Quiet Auditory Bardic Performance


Rules Questions


For example can you whisper jokes to your adjacent companions (knock-knock jokes, of course) quietly to avoid alerting nearby monsters? Is the same amount of noise made to maintain the ability? If people spread out, can you raise your volume accordingly? Can you do this in a moderate fashion (to avoid alerting bad guys further away)?


This is all we have to go off of.

If a bardic performance has audible components, the targets must be able to hear the bard for the performance to have any effect, and many such performances are language dependent (as noted in the description). A deaf bard has a 20% chance to fail when attempting to use a bardic performance with an audible component. If he fails this check, the attempt still counts against his daily limit. Deaf creatures are immune to bardic performances with audible components.


Your allies have to be able to hear you to get the benefits of performance. There is no restriction on how noisy performance needs to be.

I suggest using the message cantrip to whisper out to 100+ feet.

Silver Crusade RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16

Atarlost wrote:

Your allies have to be able to hear you to get the benefits of performance. There is no restriction on how noisy performance needs to be.

I suggest using the message cantrip to whisper out to 100+ feet.

Which is a little problematic, as it would seem to be a way to allow it to influence a Stealth check. Which it specifically cannot do.

Grand Lodge

I think they just put that prohibition in to avoid really silly situations.

If you must, just treat it as "Any performance loud enough for your allies to hear is loud enough that it just offset the bonus you gave them to stealth."


Man, would be cool to use telepathy with this :/


There's no rule you have to perform constantly, so one whispered joke should do it. What's the base DC to hear it? DC 15 is a whispered conversation, but this is just one joke - so DC 20? Almost like silent spell...


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Kwauss wrote:
There's no rule you have to perform constantly, so one whispered joke should do it. What's the base DC to hear it? DC 15 is a whispered conversation, but this is just one joke - so DC 20? Almost like silent spell...

I guess you could say that.

There are no rules for whispering one sentence vs a conversation and performing is not a conversation.

conversation wrote:
an informal talk involving two people or a small group of people

With all of that aside the party has to be able to hear it, and most of the time this won't really do you any good except for corner cases.

I might even allow it, if it came up, if it was not too difficult, but since I use bards as NPC's I would let the players know it could work against them.

PS: I don't think a deve would allow it,if they were to issue an FAQ however.


wraithstrike wrote:


With all of that aside the party has to be able to hear it, and most of the time this won't really do you any good except for corner cases.
I might even allow it, if it came up, if it was not too difficult, but since I use bards as NPC's I would let the players know it could work against them.

PS: I don't think a deve would allow it,if they were to issue an FAQ however.

Do you think they can rule that without backtracking on other rulings minimizing bardic performance requirements?


Kwauss wrote:
wraithstrike wrote:


With all of that aside the party has to be able to hear it, and most of the time this won't really do you any good except for corner cases.
I might even allow it, if it came up, if it was not too difficult, but since I use bards as NPC's I would let the players know it could work against them.

PS: I don't think a devs would allow it,if they were to issue an FAQ however.

Do you think they can rule that without backtracking on other rulings minimizing bardic performance requirements?

What rulings do you mean? I don't remember any rulings against the bard class.

Grand Lodge

I don't think the Bard's voice is the real issue here... if he is telling good enough jokes for Bardic Performance, his allies will be laughing at them.

Community / Forums / Pathfinder / Pathfinder First Edition / Rules Questions / Quiet Auditory Bardic Performance All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.