I have a player that would like to play a bard without the rest of the party knowing.
The characters or the players?
Players is probably not going to happen. It's hard to keep secrets when the mechanics are open.
Would the characters know the source of an ability like inspire courage when it is placed on them. Or would they know the source or have any automatic defenses that would activate from unknown spells and bard effects?
A creature that successfully saves against a spell that has no obvious physical effects feels a hostile force or a tingle, but cannot deduce the exact nature of the attack.
If the bard casts a spell, any character can attempt to identify it via Spellcraft.
As for Bardic Performance, to be affected, the targets have to be able to either hear or see the bard.
If the bard begins singing (or chanting or whatever you choose to fluff the audible components as), the party needs to be able to hear that in order to benefit. It's the same with visual components, they need to see him dancing or miming, or whatever it is he's doing.
As to whether the characters will know why their morale increases and they are suddenly more competent when that guy starts preaching or whatever, that will have to be determined by the GM and the players.
This was exactly one of my first characters: A bard that acted like something else. However I kept it a secret from the other players (and by extension their characters). In a scenario like this, the "fighter" suddenly breaking into song was hilarious. But after that, the cat is out of the proverbial bag.
The same pretty much goes for in game characters. Adventurers (generally) are not stoopid. If the "fighter" starts dancing and all his allies are strangely inspired by it, they know it and will probably guess that the character in question is a bard. No one else can get them jiggy like that. (Lets ignore the Sensei monk archtype).
Spellcasting is another story though. If the other party members do not have ranks in Spellcraft, they will not know what the "cleric" (i.e. bard pretending to be a cleric) is casting. It heals wounds. He must be a cleric, right?
Of course the bard could always say that his dancing mumbo jumbo comes from his magical dancing boots (Bluff versus other characters Sense Motive with appropriate modifiers). Regardless, the other PCs will know where the effect is coming from.
Edit: Damn you ninja Grick
Refluffing a Bard into something else - for instance a drill sergeant - could do the trick.
Hi.
I'm the bard :D
I had a few proposed solutions to this over in the houserules forum here but my request for feedback hasn't done so well.
To explain things a bit further...
My intent would be to play a more roguish character that likes to talk a lot. I would try to establish that aspect of the character before any abilities come into play so that it isn't out of the ordinary.
Players not realizing they are getting the buffs is part of the trick...I've talked to Casien about applying the bonuses to said rolls without the players knowing, which is easy enough since the GM knows the effect of what I'm doing.
The biggest thing is the spell casting. I'd like to be able to use things like Mage Hand to open doors, or Detect Magic, without the group knowing. As stated my houserule thread, I'm not trying to be silent or unseen so much as disguise what I'm doing as something it's not.
One tripping point for the whole "at what point would a character know" is Cure Light Wounds. I discussed with him this evening the fact that I would like to use Cure Light Wounds on party members that need it when they are sleeping...so that when they get rested they get more HP than they would otherwise normally get. Obviously at this point the player would know something is going on...just not necessarily what. But what would the character know?
I also joked about (but if there was a way to make it work, I'd totally do it) of carrying around vials of water or other non-magical liquid and giving them to players...as I cast Cure Light Wounds on them, and claim that it was a healing pot.
The idea is really that my bard wouldn't want to use magic and stuff openly...past issues to deal with...but would want to use it to benefit the group without them knowing. As I told him...in the event that things come down to certain life or death situations...the character would outright do it and deal with it later, but grudgingly so.
How would you inspire someone without them realizing it? I'm not sure if that's possible. But I guess it might help to take Perform(Oratory) as your primary perform skill; after all, oratory is simply talking, right?
I believe Bards tend to cast spells through their performance in a way, but not in a way that disguises it. They can't do it silently, no matter what. Eventually they might get an ability that lets them disguise their spellcasting as something else (like a harmless performance), but that's not at level 1.
It might also be a good idea to look at some Bard archetypes. For the Archaeologist, for example, the bardic performance has been refluffed to a kind of luck that only effects the bard himself. And he's easily the most roguish Bard archetype (more roguish than the Rogue class, in fact). But then you don't get to buff.