Base Class: Barbarian
Prerequisite: You must have a wisdom score of at least 8 to go down the path of the psycho.
Forewarning: This subclass currently breaks DnD Beyond’s content generation system since it provides bonuses for negative modifiers. To use this subclass you will have to custom set your wisdom score and your psychic weapon attacks appropriately based on the ability text.
The psycho is a lone barbarian who has wandered far into the hinterlands to the very edge of sanity and just a little past it. The unfathomable mysteries they have witnessed at the end of all things has broken reality’s grip on them and vice versa. Some say they are not insane but rather hyper-sane having bore witness to universal truths mortals and gods were not meant to know. This awareness has awakened psychic abilities that only grow as they descend deeper into madness and recede from this reality and into the next.
Psychic Psychotic
Starting at 3rd level when you adopt this path, you gain the ability to spend a bonus action to will a weapon made of pure psychic energy into existence in your empty hand. This weapon manifests for 1 minute in any form you choose. You are proficient with this psychic weapon which deals 1d8 psychic damage and you add your negative wisdom modifier (minimum 0) to attack and damage rolls. Your psychic weapon has the light, and thrown properties (range 20/60). If you drop the weapon or throw it, it dissipates at the end of the turn. Thereafter, for the duration of this ability, you can use a bonus action to cause the weapon to reappear in your hand. You can use this ability a number of times equal to your negative wisdom modifier (minimum 1 time). You may only have 1 psychic weapon manifest at a time. If you use this ability while you already have a weapon manifested the previous weapon dissipates. You regain all uses of this ability after taking a long rest.
At your 10th barbarian level you may manifest a weapon that does 2d8 psychic damage. If you do it loses the light and thrown properties.
At your 14th barbarian level you may use this ability to manifest a weapon that does 3d8 psychic damage. If you do it loses the light and thrown properties and gains the two-handed property.
Stare into the Abyss
At 3rd level, when you adopt this path, anytime your wisdom score would increase you can choose to decrease your wisdom by that amount instead. If this occurs due to a temporary condition when the condition ends your wisdom score increases by that amount.
Blind Rage
Beginning at 6th level, when you rage you can enter a blind rage. Subtract your strength modifier from your wisdom score for the duration of your rage. This may be used to summon your shadow blade additional times if your new wisdom modifier would permit it. If this feature causes your wisdom score to go below 1 you instead pass out and go unconscious for 1d4 hours.
Insight of the Insane
At 10th level when you make a wisdom check and get a negative result you gain sudden useful insight or knowledge about something unrelated to the check. After you use this ability you may not use it again until you finish a short or long rest.
Ablation
At 14th level when taking acid, cold, fire, lighting, or thunder damage you can use your reaction and spend a use of rage to take half the damage and absorb the other half as temporary hitpoints in the form of an ablative psychic shield of crackling energy. If you are not already raging this counts as entering a rage. While you have these temporary hitpoints you are resistant to the triggering damage type. In addition, when you hit with a weapon attack you may subtract an amount of your temporary hitpoints and apply it to the damage of the attack. The damage type is that of the triggering damage.
When manifesting a psychic weapon, does it deal normal weapon damage plus psychic or is it just psychic?
Thank you for your kind words and interest in this subclass. As intended the racial bonus would not invert, nor would any wisdom bonus that you got prior to gaining this subclass. For example a resilient feat taken by a variant human at level 1 or a permanent magical effect on your character. This is to simplify bookkeeping and prevent possible goofiness related to multi-classing. I would love to hear any feedback you may have as you play this subclass.
Hey I know this is a bit late, but for Stare Into The Abyss, would racial bonuses count? I'm thinking about a Loxodon (elephant) Barbarian. The get +2 Con and +1 Wis. At 3rd level would the +1 Wis become -1? If so, that would mean I could start the class with a -2 Wis mod. Any insight (heh) into this would be great! Love the class!
