/2019 7:57:46 PM
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1543
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21
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Homebrew Original
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Coming Soon
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2/5/2019 6:51:00 PM
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825
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0
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Homebrew
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Coming Soon
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Posted Oct 9, 2019The only worries I've received from this was that the player no longer can choose when to use the base class function. So in perspective, it would be like a wizard can only use their highest level spell slots if they roll a 1 or a 20, so that takes away from the agency of the player, at the cost of a boost. It isn't for everyone, but if this is something you're already looking for specifically, then you should not have any issues! Feel free to make the boosts to rage increased if you don't think the balance is even.
The ranges do increase as you level up, so the higher level you are, the more frequent you'll rage. Levels 1-5 rage on a 1 or 20 (10% chance), then levels 6-9 rage on a 1,2, 19, or 20 (20%), then levels 10-14 rage on 1,2,3,18,19, or 20 (30%), then finally levels 15-20 rage on 1,2,3,4,17,18,19, or 20 (40%)
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Posted Oct 8, 2019Excellent!
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Posted Oct 6, 2019I this was a wonderful and very interesting subclass. I am currently playing a barbarian in the Curse of Strahd module that is possessed by a demon that wants takes control to wreak havoc whenever he rages, and this in my opinion is a perfect fit. My absolute favorite part of this subclass is the fact that your rage is no longer just some anime second form you can manifest, but rather a real mental snap in response to an act of extreme violence or a failure of maddeningly frustrating proportions. I am absolutely in love with this, and if you have any worries or advice to give to a player using it I'd love to hear it. I'm gonna ask my Dungeon Master if I can use it, and I'll let you know if I can get it approved. If you want, I can give feedback after playing it some if he allows me to run it. I also agree that, unless you're using every turn to go "Crit-Fishing" with reckless attack. I might increase the ranges of each by an amount of 1 starting out, or maybe increase the confused rage range by 2. Just food for thought, either way I still love the class.
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Posted Feb 21, 2019I'll have to tweak with it. It hasn't been playtested as much as I'd like. I have a barbarian at my table that matched this subclass perfectly, but he ended up going with something else. I was relying on him to playtest it in our campaign, but without that, I'll have to do more on my own!
The reason it's a low percentage is because when a rage happens this way, I wanted it to be a big deal. I see the drawback in taking away the ability to call upon the main class feature on your own, but when it happens, it is essentially twice as good as the class feature itself.
The ruling is "whenever you roll a 20 or 1 in combat" not when you enter combat. So that's any saving throw, attack, check, initiative, etc. So there's a lot of opportunity for a rage to happen, especially once the ranges widen, considering all the extra attacks that the barbarian gets higher as well.
And the rage limit is still in play. In other words, if a barbarian has already used all of his rages, whatever the cap is, then if he rolls within the range nothing happens. I don't think unlimited rages from a subclass is good at all because that takes away the 20th level feature.
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Posted Feb 21, 2019Wait... I just realized that a normal barbarian can only rage a certain amount of times per level until level 20.. and that it only lasts 1 minute until level 15... You wrote that 'whenever' you enter battle you roll the insanity rage die and you also did not mention a duration.. Unless I just haven't seen either of these.... So.. looking back, having a 60% failure (or 80% failure at lower levels) of not obtaining either rage is still bad but if your party tends to hit a lot of encounters before a long rest, you can possibly say that there may be a better chance for more rages..
(I never really played a barbarian so I didn't know that you get such a high amount of rage uses -- I thought it was like 4 or 5 max -- which would have given your unlimited gamble a slight improvement, but again.... 80-60% of not using a main class feature is kinda harsh)
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Posted Feb 21, 2019Understandable... but again, It's not just a feature of the barbarian. It's THE feature of the barbarian. It's like a wizard without spellcasting.
If you don't want the gap to grant normal rage with the lower rolls offering a risky confused rage and a high roll granting a high reward super rage, then at least make a smaller gap because again, with NO rage at all.... just makes the barbarian pointless... and since this is sort of a gamble you CAN make an dice range grant no rage at all... but don't make it literally 60% of nothing (1-4 bad rage, & 17-20 good rage leave 5-16 giving you nothing at all).
(with or without out the 'better' rolls at higher levels-Whether you want to grant better control of their rages or make the class delve further into sanity is fair and although most classes do offer a higher level=better result formula either option is fine and completely up to you).
IMHO (and again, it's your build, your concept and you have the final say) but how about something akin to 1-4 (bad rage), 5-7 (normal rage), 8-11 no rage at all, 12-16 normal rage 17-20 super rage...
You can play with the numbers.. and instead of the center being a dead zone make it 5-7 deadzone and just go straight from 8-16 or do what I suggested and grant you more control, and a nat1 grants bad rage and 2-x grants no rage at all.... Regardless a 60% to do not activate your classes main feature AT ALL is a major drawback even if you gave super rage a +10
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Posted Feb 21, 2019Yes, you can no long rage at-will. That is the trade off for this specific subclass.
I made the confused rages increase because as you said, the barbarian wants to rage, so the higher the level, the bigger frequency of rages. So I see where some would think that you should have more control over your rages as you progress, but it's more of a further descent into the madness, which goes along with the flavor text of Mind of Lunacy. Now the flavor text does also say for Rage Over Matter and Hint of Sanity that you begin to gain control, so maybe there's room to expand there.
For the Calming Allies feature, I thought I had included some kind of switch, but I see now I did not. I'm thinking something along the lines of if the saving throw succeeds my 5 or more, then you can decide to change the rage into a super rage, instead of coming out.
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Posted Feb 21, 2019Hello. 2 questions;
Can you not rage at will at all any longer? If you roll neither a 1 or 20 (or additional rolls on the respective level), can you not rage AT ALL and fight normally? Because if you miss the roll, then you're really debilitated as rage is the meat of this class.
I was also thinking that why would you increase the negative rolls as you level up? Shouldn't you gain MORE control over your madness rages, not less? I would think to make the d20 results be:
1st level, confused rage 1-4, super rage 20
6th level, a confused rage occurs at a roll of 1-3 & super rage 19-20.
10th level, a confused rage occurs at a roll of 1-2 and a super rage occurs at a roll of 18-20.
14th level, a confused rage occurs at a roll of 1 and a super rage occurs at a roll of 17-20.
This would give you more control to avoid confused rages, give you more control in going super rage, and I would even suggest going normal rage with the in between numbers (use the default modifiers instead of your advanced ones)
For Calming Allies, I would even suggest that being calmed would allow you to transfer from a confused rage to a normal rage... because again, a barbarian WANTS to rage..
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Posted Feb 5, 2019Edited for finalized snippets using snippet codes for all features in the subclass, as well as slight tweaks to wording and overall class effectiveness.