Bard

Untold wonders and secrets exist for those skillful enough to discover them. Through cleverness, talent, and magic, these cunning few unravel the wiles of the world, becoming adept in the arts of persuasion, manipulation, and inspiration. Typically masters of one or many forms of artistry, bards possess an uncanny ability to know more than they should and use what they learn to keep themselves and their allies ever one step ahead of danger. Bards are quick-witted and captivating, and their skills might lead them down many paths, be they scholars or performers, leaders or scoundrels, or even all of the above.

Bards bring levity during grave times; they impart wisdom to offset ignorance; and they make the ridiculous seem sublime. Bards are preservers of ancient history, their songs and tales perpetuating the memory of great events down through time — knowledge so important that it is memorized and passed along as oral history, to survive even when no written record remains.

It is also the bard’s role to chronicle smaller and more contemporary events — the stories of today’s heroes, including their feats of valor as well as their less than impressive failures.

Of course, the world has many people who can carry a tune or tell a good story, and there’s much more to any adventuring bard than a glib tongue and a melodious voice. Yet what truly sets bards apart from others — and from one another — are the style and substance of their performances.

“There is nothing I would like to do more than explain to you why I’m standing here with stolen goods and my rapier sticking out of this still-warm corpse, officer. I assure you, l have a completely reasonable and plausible explanation.”

Not just musicians

Singing songs and strumming lutes might be fine for most bards. Who doesn’t like a rousing shanty now and then? But standing in a crowded tavern playing for copper pieces tossed by commoners isn’t for everyone. As a bard you can do anything, and even if you can not do something, you can make it appear as you do. The perception of you is a finely tuned instrument in its own right - and you’re just the one to pluck it.

Master of one trade: Awesomeness

As a bard, you’re known as the go-to figure when things need to get done. Your tremendous array of skills and abilities mean that you’re often the first one called upon to do the hard jobs. And if you’re going to do something, you might as well do it with panache. Since most of your compatriots likely think ’‘panache” is some kind of elven delicacy, it’s all the more impressive.

Jumping a small pit? Land with the flourish of a world class gymnast! Slaying a kobold? Take it down with a legendary oath, and no one will realize that an asthmatic farmhand could have done the same thing with a rusty sickle. Running across a room? Use prestidigitation to blow your hair back, making it look like you have the speed and grace of Corellon themself.

Not liking instruments?

As a bard you do not have to carry around an instrument as the stereotypical bard. There are many art forms that a bard may choose to follow instead. In the table below are some examples. Work with your DM to adjust your spellcasting focus feature and other college or class features that seem to be dependent on an instrument.

Unusual bard art forms

Pantomime	Sock Puppets	Ventriloquist
Juggling	Yodeling	Bad Magic Tricks
Limericks	Hula Hooping	Shanties
Stand Up Comedy	Stripper	Impressions
Opera	Shadow Puppets	Tap Dancing
Trapeze Artist	Clown	Acrobat

Cutting wit and wicked barbs

When others pick on you about being a bard, you need only remind them that you and you alone have the power to insult creatures to death. Just the other day, your harsh word about a goblin’s haircut caused it to keel over, bleeding from its ears. But with such great power comes the great responsibility - of not being lame. When you use your spells and class features to denigrate your enemies into an early grave, you need to have a number of tried and true zingers at hand to add the perfect insult to the ultimate injury.

Insults to die for

d20	Insult
1	Did your mother have any children who lived?
2	Who dressed you, a grimlock?
3	You smell like a hell hound’s hindquarters.
4	You’re as helpful as a halfling.
5	Let me guess. You’re a self-taught wizard?
6	Your personality has all the warmth of a winter wolf.
7	You’re the loveliest hag in the coven.
8	You’re not the sharpest piercer in the cave.
9	Aren’t you a little short for a giant?
10	Truly, your intellect is as deep as a Tenser’s floating disk.
11	Did you wake up in a troglodyte den this morning, or is that how you normally smell?
12	You must have been sick the day they taught fighting at warrior school.
13	Gruumsh must have closed his eye when he created you.
14	I can see you, but where’s the dragon that pooped you out?
15	You’ve got all the good sense of a mind flayer’s last meal.
16	You don’t know a beholder from a gas spore.
17	I suspected you’d fallen out of the idiot tree, but I didn’t know you were dragged through Stupid Forest afterward.
18	There’s nothing about your looks that a full-face helmet wouldn’t improve.
19	You’re about as useful as an orc horde at a tea party.
20	I’ve seen better-looking faces on a gibbering mouther

Variant Bard: Loreseeker

A loreseeker is an archaeologist, a scholar of ancient and forgotten knowledge, an adventurer more interested in the story behind a treasure than in its value in gold pieces. Loreseekers know a bit about everything, but they display peerless skills in their own fields. They learned to harness magic from ancient texts and forgotten rhymes. Scholars at core, they can offer the right advice for nearly every situation.

A loreseeker has all the usual class features of the bard, with the following exceptions.

Proficiencies

Class Skills: Add all knowledge skills

Additional Skills: Gain 2 additional skill points to spend on Knowledge skills.

Saving Throws: Dexterity, Intelligence

Advice from the sage

Replaces Bardic inspiration

This class feature works like Bardic Inspiration feature, except but you can use this feature a number of times equal to your Intelligence modifier, rather than your Charisma modifier.

Spellcasting

It is not the music of the universe but your knowledge and understanding of the words of power behind the fabric of existence itself that shapes your spells.

Intelligence is your spellcasting ability for your bard spells.

Spell save DC = 8 + your proficiency bonus + your Intelligence modifier Spell attack modifier = your proficiency bonus + your Intelligence modifier

Spellcasting Focus

You can use an arcane focus as a spellcasting focus for your spells.

Further features

Whenever a College or class feature refers to your Charisma modifier or Charisma score, use your Intelligence modifier or Intelligence score instead. When a similar feature refers to your bardic inspiration feature, instead use your advice from the sage feature.

Equipment

You start with the following equipment, in addition to the equipment granted by your background:

• (a) rapier, (b) a longsword or (c) any simple weapon
• (a) a diplomat’s pack or (b) a scholar’s pack
• Leather armor and a dagger

Bard Class Features

As a bard, you gain the following class features.

Hit Points

Hit Dice: 1d8

Saving Throws

You are proficient with Dexterity and Charisma saving throws.

Skills

Class Skills: Acrobatics, Art, Courtier, Gaming, History, Sleight of Hand and Speechcraft

Skill Points: You gain 4 skill points at 1st level.

Skills - Combat

Weapon Groups: You have rank 2 with Fencing sword, Knife, Staff, Sword, Whip, Sling and Thrown Weapon. Additionally you have rank 1 with Club, Bow and Crossbow.

Combat Skills: You gain the Light armor skill.

After 1st level: You gain 1 skill point to spend on combat skills every even level.

Equipment

You start with the following equipment, in addition to the equipment granted by your background:

• (a) rapier, (b) a longsword or (c) any simple weapon
• (a) a diplomat’s pack or (b) an entertainer’s pack
• (a) any musical instrument or (b) any book
• Leather armor (if proficient) and a dagger

Bard College

At 1st level, you delve into the advanced techniques of a bard college of your choice, detailed at the end of the class description. Your choice grants you features again at 3rd, 6th and 14th level.

Bardic Inspiration

You can inspire others through stirring words or music. To do so, you use a bonus action on your turn to choose one creature other than yourself within 60 ft who can hear you. That creature gains one Bardic Inspiration die, a d6.

Once within the next 10 minutes, the creature can roll the die and add the number rolled to one ability check, attack roll, or saving throw it makes. The creature can wait until after it rolls the d20 before deciding to use the Bardic Inspiration die, but must decide before the DM says whether the roll succeeds or fails. Once the Bardic Inspiration die is rolled, it is lost. A creature can have only one Bardic Inspiration die at a time.

You can use this feature a number of times equal to your Charisma modifier, and can regain expended uses when you finish a long rest.

Your Bardic Inspiration die changes when you reach certain levels in this class. The die becomes a d8 at 5th level, a d10 at 10th level, and a d12 at 16th level.

Spellcasting

You have learned to untangle and reshape the fabric of reality in harmony with your wishes and music. Your spells are part of your vast repertoire, magic that you can tune to different situations.

Cantrips

You know two cantrips of your choice from the bard spell list. You learn additional bard cantrips of your choice at higher levels, as shown in the Cantrips Known column of the Bard table.

Whenever you gain a level in this class, you can replace one cantrip you learned with another cantrip from your spell list.

Spells Known

You know four 1st-level spells of your choice from the bard spell list.

The Spells Known column of the Bard table shows when you learn more bard spells of your choice. Each of these spells must be of a level for which you have spell slots, as shown on the table.

Additionally, when you gain a level in this class, you can choose one of the bard spells you know and replace it with another spell from the bard spell list, which also must be of a level for which you have spell slots.

Spellcasting Ability

Your magic comes from the heart and soul you pour into the performance of your music or oration. Charisma is the spellcasting ability for your bard spells.

Spell save DC = 8 + your proficiency bonus + your Charisma modifier Spell attack modifier = your proficiency bonus + your Charisma modifier

Ritual Casting

You can cast any bard spell you know as a ritual if that spell has the ritual tag.

Spellcasting Focus

The college you belong to will specify if you can use a spellcasting focus, and what type of focus.

Bardic Song

When you reach 2nd level, and again at 6th, 9th, 13th, and 17th level, you learn a bardic song. Choose from Bardic songs below.

Jack of All Trades

Starting at 2nd level, you can add half your proficiency bonus, rounded down, to any ability check you make that doesn’t already include your proficiency bonus.

Expertise

At 4th, 8th and 12th level, you gain 3 additional skill points.

Font of Inspiration

Beginning when you reach 5th level, you regain one expended use of Bardic Inspiration when you finish a short rest.

Magical Secrets

By 10th level, you have plundered magical knowledge from a wide spectrum of disciplines. Choose two spells from any class. A spell you choose must be of a level you can cast, or a cantrip. The chosen spells count as bard spells for you and are included in the number in the Spells Known column of the Bard table.

You learn two additional spells from any class at 15th level and again at 18th level.

Superior Inspiration

At 20th level, when you roll initiative, you regain all uses of Bardic Inspiration.

Bardic songs

When you reach 2nd level, and again at 6th, 9th, 13th, and 17th level, you learn a bardic song.

You may start a song as an action. After starting a song you can continue it as an action indefinitely, as long as you keep concentration. If you loose concentration while playing a bardic song, you cannot gain the benefits of the same song again until after a long rest.

