College of Caterwauling

The tabaxi are widely acknowledged as some of the realms’ greatest performers, and the most ambitious tabaxi bards attend the College of Caterwauling. When the college was initially founded, it catered solely to tabaxi, but as the land has grown more diverse, the college has adapted. Now Lizardfolk, Dragonborn, Tortles, and even the occasional Human have begun studying with the great tabaxi masters. The College is open to all who wish to learn the feline arts.

Designed to feature the unique assets of the tabaxi performer, the College of Caterwauling focuses primarily on the voice. Many students choose to sew bells into their clothes to add instrumental accompaniment through subtle dancing, though this is not required. Stringed instruments are encouraged as a secondary pursuit, but the voice is a Caterwauler’s magical focus. As such, they do not need an instrument to cast spells, but also cannot cast if they cannot speak.

A graduate of the College of Caterwauling can unsheathe their claws to strike fear into the bravest hearts, torment the most stalwart minds, and possess their enemies’ very souls. Good-natured Caterwaulers become heroes of legend, single-handedly defeating ogres with well-crafted words and footwear. Caterwaulers who revel in their power become terrifying monsters, holding the hearts and minds of thousands in their paws.

Gift of Claws

When you join the College of Caterwauling at 3rd level, you gain the ability to encourage your allies to fight with the ferocity of a tabaxi.

As a bonus action, you may expend one of your uses of Bardic Inspiration to grant deadly claws to a creature of your choosing. When you do so, choose a creature within 60 feet of you, who you can see and who can see you. That creature can add +1d4 to one Unarmed Attack that they make. As a bonus action, that creature may attempt to caterwaul. If they succeed on a DC 11 Charisma (Performance) check, they may pass an additional +1d4 inspiration to a creature of their choice, who may in turn pass it on to another creature. Each time the Gift of Claws is passed on, the DC of the Charisma (Performance) check is raised by 1.

Each creature may only have one Gift of Claws inspiration at a time and the inspiration fades after one hour if unused.

Distracting Yowl

If you perform for at least 30 seconds, you can attempt to inspire confusion, despair, or irritation in your audience by caterwauling. At the end of your performance, choose a number of creatures within 60 feet of you who listened to it in full, up to a number equal to your Charisma modifier (minimum of one). Each target must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw against your spell save DC or be distracted by you. While distracted in this way, non-tabaxi become unable to perform any action other than covering their ears, running away, or begging you to leave it in peace. A tabaxi target who fails their Wisdom saving throw will instead by charmed your voice. When charmed in this way, they gain the Stunned condition, automatically fail Stealth checks, and are inspired to join you in song. This effect ends on any target after 1 minute, if it takes any damage, if you attack it, or if it witnesses you attacking or damaging any of its allies.

If a target succeeds on its saving throw, the target does not know that you tried to magically manipulate it.

Mighty Roar

As a bonus action, you may roar without expending a spell slot. When you roar, your voice booms up to five times as loud as normal, the environment around you trembles (tremors in the ground, shaking branches in trees, rattling windows, etc.), and each creature within 60 feet of you who can hear you must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw or drop whatever it is holding and become frightened for 1 minute.  

While frightened by your roar, a creature must take the Dash action and move away from you by the safest available route on each of its turns, unless there is nowhere to move. If the creature ends its turn in a location where it can no longer hear your voice, the creature can make a Wisdom saving throw against your spell save DC. On a successful save, the creature is no longer frightened and has advantage against Mighty Roars for the next hour.

KITTY

As an action, you may choose to magically purr and chirp at one creature of your choice within 30 feet of you that can hear and see you. The target must make a Wisdom saving throw against your spell save DC. On a successful saving throw, your sounds convince the target that you are completely non-threatening.

If the target fails its saving throw, its Intelligence and Wisdom scores become 1. The creature can’t cast spells, activate magic items, understand language, or communicate in any way other than to say “KITTY.” The creature will be fully entranced by your every action and attempt to engage you in harmless play. The creature can still identify its friends, follow them, and even protect them, but the creature will also take no actions to harm you and will attempt to protect you from external threats.

The spell ends when the creature no longer has line of sight to you.

Once you assume this adorable presence, you can’t do so again until you finish a short or long rest.