Bardic Feats

Bardic music feats, require the bardic music ability and may cost daily uses of the bardic music ability to activate. All bardic music feats require that the character be able to produce music to use the feat, even those that only require free actions and those that require no action at all.

Despite the names of the various bardic music feats, they work equally well with any variety of the Perform skill.

Class features that resemble bardic music, such as the war chanter’s chanter music or a seeker of the song’s seeker music abilities, can be substituted for the bardic music prerequisite of this feat, and uses of those class features can be spent in place of bardic music uses to gain the benefit of the feat.

In general, bardic music feats do not function in an area of magical silence.

ARCANE ACCOMPANIMENT [BARDIC MUSIC]

You infuse your performance with magical energy, allowing its effects to continue even as you attend to other tasks.

Prerequisites: Bardic music, Perform 4 ranks, Arcane Flourish, Arcane caster level 1st

Benefit: As a swift action, you can expend a prepared spell or a spell slot to extend the duration of your bardic music ability after you stop performing. You extend the duration a number of rounds equal to the level of the spell used in this manner. This extension is in addition to the normal duration of the effect after you stop your performance.

You can expend only one spell slot to extend the duration of your bardic music. The slot can come from any of your arcane caster classes, not just bard.

This has no effect on bardic music or similar abilities with a duration of instantaneous or permanent.

You strike at your foes in time with the music you sing or in cadence with an oration you deliver. The magical power of your bardic performance drives you forward and improves your fighting ability.

Prerequisites: Bardic music, Base attack bonus +2

Benefit: During a round in which you grant any ally a bonus on attack rolls, damage rolls, or saves with one of your bardic music abilities, you gain a +2 morale bonus on your attack rolls if you move at least one square before attacking. You lose this benefit for the remaining duration of your current use of bardic music if you do not move or if you do not attack on your turn. If you stand still and attack (or move without attacking), you do not gain this feat’s benefit, but this ability’s duration continues.

Special: A fighter can select Battle Dancer as one of his fighter bonus feats.

CAPTIVATING MELODY [BARDIC MUSIC]

You can expend some of your musical abilities to increase the potency of your enchantment or illusion spells.

Prerequisite: Bardic music, ability to cast arcane spells

Benefit: As a swift action before casting a spell, you can attempt a Perform check (DC 15 + the level of the spell you intend to cast). If you succeed, you can sacrifice one of your daily uses of bardic music to increase the save DC of the next enchantment or illusion spell you cast in the same round by 2. If the Perform check fails, you still lose one daily use of bardic music but gain no benefit. You can apply Captivating Melody only to spells cast by the same class that grants you your bardic music ability.

CHANT OF FORTITUDE [BARDIC MUSIC]

You can channel the power of your bardic music to sustain your allies, allowing them to function even after receiving wounds that would cause others to falter.

Prerequisites: Bardic music, Concentration 9 ranks, Perform 9 ranks

Benefit: You can expend one daily use of your bardic music ability as an immediate action to provide all allies (including yourself) the benefit of the Diehard feat until the end of your next turn. You can use this feat multiple times consecutively to keep yourself and your allies conscious. Even while this feat is active, you or your allies die if reduced to –10 hit points or lower.

This feat does not function in an area of magical silence.

CHANT OF THE LONG ROAD [BARDIC MUSIC]

You can channel the power of your bardic music to encourage your allies to pick up the pace on a long walk.

Prerequisite: Bardic music

Benefit: As a standard action, you can expend one daily use of your bardic music ability to allow yourself and all allies within 60 feet to avoid taking nonlethal damage for hustling. This requires 1 minute of performance, and the effect lasts for 1 hour.

CHORD OF DISTRACTION [BARDIC MUSIC]

You can channel the power of your bardic music to make a sudden sound or gesture that momentarily distracts an opponent.

Prerequisite: Perform 9 ranks, Bardic music

Benefit: As an immediate action, you can expend three daily uses of your bardic music ability to distract an opponent. The target must be within 30 feet of you and able to hear or see you. Make a Perform check, opposed by the target's Sense Motive check (modified as if you were using Bluff to feint in combat). If you succeed, that opponent is rendered flat-footed against an ally of your choice. The effect lasts until that opponent is attacked or until the start of your next turn, whichever comes first.

COURAGEOUS RALLY [BARDIC MUSIC]

You can rally demoralized foes with your bardic music.

Prerequisites: Bardic music (inspire courage) class feature

Benefit: When you use bardic music to inspire courage, you can make a free rally check as part of the same action used to activate your bardic music. You add a morale bonus on this rally check equal to the morale bonus granted by your inspire courage class feature.

DISGUISE SPELL [BARDIC MUSIC]

You can cast spells without observers noticing.

