Bard College
College of Whispers
Most folk are happy to welcome a bard into their midst. Bards of the College of Whispers use this to their advantage. They appear to be like other bards, sharing news, singing songs, and telling tales to the audiences they gather. In truth, the College of Whispers teaches its students that they are wolves among sheep. These bards use their uncovered secrets against others through harsh words, extortion and threats. All bards know the power of words, but the College of Whispers teaches ancient, cryptic, sinister magical words that need only be formed quietly to release their terrible power. These words are generally not noticed by anyone except for the target and even they are usually unsure if they heard something or just imagined it. This kind of power is perfect for subterfuge, manipulation and Machiavellian exploits, or exacting revenge (refer to Arya Stark and the Faceless Men from Game of Thrones). Most other bards hate the College of Whispers, viewing it as a parasite that uses a bard’s reputation to acquire wealth and power. For this reason, members of this college rarely reveal their true nature. They typically claim to follow some other college, or they keep their actual calling secret in order to infiltrate and exploit royal courts and other settings of power.
College of Whispers Features
| Bard Level | Features |
|---|---|
| 3rd | Whisper of Pain, Whisper of Terror |
| 6th | Mantle of Whispers |
| 14th | Whisper of Coercion |
Whisper of Pain
When you join the College of Whispers at 3rd level, you gain the ability to make your weapon attacks magically toxic to a creature’s mind. When you hit a creature with a weapon attack, you can expend one use of your Bardic Inspiration to whisper painful words of power that deal an extra 2d6 psychic damage to that target. You can do so only once per round on your turn. The creature must be within 60 feet and must have the ability to hear. The psychic damage increases when you reach certain levels in this class, increasing to 3d6 at 6th level, 4d6 at 12th level, and 5d6 at 18th level.
Whisper of Terror
At 3rd level, you learn to infuse your words with an insidious magic that can inspire terror. As an action, you can whisper terrifying words to sow paranoia and fear in the mind of one creature within 30 feet. The target must be able to hear you and have at least one language in common with you. It must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw against your spell save DC or be frightened of you or another creature of your choice. The target is frightened in this way for 1 hour, until it is attacked or damaged, or until it witnesses its allies being attacked or damaged. If the target succeeds on its saving throw, the target has no hint that you tried to frighten it. Once you use this feature, you can't use it again until you finish a short or long rest.
Mantle of Whispers
At 6th level, you gain the ability to adopt a humanoid’s persona. When a humanoid dies within 30 feet of you, you can magically capture its ‘face’ using your reaction. This ‘face’ is a superficial record of the humanoid’s appearance and memories just before it died. The face can be stored for a number of days equal to your proficiency bonus and then it will fade and be forgotten. You may capture a new face while you have a face stored and the new one will replace the stored one.
You can use the stored face with an action to magically create a disguise that appears on you. You now look like the dead person, but healthy and alive. This disguise lasts for 1 hour or until you end it as a bonus action.
While you’re in the disguise, you gain access to the humanoid’s surface memories, which is essentially any information that the humanoid would have freely shared with a casual acquaintance in conversation. Such information includes general details on its background and personal life but doesn’t include secrets or information of a technical nature; the information is enough that you can pass yourself off as the person by drawing on their memories. Technical information not able to be drawn on includes anything that would require a skill check, for example using thieves tools, remembering an ancient piece of arcane lore, or casting a spell, etc. The pieces of information are whispered to you in your mind as needed or requested, essentially as if the face is answering individual questions or carrying on a conversation back and forth.
So if someone asks you a question while you are disguised with a face, for example, ‘What is your pet’s name?’, you will hear the answer whispered to you in your mind and you can correctly say ‘Spot’. However, you will not, for example, be able to use a guard’s face to draw the floor plan to the entire castle they were guarding, that amount of information is too much to call up all at once. Instead though, while using the guard’s face, you would be able to trace your (the guard’s) steps around areas of the castle that the guard would know as the information would come to your mind while you walked of where you needed to go next (for example, at an intersection the face would tell you 'go left', then at the next decision point, say at a set of stairs, the face would tell you 'go up the stairs', etc.). The face would not let you know about secret doors and traps on the way though, as they are secrets or information that a guard would not share with a casual acquaintance.
When you create a face make a Charisma (Deception) check with a +5 bonus. Similar to how stealth works, the result of your check becomes the DC for a Wisdom (Insight) by another creature to see through your disguise. Such checks would only be needed when there is a reason, such as you doing something very much out of character for the person you are disguised as in front of someone that knows them well.
Once you create a disguise you cannot create another until after you finish a short or a long rest.
Whisper of Coersion
At 14th level, you gain the ability to weave dark magic into your words and tap into a creature’s deepest fears. As an action, you whisper a phrase to one creature within 30 feet. The target must be able to hear you and have at least one language in common with you. The target must make a Wisdom saving throw against your spell save DC. On a successful saving throw, your whisper sounds like unintelligible mumbling and has no effect. On a failed saving throw, the target is charmed by you for the next 8 hours or until you or your allies attack it, damage it, or force it to make a saving throw. It interprets the whispers as a description of its most mortifying secret. You gain no knowledge of this secret, but the target is convinced you know it. The charmed creature obeys your commands for fear that you will reveal its dark secret. It won’t risk its life for you or fight for you, unless it was already inclined to do so. It grants you favours and gifts that it would offer to a close friend. When the effect ends, the creature has no understanding of why it held you in such fear. Once you use this feature, you can’t use it again until you finish a long rest.