Mad Mage
When you touched magic, something broke inside you, or perhaps something broken in everyone else was made whole. Now, your brain is a gaping hole in reality, crawling with magic.
Perk - Mad Vigor
You gain 2 special health per Mad Mage template that only counts against damage you take from your own spells or abilities or as a direct, intentional consequence of your own mad actions (deliberately triggered traps, intentional falls). Any healing in excess of your maximum health restores this special health, and it is full recovered whenever you rest. If any ability grants you temporary mad vigor, it cannot be restored after being lost, and all temporary mad vigor is lost when you rest.
Perk - Pierce the Fourth Veil
You learn spell 13, the Pierce the Fourth Veil spell, when you first become a Mad Mage. Anyone who learns Pierce the Fourth Veil permanently counts as mad.
Drawback - Madness
You're already mad. Anyone who meets you can feel it in their gut, and automatically knows that you are (1) insane and (2) a magic user. Animals know it, too, but some might not mind or see you as a kindred spirit. If you try to act normal, it's almost worse - people are more comfortable with a proper lunatic than a freak sitting in the uncanny valley.
Cantrips
- You can understand and be understood by mad creatures - even mad animals, like starved rats, rabid dogs, and grinning cats.
- Once per day, you can heal yourself from an intentionally self-inflicted injury, even a fatal one. If you don't recover within a few minutes of dying, lack of oxygen to your vitals will prevent regeneration.
- You can conceal secret messages in graffiti, the arrangement of random objects, otherwise normal news broadcasts, or almost anything else. Only mad creatures can detect these messages, but they always do so if of sufficient intellect (must read to detect written messages, etc.) - with a 1-in-6 chance of inverting or otherwise disastrously misunderstanding the message.
Mishaps
- MD only return to your pool on a 1-2 for 24 hours
- Take 1d6 damage (bypassing temporary mad vigor) and gain that much temporary mad vigor.
- You can only be understood by mad creatures for the next 1d6 minutes.
- You can only understand mad creatures for the next 1d6 minutes.
- Random mutation for 1d6 rounds, then save. Permanent if you fail. You can choose to fail, but most do so before determining the mutation.
- You become blind and invisible for 1d6 minutes.
Dooms
- Convert 3 of your health into 4 mad vigor, permanently!
- Instead convert half your health into 150% that much mad vigor, permanently (update whenever your base health would change)!!
- Instead convert all of your health into twice as much mad vigor, permanently (update whenever your base health would change)!!!
- +1 mad vigor!!!! You can just keep getting this one!!!!!
There's no way back!!!!!!
Spells
1) Autodefenestrate
T: self R: your reach D: instant
A sudden force burst from you and knocks you about, dealing [sum] damage to every other thing within range and [dice] damage to you. Additionally, you are flung [5 x dice x sum] feet in a direction of your choice (chosen before rolling your MD), and reduce all fall damage, damage from smashing through windows, or similar damage prompted by this movement by [2 x sum].
2) Tentacle
T: 1 creature (split) R: touch D: [sum] hours
The target gains a awesome, giant, rubbery tentacle attached to their torso or head for the duration. The tentacle grants [5 x dice] feet additional reach and a [half dice] bonus on strength checks, dexterity checks, attack checks, and damage rolls made using solely tentacles. At 3+ [dice], the duration is instead [sum] days. A tentacle can removed early by tearing it off, inflicting 1d6 damage. The tentacles are not suitable for fine manipulation or wielding weapons not designed for tentacular use. People blessed with tentacles are trained in their use as weapons.
If you know this spell, you treat all creatures with tentacles as Mad.
3) Autophagy
T: 1 creature R: 30 feet D: [dice] rounds
For the next [dice] rounds, the target spends its action devouring its own flesh, taking 1d6 damage each round. If it was able to successfully devour itself for the full duration, the delicious meal restores [sum] health. With 2+ [dice], you can increase or decrease the amount restored by up to [dice x dice], to a minimum of 0. Unwilling targets may save to resist when first targeted.
4) Mass Hysteria
T: self and/or up to [dice] other creatures R: 30 feet D: 1 hour
For the duration, each target counts as Mad and gains [sum] temporary mad vigor. Additionally, for the duration, whenever the targets damage another creature, the damage can be resisted via mad vigor.
At 3+ [dice], you can instead target every creature within 100 feet.
5) Headcase
R: touch T: self D: 10 minutes
You open the hole in your head - the one on top, from when you were a baby - so you can put things in or take them out. Your head can hold up to [sum] slots of stuff - any excess shoots out the top dramatically whenever you cast this spell again, if you roll less than your current head storage (this is typically harmless, unless it's like flasks of alchemist fire). You can bash your head into something really hard to take 1d6 damage and eject everything in your head. Anything left in your head when the spell ends is innacessible until you cast the spell again or smash your head.
If you know this spell, you treat all creatures with head wounds as Mad.
