Cutting Words

Cutting Words is a reaction available to the College of Lore bards. It allows them to distract and confuse their foes, potentially causing attacks to miss, or ability checks or saving throws to fail.

Description

Use your wit to distract a creature and sap its confidence. It receives a -1d6 penalty to  Attack Roll,  Ability Check, or  Saving Throw.

Properties

Cost

 Reaction +  Bardic Inspiration

Details

 Range: 18 m (60 ft)

At higher levels

• At bard level 5, the penalty increases to -1d8.
• At bard level 10, the penalty increases to -1d10.

Technical details

UIDs

Target_CuttingWords

Ability triggered by the reaction

Interrupt_CuttingWords

Reaction which triggers the ability

Spell flags

HasVerbalComponent, IsHarmful

How to learn

Classes:

• Class level 3: College of Lore (via  Cutting Words)

Notes

• Unlike in D&D 5th Edition rules, Cutting Words cannot be applied to damage rolls. However, it can be applied to saving throws (which is normally available only to Eloquence Bards).
• In most cases using this action causes the caster to make a verbal quip or insult the target, drawing on the same pool of dialogue options as  Vicious Mockery. These remarks are fully voice acted, including for characters who do not normally have access to the action.

Bugs

• The visual effect and reaction spell are always directed towards the source of the attack, whether the attack has an attack roll or a saving throw. As a result, when Cutting Words is used to the reduce the saving throw roll of an enemy against a spell cast by a non-enemy creature, the visual effect and reaction spell will still be directed towards the caster.
  • The reaction spell is flagged as a harmful spell, and if the caster is a neutral creature it may become hostile towards the bard and its party.
• Despite being flagged with HasVerbalComponent, Cutting Words may be used even while silenced.
• Cutting Words is missing the potency of the bardic dice in its description when displayed in the combat log.
• Cutting Words checks for the bard level of the source of the attack, instead of the bard that is using Cutting Words (observer). As a result, unless the attacker is also a bard, the maximum difference in roll value that Cutting Words can trigger on is 6 instead of the expected 8 or 10 for bards that are level 5 or above.