Playing a bardic song requires an instrument, both hands and your mouth, and any target must be able to hear your song to be affected. You can switch songs at the beginning of your turn.

Bard Colleges

The way of a bard is gregarious. Bards seek each other out to swap songs and stories, boast of their accomplishments, and share their knowledge. Bards form loose associations, which they call colleges, to facilitate their gatherings and preserve their traditions.

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Beguiler

Some hold truth to be the greatest virtue, but it can do more damage than fiction. Everyone lives in a constant state of deception. White lies, false smiles, and secret thoughts keep society running smoothly. Honesty is a virtue only up to a certain point. Beguilers understand these ideas better than anyone, and they use deception, misunderstanding, and secrets as skillfully as a soldier employs weapons of war.

Beguilers see lying and manipulation as tools. Just as a hammer can be used to build a house or crack a skull, deceit and the ability to control others can be used for good or ill. A lie whispered in the right ear can ruin lives, but a dishonest smile and honeyed words can open doors, turn foes into friends, and even end wars. Beguilers have reputations as rakes, thieves, spies, and puppet masters, but they can also be diplomats, peacemakers, or heroic leaders who give hope in desperate situations.

“You know me. I’m as good as my word, and my life is an open book.”

— said with a straight face by Anastria Nailo, beguiler.

Spellcasting Focus

You can use a musical instrument or an arcane focus as a spellcasting focus for your spells.

Bonus Skills

When you join the College of the Beguiler at 1st level, you gain 2 additional skill points to spend on Speechcraft.

Cloaked Casting

You have learnt how to use your cunning to cast your spells with deadly effect. When you cast an Enchantment or Illusion spell on a target, you may spend 1 use of your Bardic Inspiration dice to ignore either its verbal or somatic component, and give the creature disadvantage on its saving throw against your spell.

Additional Magical Secrets

Learn two Illusion or Enchantment spells of your choice from any class. A spell you choose must be of a level you can cast or a cantrip. The chosen spells count as bard spells for you but don’t count against the number of bard spells you know, and you can cast each once per day without spending a spell slot.

Surprise Casting

You are able to make a creature unaware of your magical influence on it. When you cast an Enchantment spell to charm one or more creatures, you can alter one creature’s understanding so that it remains unaware of being charmed or that a spell has been cast.

Additionally, when the spell expires, you can try to make the creature forget some of the time it spent charmed. The creature must succeed on an Intelligence saving throw against your bard spell save DC or lose a number of hours of memories up to 1 + your Charisma modifier. The amount of time can’t exceed the duration of your spell, but you can choose the exact stretch of time lost.

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College of Awakened Arts

Song is not the only art form that can tell a story. After all, an image is worth a thousand words, and bards from the College of Awakened Art know this better than anyone. Their extraordinary talent as visual artists is second to none, as is their power to bring to life their creations as helpful allies. In addition to their arsenal of spells, their equally impressive repertoire of sketched magical summons is their key to thrive as dependable adventurers.

Spellcasting Focus

You can use a pen and paper, or basically anything you can draw a quick sketch with, as a spellcasting focus for your spells and class features.

Bonus Proficiencies

When you join the College of Awakened Art at 1st level, you gain the Art - Drawing skill. If you have that skill already, you may spend a skill point on any other class skill.

In addition you gain 2 skill points to spend on Nature.

Sketchbook of Summons

You have prepared a book filled with enchanted blank pages known as a Sketchbook of Summons. Your talent as an artist allows you to sketch from life, and bring forth your creations as magical summons.

As part of a long rest, you can sketch a number of creatures that you’ve seen in the past week, with an accumulated Challenge Rating equal to half your level in this class, unto your Sketchbook. The number of creatures you can sketch is limited only by their accumulated Challenge Rating. For example, at 3rd level, you could have one CR 1 creature and one CR 1/2 creature, or three CR 1/2 creatures, on your Sketchbook. Copies of the same creature count against the CR limit. The GM has the creatures’ statistics.

As an action you can choose one of your sketched creatures and channel your magic to summon it within 5 feet of you. The summoned creature has a painterly appearance. It is friendly to you and your companions, and it has its turn on initiative immediately after yours. It obeys any verbal commands that you issue to it (no action required by you). If you don’t issue any commands to it, it stays where it is and uses the dodge action.

Your summon lasts a number of rounds equal to twice your Charisma modifier, after which it disappears, and its summon is expended. You can summon each of your sketches once per day, and can only have one summon up at a time.

If you wish to change your stored sketches, you can do that as part of a long rest.

Still Life

As an action, you can use your painter’s supplies to paint objects into the world. The object must be medium size or smaller and simple in design, such as rocks, bushes, or a chair. Objects painted this way are visibly magical and made of paint. The object lasts for 1 hour or until you dismiss it as a bonus action.

You can use this feature a number of times equal to your Charisma modifier, and can regain expended uses when you finish a rest.

When Art Comes to Life

You have learned to magically inscribe drawings into the air, bringing your artistic creations to life. You learn additional spells when you reach certain levels in this class, as shown on the table, and they don’t count against the number of bard spells you know. You can cast these without the original material components, and instead use your painter’s supplies. Whenever you cast one of the spells on the table, it takes on a more painterly appearance.

College Spells

Bard Level	Spells
6th	Conjure Animals
7th	Conjure Minor Elemental
9th	Conjure Elemental
13th	Conjure Celestial

You may also cast each of these spells once without expending a spell slot. If you do, it doesn’t require concentration and the spell’s duration becomes 1 minute for that casting. You may only have one summon cast this way active at a time. Once you cast a spell in this way, you can’t do so again until you finish a long rest.

Summoning Maestro

You now use your sketchbook twice per day. Additionally, they now last a number of rounds equal to three times your Charisma modifier.

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College of Beasts

Bards of the College of Beasts have a fascination with other creatures, making bonds with them and learning far more about them than others even realize there is to know. These bards can often be seen in circuses, training the animals, or wandering the world, with their animals as their only traveling and performing companions. They often gather at festivals in order to show off their companions and exchange tips on how to raise them.

Spellcasting Focus

You can use a musical instrument as a spellcasting focus for your bard spells.

Animal Companion

When you join the College of Beasts at 1st level, you gain a beast companion that accompanies you on your adventures and is trained to fight alongside you. Choose a beast that is no larger than Medium and that has a challenge rating of 1/4 or lower.

Add your proficiency bonus to the beast’s AC, attack rolls, and damage rolls, as well as to any saving throws and skills it is proficient in. Its hit point maximum equals its normal maximum or four times your bard level, whichever is higher.

The beast obeys your commands as best as it can. It takes its turn after your turn, though it doesn’t take an action unless you command it to. On your turn, you can verbally command the beast where to move (no action required by you). You can use your bonus action to verbally command it to take the Attack, Dash, Disengage, Dodge, or Help action.

If the beast dies, you can obtain another one by spending 8 hours magically bonding with another beast that isn’t hostile to you, either the same type of beast as before or a different one.

Bonus Skills

Animal Handling and Nature are added to your class skills, and you gain 2 additional skill points to spent on those skill.

Additionally, you and your animal companion gain the Acrobatics and Acrobatics - Give performance skills.

Animal Friendship

You learn the animal friendship spell. If you already know this spell, you learn a different bard spell of your choice. This spell doesn’t count against your number of spells known.

You can cast the spell as a ritual, provided you use the appropriate food for the animal as material component.

Beast Trainer

You learn the find familiar and find steed spells, if you do not already know them.

Additionally, you can teach your animal companion, your familiar, and your steed certain tricks. If you have the skills Acrobatics, Art, Physique or Stealth, your beasts are also proficient in these skills (if appropriate) and use your proficiency bonus for them.

Share Spells

When you cast a spell targeting yourself, you can also affect your animal companion, your familiar and your steed with the spell if they are within 30 ft.

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College of Colors

The College of Colors is a school for Bards who excel in visual arts, and who delight in the color of the world. Color is just light, after all, and light is a gift. Likewise, your art is a gift that people should delight to enjoy. Manipulation of light is an art that can be brilliantly beautiful and dangerous. An artistic masterpiece is just one brush stroke away from burning radiance ripping into your enemies. When using spell or bardic songs, a coloration bard may paint their spell effects into thin air or decorate a canvas with elaborate runes.

Spellcasting Focus

In addition you can use your painter’s supplies or basically anything you can draw a quick sketch with as a spellcasting focus for your spells and class features.

Bonus Skills

When you join the College of Colors at 1st level, add Arcana to your class skills. You gain 1 additional skill point each to spent on Arcana and Art - Drawing.

In addition, you know the spell color spray and it does not count against the number of spells that you know. You may cast this spell once per short rest without expending a spell slot.

Prismatic Inspiration

Your inspiration is a work of art that can’t be contained by just one genre. When you expend a use of Bardic inspiration, you specify a color, whether to yourself or out loud. When the inspired creature uses your inspiration, its next attack deals the type of damage that corresponds to your specified color. This new damage type replaces all damage that would have been dealt as another type, even if it would have been multiple damage types.

Color	Damage type
Red	Fire
Blue	Lightning
Green	Poison
Orange	Radiant
Purple	Necrotic
White	Cold
Black	Acid
Yellow	Thunder

Visual Saturation

You have done significant research into how magic and light interplay, and the reason that some magic is visible to the naked eye, while some is not. You are able to tamper with this, to dampen or expose the light of magic at will.

Dampening. As a reaction, you can muffle the visible effects of any spell which originates from within 30 ft, rendering the spell invisible. The caster and the spell components performed are not invisible, only the spell’s effect. If you use this effect on a spell that requires a spell attack roll, the caster has advantage on that roll to hit their target. You could also, for example, turn a Cloud of Daggers or a Web spell invisible, making it a perfect trap for a narrow corridor.

Exposing. You can choose to overwhelm an opponent’s senses. The Weave of Magic is all around us, and using your skill to make it temporarily visible to a creature would be like moving the sun to be inches away. As an action, you can force an adjacent creature to make a Wisdom saving throw against your Bardic spell DC. On a failure, they are incapacitated until the beginning of your next turn and blinded for 10 minutes. On a success nothing happens. The creature may attempt a new Constitution saving throw at the end of each of its turns to become see again.

You can use each of these abilities once, and regain their use after a short rest.

Bending Light

Your mastery of light allows you to render yourself and others invisible, while simultaneously creating illusionary images. Once you may use an action to cast a Mass Mislead, turning yourself and up to 5 other creatures invisible at the exact moment you create illusions of those creatures in their places. All of these creatures targeted by this ability must be within 30 ft from you when you activate it.

