Bard

Bard: Bardic Tradition: Puppeteer

A storyteller who brings tales to life through the manipulation of puppets, creating intricate and engaging performances for audiences of all ages.

Puppeteer Features

Skilled Puppeteer

You gain proficiency in one of the following skills: Intimidation, Performance, or Sleight of Hand

Puppetry

You learn the find familiar spell. When you cast the spell with this feature you summon a special puppet familiar instead and the spell’s material component becomes ‘a small puppet’ (instead of ‘incense worth at least 10 gp, which the spell consumes’). The puppet familiar uses the same stat block as the familiar except its creature type is construct and it does not gain one of the shapechange options listed in its stat block. The puppet familiar instead gains two special traits:

•          False Appearance. While the puppet familiar remains motionless, it is indistinguishable from a normal puppet or doll.

•          Humanoid Doll. The puppet familiar has proficiency with all small and light simple weapons and can use weapons as if it was a small creature. The puppet familiar also has proficiency and expertise in stealth.

When you cast find familiar with this feature, your puppet familiar has a number of hit points equal to 10 + 2 for each level you have in this class, and it has a number of Hit Dice [d4] equal to your bard level.

Puppeteer’s Strings

At 10th level, you learn the dominate person spell. You can cast this spell once between long rest without expending spell slot. At 14th level, this spell is replaced by dominate monster. While concentrating on the spell granted by this feature, you can expend a bardic performance die as a bonus action to take control of the target until the beginning of your next turn (instead of the action described in these spells). Until the beginning of your next turn, the target must also roll your bardic performance die when it makes a saving throw against the spell and receive a penalty to its saving throw equal to the result of the roll.

Puppet Master

At 14th level, you learn the following spells: magic jar and soul cage. You can cast one of these spells once between long rests without expending a spell slot.

When you cast one of these spells with this feature, you must use ‘a small puppet’ in place of the spell’s costly material component. Doing this instead transfers your essence or the trapped soul into the puppet, which becomes a puppet familiar for the duration of the spell as if you had cast find familiar with your ‘puppetry’ feature on the puppet as well. This allows you to have an additional familiar for the duration of the spell. While a soul or an essence is trapped inside the puppet familiar, the puppet familiar takes on features of the creature whose soul or essence is trapped inside it.