Bardic College
Comments from the Finger: Yet another one from my long time to do list, which friend of the blog Grand Moff Xela helped bring to life.
College of Snakecharming
The College of Snakecharming traces its humble beginnings to a street act involving charmed snakes, where musicians would captivate audience and animal alike with strange, ethereal tunes. Over time, the many members learned to enthrall a plethora of types of animals, but kept the name as a nod to their humble roots.
Pied Piper
At 3rd level, you learn the following spells, which don’t count against your total number of spells known: animal friendship, animal messenger, beast bond, beast sense, and speak with animals.
Mesmerized Beast
At 3rd level, your music can hypnotize a creature of the wild to serve as your faithful companion.
Mesmerizing a Beast. With 8 hours of continuous performance and the expenditure of 50 gp worth of lures and bait, you call forth and mesmerize an animal from the nearby terrain to obey your commands. The creature must be a beast or a swarm of beasts that is no larger than Medium and has a challenge rating of 1/4 or lower. You can only have one mesmerized beast at a time.
Your mesmerized beast obeys your commands as best it can. It rolls initiative like any other creature, but your determine its actions, decisions, attitudes, and so on. If you are incapacitated or absent, your beast acts on its own. Additionally, it has abilities and game statistics determined in part by your level:
Hit Points. For each level, you gain after 3rd, your beast gains an additional hit die and increases its hit points accordingly.
Armor Class. Your beast adds your proficiency bonus to its Armor Class.
Ability Scores. Whenever you gain the Ability Score Improvement class feature, your beast’s abilities also improve. Your beast can increase one ability score of your choice by 2, or it can increase two ability scores of your choice by 1. As normal, your beast can’t increase an ability score above 20 using this feature unless its description specifies otherwise.
Saving Throws. Your beast is proficient in all saving throws.
Skills. Your beast gains proficiency in two skills of your choice. Additionally, your beast adds your proficiency bonus, instead of its own, to skills in which it is proficient.
Traits. The beast loses its Multiattack action, if it has one. It adds your proficiency bonus instead of its own to its attack rolls, and adds this bonus to its damage rolls.
Alignment. Your beast shares your alignment, and you can select or change its personality traits, ideals, or flaws as an action on your turn. Its bond is always, “The Bard who mesmerized me is my master in all things.”
Captivating Rhythm
At 6th level, your music calms your allies and enthralls your mesmerized beast. When your mesmerized beast takes the Attack action on its turn, it can spend one of your a Bardic Inspiration dice to make one additional attack. It adds the Bardic Inspiration die to its second attack’s damage roll.
Additionally, whenever a creature spends one of your Bardic Inspiration dice, that creature gains temporary hit points equal to the number rolled on the die, which last for 10 minutes.
Hypnotic Harmony
At 14th level, your mesmerized beast synchronizes to your actions. Whenever you cast a spell, your mesmerized beast can use their reaction to make one attack.
