Bard Spellcasting

You draw upon magic from esoteric knowledge. You are a spellcaster and can cast spells of the occult tradition using the Cast a Spell activity.

As a bard, when you cast spells, your incantations might be musical riffs or clever limericks, your gestures might incorporate dance and dramatic pantomiming, and you might accompany your spellcasting by playing a musical instrument.

Each day, you can cast up to two 1st-rank spells. You must know spells to cast them, and you learn them via the spell repertoire class feature. The number of spells you can cast each day is called your spell slots.

As you increase in level as a bard, your number of spells per day increases, as does the highest rank of spells you can cast.

Some of your spells require you to attempt a spell attack to see how effective they are or have your enemies roll against your spell DC (typically by attempting a saving throw). Since your key attribute is Charisma, your spell attack modifiers and spell DCs use your Charisma modifier.

Heightening Spells

When you get spell slots of 2nd rank and higher, you can fill those slots with stronger versions of lower-rank spells. This increases the spell's rank, heightening it to match the spell slot. You must have a spell in your spell repertoire at the rank you want to cast in order to heighten it to that rank. Many spells have specific improvements when they are heightened to certain ranks. The signature spells class feature lets you heighten certain spells freely.

Cantrips

Some of your spells are cantrips. A cantrip is a special type of spell that doesn't use spell slots. You can cast a cantrip at will, any number of times per day. A cantrip is automatically heightened to half your level rounded up—this is usually equal to the highest rank of bard spell slot you have. For example, as a 1st-level bard, your cantrips are 1st-rank spells, and as a 5th-level bard, your cantrips are 3rd-rank spells.