Spell Focus: Enchantment is just a feat that helps us actually stick our enchantment spells.

Lesser Dirge of Doom is our alternative to Inspire Courage. It’s like half-shaken, but doesn’t count for fear stacking. It does otherwise qualify as dirge of doom for anything that modifies dirge of doom aside from fear stacking. The whole dirge thing will go a long way to helping us

Countersong and Distraction are the typical bardic abilities which can sub your perform: comedy check for an ally’s save vs a sound or sight based effect, respectively.

Fascinate is basically the hypnotism spell but you don’t get to make a request of the subject(s). Keep their attention on you while somebody does something else.

Bardic Knowledge add half your level to knowledge checks. I don’t plan to focus on that, but we’ll make the knowledge checks and embellish what we don’t know with a better funny story.

1^st Lvl Spells- There are a lot of fun 1^st level spells for bard, especially in social situations, but we also need to be sure we’re contributing in combat so we’re going to check that box first. Hideous Laughter is a first pick which can send something running and remove it from combat for a while because your jokes are scary good. Touch of Gracelessness is risky requiring a touch attack but it targets fort saves and can really bring casters or dex users down a notch, it also causes them to fall prone if they move more than half their speed so we can laugh at them (keep that part secret if your DM doesn’t already know the spell, otherwise he’ll just cheese it and never move more than ½ speed). Better still, even a successful save only halves the dex penalty even though it negates the falling prone. At later levels it will be fun to pick up Fools Gold for roleplay; tip an NPC with a fools gold coin and then your spells are even more likely to work on them (-2 to saves), reverse pickpocket to plant a fools gold on them, or just randomly give someone 1g cuz who wouldn’t take it? Pair with Beguiling Gift and Demand Offering (which I’m merging because they’re just the same spell in reverse) and it should be very fun.

Versatile Performance, as mentioned in the skills section, lets use substitute perform: comedy checks for Bluff and Intimidate. This is not only convenient but also thematic as the best jokes are good lies and the best insults set you higher in the pecking order. Again, note that being small normally gives us a -4 to intimidate but perform: comedy does not suffer that penalty.

Well Versed is just a +4 to saves vs stuff like bard abilities. If the effect says sonic, bardic performance, or language-dependent (which is the big one I think) you probably save.

Improved Dirge of Doom is a feat that extends the range of dirge to 60ft and allows dirge to increment shaken up to frightened once per target per day. At this point we don’t have actual dirge so we can’t fearstack but the range increase will affect our lesser dirge making our job much easier or at least less dangerous.

Mock Incompetence is our skill debuff- clearly more useful in social situations but, could also be used to ruin a foe’s attempt to climb up after you or repair a mechanism you just sabotaged with disable device. It is only -2 right now but it will eventually get very significant making opposed checks very easy or at least making any non-specialized creature unlikely to succeed even at normal checks.

2^nd level spells brings us a few more flavorful ones for embracing the frat boy within. Rotgut is empirically not important; its never going to influence a combat in your favor and its unlikely to help very much even in niche social situations but… its 4 gallons of rum from 4 gallons of water!  We aren’t gonna 1up jesus or anything but its an instantaneous effect which means the rum is rum forever and we can sell it. To pair with this I also recommend Drunkard’s Breath which is a 30ft cone-shaped stinking cloud that does not obscure vision; another great fort save option and the penalties from sickened/nauseated do stack with any fear penalties we might apply. Blistering Invective is a 30ft radius demoralize (don’t forget to use perform: comedy instead of intimidate), if you get em with a good burn they are shaken and literally catch fire! Furthermore, the fire targets reflex saves, likely resulting in foes wasting an action to extinguish themselves, and the shaken effect can be used for fear stacking at lv5. Babble inflicts the nauseated condition through a will save and can affect secondary nearby targets with fascinate whilst the primary target causes a scene.

Dirge of Doom is the same as the usual bard ability, but we get it a few levels sooner. Applying shaken to all foes with no save is great, modified by the improved dirge feat from level 3 its range is 60ft and it can be used to fearstack.

Greater Dirge of Doom is a feat that gives our dirge the effect of lingering performance- the effect lasts for 2 rounds after leaving the area or not being able to see/hear the bard. Furthermore, while the improved dirge feat allowed fear stacking from shaken up to frightened this allows fear stacking from frightened to panicked. Dirge can only be used to fear stack once per target per day.

Transition Master is our c-c-combo feature. Penalties from dirge will affect saves against other performances and you can choose to keep a performance’s effects rolling on affected targets even if you switch to using a different performance.

Suggestion is the bardic performance that works like the Suggestion spell. Fun, good for tricks, but not a focus of the build.

Greater Spell Focus: Enchantment just helps our enchantment spells stick. Most of our more potent spells are enchantment (or will be anyway) and by now the most dangerous things probably all have decent will saves. This, in combo with dirge, will help us have a reasonable chance to actually affect our targets.

3^rd level spells bring us some more fun and thematic choices. Crushing despair is appropriate and adds yet another -2 on top of shaken. Slow would be appropriate as well but would only stack with nauseated in the unchained 3 action system- under normal rules slow and nauseated are kinda redundant. Aura of the Unremarkable is probably the best social spell allowing you to get away with just about anything in plain sight. Mad monkeys is a conjuration spell that deals some unavoidable damage, applies distraction, and performs a steal maneuver each round, and is monkeys. Fear, the spell, could be really effective as it causes shaken for 1 round even if it fails allowing you to increment that up to frightened with improved dirge but once the 1 round of effect from the fear spell wears off it will go back down to shaken. Its great if you really need to gain control of the situation in round 1 but it is kinda double dippy and is thematically more like spooky macabre fear than the embarrassing social anxiety fear we’re flavored for.

