College of Ventriloquism

The College of Ventriloquism welcomes those who are never alone, even with nobody else around. Skilled in manipulating their voice, bards of this school excel at creating new personas so that they always have someone to talk to. They are able to enamor audiences through humor and wit, as well as their remarkable ability to maintain both sides of a one sided conversation. In particular, these bards channel these vocal feats through the use a a Puppet, their trusted companion and partner in every performance. These Puppets come in a variety of appearances, often being switched out to match a particular voice or personality that the bard is channeling. Their ability to propel their voice from places other than their mouth, such as through their Puppet, allows them to sow confusion, generate surprise, and even get a laugh from amused onlookers. 

Throw Your Voice

When you join the College of Ventriloquism you learn how to throw your voice, making it sound as if your words are emanating from a different location. Whether to sow confusion and distrust, or put on a delightful show, you have learned to make this action virtually undetectable.

You have learned how to utilize this ability to weave your words into magical effects without garnering the attention of those around you.

You learn the cantrip Message. You may cast it without using material or somatic components if the target is within line of sight. Additionally you may choose for the target to hear the message as though it were coming from a direction of your choosing.

You have advantage on sleight of hand checks made to stealthily cast spells with only verbal components. This includes Message if being cast without material or somatic components.

Puppets and Proficiency

At 3rd level, you learn to utilize a puppet in order to channel your magical abilities, as well as awe and inspire a crowd.

You gain a new tool called a Puppet with which you are proficient. A bard can use a Puppet as a spellcasting focus. You can decide the appearance of your puppet, though it must fit within a 2 ft. cube. You can spend an hour meditating with your Puppet. At the end of that hour, you can change it's appearance as you desire.Additionally, if your Puppet is destroyed, you can spend three hours meditating with its remains to reconstruct it.

Master of Puppets

At 6th level, you have learned to weave your magic through your puppet, giving it a limited semblance of life. Your puppet can be controlled within a 60 ft. range. Outside of that range it collapses lifeless to the floor. On your turn, you can use a bonus action to have your Puppet move, as well as take either the dash, disengage, evade, help or hide action. Additionally, you can cast any spells with only Verbal components from your Puppet's location.

As an action you can see and hear through your Puppet's senses for a turn. During this, your own senses are blinded and deafened. On future turns, you may use your action to continue using these senses. You can also speak through your Puppet while using its senses.

When making a Charisma(deception, intimidation, perception) ability check while speaking through the Puppet you may expend one use of your bardic inspiration to roll a bardic inspiration die and add it to the ability check. You may choose to do this after you roll, but before you know the results of the check.

Your Puppet uses the stat block for the Puppet monster.

Vocal Gymnastics

At 14th level, You gain the ability to generate a cacophony of voices, emanating from all directions around you and your Puppet.

As an action, voices emanate from all directions, effecting a number of targets up to your proficiency bonus within 30 ft. of you or your Puppet.. The targets must make a Wisdom saving throw against your spell save DC. It automatically succeeds if it can’t hear you. On a successful saving throw, the voices sound like unintelligible mumbling and has no effect.

On a failed saving throw, the target becomes confused. An affected target must roll a D6 at the start of each turn, and suffer the corresponding result on the Vocal Gymnastics table below. At the end of each of its turns, the target may make a wisdom saving throw. On a success, this effect ends.

When the effect ends, the creature has no understanding of why it acted so strangely.

Once you use this feature, you can’t use it again until you finish a long rest.

Vocal Gymnastics Table

1. The target becomes charmed by you until the start of it's next turn.
2. The target becomes frightened of you until the start of it's next turn.
3. The target becomes stunned until the start of it's next turn.
4. The target attacks the creature nearest to it with a melee attack.
5. The target uses its movement to run in a random direction determined by a D8 with a direction assigned to each face.
6. The target takes it's turn as normal.