These illusions look perfect, but act very crudely as it is difficult to maintain concentration of the mannerisms of so many creatures. You may use an action to control any one of the illusions more specifically, but without your guidance they can do nothing more extravagant than stand and appear to repeat mindless tasks. After 10 minutes, the illusions disappear, but the invisibility lasts for one hour or until an invisible creature casts a spell or makes an attack.

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College of Crossroads

Most bards practice endlessly to perfect their craft, taking every opportunity to perform and hone their musical skills. Becoming a musician is a long, arduous road that requires passion, talent, and a great deal of fortune, but not all bards are so diligent. Some seek out a shortcut, no matter what the cost―even if it means their souls.

These bards are named for the traditional location where such mortal bargains are made. An agreement with a devil, demon, or other denizen of the lower planes is but the start of such a bard’s quest for personal power and fame.

Striking a deal with a powerful devil (or another sinister power) can confer upon a bard unbelievable musical skills, but usually comes a mortal cost to be extracted at a later date. Few bards walk this infernal path, but those that do invariably gain legendary skill and a meteoric rise to stardom. Other bards label this group of pact-makers the College of Baator: a designation laced with seething jealousy, begrudging respect, and a pious moral judgement that devils should never be trusted.

Spellcasting Focus

You can use a musical instrument as a spellcasting focus for your bard spells.

Infernal Musician

You have gained strange and sinister skills at the Crossroads. When you join this College at 1st level, you gain the skill to play any musical instrument.

You learn to speak Infernal, the language of Devils, as if you had spent 2 skill points on the Language skill.

Infernal Duelist

Whenever you make a contested ability check against another creature, you can really get into your opponent’s head to psych them and goad them into mistakes. You can roll a Bardic Inspiration die and reduce the result from your opponent’s roll, without expending any uses of that feature.

In addition, you can use this ability even when not in a contest, but used this way, the die is spent.

Eldritch Invocation

Your fiendish patron grants you a magical boon. You can choose one Eldritch Invocation from the warlock class that does not have prerequisites.

At 14th level, you gain an additional invocation, provided you qualify for its prerequisites (you can treat bard levels as if they were warlock levels in this instance).

Hellish Recovery

You can draw additional power from your fiendish ally. After a short rest when you have spent spent spell slots, you can either gain one spell point, or regain one spell slot by spending a number of spell points equal to twice the spell slot level.

In addition, you learn the infernal calling spell, which counts as a bard spell for you and doesn’t count against the number of bard spells you know.

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College of Dance

The college of dance teaches bards who are exceptionally in tune with their bodies, weaving movement, combat with or without a weapon and spellcasting into a singular art of self-expression. Dancers prefer small, light instruments, commonly a tambourine, a set of finger cymbals, or percussion instruments worn around the ankles, but a few manage to play other instruments while dancing.

While most dancers do not cut an imposing figure, they are highly effective fighters with or without a weapon: their graceful leaping movements can provide them with a burst of speed or the ability to make wild unpredictable movements that make them almost impossible to pin down, especially in single combat.

When paired with an ally, a dancer makes for a frenetic, distracting presence, moving with and opposite their allies in equal measure, turning the tide of a battle as if they were spinning on their own heel. A dancer’s music and kinetic energy can be infectious, and others bound up in their spells find themselves dancing along with them.

Spellcasting Focus

You can use a musical instrument as a spellcasting focus for your bard spells.

Bonus Skills

When you join the College of Dance at 1st level, you gain 1 additional skill point each to spent on Acrobatics - Give exhibition and Art - Dance.

Combat Dancing

As a dancer, you abandon wearing armor and learn to use your body’s movement as a fluid defense. From 1st level, when not wearing armor, you gain the following benefits:

• If you hit a creature with an unarmed strike, you deal bludgeoning damage equal to 1d4 + your Dexterity modifier.
• You can add your Dexterity modifier to the distances you can cover making a long or high jump.
• Your Armor Class is equal to 10 + your Dexterity modifier + your Charisma modifier.

Dance Flourish

From 3rd level, you can combine the arts of combat and dance. Whenever you take the Attack action, unarmed or with a weapon with the finesse or light properties, you can perform a Dancing Flourish by expending a use of Bardic Inspiration. You can use only one option per turn, choosing from the following options:

Confounding Twirl. Your dance creates a ribbon of energy, dealing additional force damage to the target equal to the number you roll on the Bardic Inspiration die. You also add the number rolled to your AC until the start of your next turn.

Leaping Spirals. You jump, twist and turn unexpectedly. You can take the Dodge action as a bonus action, and until the start of your next turn, the distances you can cover making a long or high jump increase by a number of feet equal to the number you roll on the Bardic Inspiration die.

Rising Rhythms. You can use your bonus action to Disengage, and gain a climbing speed equal to your movement speed. Until the start of your next turn, you take half damage from falling and your Strength and Dexterity saving throws receive a bonus equal to the number you roll on the Bardic Inspiration die.

Synchronized Strikes. You can take the help action as a bonus action. If the ally you are helping hits with their next attack, it deals additional force damage equal to the number you roll on the Bardic Inspiration die.

Choose a Partner

As a bonus action you can select a target and enter a state of supernatural grace for 1 minute or until your concentration ends (as if you were concentrating on a spell). During that time, you can attack your target twice, instead of once, whenever you take the Attack action.

Once you use this feature, you can’t use it again until you finish a short rest.

Dance Party

From 14th level, after you have used a Dance Flourish, you can grant up to three friendly creatures who can see you and are within 30 ft, a bonus to their Armor Class until the start of your next turn. The bonus depends on the type of armor they are wearing.

Armor type	AC bonus
No armor	+4
Light	+3
Medium	+2
Heavy	+1

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College of Desire

Bards of the College of Desire are peerless in a particular art, and that art is infatuation. With a pluck of a string, they can cause the heart to stir and bubble with complex emotion, whether through music or with their enchanted arrows. While a benevolent member of the College of Desire would seek to lighten the load of a heavy heart if only for a moment, many of them take advantage of their ability to cause chaos. Nothing is easier to control than the heart, or so they say.

Spellcasting Focus

You can use a musical instrument, a shortbow or a longbow as a spellcasting focus for your spells.

Bonus Proficiencies

Starting at 1st level when you join this college, you gain 1 skill point each to spend on the Bow weapon group and Speechcraft.

Cherubic Arrow

You can bolster a heart from a distance. While wielding a shortbow or longbow, you can use a bonus action and expend one use of your Bardic Inspiration to choose a creature you can see within range of your weapon.

You shoot a harmless magical arrow of energy at the creature, and it gains temporary hit points equal to the number you roll on the Bardic Inspiration die + your Charisma modifier.

The next spell you cast before the end of your turn can ignore range if it isn’t a harmful spell, doesn’t have a range of self, and targets only that creature.

Cherubic Charm

Your enemies often forget they are your enemies. Once per turn, when you hit a creature with a ranged weapon attack using a shortbow or longbow, you can attempt to charm it. It must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw against your spell save DC or gain the charmed condition until the end of your next turn.

You can instead target a creature not hostile to you. In that case the attack deals no damage as the arrow dissipates on contact. The creature must make a Wisdom saving throw with disadvantage against your spell save DC. On a failed save, the creature forgets that it was shot, is charmed by you for 1 hour or until you or your companions do anything harmful to it.

In both cases, a creature that fails its save, can not be charmed in this way again for 24 hours.

While a creature is charmed by this feature, it is also counts as charmed by any creature that has temporary hit points from your Cherubic Arrow.

Amorous Atmosphere

Each and every heart flutters at your presence. As an action, you can exude an aura of adoration in a 30 ft radius. For 1 minute, when a creature enters the aura for the first time on a turn or starts its turn there, it must succeed with a Wisdom saving throw or gain the charmed condition until the start of its next turn. While a creature is charmed by this feature, it is also charmed by any creature that has temporary hit points from your Cherubic Arrow.

Once you use this feature, you can’t use it again until you finish a long rest.

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College of Doors

Bards of the College of Doors are roamers of the planes who tell tales of their travels and the fantastical places they’ve seen. The College of Doors believes that the infinite vastness of the planes, outer, inner, upper, and lower, is where the truest sense of wonder originates. From the plains of the Beastlands, to the great gears of Mechanus, to the chaotic islands of Limbo there are new things to experience and see, and those things are worth writing poems and songs and performances about.

Not many people ever leave their home plane, but it is the purpose of the College of Doors to spread the distant wonders of the planes to those who cannot see it for themselves.

Spellcasting Focus

You can use a musical instrument as a spellcasting focus for your spells.

Bonus Skills

When you join the College of Doors at 1st level, add Arcana and Astronomy to your class skills. You gain the skills Arcana - Conjuration - Apportation and Astronomy - Navigation and all included prerequisites (total of 5 skills).

Magic Door

A staple of the College of Doors is its namesake, the Magic Door. At 3rd level you begin to learn to use this technique to your advantage. You can perform a 1-hour ritual on any mundane door, involving at least 20 gp worth of materials, to turn it into a special portal.

The door retains its mundane appearance and does not create a portal unless a special phrase is uttered, or a certain knock performed, which is dictated by you when you perform the ritual. You can maintain up to 3 of these Magic Doors at any given time, disenchanting one when you create a fourth. A door that is destroyed, or made impossible to open normally has its portal deactivated.

When you activate the portal, you link the door to any other door you’ve performed the ritual on that is within 1 mile and on the same plane of existence. A door can only be activated and used as an entrance once on each day, and continues to be active for 1 minute after activation, allowing any number of creatures to pass through in that time.

The maximum distance between doors and the number of doors you can have created increase with your level. The maximum distance between doors increases to 10 miles at 6th level, while the maximum number of doors increases to 6 at 6th level, and 10 at 14th level.

Portal Strike

Doors are not the only form of teleportation that you can achieve. As an action on your turn you can expend one use of your Bardic Inspiration in order to vanish and reappear behind a hostile creature up to 15 feet away, make a melee weapon attack against it with advantage and then teleport an additional 15 feet in any direction as a bonus action. On a hit the attack deals extra damage equal to your Bardic Inspiration die.

Planar Door

You can travel between any two Magic Doors regardless of their distance, and even between planes of existence.

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College of Entropy

Bards of the College of Entropy are itinerate gamblers and daring thrill seekers whose actions are supremely unpredictable. Rather than relying on ancient lore or skill with arms, these bards throw themselves into new challenges just to see what happens, trusting in luck to see them through. They’re called luck stealers (with a mixture of derision and respect) because no matter how bad things get for everyone around them, these bards always seem to come out unscathed.

