College of Puppetry

The College of Puppetry teaches the oftentimes impressive but also unsettling art of puppetry, making dolls appear animate by the twists and turns of their hands. Through their performances, they are able to learn how to extend these talents to magic ways in order to enthrall enemies and even string them like a puppet with strands of their innate power. Turning them against their allies against their will.

Bonus Proficiencies

When you join the College of Puppetry at 3rd level, you gain proficiency in Deception, Performance and Sleight of Hand if you do not already have it.

Captive Audience

Starting at 3rd level, you gain the ability to force others to watch your performances. As an action, you can expend one use of your Bardic Inspiration to enthrall those around you for 10 minutes, during which you are performing a show of puppetry and are unable to act otherwise. You are considered concentrating while using this ability. You may target an amount of creatures of your choice within 30 feet equal to your bard level, and they must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw against your spell save DC or be charmed by you. Creatures charmed in this manner cannot take their eyes off of the performance. A target remains charmed in this way during the performance or until it is attacked or damaged, or you use another action to break the performance. It will also be able to reroll if an ally of theirs is harmed or otherwise incapacitated. Targets who succeed on their saving throw do not know you attempted to charm them.

Malign Puppet

At 6th level, you are able to channel your magic into a creature to make it turn into a grisly puppet for your own machinations. As an action, you can force a creature of size Large or smaller to make a Constitution saving throw against your spell save DC. On a failure, the creature’s body is at your whim. On its turns, you can use your reaction to control the creature’s movement and cause it to make one attack against a creature of your choice. At the end of each of its turns, or any time you or one of your allies damages the creature, it can make a Constitution saving throw. On a success, the effects of the feature end. A creature who successfully saves against the effect, or if the effect on it ends, is immune to the effects of this feature for the next 24 hours. Once you use this feature, you can’t use it again until you finish a short or long rest.

Puppet Master

At 14th level, you have gained the ability to create and utilize your puppets more effectively. When you force your puppet creature to attack, it can now attack twice instead of once. Additionally, you can cast spells as if you were in your puppet’s space.

As a bonus action, you can see through your puppet’s eyes, hear what it hears and cause your voice to emanate from it. While using your puppet’s senses, you are blind and deaf with regard to your own senses.