The College of Whispers 2.0: The Sound of Silence

Bards of the College of Whispers appear to be like any other bard, sharing news, singing songs, and telling tales to the audiences they gather.

In truth, the College of Whispers teaches its students that knowledge is power, and to hold that power close. These bards use their magic and skills subtly. A Whisper Bard can weave an imperceptible web of influence around a creature, a village, or even a kingdom.

Many other bards hate the College of Whispers, viewing it as a corruption of a Bard's true nature. For this reason, these bards rarely reveal themselves unless they must. Among the secrets they keep, perhaps the most perilous is their membership in the College of Whispers itself.

Vicious Whispers

When you join the College of Whispers at 3rd level your words become your most powerful weapon.

For you, Vicious Mockery has the following changes:

The number of attack rolls subject to Disadvantage for an affected creature before the end of its next turn increases by 1 at certain levels in this class: 5th (2), 11th (3), and 17th (4).
Creatures who fail their save against Vicious Mockery subtract 1 from their Spell Save DC until the end of their next turn. The amount subtracted increases by one at certain levels in this class: 8th (2), 13th (3), and 18th (4).
You can expend a use of Bardic Inspiration to cast Vicious Mockery as a Bonus Action.

Maddening Whispers

When you join the College of Whispers at 3rd level, you gain the ability to make your spells magically toxic to a creature's mind.

When you do damage to a creature with a spell that has a Verbal Component, you can expend one use of your Bardic Inspiration to deal an additional 2d6 psychic damage to that target.

The psychic damage increases when you reach certain levels in this class, increasing to 3d6 at 5th level, 5d6 at 10th level, and 8d6 at 15th level.

You can whisper the Verbal Components of spells. If you are Invisible, and no creatures other than your allies are within 30 feet of you, whispered Verbal Components do not end your Invisible condition.

Mantle of Whispers

At 6th level, your mastery of whispers enhances your spellcasting.

The Message, Command, Suggestion and Tongues spells are added permanently to your list of prepared spells. If you already have any of these spells prepared, you may choose a different spell of the same level from the Bard list to add instead.

When you cast a spell, you can attempt to disguise its Components. Make a Charisma (Performance) or Dexterity (Sleight of Hand) check. The DC of this check is 10 + the spell’s level (0 for cantrips). Success means creatures who perceive the Components of the spell do not as a result perceive that you are casting the spell.

If you successfully disguise the Components of an Enchantment or Illusion spell, the targets have Disadvantage on any saves they make as a result of the spell. If you are unsuccessful, they have Advantage on any saves they make as a result of the spell and may become hostile to you.

Once you are unsuccessful a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus since taking a long rest, you can no longer use this ability until you take a long rest.

Art: OpenArt.ai

Shadow Lore

At 14th level, you gain the ability to weave dark magic into your words and terrorize creatures within an entire area.

As a Bonus Action, make a check of the appropriate Skill shown in the Skills Table below to weave a Tale that can imperil your audience, depending on the Saving Throw you wish to affect. For the next 10 minutes, unless you choose end the effect earlier, all creatures within 60 feet of you that can hear you, other than yourself, must subtract the number shown in the effect column of the roll table that corresponds to your check result from the relevant Saving Throw.

The first time a creature is affected by a Tale, it rolls a Wisdom (Perception) check. If this check is higher than your Skill check, it becomes hostile to you. Otherwise, the Tale does not affect its attitude towards you.

If you critically succeed, all creatures affected must subtract double the amount shown in the effect column.

If you use Shadow Lore again while a previous instance is still in effect, that previous instance immediately ends.

You can do this a number of times equal to your Charisma modifier per long rest, or, by expending a spell slot of third level or higher.

Skills Table

Skill	Saving Throw
Intimidation	Strength
Sleight of Hand	Dexterity
Medicine	Constitution
Deception	Intelligence
Performance	Wisdom
Persuasion	Charisma

Roll Table

Check Result	Effect
0 - 9	0
10 - 14	1
15 - 19	2
20 - 24	3
25 - 29	4
30+	5

Comments from the Author

This Revised College of Whispers (CoW) has two goals: compatibility with the 2024 PHB, and to make sure that the abilities are applicable across all pillars of the game and are not replicable with spells.

This version focuses on being a sneaky spellcaster that enhances its spells with skills.

Abilities:

Vicious Whispers This feature fixes the vanilla version of VM by improving its debuff, scaling that debuff as you level and allowing you to cast it as a Bonus Action, which allows you to debuff and still cast with your Action.

Maddening Whispers Like Psychic Blades from the original version, but the trigger is now spell damage rather than a weapon attack.

Staying invisible by whispering spell components works if you hide, but not if you use the Invisibility spell, by design. Rewards using your skills.

Mantle of Whispers This adds four highly thematic spells to your list of prepared spells.

You can make a check to disguise spell component use. Disguising components is different from a Sorcerer's Subtle Spell in that you still have to perform/have the components, but you can disguise them from others. It also gives your targets disadvantage on saves for enchantment and illusion spells if you succeed, and but they have advantage if you fail.

Shadow Lore Doubling down on the theme of making an investment in skills pay dividends for your spellcasting, the idea here is that if you invest your skills and expertise wisely, you can debuff groups of enemies (and your allies if you aren't careful) as a result.

The DCs in the roll table are intended to make this something that has a good chance of having no or little result unless you have made a reasonable investment in the relevant skill(s).

The pairings of skills with saving throws are intended both to be thematic and to pair skills that are used more often with less important saving throws, and skills that are used less often with the more important ones.

Art: OpenArt.ai
Author: https://gmbinder.com/profile/tmckd