Spellcasting Focus

You can use an arcane focus or a musical instrument as a spellcasting focus for your spells.

Bonus proficiencies

When you join the College of Entropy at 1st level, you gain 2 skill points to spend on Gaming

Luck Stealer

You learn to borrow a little bit of other people’s luck for yourself. When a creature that you can see within 60 ft of you makes an attack roll, ability check, or saving throw with advantage, you can use your reaction to expend one of your uses of Bardic Inspiration to grant that creature a penalty to the check equal to the number rolled on your Bardic Inspiration die.

This grants you an Inspiration (i.e. for adding advantage to a roll or reroll a skill check) that is usable only on yourself and lasts for a number of rounds equal to the number rolled on the Bardic Inspiration die. If you do not expend the Inspiration before that time, it is lost.

Stealing luck, regardless of whether you use the Inspiration, causes a wild surge if you fail a DC 5 Luck roll.

Infusion of Fortune

When you cast a chaos spell, you may cause a wild surge and regain one use of your Bardic Inspiration.

You regain the use of this feature after a short rest.

Belief is a tool

Everything desires to be something else. As an action, you can change one known spell to another spell of the same or lower level on your spell list. At the end of your next turn, the known spells returns to normal. Casting a spell that you learn from this ability causes a wild surge.

You regain the use of this feature after a short rest.

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College of Eulogies

Bards are masters of eliciting all types of emotion. They use their musical magic to make audiences feel longing for places they have never been and love for people long dead. Those who join the College of Eulogies have a fondness for the more negative emotions; grief, sorrow, and horror. They take their name from the speeches typically delivered in memory of the deceased, for they see themselves as bringers of death.

Combined with a talent for necromancy magic, Eulogy bards wield the power of fear and despair to fill their foe’s hearts with horror and bind restless spirits to their will.

Spellcasting Focus

You can use a musical instrument as a spellcasting focus for your bard spells.

Deep Despair

You are not the bard that spreads cheer and joy throughout your adventures. Instead of inspiring the ones you care for with courage and care, your Bardic Inspiration now inspires deep despair in your enemies.

When you join the College of Eulogies, you use your inspiration to harm your enemies instead of support your allies. Other creatures can no longer expend your bardic inspiration, and you can stack as many dice equal to your proficiency bonus on any single creature. Your Bardic Inspiration now can do the following:

Torment

As a reaction when a creature with a Bardic Inspiration rolls for an ability check, attack roll, or saving throw, you can expend the Bardic Inspiration the creature holds to try and alter the result. You roll a Bardic Inspiration and subtract the number from the roll.

Misery

As an action you may expend as many Bardic Inspiration that a creature has in order to hasten their death. Roll the amount of die that you have used and the creature takes necrotic damage equal to the amount rolled.

Reap

As a reaction when a creature’s hit points are reduced to 0 within 30 feet of you, you can regain the Bardic Inspirations they had on them and give an equal amount of bardic inspirations to another creature within 30 feet of you.

Lament for the Dead

You are knoledgable in the sacred rituals associated with death. You gain 2 skill points to spend on Relegion. Additionally, even if not faniliar with a culture, you can still make educated guesses about their funerary rites, graves and similar knowledge, and can add you proficiency bonus to such check.

Bardic Dirge

You wield the melancholic magic of negative emotions, and can use it to inflict minor curses. When a creature within 60 ft who can hear you makes an attack roll, ability check, or saving throw, you can give any number of bardic inspiration to the creature as a reaction and if you wish, you can use Torment from the Deep Despair feature as part of the same reaction.

Restless Spirit

You can summon and bind the Restless Spirits of those who died with unfinished business. At the end of a long rest, you can perform a short ritual that summons such a spirit. A Spirit bound in this way is friendly to you, obeys your commands, and uses the Restless Spirit stat block. The stat block uses your proficiency bonus (PB) in several places.

In combat, the Spirit acts during your turn. It can move and use its reaction on its own, but the only action it takes is the Dodge action, unless you used a bonus action on your turn to command it to take an action from its stat block, or another action. If you are incapacitated, it takes any action it chooses.

If your Spirit was destroyed within the last hour, you can expend a spell slot of 1st-level or higher. After 1 minute, it returns from beyond the veil with all its hit points restored.

Infectious Despair

The sadness and despair that you inflict upon your enemies cloys to them until it exacts its toll. When you use Misery from the Deep Despair feature, the inspiration is not lost if the target dies and you use Reap as a reaction immediately direct after.

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College of Faith

Bards of the College of Faith (also called cantors) believe their music is a gift from above and that it should be used to praise the gods. They follow the tenets of a deity or religion and they are as unshakable in their conviction as the most devout cleric or the bravest paladin.

These bards learn ways of inspiring others through their faith. Often taught in temples by clerics and priests, these bards specialize in spreading their faiths and in telling stories of the gods. Cantors are often welcomed in taverns and temples alike as they sing songs and evangelize to the masses.

Spellcasting Focus

You can use a musical instrument as a spellcasting focus for your bard spells.

Bonus Proficiencies

When you join the College of Faith at 1st level, you gain 2 skill points to spend on the Religion skill.

Divine Inspiration

Bards from the College of Faith have some restrictions because of their religious focus, compared to other bards. At 1st level, pick a divine domain from your chosen deity’s list of eligible domains. When you gain the Magical Secrets feature, you can only choose spells from from the spell list of your divine domain.

In addition, when a creature uses a Bardic Inspiration Die from you, they also regain hit points equal to the number they rolled on the Bardic Inspiration Die + your Charisma modifier.

Hymn of the Faithful

As a bonus action, you can expend two uses of Bardic Inspiration to sing a hymn to your deity. Once before the end of your next turn, you can can use the Channel Divinity option granted at 2nd level by your chosen domain.

Divine Magic

You gain the ability to prepare two spells from the spell list of your divine domain. The spells you prepare must be of a level you can cast, as shown on the Bard table. The chosen spells count as bard spells for you but don’t count against the number of bard spells you know.

You can change these two spells by spending time in prayer and meditation during a long rest.

Godly Voice

If your chosen divine domain grants a Channel Divinity option at 6th level, you gain access to it as well when you use Hymn of the Faithful. In addition, you get the following two songs that you can use as if it were a Channel Divinity option:

Dirge of the Divine: As an action you sing a harrowing song which inspires fear in your foes. All creatures of your choice within 60 ft must make a wisdom saving throw against your spell save DC. On a failed save the creature takes 4d8 + your Charisma modifier psychic damage or half as much on a success. On a failed save, the creature is also frightened for 1 minute. Whenever the creature takes damage, it can repeat the save, ending the condition on a success.

Chords of the Choirs: As an action you sing a song of holy inspiration. All creatures of your choice within 60 ft regain hit points equal to 4d8 + your Charisma modifier. Creatures affected by this ability are immune to fear and make all wisdom saving throws at advantage. These benefits last for 1 minute.

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College of Fools

Bards of the College of Fools are also called jesters. They use lowbrow stories, daring acrobatics, and cutting jokes to entertain audiences, ranging from the crowds in a rundown dockside pub to the nobles of a king’s royal court. Where other bards seek forgotten lore or tales of epic bravery, jesters ferret out embarrassing and hilarious stories of all kinds. Whether telling the ribald tale of a brawny stable hand’s affair with an aged duchess or a mocking satire of a paladin of Helm’s cloying innocence, a jester never lets taste, social decorum, or shame get in the way of a good laugh.

While jesters are masters of puns, jokes, and verbal barbs, they are much more than just comic relief. They are expected to mock and provoke, taking advantage of how even the most powerful folk are expected by tradition to endure a jester’s barbs with good humor. This expectation allows a jester to serve as a critic or a voice of reason when others are too intimidated to speak the truth.

For the duchess with a taste for strapping young laborers, such tales might serve to warn the targets of her affections and force her to change her ways for lack of willing partners. Striking back at the jester only ruins her already damaged reputation, and might provide the best evidence that the jester’s satires have hit their mark. But if she is kind and generous to her conquests, the jokes and stories cast her as a kind of folk hero, while drawing even more potential partners to her.

Jesters are loyal to only one cause: the pursuit and propagation of the truth. They use their comedy and innocuous appearance to break down social barriers and expose corruption, incompetence, and stupidity among the rich and powerful. Whether revealing a con artist’s treachery or exposing a baron’s plans for war as driven by greed and bloodlust, a jester serves as the conscience of a realm.

Jesters adventure to safeguard the common folk and to undermine the plans of the rich, powerful, and arrogant. Their magic bolsters allies’ spirits while casting doubt into foes’ minds. Among bards, jesters are unmatched acrobats, and their ability to tumble, dodge, leap, and climb makes them slippery opponents in battle.

Satirical Theatrics

When you join the College of Fools at 1st level, you gain the skills Acrobatics - Give Exhibition and Sleight of Hand - Juggling, including their prerequisites.

In addition you gain 1 skill point to spend on Thrown weapon combat skills. You can juggle light and thrown weapons, and hand-held objects as though you had an extra free hand, switching freely between the items or weapons.

Antagonize

You learn how to use your wit to antagonize others. When a creature that you can see within 30 ft makes an attack roll, an ability check, or a damage roll, you can use your reaction to expend one of your uses of Bardic Inspiration, rolling a Bardic Inspiration die and subtracting the number rolled from the creature’s roll.

The creature is immune if it can not hear you or if it is immune to being charmed. If the creature is in a rage or frenzy (such as a barbarian’s rage), your Bardic Inspiration die cannot be used to subtract from the creature’s damage roll.

Tumbling Fool

As long as you wear no armor and wield no weapon, your armor class is equal to 10 + your Dexterity Bonus + your Charisma modifier.

You also gain the Acrobatics - Tumbling skill. If you have that skill already, you may spend a skill point on any other class skill.

In addition to the regular uses of tumbling, you can use it to gain the benefits of taking the Disengage action as a bonus action.

Comedic Inspiration

What better way to get your allies in good spirits than by collectively and ruthlessly mocking your enemies? When an enemy that you can see within 30 ft rolls a natural 1 on their attack, or an ally within 30 ft rolls a natural 20, you regain one use of your Bardic Inspiration, up to your maximum.

The Best Medicine

You can share your good humor and reassuring optimism with your friends. In addition to attack rolls, ability checks, and saving throws, your allies can now also use Bardic Inspiration to grant themselves temporary hit points.