Bizarre Dirge is our shoe-in to keep being useful against targets that would otherwise be immune to our most useful ability. It won’t support fear stacking on such targets, but at least they still take the penalty.

Amateur Swashbuckler is a feat that gives us 1 point of panache and access to a single deed. The deed we’re going to choose is Dodging Panache which allows us to spend 1 panache point to take a 5ft step as an immediate action in response to an attack. We also gain our CHA as a dodge bonus to AC but otherwise the triggering attack resolves as normal, and then they would have to move to attack again. Under the normal rules this means the full attack is over because they can’t reach us anymore. I doubt the CHA bonus to AC will really help but at least we’re only taking that 1 hit because full attacks could be deadly at this point. Under the unchained action economy rules, which I now use, there is no full attack; you just get three actions with iterative penalties for each attack. In this rule system I think this deed should allow you to move your speed as an immediate action, and gain the CHA bonus against any further attacks from the triggering foe this round. This will allow you to either escape behind allies making the next attack impossible, or at least give that CHA bonus to AC a chance to matter vs another attack after the foe uses his 2^nd action to move up and his 3^rd to attack. By now most other casters have some big defensive abilities to go on and, until this feat, we really didn’t.

Mock Inferiority is our version of inspire greatness in that it imposes negative levels. The great part, however, is that they are regular temporary negative levels following the normal rules of getting a save daily to eliminate them rather than only lasting until the performance ends. Whatever you affect with this can be affected by dirge too for a total of -4 to a lot of things once you start dirge back up next round. Also, thanks to transition master, the penalty from dirge (if you had it rolling) applies to the save required by this.

Steal the show is an ability which may be difficult to arbitrate but, I feel, is very thematic. It would be nice to have it earlier for establishing the character’s identity and flavor but its kinda powerful and there isn’t anything else I’d like to swap out at a lower level. It can be used either supportively ensuring an ally’s success, even though you totally stole their thunder, or competitively ensuring that you outperform the target of your skill penalty performance when in contest.

4^th level spells don’t offer anything truly thematic for us. We’ve needed a good defensive so we can pick up Shocking Image which is just mirror images plus some electric damage. You can have a chuckle at the fool who hit the wrong image and got zapped I guess. Greater Invis could be good for not even getting targeted and Dimension Door is good for gtfo needs. Amnesia can remove all class features, making casters and hybrids useless, but targets will saves which are often strong for classes that depend on heavily on their features over their hit dice and base attack. Virtuoso Performance could let you save some action economy by not giving up your dirge for a turn when you use other performances but… we don’t have that much use for it yet. Ultimately go ham and have fun here; maybe grab some lower level spells that you wanted but missed out on.

Extra Panache is a feat that gives us 2 more panache points to spend on our dodging panache deed. Now we can scooch out of a full attack 3x per day with an AC bonus to boot. Picture that moment where we’re going “nanner nanner boo boo” and when the beefy boi finally gets to crush us, we just looney toons outta there.

Damning Dirge is just a boost to help us actually affect targets with our spells and performances. On top of shaken, they take another -1 to saves vs us.

Ravaging Performance is some decent AOE damage that you can weave into your performance- as long as you’ve stuck it on something for 4 rounds straight you can hit em with 3d8+lv negative energy damage. It’s unlikely to turn the tide as many say most combats are decided by then but it could help save some resources by ending it quicker.

Spell Penetration is pretty generic but we’ve invested a lot in ensuring our spells affect foes so we might as well further invest toward the same goal and, by now, spell resistance is likely to be an issue.

Lv5 Spells offer some pretty powerful choices but nothing too amazing. Last tier was lackluster for a scarcity of thematic spells while this tier is rich in theme and yet difficult to make a decision over which spells are more useful. Among the best of the bunch is Stunning Finale which can stun up to 3 targets but for only 1 round. The sweet part is that, even if they save, they are staggered for 1 round instead. Resonating Word targets fort saves, deals damage, and worsens each turn for 3 turns potentially culminating in a 1d4+1 round stun. Total damage is up to 20d6 over those 3 rounds. The word spoken for the verbal component of this spell should probably be something deeply offensive, something you wouldn’t say outside of this character at the table. Cacaphonous Call can cause nauseated on any targets you want within 30ft. It targets Will which is an uncommon vector for nauseated but it would be great to stack with the -2 from shaken.

Frightening Tune is another unchanged performance which can only synergize well with Dirge of Doom if we cast Virtuoso Performance or ShadowBard to keep them both up at once. This would be very costly in terms of performance rounds per day but the Shaken from Dirge plus the Frightened from Tune will stack to become Panicked meaning foes will drop their weapons before they flee. The monsters will probably have 5 claws and two bites as backup weapons, knowing our luck but, in theory, the orc barbarians should be a lot less threatening without their greataxes.

Greater spell penetration is a pretty token feat to help us be more likely to affect our targets with the only thing we can really do- spells. Nothing exciting or interesting, just better odds to be spell resistance.

Mock impotence is our last mocking performance which will dramatically cripple, but not completely incapacitate, the target. Between being flat-footed and the 50% chance to not act, that’s pretty solid. Furthermore, with this in our kit we now have different performances to cycle through. If any one doesn’t stick, just Dirge and try another.

From here on our just pick whatever. Rarely do games go this high and, if they do, no generic insight should be useful. I will note that Mass Suggestion is an ability that will definitely accomplish the characters goals- you can just use that to make everyone vote you in as the King of the Kollege. It can be kind of interesting when a class feature can be a synonymous with accomplishing a major character goal. Lastly, Deadly performance would probably feel great to use- call someone a name so insulting that they instantly die.