Path of the Possessed

### Path of the Possessed

Not every demon that manages to possess a mortal is without restraint. Occasionally, a demon will find its new host to be exceptionally useful, offering it unholy strength in exchange for harboring the evil spirit. From this union, barbarians of the Path of the Possessed are made, cursed warriors whose bodies and minds are transformed for battle.

Such a barbarian is free to revel in their new power, but as always there is a cost. A demon may desire to further its goals through the use of its new flesh carriage, or simply seek the acquisition of another corrupted soul to fight on the side of the Abyss in the Blood War. You can choose the aim of your demon or determine it by rolling on the Demonic Drive table.

##### Demonic Drive

|     d4      | Drive |
|:---:|:-----------|
|  1</br></br></br> | The spirit inside you aims to take over a humanoid kingdom. In your dreams, it nudges you towards actions that will  lead to destabilization.  |
|  2</br></br></br>  | Your soul will inevitably be forfeit to the armies of the Abyss. Your demon pressures you to commit deplorable acts in order to intensify your evil. |
|  3</br></br>  | Your possessing spirit is curious about mortal life, demanding strange behavior for their amusement.  |
|  4</br></br>  | You and the demon share a common enemy, whose destruction would be mutually beneficial. |

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I made this because I saw someone request a fiend-based barbarian on Reddit and I liked this artwork. Also because I really like homebrewing barbarian subclasses.

While it isn't elaborated on a whole lot through the subclass features, I think this subclass has a lot of roleplay potential. Much like how Aasimar have their angelic guide, you have a demon living in your body. How did you come to be possessed? How does your demon interact with you and the rest of the party? Feel free as a player or DM to involve the demon as an NPC member of the party if you so wish, or have it be more of a background presence.

I might consider using the various demon lords as the framework for a redesign of this subclass, but I don't think that's really necessary. As is, the brew is fairly generic and I don't feel a great need to tie it directly to Forgotten Realms lore any more than it already is. Most of the features are inspired by abilities and traits from various demon and devil statblocks, which I feel is enough.

Only after making this subclass did I read the Symbiotic Being Dark Gift in Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, and I was surprised by the similarities it shares with this subclass. A separate entity inhabits your body, has its own agenda, and can let you use your Hit Dice to give you a bonus on saving throws.

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#### Perilous Blessing
*3rd-level Path of the Possessed feature*
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As payment for harboring a being of evil incarnate, you are rewarded with pieces of the demon's magic, blessings to empower you in battle. If a blessing requires a saving throw, the DC equals 8 + your proficiency bonus + your Constitution modifier. When you enter your rage, you gain a number of the following blessings of your choice equal to your rage damage bonus, which last until the end of your rage. You choose which blessings to adopt each time you rage:

<p class='negative-indent'><b>Abyssal Hunger.</b> You feast on the strength of your foes. Your weapon attacks deal an extra 1d4 necrotic damage on a hit. When you score a critical hit on a creature, you regain a number of hit points equal to the necrotic damage dealt.</p>

<p class='negative-indent'><b>Dark Affinity.</b> You become comfortable in the most inhospitable circumstances. You gain resistance to cold, fire, and lightning damage. </p>

<p class='negative-indent'><b>Dread Warrior.</b> You erode the willpower of any in your path. Once during each of your turns when you hit a creature with an attack roll, you can force the target to make a Wisdom saving throw or become frightened of you until the end of your next turn.</p>

<p class='negative-indent'><b>Evil's Reach.</b> Your arms lengthen into violent, thrashing appendages. Your weapons and unarmed strikes gain the reach property.</p>

<p class='negative-indent'><b>Horrid Protrusions.</b> Writhing black tentacles emerge from your flesh. Once per turn when you are damaged by a creature within 5 feet of you, you can force them to make a Dexterity saving throw or be grappled by you. You cannot grapple another creature this way until the grapple ends.</p>

<p class='negative-indent'><b>Profane Carapace.</b> Chitinous plates form over your skin. You gain a +1 bonus to AC while you are not wearing armor.</p>

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Pick two. Then pick three. Then pick four.