Twist of Fate

Whenever you are dealt lethal damage you may make a DC 15 Dexterity saving throw. On a success, you avoid that damage. This ability can be used once per long rest.

Wait for the Punchline

Even if a joke falls flat at first, you know how to get your audience laughing; it’s all in the timing. A creature that has a Bardic Inspiration die from you can roll that die twice and take the higher result.

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College of Glamour

The College of Glamour is the home of bards who mastered their craft in the vibrant realm of the Feywild or under the tutelage of someone who dwelled there. Tutored by satyrs, eladrin, and other fey, these bards learn to use their magic to delight and captivate others.

The bards of this college are regarded with a mixture of awe and fear. Their performances are the stuff of legend. These bards are so eloquent that a speech or song that one of them performs can cause captors to release the bard unharmed and can lull a furious dragon into complacency. The same magic that allows them to quell beasts can also bend minds. Villainous bards of this college can leech off a community for weeks, misusing their magic to turn their hosts into thralls. Heroic bards of this college instead use this power to gladden the downtrodden and undermine oppressors.

Spellcasting Focus

You can use a musical instrument as a spellcasting focus for your spells.

Bonus Skills

When you join the College of Glamour at 1st level, you gain the skill Nature - Primal magic - Fey magic, including its prerequisites.

Additionally you the bard spells you cast are primal magic, not arcane.

Mantle of Inspiration

You gain the ability to weave a song of fey magic that imbues your allies with vigor and speed.

As a bonus action, you can expend one use of your Bardic Inspiration to grant yourself a wondrous appearance. When you do so, choose a number of creatures within 60 ft that can see you, up to a number equal to your Charisma modifier. Each of them gains 5 temporary hit points. When a creature gains these temporary hit points, it can immediately use its reaction to move up to its speed, without provoking opportunity attacks.

The number of temporary hit points increases when you reach certain levels in this class, increasing to 8 at 3th level, 11 at 6th level, and 14 at 14th level.

Enthralling Performance

You can charge your performance with seductive, fey magic.

If you perform for at least 5 minutes, you can attempt to inspire wonder in your audience. At the end of the performance, choose a number of humanoids who watched and listened to all of it, up to a number equal to your Charisma modifier. Each target must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw against your spell save DC or be charmed. While charmed in this way, the target idolizes you, it speaks glowingly of you to anyone who talks to it, and it hinders anyone who opposes you, although it avoids violence unless it was already inclined to fight on your behalf. This effect ends on a target after 1 hour, if it takes any damage, if you attack it, or if it witnesses you attacking or damaging any of its allies.

If a target succeeds on its saving throw, the target has no hint that you tried to charm it.

Mantle of Majesty

You gain the ability to cloak yourself in a fey magic that makes others want to serve you.

As an action, you can spend a use of your Bardic Inspiration to take on an appearance of unearthly beauty for 1 minute or until your concentration ends (as if you were concentrating on a spell). During this time, you can cast command as a bonus action on each of your turns, without expending a spell slot.

Any creature charmed by you automatically fails its saving throw against the command you cast with this feature.

Unbreakable Majesty

Your appearance permanently gains an otherworldly aspect that makes you look more lovely and fierce.

In addition, as a bonus action, you can assume a magically majestic presence for 1 minute or until you are incapacitated. For the duration, whenever any creature tries to attack you for the first time on a turn, the attacker must make a Charisma saving throw against your spell save DC. On a failed save, it can’t attack you on this turn, and it must choose a new target for its attack or the attack is wasted.

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College of Grandeur

You have a deep understanding of the forces—both mundane and mystical—that draw forth greatness in otherwise ordinary mortals. Your study of history and politics has made you an expert in how certain individuals shape the destinies of multitudes, and you understand the path that leads to this kind of legendary influence. Whether ruling themselves or seeking to inspire others to rule well, bards of the College of Grandeur wield abilities fueled by the presence of true leadership.

The sagas of those bards make it clear that more direct opportunities for greatness often come with a weapon in your hand rather than a crown on your head. Many epic histories begin with a small band of seemingly insignificant heroes who chose glory over safety. While confronting danger and mystery directly as an adventurer often leads to death, you also know it can also be a path to glory beyond what any throne or title can confer.

Spellcasting Focus

You can use a musical instrument as a spellcasting focus for your spells. You can also use an emblem on your shield as a spellcasting focus. The emblem must be a crest, symbol, or sigil of personal significance to you.

Bonus Proficiencies

When you join the College of Grandeur at 1st level, you gain the skills History - Military study and Medium armor, including its prerequisites.

Majestic Word

You can utter inspiring words that restore your ally’s stamina and courage. As a bonus action, you can spend a spell slot to give temporary hit points to an ally within 30 ft who can hear you. The ally you choose gains temporary hit points equal to 1d6 + your Charisma modifier for a 1st-level spell slot, plus 1d6 for each spell level higher than 1st. They also gain advantage on Wisdom or Intelligence saving throws as long as they have any of these temporary hit ponts remaining.

After you use this feature, you can immediately take your action to expend one use of Bardic Inspiration, allowing the target of your Majestic Word to make one weapon attack using its reaction. The target can move up to half its walking speed as part of the same reaction.

Inspire Defenders

You can encourage allies to come to your defense:

• When a creature hits you with a melee attack, it provokes opportunity attacks from your allies adjacent to it.
• When an attack gains advantage from your Help action, the attacker gains temporary hit points equal to your Charisma modifier if that attack hits.

Inspirational Recovery

You may use a bonus action to encourage an ally with 30 ft and refocus their efforts. The ally may act as if they have just spent a short rest including spending a Hit Die and recovering abilities that reset after a short rest.

You can use this feature a number of times equal to your Charisma modifier and can regain uses when you finish a long rest.

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College of Lore

Bards of the College of Lore know something about most things, collecting bits of knowledge from sources as diverse as scholarly tomes and peasant tales. Whether singing folk ballads in taverns or elaborate compositions in royal courts, these bards use their gifts to hold audiences spellbound. When the applause dies down, the audience members might find themselves questioning everything they held to be true, from their faith in the priesthood of the local temple to their loyalty to the king.

The loyalty of these bards lies in the pursuit of beauty and truth, not in fealty to a monarch or following the tenets of a deity. A noble who keeps such a bard as a herald or advisor knows that the bard would rather be honest than politic.

The college’s members gather in libraries and sometimes in actual colleges, complete with classrooms and dormitories, to share their lore with one another. They also meet at festivals or affairs of state, where they can expose corruption, unravel lies, and poke fun at selfimportant figures of authority.

Spellcasting Focus

You can use an arcane focus or a musical instrument as a spellcasting focus for your spells.

Bonus Proficiencies

When you join the College of Lore at 1st level, you gain 3 skill point to spent on Knowledge skills.

Cutting Words

You learn how to use your wit to distract, confuse, and otherwise sap the confidence and competence of others. When a creature within 60 ft makes an attack roll, an ability check, or a damage roll, you can use your reaction to expend one of your uses of Bardic Inspiration, rolling a Bardic Inspiration die and subtracting the number rolled from the creature’s roll.

You can choose to use this feature after the creature makes its roll, but before the DM determines whether the attack roll or ability check succeeds or fails, or before the creature deals its damage. The creature is immune if it can’t hear you or if it’s immune to being charmed.

Additional Magical Secrets

You learn two spells of your choice from any class. A spell you choose must be of a level you can cast, as shown on the Bard table, or a cantrip. The chosen spells count as bard spells for you but don’t count against the number of bard spells you know.

Peerless Skill

When you make an ability check, you can expend one use of Bardic Inspiration. Roll a Bardic Inspiration die and add the number rolled to your ability check. You can choose to do so after you roll the die for the ability check, but before the DM tells you whether you succeed or fail.

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College of the Mad God

In the middle of the night, you hear the music. Every time, it begins the same way, rising from a low drone into a deafening cacophony. The noise is maddening. In your waking hours, your fingers learn to imitate this melody and bring others to your level of psychosis.

Some attribute the dreadful nightmares to a curse or stress, but you know better. You and others like you are called nightly by the beating of vile drums and the thin monotonous whine of accursed flutes, the sounds of a Mad God who echoes the pandemonium of the universe, and summons you to do something. You know not what.

Spellcasting Focus

You can use a musical instrument as a spellcasting focus for your spells.

Already Crazy

When you join the College of the Mad God at 1st level, you gain resistance to psychic damage.

Frenzied Strings

At 3rd level, you can play an insane tune that anguishes creatures that hear it. As an action, choose a creature within 30 ft that you can see. That creature must make a Wisdom saving throw, taking 2d6 psychic damage on a failed save. You can expend any number of Bardic Inspiration dice to increase this damage by the amount rolled. A deafened creature is immune to this effect.

The number of creatures affected by this ability increases to two at 5th level, three at 11th level, and four at 17th level.

Mad Melody

You can expend a bardic inspiration die as a bonus action to decrease the results of all saving throws rolls by creatures within 60 ft, by the amount rolled until the beginning of your next turn.

Cacophony

As an action, you can create a droning, deafening noise with your instrument. all creatures within 10 ft of you take 5d6 psychic damage

Additionally, if a creature within 30 ft is concentrating, it must make a successful Constitution saving throw against your spell save DC or lose concentration.

After you use this ability, you must complete a short rest before using it again.

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College of Masks

Bards in the College of Masks (or Masters of Masks, as they have come to be called) are virtuoso performers who practice becoming the figure they portray, rather than merely imitating them. Bards who practice in this college come to believe that all life is performed, rather than lived, and that to become an actor in this Great Play requires that one merely put on the metaphorical mask of another.

Just as every person wears a mask each day, a Master of Masks carries with him a number of masks, each with potent magic of a specific archetypical character or creature, to allow them to better enter those roles.

Spellcasting Focus

You can use an arcane focus as a spellcasting focus for your spells.

Bonus Proficiencies

When you join the College of Masks at 1st level, you gain 2 skills point to spend on Speechcraft.

Persona Masks

You have learnt how to craft potent magical masks, each of which allows you to take on a different persona and gain some aspect of that archetypical character.

Creating a mask requires a full day’s work and 100 gp. You can two magic masks at any time. If you create an additional mask, one of the previous becomes mundane. You may only use masks created by yourself, and no one else (even another Master of Masks) can benefit from a persona mask you create.

Hidden Mask

You can have a third mask. You may make a mask you wear become invisible, or return an invisible mask to visibility, as a bonus action.

