Can you use the perform action without an audience?


Rules Discussion


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

This question arises from a discussion in a wizard/spell caster thread about whether or not one can use the melodious spell with the intention of making an inconspicuous performance check to cast a spell without people paying attention to you.

In my mind this is clearly bending the rules, as the perform action is about capturing the attention of an audience, not specifically about the quality of ones acting or singing. Others vehemently disagreed, but it seemed like a separate conversation so I made this thread.


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100% no. Performance requires an intent to communicate something to an audience. If you are alone in your studio you aren't using Performance (what GM would make you roll for this) you're just practicing or playing for your own amusement.

Charisma skills in general are about "affecting other people" and "affect them in such a way that they don't pay attention to you" is a magical effect, not a mundane one.

The skill for escaping notice, after all, is stealth. Any time you roll performance, anybody who cares knows you're there. Now what Melodious spell can do is if you're already there, in the background, juggling or playing the lute or whatever then you can slip a spell in there and no one will be the wiser- but they're still aware of the presence of a juggler or a lutist.


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Performance (noun) an act of staging or presenting a play, concert, or other form of entertainment.
Staging (noun) the method of presenting a play or other dramatic performance; the organizing of a public event.

I'm in agreement that you can't hum a tune to yourself or whisper to the walls.

The entire point of the feat is to be doing one thing (that everyone knows you are obviously doing and grabbing attention) and at the same time doing something else (casting a spell).

Look up Apollo Robins some time. He's literally taken the coat off people's backs without them noticing. He's done it after he's told them he's going to rob them blind. I saw a video once where he took a guy's eye glasses and the guy didn't notice.

That's what Melodious Spell does.


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Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
PossibleCabbage wrote:

100% no. Performance requires an intent to communicate something to an audience. If you are alone in your studio you aren't using Performance (what GM would make you roll for this) you're just practicing or playing for your own amusement.

Charisma skills in general are about "affecting other people" and "affect them in such a way that they don't pay attention to you" is a magical effect, not a mundane one.

The skill or escaping notice, after all, is stealth. Any time you roll performance, anybody who cares knows you're there. Now what Melodious spell can do is if you're already there, in the background, juggling or playing the lute or whatever then you can slip a spell in there and no one will be the wiser- but they're still aware of the presence of a juggler or a lutist.

I strongly agree. Additionally, there is a reason why impersonating a different person is the deception skill and not performance. Letting your players turn performance into a god skill for the bard, without taking the feat support to do so is only doubling down on turning the bard into the end all be all of casters.


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I would allow "discreet performances" under certain circumstances. For example, I would allow a PC to attempt a performance check to tell a series of jokes to cheer up a crying child on the streets - there may be other potential observers, but the PC can make a performance mostly directed to one individual even when in a crowded area.

If a PC attempted to stage a performance without an audience entirely (such as a Bard playing sad music in her prison cell with no-one around) I would also allow her to make the check. The result has no real impact beyond how good the song was, but there could still be observers the PC is unaware of, such as an unseen guard. Additionally, the PC may just be interested in knowing if they played well.

For Melodious Spell in particular, I'll repeat what I said before. Spells ordinarily has the caster make very noticeable motions and sounds, and Melodious Spell does not remove these, it merely masks them behind a performance. Therefore, the "observers" the feat talks about (those who the player rolls against), are the same people who would normally observe the PC casting a spell (They are still fully able to observe the spell being cast, the PC is just tricking them that what they see is part of the performance). To rule otherwise would allow players to always make a discreet performance no-one sees and never have to care about the result of their performance check. I view it as a very shaky RAW reading, and clearly against RAI.


The intent behind "spell manifestations" to begin with is to prevent spellcasters from running roughshod over mundane folks with no one the wiser. Like if you were to try to mind control the merchant at market day so they give you all of their stuff, the crowds of people present are going to notice and express their objection to your tactics.

So I think from an RAI perspective scrutiny should be paid towards "subtle magic" proportional to how much it would ruin things if this particular tactic were commonplace.


Draco18s wrote:

Performance (noun) an act of staging or presenting a play, concert, or other form of entertainment.

Staging (noun) the method of presenting a play or other dramatic performance; the organizing of a public event.

I'm in agreement that you can't hum a tune to yourself or whisper to the walls.

The entire point of the feat is to be doing one thing (that everyone knows you are obviously doing and grabbing attention) and at the same time doing something else (casting a spell).

Look up Apollo Robins some time. He's literally taken the coat off people's backs without them noticing. He's done it after he's told them he's going to rob them blind. I saw a video once where he took a guy's eye glasses and the guy didn't notice.

That's what Melodious Spell does.

Yea, Apollo's freakin' amazing. Really opens up one's eyes about how much a Rogue (et al) in a fantasy setting could pull off. As noted, he does it through distraction not stealth. He overloads the victim's input for example by making them think via a question, observe something nearby, and perhaps touching them overtly on the shoulder all at the same instance so as they don't notice the subtler motion of him taking their watch, scarf, or as mentioned eyeglasses right off their face. Astounding how smoothly he executes his maneuvers in mere seconds.

And as the cabbage noted, complete anonymity while casting leads to complications & exploits Paizo foresaw to avoid in PF2.

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