[3.5] Subsonics Fascinate

[Captain Cap]

Description of the feat Subsonics, from the Complete Adventurer:

You can produce music or poetics so subtly that opponents do not notice it, yet your allies still gain all the usual benefits from your bardic music. Similarly, you can affect opponents within range with your music, but unless they can see you performing or have some other means of discovering it, they cannot determine the source of the effect.

The text seems to suggest that you can influence enemies without them acknowledging the attempt (and for a basic bard the only music effects on opponents are Fascinate and Suggestion, the second one requiring the first one). However in the Player Handbook, about Fascinate, is written:

Each creature to be fascinated must be within 90 feet, able to see and hear the bard, and able to pay attention to him.

So the target must pay attention, and so be able to identify the source of the effect. Does Subsonics let you ignore this requirement? If not, wouldn't the second part of the description be pointless?

[Fizban]

Hmm. Unless you use a meaning of opponent that doesn't include any of the things that stop you from using Fascinate, but when something says "opponent" I don't take that as being swappable for "target." And there aren't any feats in CA to give offensive music options, so unless you count Virtuoso effects, I don't see what they could be referring to either. Maybe if you read Countersong as affecting opponents, their stuff is being countered, and with Subsonics you can Countersong them and they won't know what's wrong.

Still seems pretty ridiculously niche since they explicitly say opponents who can see you performing still know you're the source. So all Subsonics really does is make it so the Bard can hide around the corner without the enemy realizing there's a Bard there (or invisible or hidden etc).

[PhantasyPen]

The implication of subsonics appears to be that if they are in audio range, you no longer need line-of-sight to be able to affect them. Not sure what to say beyond that.

[Bronk]

Description of the feat Subsonics, from the Complete Adventurer:

The text seems to suggest that you can influence enemies without them acknowledging the attempt (and for a basic bard the only music effects on opponents are Fascinate and Suggestion, the second one requiring the first one). However in the Player Handbook, about Fascinate, is written:

So the target must pay attention, and so be able to identify the source of the effect. Does Subsonics let you ignore this requirement? If not, wouldn't the second part of the description be pointless?

Fascinate doesn't work well with subsonics, not just because of the part you bolded (being able to see, hear, and pay attention to the bard), but earlier in the ability's description where it says '...cause one or more creatures to be fascinated with him.' Regardless of being able to hear the bard properly or not, the people are going to fixate on the bard him/her/it-self. That's not terribly stealthy, but I suppose they wouldn't necessarily know why they were doing it.