Master of Many Masks

You can have a fourth mask. You have become a master of assuming the archetypes contained within the masks, and may wear two masks simultaneously, gaining the benefits of each. If your masks disagree for how your alignment appears, for each alignment axis (good/evil or lawful/chaotic), your alignment appears neutral.

Persona Masks

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College of Mirrors

Bards of the College of Mirrors specialize in the art of redirection. What starts off as simple sleight of hand card tricks or minor magical illusions can lead a bard to this elusive path. A common value shared throughout this college is that appearances can be and often are deceiving. These bards often find themselves employed in thieves guilds as a master of distraction, helping cover up assassinations or secret plots, and many other jobs that require artful illusory work.

Spellcasting Focus

You can use any mirror as a spellcasting focus for your spells.

Bonus Proficiencies

When you join the College of Mirrors at 1st level, you gain 1 skill point to spend on Sleight of hand. In addition you learn the spell silent image and it does not count towards the number of bard spells you know.

Illusory Distraction

Your talents of redirection and distraction are supplemented by illusory magic. When you cast an Illusion spell of 1st level or higher, you can magically turn invisible until you cast a spell, attack, or after 1 minute.

A creature that perceives any illusion created by that spell as real or that fails any saving throw caused by an illusion spell will take an additional 1d6 psychic damage next time you damage them with a cantrip or attack. You can only take advantage of this extra damage while the illusion is sustained, or until 1 minute passes (whichever comes first).

The damage dealt by this feature increases to 2d6 at level 7, 3d6 at level 11, and to 6d6 at level 16.

Illusive Step

Your bardic magic deflects and redirects harm from those who hear it. Whenever a creature expends your bardic inspiration dice on a saving throw, if that effect would allow you to take only half damage on a successful saving throw, they instead take no damage if they succeed.

Hall of Mirrors

Your magic can refract and reflect the world around you, redirecting spells to protect you and your allies. When a spell targets you or a creature within 30 ft, or if a spell’s area of effect overlaps within 30 ft, you can use your reaction to attempt to reflect it.

Make an ability check using your spellcasting ability plus your proficiency modifier contested with the spellcaster’s spell save DC. On a success, the spell is recast from your location, allowing you to change the targets or area of effect. It still uses the spell attack modifier and spell save DC from the caster.

This feature can not be used when the casting of the spell takes you by surprise.

You can use this feature a number of times equal to your Charisma modifier and can regain expended uses when you finish a long rest.

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College of Portraiture

Bards of the College of Portraiture are artisans first and foremost. Through your intensive study of anatomy and artistry, you’ve begun to unlock the secrets of instilling your soul into your creations. True artistic mastery lies in the ability to imbue each masterpiece with a fragment of one’s soul, binding each creation to the artist in an elegant and harmonious union. Your skill and talent in the manipulation of your life essence allows you to create and animate works of art in your own image. Narcissism is common among the practitioners of this College, though it can hardly be faulted. If everyone could portray themselves so beautifully, surely they would.

Spellcasting Focus

You can use a pen and paper, or basically anything you can draw a quick sketch with, as a spellcasting focus for your spells and class features instead of an instrument.

Master Artisan

When you join the College of Portraiture at 1st level, you gain the Art - Drawing and Art - Sculpture skills.

Additionally you gain the ability to create incredible works of art at a manic pace. During a long rest, you can create a portrait or statue. If you expend one use of your Bardic Inspiration while doing this, you can completely eschew sleep and still get the benefits of a long rest. You can do this a number of nights equal to your Charisma modifier, before requiring a good night’s rest. When finishing a piece made with this feature, you imbue it with a fragment of your soul, and can use with your other class features.

Living Exhibition

You gain the ability to breathe life and purpose into artwork made in your image. When you have create a painting or statue that is a portrait of yourself, is equal to or smaller than your size and imbued with a fragment of your soul, you can bring it to life by expending a spell slot of 1st level or higher.

The masterpiece becomes an animate portrait-soldier. Each portrait-soldier has hit points equal to twice your bard level + three times the level of the expended spell slot, AC equal to 12 + the level of the expended spell slot, and is equipped with a nonmagical version whatever it is depicted with.

Portrait-soldiers share your statistics, but automatically fail Wisdom and Intelligence ability checks and saving throws. They act on your initiative after your turn, but they can’t speak, operate magical items, or cast spells, and lack sufficient autonomy to attack without your magical direction. A creature that is charmed or frightened by you is also charmed or frightened by all of your portrait-soldiers.

As an action, you can order one of your portrait-soldiers to attack, or expend a Bardic inspiration die, or spell slot of 1st level or higher to allow all your portrait-soldiers to attack.

You can animate a number of portrait-soldiers equal to Charisma modifier. Every 24 hours, you must expend a spell slot for each in order to maintain the soul link that animates them, adjusting their hit point maximum and AC if necessary, or they crumble to dust.

Legion’s Defense

Your control over your portrait-soldiers improves. Whenever a creature would provoke an opportunity attack from a portrait-soldier, you can use your reaction to enable the soldier to make the attack.

Also, whenever two or more of your portrait-soldiers make a saving throw against the same effect and one succeeds, the others also succeed automatically.

Personal Unity

The soul link with your portrait-soldiers becomes more efficient, enabling you to unlock the latent power within them. You can now animate a number of portrait-soldiers equal to twice your Charisma modifier.

Whenever you cast a spell, you can use one of your portrait-soldiers as the point of origin or as a vessel to deliver the spell. Whenever a portrait-soldier would take damage, you can use your reaction to channel your life energy into it. It gains temporary hit points equal to the number of hit points you sacrifice (up to your bard level).

Whenever you would take damage, you can use your reaction to sacrifice the life of one of your portrait-soldiers before the damage is applied. You gain temporary hit points equal to the portrait-soldier’s remaining hit points, and the portrait-soldier is destroyed.

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College of Purity

Despite living through many of the cruellest dangers the world has to offer, there are those who maintain that all conflicts can be resolved with the power of friendship. The bards of the College of Purity are united by their belief in this ideal, and use their performances to spread peace and harmony wherever they go.

It is said that this College was once founded by a talented princess, whose clarity of voice was matched only by her purity of heart. Variously imagined as a mermaid who longed for legs, a leader of a troupe of dwarves, and even a woman who could paint with the colors of the wind, her adventures are often told by these bards to set a positive example for children, bring hope to the hopeless, and quell the hostilities of others.

Spellcasting Focus

You can use a musical instrument as a spellcasting focus for your spells.

Woodland Warbler

When you join the College of Purity at 1st level, you develop a natural rapport with woodland animals and other good-hearted critters. You learn the find familiar

Small and smaller beasts can understand your language, while you in turn can decipher their noises and motions. By whistling, singing, or playing a harmonious tune for 1 minute, you can assemble a group of friendly critters that will try to complete simple tasks for you. These critters can be any Tiny beasts of challenge rating 0 of your choosing (such as cats, badgers, or owls), but they must be suited to the environment in which they are assembled.

The critters will attend to your requests for 1 hour, until they are 1 mile away from you, or until they enter combat, before they disperse. If some of the critters are harmed or killed, new critters will arrive to replace them.

Once you use this feature, you can’t use it again until you finish a short rest.

Comforting Melody

You learn a mellifluous song that soothes friend and foe alike. As an action, you can expend a use of your Bardic Inspiration to sing to creatures of your choice within 60 ft, that can hear you. The number of creatures you can sing to equals the number rolled on the Bardic Inspiration die.

If a creature you select is an ally, it can gains advantage on one attack roll or ability check of its choice in the next 10 minutes.

If a creature you select is not an ally, it must succeed on a Charisma saving throw against your spell save DC or suffer disadvantage on its first attack roll or ability check against you in the next 10 minutes.

Heart to Heart

Your open sincerity can cleanse others of ill-will. As long as you are speaking truthfully and in good faith, you have advantage on your Charisma checks when interacting with creatures that aren’t hostile to you.

In addition, as an action, you can force a creature within 60 ft that can see and hear you to make a Charisma saving throw against your spell save DC. Creatures immune to being charmed automatically succeed on this saving throw, and creatures you are fighting make this save with advantage.

On a failed save, the target becomes indifferent to you and your allies if it was hostile to you, or friendly to you and your allies if it was indifferent to you. This effect ends if the target is harmed or if it sees its allies being harmed. Otherwise, it lasts until the end of your next turn if you were fighting the target, or for 1 minute if you weren’t fighting the target.

You can use this feature a number of times equal to your Charisma modifier, and can regain expended uses when you finish a long rest.

Beacon of Harmony

Your virtue begins to attract spirits of true goodness. As an action, you can summon a gentle unicorn to your side (At your option, you can have it take the appearance of a different mythical creature). It is friendly to you and your allies, and has its own turn and initiative. Only you, your familiar, and the critters you assemble can mount the gentle unicorn. While within 120 ft, you can telepathically communicate with it.

Although the gentle unicorn will follow your commands, it only does so if they don’t go against its alignment. Uncommanded, it focuses on protecting you. The gentle unicorn will leave you after 1 hour or after it drops to O hit points. It will also leave your side 1 minute after it enters combat, regardless of when it was summoned. When it leaves, it disappears in a shower of buttercups and daisies, and anything it was carrying floats harmlessly to the ground.

Once you use this feature, you can’t use it again until you finish a long rest.

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College of Revelry

Some bards have a way of becoming the center of attention wherever they go. They enjoy the after parties more than their performances, and it is rare that they turn down an invitation for a good time. From formal banquets of royalty to the harvest celebrations of small farming towns, Revelry bards live for parties and hedonistic gatherings of all kinds.

Spellcasting Focus

You can use a musical instrument as a spellcasting focus for your spells.

Charming Presence

Upon joining the College of Revelry at 1st level, your natural charisma makes other people uniquely comfortable around you. You gain 2 skill points to spend on Speechcraft.

Depraved Enchantments

Your very voice drips with debilitating pleasure and weakens the mental resolve of your foes. When you cast an enchantment spell of 1st-level or higher that has a verbal component, you can expend a use of bardic inspiration to impose disadvantage on the target’s saving throw.

Stirring Performance

Your presence during rests enlivens your allies and assuages their worries. Creatures that benefit from your Song of Adventures regain additional hit points equal to your Charisma modifier.

Also, any creature that benefits from your Song of Adventures during a short rest has advantage on the first ability check, attack roll, or saving throw they make after their rest.