Thanks for your comments! This idea is very young and does need some work for sure but I tried to keep the power level for the first draft in line with the other barbarian paths as well as I could muster. I am personally on the fence about so much reliance on the psychic weapon, it feels less imaginative than I think a class based around going insane should be. As for whether INT or WIS should be the stat that represents sanity my reasoning is that skills that are reliant on WIS are all skills in which the person must interpret the world around them, I.e. Perception, insight and survival. Intelligence on the other hand is all about learned knowledge and methodicalness. The madness of the Psycho is that their reality is dissolving around them and they become unable to discern between real and unreal (perception), they find it difficult to connect and empathize with the sane (insight), and they became ill equipped to function in this “reality” (survival). On the other hand they migh be very well educated, especially in the arcane as a potential driving force for their insanity.
Maybe my valuation of the psychic weapon is too strong, I see it as an almost too powerful ability. Maybe it’s not clear that you add your negative wisdom score on top of the str or dex that your chosen psychic weapon would typically get making this quite a significant damage increase in my view. Of course the drawback is all the negatives associated with a bad WIS and that at level 3 your negative WIS is at lowest -1 and can only reliably deteriorate with ASIs which you might otherwise spend on a feat or improving your primary stat. Although, your recommendation sounds like a wonderful subversion that is more in line with the disorientation I want the player to feel when playing this class. I will highly consider some form of it for a version update.
Ablation is... kind of a placeholder but the difference with bear totem is that you get to choose between offensive and defensive tactics as the more you use the shield offensively the quicker you will lose it’s protection. For most fights this will be a small matter and I don’t expect the shield to last more than a round or two of attacks but the fight I really saw this shining in is encountering a dragon’s breath where you could generate a huge shield. Of course using that power offensively is useless on the dragon but throw in a couple cultists and now you’ve turned their ally’s mightiest weapon against them. It begs the barbarian to go running screaming at the dragon begging for the breath, which is exactly the scenario this ability is built for.
And finally, concerning blind rage, the benefit is significantly increased damage output as I mentioned above and an extra use of the weapon and encouragement to keep STR as a relevant stat to compete for ASIs. Considering the other paths generally provide ribbon benefits at 6th level I thought this was rather generous, and yes, situational. I had considered immunity to charm and fear somewhere in this class for the reasons you mention but it had been done and in any case I couldn’t find a good place to fit it that didnt creep a bit in power... On the other hand a save for passing out does make that caveat more like a fun gamble than a static restriction to design around, I like it!
I like what you did here.
Only I would base this class on INT instead of WIS because it is your INT that logically binds your mental construct of the world to your real life experiences.
I have the impression that mechanically this subclass doesn't offer much before 6th level Barbarian or even 10th level, apart from creating psychic weapon damage.
At level 14 though, this subclass turns into a real tank, gaining almost the same resistance a a bear totem but on top of it you can absorb this damage and spend it as extra damage.
I wonder if you ever played this on lower levels?
I might be inclined to change Psychic Psychotic into and bonus psychic damage during rages when you roll to hit (before modifiers) under or equal to your WIS (or INT) negative bonus, or roll a natural '1'.
This makes the Subclass work counter to normal mechanics. It has some negative synergy with Reckless Attack, which is mechanically weird.
On Blind Rage I would add the immunity from charm and fear from berserker, path as it seems fitting. A insane mind can't be controlled that easy. Or allow for a save with negative bonus from WIS (or INT) on it.
Am I missing something here? I don't see the benefits.
Hey, thanks for taking the time to comment! Actually, the character model I wrote this for is someone who is hyper-intelligent to the point of being withdrawn from the world as most people know it. Their brain smarts, or Intelligence, may be fine to really good but their ability to perceive the mundane world and draw reasonable conclusions from their experiences (i.e. wisdom) is what suffers... but only as they gain unique access to meta-reality which interferes. They begin to see the code behind The Matrix, so to speak and so lose connection to what everyone else thinks of as “reality”. I’m enthralled with the idea that the high level Psycho realizes they are merely a character in an RPG and is capable of using that knowledge to their advantage somehow.
Very interesting for a subclass to take advantage of bad ability scores, though it does semi condone the barbarian stereotype of being a bumbling buffoon with next to no brain smarts, overall great idea