Vox

A savant with the vox aptitude manipulates people with their voice, using appeals to reason or emotion as well as outright castigation, intimidation, or prevarication.

The term vox means ‘voice’ in the Infernal language, but these savants can influence people with any form of linguistic communication, including text and signing, though enemies may find these methods easier to ignore.

Bonus Proficiencies

When you choose this archetype at 1st level, you gain proficiency with Insight and one language. You also gain proficiency in one of the following: light armor, Deception, Intimidation, Performance, or Persuasion.

Compelling Communication

At 1st level, you can manipulate people with words as easily as a warrior can with physical force. You can spend an action to affect a creature within 30 feet that can understand you with any flourish trick that you have prepared other than Surgical Flourish, without making an attack.

At 6th level, the range you can affect a creature increases to 60 feet. Additionally, you gain the ability to use flourish tricks other than Surgical Flourish whenever you deal damage to a creature with your Weapon of Choice ability (see below).

Ear for Languages

At 2nd level you train your mind to pick up languages as needed. By spending a short or long rest in the presence of a speaker of any language, you can acquire a rudimentary understanding of that language, enough to have a basic conversation. Any abilities you have that rely on sharing a common language and require a saving throw can work, but the target has advantage on their save.

The cognitive effort to decode the unfamiliar tongue means that if you use this ability again, you lose access to any other language you learned through it.

Weapon of Choice

Also at 2nd level, you can guide a foe to ruin with your words. You can use an action to insult a creature within 60 feet that can understand you, or undermine its confidence, goad it into exhausting itself, amuse it into giving up the fight, or similar verbal gambits. If the creature fails a Wisdom saving throw against your trick DC, it takes 1d6 psychic damage and its hit point maximum is reduced by an amount equal to the damage taken. The reduction lasts until the creature completes a short rest . A creature reduced to 0 hit points this way is not dying, but rather is conscious and incapacitated .

The damage increases to 2d6 and 5th level, 3d6 at 11th level, and 4d6 at 17th level.

Hypnotic Voice

At 6th level, you are able to keep people and creatures’ attention focused on you. Spend an action to cause creatures of your choice that can perceive you to make a Wisdom saving throw against your trick save DC. Creatures that don’t understand your language have advantage on the saving throw. Creatures that cannot be charmed automatically succeed their saving throws, and if you or your companions are fighting a creature, it makes its saving throw with advantage .

On a failure, a creature is charmed by you for as long as you continue talking (with reasonable pauses, perhaps even conversation back and forth) and for the next hour after. While charmed by you, the creature has disadvantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks made to perceive creatures other than you.

The focus required for this mesmerism is mentally taxing. Once you use this feature, you must finish a short or long rest before you can use it again.

When You Put It That Way

At 11th level, as an action you can suggest an activity (limited to a sentence or two) to a creature that can hear and understand you. A creature that can’t be charmed is immune to this feature. The course of action must sound reasonable, as with the suggestion spell.

If the target fails a Wisdom saving throw , it pursues the course of action you described to the best of its ability for as long as you are present, and for up to 10 minutes after.

Once you use this feature, you must finish a short or long rest before you can use it again.

Attentive Polyglot

At 14th level you know all languages, and cannot be magically silenced. If you would be affected by a language-dependent effect, you may choose to ignore that effect, as if you didn’t understand the language.

Additionally, so deft is your understanding of language that when you make an ability check to influence someone with words, you gain an expertise die . An expertise die is 1d4 you roll and add.

Killing Word

At 17th level, you can spend an action to so utterly cut to the core of a person’s identity that for a moment they might lose the will to live. One creature that can understand you is stunned . At the end of each of its turns it must make a Charisma saving throw against your trick DC or else it gains a level of strife . The effect ends when it succeeds one of these saving throws, or when it has six levels of strife.

Once you use this feature, you must finish a short or long rest before you can use it again.