Hedonistic Trance

Your words and songs send creatures into a state of ecstasy. You can use your action to expend a bardic inspiration and force a creature that can hear you within 30 ft to make a Wisdom saving throw. On a failed save, the creature is stunned for one minute. If the creature takes damage, they may immediately repeat the saving throw, ending the effect on a success. If the creature’s saving throw is successful, or the effect ends for it, it is immune to the effects of your Hedonistic Trance for the next 24 hours.

While stunned, the creature is in state of pure ecstasy of your choosing. It could be a drunken stupor, uncontrollable laughter, sensual hallucinations, or overwhelming pleasure.

When you use this feature, you can choose to expend an additional use of bardic inspiration to impose disadvantage on the target’s initial saving throw.

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College of Secrets

There have been many secret societies in history, and they have always needed those like you, those who truly understand the nature of loyalty and respect. And fear, of course. There must always be fear, your insurance against those unfortunate days when loyalty and respect do not carry their proper weight. You prefer to be respected, even loved, and you work hard to earn loyalty. But fear will do in a pinch.

Your branch of your college is no loose association, but a close-knit society of sworn comrades, bound together in a mutually dependent code of discretion, honor, and blood. It could be one or more of many things—a thieves’ guild, an outlawed cult, a spy ring, a hidden faction of nobles devoted to restoring the true heir to the throne—but the key to your survival is clear: an expert understanding of the psychology and culture of those around you.

You are different things to different people. Some may call you a protector of the common folk, others may think of you as an extortionist or a threat. In some places, you and your fellows may be relied upon as an unofficial police force. You may even be tolerated or condoned by local authorities, but they never know the whole truth of what you are.

Spellcasting Focus

You can use an arcane focus as a spellcasting focus for your spells.

Blood Initiation

When you choose this college at 1st level, you have been fully initiated as a member of your secret society, and you have been trained in all their mysterious ways. They in turn expect your loyalty and secrecy, but this gives you a number of benefits:

When you join the College of Doors at 1st level, add Arcana and Astronomy to your class skills. You gain the skills Arcana - Conjuration - Apportation and Astronomy - Navigation and all their .

• Add Underworld to your class skills, and gain 2 skill point to on that skill. Additionally you gain 2 skill points to spend on combat skills.

• Once per turn, when you inflict psychic damage, you can expend one of your uses of Bardic Inspiration as a bonus action to choose one target who received that damage. That target must roll a Wisdom save against your bard spell DC. If they fail, they take additional psychic damage equal to the number rolled on the Bardic Inspiration die and are frightened of you until the end of your next turn.

• As an action, when a non-hostile creature is frightened of you, you can make a Charisma (Speechcraft) check against its Wisdom (Speechcraft - Insight) to cause it to stop being frightened of you and become charmed by you instead. It remains charmed by you for 10 minutes or until you or your companions threaten it or do anything harmful to it. Creatures immune to being charmed remain frightened of you.

Inspire Dread

When a creature you can see that is frightened or charmed by you makes an attack roll or ability check, you can use your reaction to expend one of your uses of Bardic Inspiration, rolling a Bardic Inspiration die and subtracting the number rolled from the creature’s roll. You can choose to use this feature after the creature makes its roll, but before the DM determine whether the attack roll or ability check succeeds or fails. The creature is immune if it cannot either hear or see you.

Secret Insights

You learn the hunter’s mark spell. It does not count against the total number of spells you know. You gain certain bonuses when using this spell, as follows:

• When you inflict the extra damage from this spell on a creature, that damage is psychic.

• When a creature is the target of your hunter’s mark, you have advantage on Wisdom (Insight) checks against it.

• You can use the Inspire dread feature on the target of your hunter’s mark, whether that creature is frightened or not.

Deflect Interrogation

When you take the Attack action on your turn and hit at least one creature, you can cast the vicious mockery cantrip as a bonus action, targeting the creature you struck.

In addition, when rolling a saving throw to resist any attempt to discern information about you, your plans, your location, or your thoughts, you have advantage on the roll. This includes effects that would read your thoughts or compel you to speak the truth. If you succeed on your roll, you can cast vicious mockery as a reaction.

Informant Network

You have carefully built up a network of informants who you can contact from almost anywhere (via a messenger bird, magic, or other means). These informants are mix of guards, beggars, vagabonds, merchants, and allied government officials who have enough personal loyalty to you to perform routine favors, but not to risk their safety. As long as you are within 100 miles of a settlement that includes at least 100 intelligent creatures with whom you share a language, you can use the following abilities:

• You can cast the commune and legend lore spells as rituals, but they are not magical effects; they are in fact information from your network rather than divinations, and can be used even if spells are unavailable (such as in area of dead magic or antimagic). Any references to contact with deities in those spells instead reference contact with your network. You can gain any information that is known by more than 1 person within 200 miles, within the limitations of the spells. The casting time is the time it takes to contact your network and get back your answer.

• You choose a location that you have seen before, or a public location which has been described to you in some detail, then ask members of your network to watch it for one hour. At the end of that hour, you are informed of everything that could have been seen in that location within the last hour, as if you had been watching it yourself with a scrying spell for that time. Creatures that enter the location who have the Observant feat or can see invisible objects make a Wisdom saving throw against your bard spellcasting DC. If they succeed, they know they are being watched.

• You use your existing network’s contacts to get knowledge about an unfamiliar city or town you are near. When you within 5 miles of a settlement with a population of at least 100 intelligent creatures, you can spend 30 minutes following up on leads from your contacts to gain knowledge of up to three facts of your choice about any of the following subjects as they relate to the settlement:

  • major criminal organizations and cult activities
  • significant underground tunnels or architecture
  • popular religious groups and places of worship
  • powerful figures in government and commerce
  • individuals who inspire great awe or fear (such as archmages or legendary warriors)
  • basic demographics of the population (percentage of humans and other races, etc.)
  • rumors of monsters dwelling in the settlement or nearby (including below it)
  • any large wilderness areas inside or close to the settlement
  • other settlements or cultures nearby

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College of Shanties

A seaman, a singer, a trusty mate with quick reflexes and a big heart: this is the ideal bard from the College of Shanties, a hero whose words lead and inspire their companions to always act at their best. Shanties are simple sea songs with a mechanism of call and response: the main singer, the shantyman, directs their companions both in the chorus and in the chores required to sail a ship. The voice and wits of a proper shantyman support sailors during their exhausting manual labor, and many a seaman found that a good shanty could inspire them to complete nearly impossible tasks.

For a bard in this college, it is clear that the same principles could be used to lead adventurer parties.

Spellcasting Focus

You can use a musical instrument as a spellcasting focus for your spells.

Seaman

To be a shantyman means to know your way around the deck, first and foremost.

Starting when you join this college at 1st level, Physique, Sailor and Swimming are added to your class skills. Additionally you gain 2 skill points to spend on Sailor.

Call and Response

You infuse the call and response rhythm of shanties with your bardic inspiration. When you grant Bardic Inspiration to a creature, that creature can use its reaction to move up to its speed, make an attack or take the Item action. If the creature decides to attack, the granted Bardic Inspiration die can be added to the damage roll for that attack.

Look Out Mate

You gain the ability to utter a mystical warning that saves your companions from certain death. As a reaction when a creature you can see within 30 ft that can hear you suffers a critical hit to turn the hit into a normal hit. You can use this feature a number of times equal to your Charisma modifier and can regain uses when you finish a long rest.

Strong Lungs

When you run out of breath or are choking, you can survive for a number of rounds equal to twice your Constitution modifier (minimum of 2 rounds). Accidents happen at sea, after all.

Ballad of Shame Unending

The very act of striking you down is enough to invoke a supernatural curse on whoever dared attack a shantyman. If you are reduced to 0 hit points or incapacitated against your will, you can immediately cast a 9th level bestow curse spell against a target within 60 ft, without expending a spell slot nor using an action.

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College of Tales

Wanderers and storytellers, bards of the College of Tales can be found in every corner of the world, tirelessly seeking out ancient legends and new tales alike. Using their gift of magic, these bards bring their stories to life, conjuring monsters of legend and fantastical landscapes to augment their narration.

To simply hear a story is one thing; to witness the performance of one of these bards is almost as good as being there yourself. While many such bards begin their careers as collectors of tales or historians, they are seldom content to merely reproduce the words of others. By taking up the mantle of adventurer, they are able to acquire a repertoire of stories which are entirely their own, and which they can be confident in the retelling of.

Spellcasting Focus

You can use an arcane focus or a musical instrument as a spellcasting focus for your spells.

Collector of Tales

By the time you join the College of Tales at 1st level, your knowledge of legends and lore is as deep as it is broad. You gain 1 skill point to spend on History.

Legend Made Real

Your training as a bard of the College of Tales enables you to make stories and myths manifest through your magic. At 3rd, 5th, 7th and 9th level you gain access to certain spells, reflecting the creatures and tales you have encountered in your travels. These spells count as bard spells for you but don’t count against the number of bard spells you know.

College of Tales Spells

Bard Level	Spells
3rd	find steed, healing spirit
5th	conjure animals, fallen soul
7th	conjure woodland beings, find greater steed
9th	conjure elemental, insect plague

Song of Triumph

Your tales of victory in the face of overwhelming odds inspire your allies and egg them on to ever greater heroics. Whenever a creature you can see within 60 ft scores a critical hit, you can use your reaction to celebrate their accomplishment, granting them one Bardic Inspiration die which lasts until the end of the creature’s next turn. This ability does not require you to expend a use of your Bardic Inspiration.

Mantle of Heroes

Your Bardic Inspiration magically imbues your allies with the aspect of heroes of old. When you grant a creature Bardic Inspiration, they gain temporary hit points equal to your bard level. While these temporary hit points remain, the creature may choose to take on the appearance of a legendary figure from the past, granting them advantage on Charisma (Intimidate) checks.

Makers of Truths

Any creature that you summon or create with a spell is automatically granted a Bardic Inspiration die.

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College of Valor

Bards of the College of Valor are daring skalds whose tales keep alive the memory of the great heroes of the past, and thereby inspire a new generation of heroes. These bards gather in mead halls or around great bonfires to sing the deeds of the mighty, both past and present. They travel the land to witness great events firsthand and to ensure that the memory of those events doesn’t pass from the world. With their songs, they inspire others to reach the same heights of accomplishment as the heroes of old.

While most are satisfied with this role, others strive to be the hero of legend themselves. Valuing bravery and decisive action above all, such bards cultivate larger than life persona and hone their physical abilities to match, augmented by their magic.

Spellcasting Focus

You can use an arcane focus, your meele weapon or a musical instrument as a spellcasting focus for your spells.

Glorious Purpose

You have trained to overcome any obstacle that may stand in the path of your glorious legend.

