College of Emotions

The College of Emotions teaches the ways of the emotional spectrum and its ever-present effect on creatures across all worlds and planes of existence, for wherever there is life, there is in turn emotion. Bards who follow this college gain the ability to manipulate the emotions of those around them, causing them to gain great advantages in combat or to falter under the raw unfettered power of their own minds.

The bards who can channel emotional energy into others are regarded as exceptionally talented in their practices of magic and often compared to sorcerers and similar users of the arcane arts. Though they can inspire pleasant thoughts and feelings in others, many are wary of these manipulative masters of the mind, as many creatures have drawn comparisons between these bards and fey creatures of old who once twisted the mentalities of great mortal rulers and consequently started kingdom-wide wars and conflicts. No matter how you feel about these practitioners of emotional control, one truth remains... they can change your mind with a honey coated word and a sly wink.

Insightful Artist

When you join the College of Emotion at 3rd level, you gain proficiency in the insight skill. Your proficiency bonus is doubled for any Wisdom (Insight) check you make.

Emotional Effects

Also at 3rd level, you learn how to inspire intensely powerful emotions in creatures who can hear you. As an action, choose a creature who can hear you within 30 ft., you can then expend one use of Bardic Inspiration, and inflict one emotional effect of your choice upon that creature. The creature is immune if it can’t hear you or if it’s immune to being charmed.

When you perform this action, choose one of the following emotional effects. If the effect requires concentration, you must maintain concentration while the effects lasts. You can hold concentration on one effect and one spell simultaneously (once you lose concentration on either the effect or the spell, you lose concentration on the other). If the effect requires a spell attack, you make the attack with advantage. If the effect requires a saving throw, the DC is equal to your spell save DC and the target has disadvantage on this saving throw. Each creature can only be effected by one emotional effect at a time, if you apply a second effect to creature, the first one effecting them automatically ends.

• Anger: The target is effected by the compelled duel spell, treating you as the caster.
• Disgust: The target is effected by the ray of sickness spell.
• Fear: The target is effected by the cause fear spell.
• Joy: The target is effected by the bless spell.
• Sadness: The target is effected by the armor of agathys spell.
• Trust: The target is effected by the shield of faith spell.

Emotional Spectrum

Starting at 6th level, creatures who are effected by your emotional effects gain elemental resistances or vulnerability. When you afflict a creature with an emotional effect, you can simultaneously grant them resistance or vulnerability (your choice) to the emotion's damage type. These resistances or vulnerabilities last for 1 round, unless you use your bonus action to extend the duration by 1 round.

• Anger: Fire
• Disgust: Poison
• Fear: Necrotic
• Joy: Radiant
• Sadness: Cold
• Trust: Psychic

Additional Emotional Effects

At 14th level, you learn to inspire even stronger, more potent emotions using your emotional effects feature. You gain new options for your emotional effects. Whenever you use your stirring words feature, you can choose one of these new emotional effects to afflict a target with.

These emotional effects all have a duration of 1 minute and require you to maintain concentration.

• Anger: They can add your Charisma modifier to their Strength based damage rolls.
• Disgust: They can move up to half their speed as a reaction when an enemy ends its turn within 5 feet of them. This movement doesn’t provoke opportunity attacks.
• Fear: They can take a bonus action on each of their turns in combat. This action can be used only to take the Dash, Disengage, or Hide action.
• Joy: They gain a fly speed of 30 feet.
• Sadness: When they are in dim light or darkness, as a bonus action they can teleport up to 60 feet to an unoccupied space they can see that is also in dim light or darkness.
• Trust: Whenever they must make a saving throw, they gain a bonus to the saving throw equal to the your Charisma modifier (with a minimum bonus of +1).