To most, music is a comfort. A performance is a story with a beginning, middle, and end. But to bards of the College of Delirium, order is a lie told to keep the mind from breaking. Their song unravels sanity, tears apart logic, and bends perception until enemies don’t know friend from foe, up from down, or real from imagined. Their work is not performance—it is affliction.
Bards of Delirium walk the line between genius and madness. Some are mystics who dream too deeply. Others are carnival performers, alchemists of mind-altering sound, or vessel-voices for unknowable forces. They inflict their vision upon others, dragging them into dream-logic mazes, surreal revelations, or recursive patterns of thought. A fight near a bard of Delirium becomes unpredictable: the battlefield warps, allies forget their purpose, and enemies turn on illusions or speak in tongues.
Where other bards seek to clarify, the College of Delirium seeks to confuse. Not with deception—but with raw, immersive, and consuming disorientation.
Disorienting Performance
3rd-Level Bard (College of Delirium) Feature
You learn to warp the perceptions of others through erratic performance. As a bonus action, you can begin a Delirious Display, which lasts for 1 minute or until you are incapacitated. While it lasts, choose one effect at the start of each of your turns (no action required):
- Warped Vision: Choose one creature you can see within 60 feet. That creature must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw or perceive all other creatures as distorted and hostile until the end of its next turn. It has disadvantage on attack rolls unless it targets the last creature that damaged it.
- Echo Pulse: When you cast a Bard cantrip that targets only a single creature other than you, you can use your reaction to target a second creature within 10 feet of the original target. You must repeat the attack roll or saving throw as normal for the second target.
- Lurching Step: All movement you take is considered Shifting.
You can use this feature a number of times equal to your Bard Power Reservoir, regaining all expended uses when you finish a long rest.
Dream-Eater's Verse
3rd-Level Bard (College of Delirium) Feature
You learn the
Dissonant Whispers spell if you don’t already know it. When you cast it, the psychic magic you weave manifests as dreamlike hallucinations and distorted echoes. A creature that fails its saving throw against your Dissonant Whispers is disoriented until the end of your next turn. While disoriented, the target treats all creatures it sees as lightly obscured and it has disadvantage on the next attack roll it makes.
In addition, when a creature takes psychic damage from one of your Bard spells, you can expend a use of Bardic Inspiration to force that creature to make a Wisdom saving throw. On a failure, the target is Stunned until the start of your next turn, unable to act as it is overwhelmed by a false sensory experience. Once a creature has been Stunned in this way, it is immune to this effect until it finishes a long rest.
Twisting the Familiar
6th-Level Bard (College of Delirium) Feature
When a creature you can see within 30 feet of you fails a saving throw against being
Charmed or d, you can use your reaction to deepen the effect into delirium. The target is both Charmed and Frightened of you until the start of your next turn, and must immediately use its reaction to move 10 feet in a direction of your choice.
Additionally, while a creature within 30 feet of your is Charmed by you or Frightened of you, you have advantage on Concentration checks for Bard spells.
Mind-Sundering Aria
14th-Level Bard (College of Delirium) Feature
Your performances rupture the fragile barrier between reality and delusion. As an action, you can perform a Mind-Sundering Aura for 1 minute, requiring Concentration and unleashing a surge of twisted auditory hallucinations. Each creature of your choice within 30 feet of you that can hear you must make an Intelligence saving throw against your Spell Save DC. A creature takes 6d10 psychic damage and is Blinded, Charmed, and Frightened. On a successful save, the target takes half as much damage and suffers no conditions. A target may repeat the saving throw at the end of each of its turns, losing the conditions on a success.
Once you use this feature, you can’t do so again until you finish a long rest or you expend a 5th-level spell slot.
