The Madness Domain celebrates the variety of shapes the mind can take, reveling in the truth and freedom of what others deride as insanity. The gods of madness seek to spread their gift and their perspective to all the mortal races and beyond, to disabuse fools of their silly ideas of "reality" and wake the sleeping masses from their idyllic dreams.

Most gods of madness are considered Evil, and in some settings they are also fiends or undead, such as a demon lord of chaos and insanity or a lich god of deranged seekers who leave the world of mortal thought behind. Some are simply misunderstood divinities that seek to spread their unique and mind-bending perspective on reality, only called "mad" by the ignorant masses who know little of their revelations. These gods rarely speak of things like hope or peace, and often espouse a pessimistic or even paranoid view of creation.

Madness Domain Spells

CLERIC LEVEL	SPELL
1st	dissonant whispers*, Tasha's hideous laughter*
3rd	crown of madness*, phantasmal force*
5th	fear, incite self-harm (new)
7th	confusion, phantasmal killer
9th	modify memory, phantasmal plunge (new)

D&D Beyond Note: New homebrew spells and spells marked with an asterisk must be selected manually in the character builder. Homebrew spells must first be added to your collection.

Bonus Cantrip

When you choose this domain at 1st level, you learn the vicious mockery cantrip, which is a cleric cantrip for you and doesn't count against the number of cantrips you can know as a cleric.

Divine Hallucinations

Starting at 1st level, you can use an action to enter a catatonic trance to receive warnings from your god via hallucination. You become incapacitated for 1 minute as you experience a vivid hallucination that might be prophetic. The DM rolls a d6 in secret. On a roll of a 5 or 6, the DM shows you a likely future involving a real threat you're likely to face soon. On any other roll, the DM shows you a paranoid vision of an unlikely future involving threats that are not real or that you're unlikely to face, such as a betrayal from allies that are actually trustworthy, or an attack from monsters that aren't actually present in the immediate area.

You can enter this trance a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus. You regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest.

Gift of Madness

At 1st level, you also learn how to ward off attackers by sharing your madness with them. Immediately after a creature hits you with a melee attack, you can use your reaction to assault it with hallucinations. The creature must make a Wisdom saving throw. On a failed saving throw, it takes psychic damage equal to 1d4 + half your cleric level, and the hallucinations make it either blinded or deafened (your choice) and frightened of you until the end of your next turn.

You can use this feature a number of times equal to your Wisdom modifier (a minimum of once). You regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest.

Channel Divinity: Dread Whispers

At 2nd level, you can use your Channel Divinity to infuse the creatures in an area with paranoid dread and maddening whispers warning them of betrayal.

As an action, you present your holy symbol and invoke the name of your deity, then choose a point that you can see within 60 feet. Each creature in a 10 foot sphere centered on that point must make a Wisdom saving throw. On a failed saving throw, a creature takes psychic damage equal to 1d8 + your cleric level and it becomes addled with dread for 1 minute. On a successful saving throw, it takes half as much damage and isn't addled.

A creature that is addled with dread treats all other creatures as enemies for the purpose of disadvantage for ranged attacks, and it must make every opportunity attack that it possibly can. At the end of each of the creature's turns, it repeats the saving throw, ending the effect on itself on a success.

Crazed Stumbling

Starting at 6th level, whenever you deal psychic damage to a creature, you can cause it to insensibly stagger and stumble with no regard to its safety. The creature moves up to half its speed (but no more than 10 feet) in a direction of your choice, without provoking opportunity attacks. Creatures that can't be charmed or that can't be frightened are immune to this feature.

Potent Spellcasting

Starting at 8th level, you add your Wisdom modifier to the damage you deal with any cleric cantrip.

Already Mad

Starting at 17th level, you cannot be charmed or frightened and you have immunity to psychic damage.