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Spellsong
You can blend the power of your performance and spellcasting.
Prerequisites: Cha 13, bardic performance class ability, able to cast 1st-level spells.
Benefit: You can combine your bardic performance and your spellcasting in two ways.
First, you can conceal the activity of casting a bard spell by masking it in a performance. As a swift action, you may combine your casting time of a spell with a Perform check. Observers must make a Perception or Sense Motive check opposed by your Perform check to realize you are also casting a spell. This uses 1 round of your bardic performance ability, regardless of the spell's casting time.
Second, as a move action, you can use 1 round of bardic performance to maintain a bard spell with a duration of concentration. You can cast another spell in the same round you are using bardic magic to maintain concentration; if you do this, your concentration on the maintained spell ends when you end the bardic performance the spell is part of.
Do you need to be maintaining a performance in order to use this ability? It seems to be implied by the first sentence that you do, but it is not explicit.
Can you just cast a spell, spend a round of performance and make the check without an ongoing performance in progress?
"First, you can conceal the activity of casting a bard spell by masking it in a performance."Do you need to be maintaining a performance in order to use this ability?
I would say a performance, but not a bardic performance.
IE: You're juggling, regular old juggling, then bammo, a spell happens. It uses a round of bardic performance, but you don't need to be fascinating or inspiring courage or whatever.
That's my interpretation, anyway.
Performance is one thing, you can just do that without a standard action.
Bardic Performance would force a standard action (at early levels anyway) which affects the utility of this feat pretty directly. I think it would still be a good feat if the standard action were required, but it would a great feat if there's no requirement.
What's the difference you are seeing?
It says that it is a swift action to combine casting a spell while performing. If the spell takes 10 minutes to cast, you can hide it in a 10 minute performance. It doesn't say it changes the casting time requirements of the spell.
The feat just seems to me to be a method of "Sleight of Hand" casting a spell, which is pretty awesome just for that.
If the use of the feat requires an ongoing bardic performance, that needs to be started with a standard action, meaning you can't also cast a spell that turn. Therefore, the minimum time to pull off a spell in this manner is 2 rounds.
If the spell merely requires a perform check and an expenditure of bardic performance rounds/day, that means you can just cast in this manner without spending the action to start the performance. That would be clearly more effective.
As currently printed, there is no explicit requirement of an active bardic performance. Both versions make sense to me, but it would be nice to have a ruling on which is the intended one.
If the use of the feat requires an ongoing bardic performance, that needs to be started with a standard action, meaning you can't also cast a spell that turn. Therefore, the minimum time to pull off a spell in this manner is 2 rounds."First, you can conceal the activity of casting a bard spell by masking it in a performance. As a swift action, you may combine your casting time of a spell with a Perform check. Observers must make a Perception or Sense Motive check opposed by your Perform check to realize you are also casting a spell. This uses 1 round of your bardic performance ability, regardless of the spell's casting time."
I don't see where it says you need to have a "bardic" performance up and running to do this.
RAW says "in a performance", meaning any old performance be it bardic, singing, comedy, (not-miming), oratory, etc. Vocal performance required obviously due to all bard spells have vocal components.
RAI? Good question. I'll guess it was simply meant to be a sleight of hand method to cast spells and thus not specifically a bardic performance. And wait to be proved wrong...
This is how we have always used it, and it seems to be what the rules are saying. It says Performance, but not Bardic Performance, and that is the distinction.
My oratory bard got great use from the feat, using his speeches to cover emotional spells he's casting on the people listening in. It's amazing how much more money the constable will give you as a reward if you can slip a charm person into your recounting of the the raid on the bandit camp, or the havoc you can wreak in a local court with the UM emotional manipulation spells mixed into a story recitation (unnatural lust tends to derail a diplomatic summit).