Has anyone else tried this? I played a level 4 session today and it was glorious. Silver Tongue with expertise in Deception and Persuasion turns you into the ultimate infiltrator. If you have a DM who will allow you to have fun with it, it really is a blast.
I'll summarize the background I came up with.
First, Changelings don't actually exist in this (homebrew) campaign. I'm re-skinned as a human. My father was an evil Transmutation Wizard, who was experimenting on me in an attempt to create a potion of True Polymorph. After months of trial an error, he never succeeded but I ended up developing this ability as a side effect.
Later in life I put my abilities to use by working for an unscrupulous empress as an assassin/spy. I was her #2. Her #1 could not infiltrate as effectively as I could, but he was far more deadly as an assassin. One day she sent me on a mission to kill a man's wife and children to teach him a lesson. I shapeshifted into the man and entered his home (as him) to do the deed. But then his children ran up to greet me at the door, and when I went inside I was being showered with love and affection. For the first time I experienced what a loving home was like, and I could not carry out the deed. So I defected and went into hiding. Angered by my failure to carry out the deed, and my disloyalty, the empress sent her #1 to kill me. He found me and soundly defeated me, leaving me bloodied and (he thought) lifeless on the ground. Nobody could survive all those wounds! But he made a critical mistake, a shocking stroke of luck. He never makes mistakes! He did not check my body to make sure I was dead. I lived. And so I went into hiding again, this time successfully as the empress thought I was dead.
That’s an awesome story! As a matter of fact I’m actually playing an eloquence bard changeling as well. His story is he was orphaned and taken into a small village when he was a baby and his powers began to surface when he was 5. He quickly learned that his powers weren’t normal and stayed as one form for the next 6 years. Then one day, demons raided the village and killed everyone but he was able to hide as shift into a tie-fling to get away. He came back to the village afterward and stayed there dazed until someone came to scout the aftermath and took him to a boarding school in another country. From there, he realized his full potential of being able to manipulate people and also his love for music. He then when to a bardic college and once he graduated, he worked as a diplomat for the country he went to school in before being fired for growing up in a rival country (he never got high ranked enough for anyone to care when he was fired, and being scared of his powers he never told anyone) I then became an outcast and met the party. The campaign is more role play heavy with each side in a tense war and terrible propaganda for each side. I’m exited to be able to play both sides as the master of infiltration this kind of character is. Another thing that I want to play with is because of his traumatic past he has the haunted one background, and a side effect is he developed minor Dissociative personality disorder which might grow worse through the campaign (depending on what happens) I love how much potential a build ours can have and even at low levels, with silver tongue they are pretty much gods of espionage and generally all things relating to charisma.
Wow, that's a backstory! College of eloquence shines in social interactions and you have built the perfect invironment to test your skills
I fall in love with college of eloquence since the day it was spoiled. I am currently playing a variant human (inspiring leader feat) eloquence bard with 3 levels of clockwork sorcerer in Curse of Strahd. The general idea is to boost my allies with the aid spell and inspiring leader feat. After that I manipulate the board with spells like levitate and twinned spell metamagic.
College of Eloquence is a very good Bard college, though Silver Tongue can be a little broken depending upon your DM, since you can be rolling a minimum of like 18+ from 3rd level. I find it important that a DM handles "degrees of success" well when dealing with those kinds of numbers, i.e- if you roll poorly they should still allow you to sort of fail, and don't get exactly what you wanted, or a person starts to get suspicious, or something has consequences later, otherwise it'll start to feel like there's no point rolling at all if you just "automatically" pass every check.
My favourite features though are the Unsettling Words, and Unfailing Inspiration; the former being fantastic for combos with yourself or an ally, and the latter just being a really good boost to Bardic Inspiration (you no longer need to be as careful about handing it out).
Has anyone else tried this? I played a level 4 session today and it was glorious. Silver Tongue with expertise in Deception and Persuasion turns you into the ultimate infiltrator. If you have a DM who will allow you to have fun with it, it really is a blast.
I'll summarize the background I came up with.
First, Changelings don't actually exist in this (homebrew) campaign. I'm re-skinned as a human. My father was an evil Transmutation Wizard, who was experimenting on me in an attempt to create a potion of True Polymorph. After months of trial an error, he never succeeded but I ended up developing this ability as a side effect.
Later in life I put my abilities to use by working for an unscrupulous empress as an assassin/spy. I was her #2. Her #1 could not infiltrate as effectively as I could, but he was far more deadly as an assassin. One day she sent me on a mission to kill a man's wife and children to teach him a lesson. I shapeshifted into the man and entered his home (as him) to do the deed. But then his children ran up to greet me at the door, and when I went inside I was being showered with love and affection. For the first time I experienced what a loving home was like, and I could not carry out the deed. So I defected and went into hiding. Angered by my failure to carry out the deed, and my disloyalty, the empress sent her #1 to kill me. He found me and soundly defeated me, leaving me bloodied and (he thought) lifeless on the ground. Nobody could survive all those wounds! But he made a critical mistake, a shocking stroke of luck. He never makes mistakes! He did not check my body to make sure I was dead. I lived. And so I went into hiding again, this time successfully as the empress thought I was dead.
Now, I have resurfaced...
That’s an awesome story! As a matter of fact I’m actually playing an eloquence bard changeling as well. His story is he was orphaned and taken into a small village when he was a baby and his powers began to surface when he was 5. He quickly learned that his powers weren’t normal and stayed as one form for the next 6 years. Then one day, demons raided the village and killed everyone but he was able to hide as shift into a tie-fling to get away. He came back to the village afterward and stayed there dazed until someone came to scout the aftermath and took him to a boarding school in another country. From there, he realized his full potential of being able to manipulate people and also his love for music. He then when to a bardic college and once he graduated, he worked as a diplomat for the country he went to school in before being fired for growing up in a rival country (he never got high ranked enough for anyone to care when he was fired, and being scared of his powers he never told anyone) I then became an outcast and met the party. The campaign is more role play heavy with each side in a tense war and terrible propaganda for each side. I’m exited to be able to play both sides as the master of infiltration this kind of character is. Another thing that I want to play with is because of his traumatic past he has the haunted one background, and a side effect is he developed minor Dissociative personality disorder which might grow worse through the campaign (depending on what happens) I love how much potential a build ours can have and even at low levels, with silver tongue they are pretty much gods of espionage and generally all things relating to charisma.
Wow, that's a backstory! College of eloquence shines in social interactions and you have built the perfect invironment to test your skills
I fall in love with college of eloquence since the day it was spoiled. I am currently playing a variant human (inspiring leader feat) eloquence bard with 3 levels of clockwork sorcerer in Curse of Strahd. The general idea is to boost my allies with the aid spell and inspiring leader feat. After that I manipulate the board with spells like levitate and twinned spell metamagic.
That's a really cool backstory!
College of Eloquence is a very good Bard college, though Silver Tongue can be a little broken depending upon your DM, since you can be rolling a minimum of like 18+ from 3rd level. I find it important that a DM handles "degrees of success" well when dealing with those kinds of numbers, i.e- if you roll poorly they should still allow you to sort of fail, and don't get exactly what you wanted, or a person starts to get suspicious, or something has consequences later, otherwise it'll start to feel like there's no point rolling at all if you just "automatically" pass every check.
My favourite features though are the Unsettling Words, and Unfailing Inspiration; the former being fantastic for combos with yourself or an ally, and the latter just being a really good boost to Bardic Inspiration (you no longer need to be as careful about handing it out).
Characters: Bullette, Chortle, Dracarys Noir, Edward Merryspell, Habard Ashery, Legion, Peregrine
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