I assume Abyssal Hunger will be used in 99% of fights. It adds an average of 2.5 damage to each attack, but at low health it also heals you for that many points. Once you get Extra Attack, this is almost like chugging a basic healing potion every time you land both attacks or get a crit. You won't be setting records in the damage dealing department, but this will make you fairly hard to kill and less reliant on healing from your allies. Note that this subclass has nothing that consumes a bonus action, and this ability would work very well with two-weapon fighting. This also works great in tandem with Damning Protection, since you won't have a whole lot of Hit Dice left lying around when you take a Short Rest, so finding other ways of keeping yourself healthy is important.

Dark Affinity gives you the damage resistances that demon statblocks usually have. These are fairly common damage types, and combined with the resistance to physical damage you get from raging, you nearly match with the Bear Totem barbarian. This is a strong ability, but a situational one. A lot of fights likely won't have any of these damage types flying around, but when they are present this will be a most welcome benefit.

Dread Warrior is quite strong. Once per turn you can try to frighten an enemy you hit with an attack. The fear effect only lasts about a round so you won't be able to have multiple enemies frightened at once, but this can be very powerful if you are up against a single enemy, especially for trying to burn through abilities like Legendary Resistance. Once an enemy has resisted it or the effect expires for them, they gain advantage on the save for the next day, so unless the target has a very low Wis or you have the right debuffs on them, you won't be able to keep a creature frightened perpetually.

Evil's Reach extends the range of your melee attacks by 5 feet, allowing you to hit targets farther away. This is a fairly simple benefit, but combines well with most of the other possible options. Obviously it gives you more choices of who to hit in combat, allowing you to engage more targets at once, which works well with Abyssal Hunger and Dread Warrior. This lets you deal with enemies using their range to avoid Horrid Protrusions grappling them. This one is a little vague in terms of the flavor, but I imagine the Barbarian's arms turning into big tentacles like the demon prince Demogorgon. You could also go with some body horror of the arm bones extending and ripping the flesh, or go a more magical route and say that ethereal arms or wisps of smoke hold your weapons aloft. This should work with most other effects that increase your reach, such as using reach weapons or certain features, so you can hit people from far away.

Horrid Protrusions is situational, but can be very good. It allows you to grapple nearby attackers without an action cost. To escape, enemies must use their action to make a contested Athletics or Acrobatics check against your Athletics, and as a Barbarian that contest will usually go in your favor. This keeps enemies from moving away from you, turning them into free targets for your allies, or letting you chunk them down with Abyssal Hunger while they try to escape. This can stray a little into the Tank Fallacy (being durable isn't useful on its own if enemies can avoid you and kill your allies) and punishing enemies for hitting you doesn't help much with that. However, you deal a decent amount of damage as a Barbarian plus you will usually have Abyssal Hunger making you hit harder, so you should be able to prevent enemies from ignoring you. This also works great with Pain Spreader to keep enemies in the AOE, or with Dread Warrior to keep frightened enemies from moving away (plus, fear gives disadvantage on ability checks, so escaping will be even harder).

Profane Carapace is simple but strong. You get a +1 bonus to AC. A bonus of 1 isn't a lot, but each point of armor is more valuable than the last, so this is very strong.

Overall I'd expect the most common choices to be Abyssal Hunger and either Profane Carapace or Dark Affinity as needed at the lower levels. Once your RDB increases to 3, Dread Warrior and Horrid Protrusions become good options. Evil's Reach is situational throughout the game, but can be useful in the right circumstances.

By the current wording, I believe any item or other feature that increases your rage damage bonus should also let you pick another ability for Perilous Blessing. I'm planning to release the final version of this subclass along with a lot of other homebrew material, including at least one item that will increase your RDB by 1, so that item would be extra good on a Possessed barbarian.

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#### Damning Protection
*6th-level Path of the Possessed feature*
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Spells wash over you like blood over the bed of the river Styx. When you make a saving throw against a spell or magical effect, you can choose to expend one Hit Die, roll it, and add that number to the total. You can do so after seeing the initial roll but before any of the roll's effects occur.

