College of Puppets

The College of Puppets breathes life into the art of manipulation, turning bards into consummate puppeteers. Masters of strings and enchantments, these bards weave intricate spells through their marionettes, commanding both allies and adversaries. The puppeteer's stage becomes a battleground, strings pulling the destinies of those entangled in their captivating performance. With deft control, they navigate the ebb and flow of combat, casting spells and orchestrating maneuvers through the delicate dance of enchanted puppets. In this unique rendition of bardic artistry, the College of Puppets crafts an enthralling spectacle where threads of magic and puppetry intertwine seamlessly.

Puppet Focus

3rd-level College of Puppets feature

You gain the ability to use puppets of any kind as spell casting foci. When you concentrate on your Puppet Focus it becomes a non-sentient creature. See its game statistics in the Puppet Focus stat block. You determine the Puppets appearance and whether it's a marionet, a sock puppet, a dummy or some other kind of puppet; your choice has no effect on its game statistics. When you use the puppet as a focus for your spell casting the verbal components of the spell sound as if they were coming from the puppet and the puppet performs the somatic components. You must have a hand holding the puppet or a mechanism used to control it in order to use it as a spell casting focus.

In combat, the puppet acts on your turn. You can move the puppet around you using it's movement, when you take the Dodge action the puppet does too. The puppet cannot use any other action on unless you use your bonus action to control it.

If it is reduced to 0 hit points it becomes a regular puppet but can still be used as a spell casting focus when held. If the mending spell is cast on it, it regains it's hit point and once again gains the ability to use the Puppet Focus stat block.

If you lose or break your puppet focus you can craft a new one out of fabrics or wood or mend your broken one during a short or long rest.

 

Spectral Strings

3rd-level College of Puppets feature

As an action, you can summon magical strings between yourself an a creature within 60ft. of you. Using your action you can control their body, allowing them to take another action immediately. The action must be the attack action (one weapon attack only), dash action, dodge action, hide action, a jump, a skill check or dropping or using a held object. An unwilling creature can make a Strength saving throw against your spell save dc to resist the pull of the strings.

You can use this feature a number of times equal to your Charisma modifier (minimum of once) per long rest. If you have no uses remaining, you can expend a bardic inspiration die to gain an additional use.

Quick Control

6th-level College of Puppets feature

As a reaction to a creature casting a spell or using a spell like ability that has an area of effect (for examples a dragons breath), you can telekinetically move a of you choice 5ft. to move them into or out of the area of effect. The creature feels either as if they are being puppeted to walk into or out of the area or are being yanked by invisible strings.

Go My Friend

6th-level College of Puppets feature

Your Puppet Focus's Strings Attached feature can now be ignored if you expend a use of your bardic inspiration when you begin concentrating on your puppet. You also form a magical connection with the puppet that allows it walk around freely without you needing to use a hand to control it, though you still control it with your mind. A character can throw the Puppet Focus as an object interaction (or as part of an attack action if they intend to throw it as an improvised weapon, it's range would be 20/40 and it would take equal damage as the target it strikes), the distance they can throw would be equal to a Strength (Athletics). You must still be able to see your puppet if you wish to cast a spell as if you were in its space.

When you use this feature you can still use the Puppet Focus as a spell casting focus even if you are not holding it as you maintain a magical connection to it.

Astral Puppet Master

14th-level College of Puppets feature

You learn the dominate beast, dominate monster and dominate person spells. When you successfully dominate a creature with one of these spells you can cause your soul to leave your body leaving it to collapse into and remain in a vegetative state, until the spell ends. Whilst your soul is outside of your body in this way it appears as a spectral puppet master that is one size larger than the creature being dominated, above it. The targeted creature makes its first saving throw against the spell as normal but if it fails it is unable to make further saving throws to break free of the spells effects. If your body takes damage you still must make a saving throw to maintain concentration but you do so with advantage. Whilst your body is in a vegetative state you cannot take any actions, bonus actions or reactions, apart from being able to maintain concentration, you are functionally unconscious

Once you use this feature you cannot do so again until you finish a long rest.