6) Eye Sore
T: 1 creature R: touch D: 1 hour
The target gains [sum] large sores scattered about its body, which can open revealing strange eyes within. Up to [dice] times during the duration, the target can open an eye to gain one of the following benefits as a non-action:
- See a strange path through the physical world to use any mental ability score in place of a single physical ability score of their choice for 1 round.
- See into the unnatural, discerning illusions, spotting the invisible, and piercing shapeshifted disguises for 1 minute.
- Replace a ruined or blind eye (a conveniently located sore will be present).
- See in the dark for 1 minute.
Any sores opened leave nasty scars after the spell ends, but the rest vanish without a trace.
At 4+ [dice], you can make the spell permanent. The target can open [dice] eyes per day, up to [sum] times total. New permanent castings add to [sum] and reset [dice].
If you know this spell, you treat all sightless or blind creatures as Mad.
7) Buddy System
T: self D: [sum] hours
You take [sum - dice] damage and vomit up a tangled digestive system buddy that is absolutely loyal to you. The buddy is mad, allowing you to communicate with it. The viscera has no particular abilities or training, but functions as a [dice] HD creature of your size with [dice + sum] health. It has a bite attack (1d8 + [dice]) and will eat whatever you tell it to (but might die). It smells awful and leaves a trail of gore wherever it goes. At any point, or within 10 minutes of the spell's end, you may consume the buddy's body to regain health equal to the the buddy's current health (or the health it had when the spell ended). This takes 1 round per health regained.
If you know this spell, you treat fresh corpses as Mad.
8) Appetizer
T: 1 thing R: 50 feet D: [sum + dice] rounds
The target gets appetized. For the duration, the target smells delicious and creatures can bite off tasty pieces of it for 1d8 damage, ignoring most forms of damage resistance. Creatures do not suffer damage, poison, or similar consequences from biting dangerous targets. With 2+ [dice], the biters can reduce the damage to 1d6 to ignore abilities that would negate the bites such as incorporeality or invulnerability. With 4+ [dice], the target must save at the end of the duration, or the effect becomes permanent.
If you know this spell, you treat creatures you've had a bite of as Mad.
9) Mad Mimicry
T: 1 creature R: 50 feet D: [sum] minutes
Your flesh cracks, twists, and warps, reshaping you into a copy of the target creature. The creature must be willing or have [dice] or fewer HD. You keep your own health and mental abilities, but form (non-magical) meat duplicates of its equipment that rot into nothing when the spell ends. You cannot replicate complex magical abilities of the creature that require activation. The copied creature counts as Mad as long as it can perceive your twisted shape.
10) Internal Gate
T: a space R: see text D: [sum] rounds (D)
You transmute your own body into a gate to an location you are aware of within [sum x units] distance, where units depends on [dice]: 1 - 10 feet, 2 - 50 feet, 3 - 500 feet, 4 - 1 mile, 5+ - 10^[dice] miles. You can try to guess an open location, but if you choose an area that is obstructed you take [2 x sum] damage and the spell fails. To travel through your internal gate, you must invert yourself as an action, taking [dice] d6 damage and ending the spell.
Creatures and objects up to [dice] sizes larger than you can squeeze through the gate. If you die while the gate is active (or as a consequence of inverting yourself), it is permanent until your mangled, superpositioned corpse is entirely destroyed. You are effectively paralyzed while the gate is open, able to take no actions beyond self-inversion and dismissing the spell.
11) Clarity
T: n/a R: n/a D: instant
You cast this spell as a reaction. Once during the duration, you may shift a single dice roll by up to [sum]. It can be any kind of roll, but you cannot shift the result to one that could not have occurred naturally. If the roll was made by or against an unwilling creature, it may save - if it succeeds, you may only shift the roll by up to [half sum].
12) Madden
T: 1 creature R: 50 feet D: see text
You describe a mad behavior with up to [2 x dice] words. The target may save. If it fails, it is afflicted by the described madness for [sum] rounds/10 minutes/days/centuries (per [dice]). If the creature was having a particularly non-maddening day, it gets advantage on this save, but if it was having a particularly maddening day, it gets disadvantage of this save.
A creature twice maddened by this spell cast with 4+ [dice] gains 1 MD and learns a single Mad Mage spell (roll 1d6) and permanently counts as Mad. This does not stack.
13) Pierce the Fourth Veil
T: self D: instant
You cast your mind to eldritch realms, and receive a message from alien and unknowable beings. You (the real person controlling the character) communicate a message of up to [half sum + 1] words to you (the character in the game), which can be anything you (the real person) know. You (the character) might ask a question you (the character) have reason to ask first, or simply feel a strange compulsion to cast this spell because you (the real person) want you (the character) to.
If you know this spell, you are always treated as Mad.
EDITED: After some playtesting, Pierce the Fourth Veil was made a baseline feature, and the Clarity spell was added. Additionally, some of the self-damage was toned down.