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Almost every demon in official materials has the Magic Resistance trait, so I wanted to emulate that. However there are a number of other ways to get that ability (like picking the Satyr race) and I don't like overlap. This consumes your Hit Die but can give up to +12 to your saving throws (with an average of +6.5). The presence of Abyssal Hunger means you hopefully won't need as much healing from short rests, but it's named "Damning" because you can screw yourself over a bit, if you end up not being able to heal on a short rest because of this. Not too much of a concern I think, but a cool blend of flavor and mechanics.

Using Hit Die to fuel other features is an experiment, and I think the Barbarian is a good subclass to start it with. When you get this you'll be able to use it 6 times per day but it will take 2 days to fully recover your Hit Dice. I think this is still a favorable tradeoff however, in cases where passing a saving throw means you will avoid more than 1d12+Con damage, since that is how much you would heal from using a Hit Die normally.

Keep in mind this applies even when not raging. Good for warding off initiation spells from surprise attacks. Barbarians are often targets for enchantment spells to turn them against the party, so having a hefty boost to saves against them is helpful. You already get advantage on Dexterity saving throws against effects you can see thanks to Danger Sense, so usually you will want to save this for mental saves, since being charmed can be really bad news for the party.

I could add a use limit for this, like you can only use it a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus per short rest or whatever, but honestly that seems unnecessary. It already consumes a limited resource, which can take as many as two long rests to restore fully, and has other uses. Even at 20th level, you'll only be able to use this 10 times per day if you are using it as much as possible every day and not spending Hit Die on anything else.

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#### Fiendish Awareness
*10th-level Path of the Possessed feature*
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Your eyes blaze with the fires of chaos, burning away the veneer that conceals reality. As a bonus action, you can grant yourself truesight out to a range of 60 feet for 10 minutes.

Once you use this feature, you can't do so again until you finish a short or long rest, unless you expend a use of your Rage feature to do so.

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The ribbon/utility feature, but a useful one.

Lots of demons have innate truesight, so from a flavor perspective, this makes perfect sense.

Mechanically, this is pretty strong. Truesight has a lot of benefits. It lets you see in normal and magical darkness, see invisible creatures and objects, automatically detect visual illusions and succeed on saving throws against them, perceive the original form of a shapechanger or a creature that is transformed by magic, and see into the Ethereal Plane. You can do just about everything but see through walls, so this is a great ability for fighting enemies you wouldn't normally be able to see. If you are in darkness, if the enemy is invisible, if it is shielding itself with illusion spells like Blur, or if a target is escaping into the Ethereal Plane.

You only get one use per day, but it can be used again if you burn a use of your Rage feature. That is a fairly steep cost if your DM regularly throws multiple combats at you per day.

At 20th level, you can have this going as much as you want. Strong for sure, but it isn't the only way to get truesight, and a powerful caster of the same level can cast True Seeing or better yet use Planar Binding to have a powerful minion with truesight.

The spirit that shares your body teaches you to peel away the veneer of the material world. You can cast the *detect evil and good*, *detect magic*, and *detect thoughts* spells without spending a spell slot or components. Constitution is your spellcasting ability for these spells. Once you cast any of these spells in this way, you can’t cast that spell in this way again until you finish a short or long rest.

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#### Embodiment of Sin
*14th-level Path of the Possessed feature*
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A perfect union of mortal and demon, you rip and tear through the battlefield. The following blessings are added to the list of options you can choose from for Perilous Blessing:

<p class='negative-indent'><b>Bloodwings.</b> Great demonic wings sprout from your back. You gain a flying speed equal to your walking speed. </p>

<p class='negative-indent'><b>Cursed Betrayal.</b> When you reduce a creature to 0 hit points, you can force it to make a weapon attack against another creature of your choice before it falls.  </p>

<p class='negative-indent'><b>Pain Spreader.</b> When you take damage, you can use your reaction to force each creature of your choice that you can see within 10 feet of you to make a Dexterity saving throw or take 2d6 cold, fire, or lightning damage (your choice each time you use this ability). </p>

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Three new things to choose from for Perilous Blessing. Flight, a reaction ability, and a fun boost to damage.