Prerequisite: Bardic music, Perform (any) 9 ranks

Benefit: You can cast spells unobtrusively, mingling verbal and somatic components into your performances. To disguise a spell, make a Perform check as part of the action used to cast the spell. Onlookers must match or exceed your check result with a Spot check to detect that you’re casting a spell (your performance is obvious to everyone in the vicinity, but the fact that you are casting a spell isn't). Unless the spell visibly emanates from you, or observers have some other means of determining its source, they don’t know where the effect came from.

A disguised spell can’t be identified with a Spellcraft check, even by someone who realizes you’re casting a spell. The act of casting still provokes attacks of opportunity as normal.

DOOMSPEAK [BARDIC MUSIC]

You can demoralize an enemy with horrible condemnations and grim portents of impending doom.

Prerequisite: Bardic music class feature, Intimidate 8 ranks, Perform 8 ranks

Benefit: You can spend one of your bardic music uses to utter a string of crass and appalling epithets and curses at one enemy within 120 feet. The intended target must be able to hear and comprehend your damning remarks. A target that fails a Will save (DC 10 + your character level + your Cha modifier) is cursed with a -10 penalty on attack rolls, saves, ability checks, and skill checks for 1 round. This is a supernatural, necromantic effect.

ENCHANTING SONG [BARDIC MUSIC]

You can channel the power of your bardic music to temporarily increase the power of your enchantment spells.

Prerequisites: Bardic music, Perform (any one) 5 ranks, Spell Focus (enchantment),

Benefit: As you cast a spell of the enchantment school, you may spend one daily use of your bardic music ability to increase the caster level and saving throw DC of that spell by 1. These bonuses stack with those provided by other feats, such as Spell Focus.

EXTRA MUSIC [BARDIC MUSIC]

You can use your bardic music more often than you otherwise could.

Prerequisite: Bardic music

Benefit: You can use your bardic music four extra times per day.

Normal: Bards without the Extra Music feat can use bardic music once per day per bard level.

Special: You can gain this feat multiple times. Its effects stack.

GREEN EAR [BARDIC MUSIC]

Your bardic music can affect plant creatures.

Prerequisite: Bardic music, Perform (any) 10 ranks

Benefit: You can alter any of your mind-affecting bardic music abilities (or similar Perform-based abilities from other classes) so that they influence only plant creatures instead of other creatures. However, plants receive a +5 bonus on Will saves against any of these effects.

Normal: Plants are normally immune to all mindaffecting spells and abilities.

ICE HARMONICS [GENERAL]

You can use your voice to shatter ice.

Prerequisite: Bardic music, Perform (sing) 6 ranks

Benefit: By expending one of your daily uses of bardic music, you can cause any unattended nonmagical ice object or portion of ice to explode violently. The target must be within 30 feet, and you must be able to sing in order to shatter the ice. Any creature located in the 5-foot square in which you target with this ability takes piercing damage equal to 2d6 + your Charisma modifier. Creatures made of ice that you specifically target with this effect take double damage.

INSPIRE SPELLPOWER [BARDIC MUSIC]

You can use your bardic music to increase the power of your allies’ spells.

Prerequisites: Bardic music, Perform (any one) 8 ranks

Benefit: You gain an additional bardic music ability called inspire spellpower. Inspire Spellpower (Su): As a standard action, you can use music or poetics to inspire the spellcasting of allied spellcasters, making their spells more powerful. To be affected, an ally must be able to hear you perform. The effect lasts for as long as the ally hears you sing and for 5 rounds thereafter. The affected allies’ effective caster level is increased by 1. You cannot inspire spellpower in yourself. Inspire spellpower is a mind-affecting ability.

Special: Inspire spellpower follows all the normal rules of the bardic music ability, including using one of the character’s daily uses of the ability.

IRONSKIN CHANT [BARDIC MUSIC]

You can channel the power of your bardic music to enable yourself to ignore minor injuries.

Prerequisites: Bardic music, Concentration 12 ranks, Perform 12 ranks

Benefit: As a swift action that does not provoke attacks of opportunity, you can expend one daily use of your bardic music ability to provide damage reduction of 5/- to yourself or to one ally within 30 feet who can hear you until the start of your next turn.

This feat does not function in an area of magical silence.

LINGERING SONG [BARDIC MUSIC]

Your inspirational bardic music stays with the listeners

long after the last note has died away.

Prerequisite: Bardic music

Benefit: If you use bardic music to inspire courage, inspire greatness, or inspire heroics, the effect lasts for 1 minute after an inspired ally stops hearing you play.

Normal: Inspire courage, inspire greatness, and inspire heroics last as long as an ally hears the bard sing plus an additional 5 rounds thereafter.

