Identity
Lore Bards are archivists with stage presence. They are at home in Aurelion court libraries, Halcyion abbey archives, Echelon legal-aid offices, and the small back-rooms of every used-data-shop in the spinward sectors. Their channeling rides on cited authority: a Lore Bard's chant is half song and half index, and the things they invoke have weight because they have a verifiable past. They are also, almost universally, mean — affectionately, professionally mean.
Features
- L3 Cutting Words
You gain proficiency with three additional skills of your choice. Additionally, when a creature you can see and hear within 60 ft makes an attack roll, ability check, or damage roll, you may use your reaction to expend one Bardic Inspiration use to subtract the rolled Bardic Inspiration die from the creature's roll. You may choose to use this feature after the creature makes its roll, but before the GM determines whether the roll succeeds or fails (and before damage is rolled, for a damage roll). The creature is immune if it cannot hear you or if it is immune to being Charmed.
- L7 Additional Magical Secrets
You learn two channels of your choice from any class. A channel chosen must be of a level you can cast, or a cantrip. The chosen channels count as Bard channels for you, and they are additional channels known beyond your normal channels-known limit (these do not count against the Magical Secrets pool gained at 10th level).
- L11 Peerless Skill
When you make an ability check, you may expend one use of Bardic Inspiration; roll your Bardic Inspiration die and add the result to the check. You may do this after seeing the d20 result but before the GM declares whether the check succeeds. If the check still fails after the Inspiration die, the Bardic Inspiration use is not expended. Additionally, your Expertise total may include up to one tool proficiency of your choice in addition to skill proficiencies; the chosen tool's proficiency bonus is doubled for ability checks you make with it.
- L15 Verbal Mastery
Your delivery has reached the register where it imposes weight by itself. As a bonus action on your turn, you may choose one creature within 60 ft that can hear and understand you; that creature has disadvantage on Charisma saving throws until the start of your next turn. You may use this feature a number of times per long rest equal to your CHA modifier (minimum 1). Additionally, you have advantage on Charisma (Persuasion, Deception, and Intimidation) checks made against creatures that have heard you speak for at least 1 minute in the preceding hour.
- L18 Untold Tale Capstone
Once per long rest, you may perform a 10-minute act of narrative reframing — a told tale, a published correction, a courtroom intervention, a viral broadcast — that rewrites a minor detail of recent history in the social and legal record of a community within range of your performance (a city precinct, a starship's complement, an interplanetary news cycle if you can reach broadcast tools). The rewrite must concern a discrete factual claim of moderate consequence (the identity of an unknown bystander; the order of two events in a recent crime scene; the attribution of a published anonymous quote). For 30 days after the performance, that detail is accepted by the affected community as if it had always been true; physical records, sworn memories, and direct supernatural divinations may resist (DC 20 Wisdom save by an individual to recall the original; magical or technological forensic methods of caster level 9 or higher / equivalent reveal the alteration on inspection). This does not change physical reality, only the record. It cannot rewrite events of major historical consequence (a war, the death of a head of state, a publicized atrocity), and it cannot manufacture new physical evidence. The 30-day window may be renewed by repeating the performance.