Improving Mockery


Homebrew and House Rules


Hello folks. I'm trying to improve the mockery ability of the court bard archetype...

Quote:
Mockery (Su): A court bard of 3rd level or higher can subtly ridicule and defame a specific individual. The bard selects one target who can hear his performance. That individual takes a –2 penalty on Charisma checks and Charisma-related skill checks as long as the bard continues performing. This penalty increases by –1 every four levels after 3rd. Mockery is a language-dependent, mind-affecting ability that relies on audible components. This performance replaces inspire competence.

I want it to be as good as the ability it replaces (I know, I know; archetypes are supposed to be balanced on a whole and not on an ability-by-ability basis).

So far, I've thought of making it more like a reverse 'inspire greatness/heroics'; i.e. a more general target-specific debuff.

Alternatively, I've thought of having it be even more damaging to characters that rely on charisma; perhaps disabling things like tactician. However, it seems like I would have to make the ability rather lengthy in description to account of all possible uses.

Any ideas? As it stands, the thing is next to useless IMHO.


I think it could work as a generic skill-use debuff. Ridiculing someone can make them mess up more than CHA skills. I feel like it'd fit with this archetype to cast grease and then ridicule the orcs trying to get up (give penalty to acrobatics) to make them stay on the ground.

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