LYRIC SPELL [BARDIC MUSIC]

You can channel the power of your bardic music into your magic, allowing you to expend uses of your bardic music ability to cast spells.

Prerequisites: Bardic music, Perform 9 ranks, ability to spontaneously cast 2nd-level arcane spells

Benefit: You can expend daily uses of your bardic music to cast any arcane spell that you know and can cast spontaneously. You must still use an action to cast the spell (following the normal rules for casting time), but using the Lyric Spell feat counts as part of the spellcasting action. Casting a spell requires one use of your bardic music ability, plus one additional use per level of the spell. For example, casting a 3rd-level spell requires four daily uses of your bardic music ability.

Special: Any spell that you cast using the Lyric Spell feat gains your instrument as an additional arcane focus, if you use one.

You cannot use Lyric Spell to cast a spell improved by the Silent Spell metamagic feat.

METAMAGIC SONG [BARDIC MUSIC]

You can channel the power of your bardic music into your magic, allowing you to pay the cost of metamagic feats by spending uses of your bardic music ability.

Prerequisites: Bardic music, Any two metamagic feats

Benefit: When you spontaneously cast an arcane spell that is enhanced by a metamagic feat, you can spend a number of uses of your bardic music ability equal to the number of extra levels that the metamagic feat imposes on the spell rather than raising the spell’s effective level. Applying metamagic spontaneously using this method increases the casting time of the spell normally.

You cannot use the Metamagic Song feat to add metamagic feats that would make the spell’s effective level higher than the highest level of spell that you can cast normally.

Special: When applying a metamagic feat to a spell, you must either use Metamagic Song to ompletely offset the increase in the spell’s effective level or apply the metamagic feat normally and cast the spell at its higher level. You cannot partially increase the level of the spell (or “split” the cost) to reduce the number of uses of bardic music spent when using the Metamagic Song feat. Only one method can be used to pay for metamagic feats that affect a single spell.

You cannot use the Metamagic Song feat to improve a spell with the Silent Spell metamagic feat.

MISLEADING SONG [BARDIC MUSIC]

You can channel the power of your bardic music to temporarily increase the power of your illusion spells.

Prerequisites: Bardic music, Perform (any one) 5 ranks, Spell Focus (illusion)

Benefit: As you cast an illusion spell, you can spend one daily use of your bardic music ability to increase the caster level and the saving throw DC of that spell by 1. These bonuses stack with those provided by other feats, such as Spell Focus.

SNOWFLAKE WARDANCE [GENERAL]

You have mastered the snowflake wardance, a mystical style

of fighting with slashing weapons that allows you to leap

and almost seem to fl oat haphazardly across the battlefield

like a whirling, razor-edged snowflake.

Prerequisite: Bardic music, Perform (dance) 6 ranks

Benefit: By expending one of your daily uses of bardic music, you may perform a deadly style of combat known as the snowflake wardance. Activating a snowflake wardance is a free action, and once activated, you add your Charisma modifier to your attack rolls with any slashing melee weapon you wield in one hand. This bonus to hit stacks with any bonuses you get from a high Strength score (or Dexterity score, if you are using Weapon Finesse).

You cannot use this feat if you are carrying a shield, wearing medium or heavy armor, or carrying a medium or heavy load.

A snowflake wardance lasts for a number of rounds equal to your ranks in Perform (dance). Performing a snowflake wardance is physically tiresome—when the snowflake wardance ends, you become fatigued for the next 10 minutes.

SUBSONICS [BARDIC MUSIC]

Your music can affect even those who do not consciously hear it.

Prerequisite: Bardic music, Perform (any) 10 ranks

Benefit: You can produce music or poetics so subtly that opponents do not notice it, yet your allies still gain all the usual benefits from your bardic music. Similarly, you can affect opponents within range with your music, but unless they can see you performing or have some other means of discovering it, they cannot determine the source of the effect.

WINDSINGER [BARDIC MUSIC]

You can use song or a wind instrument to compel the winds to obey you. The bard who possesses this feat is highly favored aboard a sailing vessel; indeed, a bard who demonstrates the ability to control the wind to some degree is usually given an officer’s position aboard ship.

Prerequisites: Bardic music, Perform (sing or wind instruments) 5 ranks

Benefit: By expending a daily bardic music use, you can lull the winds around a single ship into well-tamed gusts. They continue to blow into the sails of the ship as normal for their speed, but their effects on the crew are one stage in intensity less. Thus, a strong wind affected by this ability continues to propel the ship along as normal for a strong wind, but it only affects the crew as though it were a moderate wind.

You can also alter the direction of the wind by one compass point (from north to north-west or north-east, from south-west to west or south, etc.).

These effects last as long as the bard continues to perform his bardic music, plus 10 rounds after the music has ended.

BATTLE DANCER [BARDIC MUSIC]