Bloodwings is very simple, you gain a flying speed. This is better than the final Eagle ability of the Totem Barbarian but that ability is simply not very good and I don't think its a fair comparison. The Draconic Bloodline sorcerer gets wings at level 14 and those last until dismissed. This is flight only in your rage. Considering all the ways flight can be obtained (racial abilities, spells, class features, magic items, etc.) I don't think a barbarian getting flight while raging is a huge deal at level 14. Think of it this way; if you wanted a character that could fly, how would you achieve that? Playing a barbarian for 14 levels probably isn't the answer. Anyways, it fits the idea of this being a versatile and adaptable subclass, since you only need this blessing if there are flying enemies or maybe ground hazards, or if you just want to look cool as hell.

Cursed Betrayal is fun. When you kill a creature, you can force it to attack one of its allies before it dies. This can't trigger off of itself (if the Betrayer's attack gets a kill it won't trigger on the second enemy, since that isn't technically you reducing the second creature to 0) but it can trigger off of kills from Pain Spreader. Take damage, deal damage to everything nearby, get some kills off of that, those creatures then attack other nearby creatures leading to more damage. I think you could even use this to force the dying creature to attack you if you don't care about their damage, if you just wanted to trigger Pain Spreader. This does require you to get the last hit on an enemy, and for them to be within melee range of another target, so it may be somewhat hard to use.

Pain Spreader is your way of dealing with crowds which I think every martial character needs. As a reaction to taking damage you can deal ~7 damage to each creature of your choice within 10 feet of you that fails their save. A pretty significant boost to your damage output, since I expect this to be used almost every round. It won't deal as much damage as your opportunity attacks, but it deals the damage to multiple enemies. I am considering adjustments to the damage values, it is kind of hard to tell whether this is overpowered or underpowered. In some scenarios such as fights against a lot of weak enemies this could certainly be quite effective, but against a singular boss monster it will likely just tickle, assuming they even fail the save.

In the late game, it is fairly common for barbarians to struggle against airborne enemies if they have no items that let them fly or an ally to cast Fly on them. For this reason I expect Bloodwings to be picked fairly often in fights where it is necessary. However, Pain Spreader and Cursed Betrayal both offer more damage so I expect them to be used frequently as well. Since this is the capstone it makes sense for these abilities to be useful and strong. I think Abyssal Hunger will remain useful throughout the game, so it will usually be that plus one, two, or three other abilities.

This is a subclass all about versatility and being able to adapt to new situations, and the effect I want to achieve with it is surprising the enemy or the rest of the party, when you occasionally pull out some new combination of abilities they haven't seen before. A character being possessed by a demon implies they will be somewhat unpredictable, with capabilities that aren't always fully disclosed, so I feel like this subclass really delivers on that.

For the sake of fun, I have come up with a few more blessings, just to brainstorm. Some people have raised concerns over some of the existing blessings, and while I don't think anything is too far out of line, it is nice to have backups in case I decide something like Bloodwings really does need to be swapped out. Most of these would probably be level 14 abilities if I were to include them.

***Incorporeal Movement.*** You can move through other creatures and objects as if they were difficult terrain, and you are immune to being grappled or restrained. If you end your turn inside an object, you are immediately shunted to the nearest unoccupied space and take force damage equal to twice the number of feet you are moved.

***Returning Wrath.*** Whenever you have advantage on an attack roll while you have less than half your hit points, you can reroll one of the dice once.

***Ravenous Frenzy.*** When you take the Attack action on your turn, you may make one additional attack as part of the same action if both your normal attacks hit.

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##### Path of the Possessed v 1.3 for D&D 5e
**Created by:** [u/NotTheDreadPirate](https://www.reddit.com/user/NotTheDreadPirate "u/NotTheDreadPirate's profile")</br>**Art Credit:** [Grzegorz Rutkowski - Demon Berserker Token](http://www.artofmtg.com/art/demon-berserker-token/ "Grzegorz Rutkowski - Demon Berserker Token")</br> 
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