Starting when you join this college at 1st level, Physique is added to your class skills. Additionally you gain Medium armor, including its prerequisites, and 2 additional skill points to spend on combat skills.

Combat Inspiration

You learn to inspire others in battle. A creature that has a Bardic Inspiration die from you can roll that die and add the number rolled to a weapon damage. Alternatively, when an attack roll is made against the creature, it can use its reaction to roll the Bardic Inspiration die and add the number rolled to its AC against that attack, after seeing the roll but before knowing whether it hits or misses.

Extra Attack

You can attack twice, instead of once, whenever you take the Attack action on your turn.

Paragon of Glory

Your desire to become a true legend will never die. You are immune to the frightened condition, and whenever you make a death saving throw you can choose to expend a bardic inspiration and add it to your roll.

In addition, you have mastered the art of weaving spellcasting and weapon use into a single harmonious act. When you use your action to cast a bard spell, you can make one weapon attack as a bonus action.

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College of Whispers

Most folk are happy to welcome a bard into their midst. Bards of the College of Whispers use this to their advantage. They appear to be like other bards, sharing news, singing songs, and telling tales to the audiences they gather. In truth, the College of Whispers teaches its students that they are wolves among sheep. These bards use their knowledge and magic to uncover secrets and turn them against others through extortion and threats.

Many other bards hate the College of Whispers, viewing it as a parasite that uses a bard’s reputation to acquire wealth and power. For this reason, members of this college rarely reveal their true nature. They typically claim to follow some other college, or they keep their actual calling secret in order to infiltrate and exploit royal courts and other settings of power.

Spellcasting Focus

You can use an arcane focus or a musical instrument as a spellcasting focus for your spells.

Words of Terror

When you join the College of Whispers at 1st level, you learn to infuse innocent-seeming words with an insidious magic that can inspire terror.

If you speak to a humanoid alone for at least 1 minute, you can attempt to seed paranoia in its mind. At the end of the conversation, the target must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw against your spell save DC or be frightened of you or another creature of your choice. The target is frightened in this way for 1 hour, until it is attacked or damaged, or until it witnesses its allies being attacked or damaged.

If the target succeeds on its saving throw, the target has no hint that you tried to frighten it.

Psychic Blades

You gain the ability to make your weapon attacks magically toxic to a creature’s mind.

Once per turn, when you hit a creature with a weapon attack, you can expend one use of your Bardic Inspiration to deal an extra 2d6 psychic damage to that target.

The damage increases when you reach certain levels in this class, increasing to 3d6 at 5th level, 5d6 at 10th level, and 8d6 at 15th level.

Mantle of Whispers

You gain the ability to adopt a humanoid’s persona. When a humanoid within 30 ft dies, you can magically capture its shadow using your reaction. You retain this shadow until you use it or you finish a long rest. You can never carry more than one captured shadow at any time.

You can use the shadow as an action, magically transforming it into a disguise that appears on you. You now look like the dead person, but healthy and alive. This disguise lasts for 1 hour or until you end it as a bonus action.

While you’re in the disguise, you gain access to all information that the humanoid would freely share with a casual acquaintance. Such information includes general details on its background and personal life, but doesn’t include secrets. The information is enough that you can pass yourself off as the person by drawing on its memories.

A creature can see through this disguise by succeeding on a Wisdom (Speechcraft - Insight) check contested by your Charisma (Speechcraft).

Shadow Lore

You gain the ability to weave dark magic into your words and tap into a creature’s deepest fears.

As an action, you magically whisper a phrase that only one creature of your choice within 30 ft can hear. The target must make a Wisdom saving throw against your spell save DC. It automatically succeeds if it doesn’t share a language with you or if it can’t hear you. On a successful saving throw, your whisper sounds like unintelligible mumbling and has no effect.

On a failed saving throw, the target is charmed by you for the next 8 hours or until you or your allies attack it, damage it, or force it to make a saving throw. It interprets the whispers as a description of its most mortifying secret. You gain no knowledge of this secret, but the target is convinced you know it.

The charmed creature obeys your commands for fear that you will reveal its secret. It won’t risk its life for you or fight for you, unless it was already inclined to do so. When the effect ends, the creature has no understanding of why it held you in such fear.

Once you use this feature, you can’t use it again until you finish a long rest.

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Marionettist

Marionettists, or bards of the College of Puppeteers, are one person troupes who stage epic tales of heroism, tragedy and comedy with their merry bands of magically animated puppets. Ornately crafted, these puppets can adopt any role and play any character, and a puppeteer makes great use of this versatility to rapt audiences, entertain the masses and captivate nobles with performances that are bold, intricate and sometimes shocking; many a puppeteer has used their creations to portray exaggerated parodies of events and people in much the same way a jester does, for good or ill.

To other bards, and those who know the extent of their powers, a puppeteer is a figure to be treated with caution. In learning to pull the strings of their puppets without lifting a finger, these bards also learn to pull the strings of living beings, twisting and pulling them to their whims. A heroic puppeteer can use these powers to expose corruption, bring light to hidden secrets and incite the downtrodden to action, but a villanious puppeteer can enthrall entire communities, binding them with fear and paranoia.

Spellcasting Focus

You can use one of your puppets as a spellcasting focus for your spells.

Merry Band

When you join the College of Puppets at 1st level, you add Craft to your class skills and you gain the Craft - Woodworking - Whittling skill, including its prerequisites.

Additionally you can cast the unseen servant spell as a ritual, using one or more puppet as the material component. When cast this way, the spell lasts until the start of your next long rest, and instead of creating a servant, the puppets used for the ritual becomes your servants. If you control multiple servants, you can command any or all of them at the same time.

You can have a number of puppets active equal to your Charisma modifier.

Strings of Fate

You learn how to manipulate the movements of your foes and inspire fear in their hearts. As a bonus action, you can expend a use of your Bardic Inspiration to target a creature within 60 ft.

The creature must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw or be frightened of you until the end of its next turn, and must immediately move in a direction of your choice. It can’t be compelled to move into an obviously deadly hazard, such as a fire pit, but will provoke opportunity attacks.

No Strings Attached

You can infuse your puppets with powerful magic to make them capable in combat. As a bonus action, you can empower a puppet within 60 ft, created by your Merry Band feature. For 10 minutes, the puppet become empowered. Each puppet can only be empowered once.

An empowered puppet shares your statistics, except it has an AC of 12 + your Charisma modifier, and hit points equal to three times your bard level + your Charisma modifier. When you use a bonus action to command your unseen servants (see the spell), you can command an empowered puppet to move up to 30 feet and make a melee spell attack. On a hit, the target takes 1d8 + your Charisma modifier psychic damage. At 10th level, the damage increases to 1d10, and at 15th level it increases to 1d12.

Master of Puppets

Your soul strings can attach to the bodies of dead creatures and inanimate objects, turning them to your will. You can expend a Bardic Inspiration die to cast animate dead or animate objects, as appropriate, for a single target within 30 ft without expending a spell slot or spell components.

The duration of this spell is a number of rounds equal to the number rolled on the Bardic Inspiration die and does not require concentration.

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Pathfinder Chronicler

The Pathfinder chroniclers are wide-ranging raconteurs and heralds, tale-tellers and story-spinners who form and shape the views of history and public opinion across the face of Golarion. Commonly known by their wayfinders, the Pathfinder chroniclers are recorders of great deeds, but ones who do not fear getting their hands dirty in the midst of the action. While they rarely write themselves as the stars of their tales, they are always found near adventure and romance. Commoners delight when a Pathfinder chronicler comes to town, bearing news, gossip, or favorite tales of yore.

Spellcasting Focus

You can use an arcane focus or a musical instrument as a spellcasting focus for your spells.

Bonus Skills

When you become a Pathfinder chronicler at 1st level, you add History to your class skills and gain 1 skill point to spend on it.

In addition you are given a Wayfinder, a magical compass that, when attuned, always points north and allows you to cast light at will.

Deep Pockets

A Pathfinder chronicler collects items as well as lore, picking up small amounts of this or that throughout her travels. You may carry up to 10 pounds of unspecified equipment worth up to 10 gp per class level. This can be any kind of nonmagical gear that can reasonably fit into a backpack. At any later time, as a action, you may dig through your pockets to retrieve an item you specifies at that time, deducting its value from the allocated amount of cost and weight. When either cost or weight reaches 0, you can retrieve no more items until you refill your deep pockets by spending a few hours and 10 gp in any settlement.

In addition, if you take 1 hour to pack your gear each day, you gain a +4 bonus to Strength to determine light encumbrance. This does not affect maximum carrying capacity. The efficient distribution of weight simply encumbers you less than the same amount of weight normally should.

Finally, you have advantage on checks made to conceal small objects on your person.

Epic Tales

Your retelling of the ancient tales of old are so evocative and so moving that it allows you to summon echoes of the legends. As an action, you can expend up to three Bardic Inspiration dice to tell the tale of a deceased legendary figure. You can only have one Echo active at a time, and each Echo lasts for 1 minute. The Echo has hit points equal to double your Charisma modifier, plus the number rolled on your Bardic Inspiration dice. The Echo takes its turn immediately after yours, has a speed of 30 ft, and follows mental directions you issue (no action required by you). It either takes the form of the Warrior or the Wizard, your choice each time you use this feature.

Warrior. The spectral warrior wields a shield, has an AC of 15 and adds your Charisma modifier to its attack rolls. On a hit, the Echo deals force damage equal to 1d8 + your Charisma modifier.

Wizard. The spectral wizard has an AC of 12 and has a +2 bonus to its attack rolls, which have a range of 150/600. On a hit, the Echo deals force damage equal to 1d8 + your Charisma modifier.

Live to Tell the Tale

As a bonus action you can attempt a new saving throw against any ongoing condition against which you failed a saving throw in a previous round, even if the effect is normally permanent. You can only repeat a save once per magical effect, and the ability has no effect against instantaneous effects.

Pathfinding

A Pathfinder chronicler develops an excellent sense of direction and skill at leading others through difficult terrain or by following ancient maps. You have advantage on checks made to avoid becoming lost, and to Intelligence checks to escape a maze spell.

Greater Epic Tales

You may have two Echoes active at once – either two Warriors, or one Warrior and one Wizard. Each can be commanded separately or together. The echo of a Wizard takes its turn before the Warrior, though both still take their turns just after yours.

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Pied Piper

The College of Pied Pipers have a strong affinity for animals, particularly for vermin. The college has no official name, and its lore is spread between those few who dare to teach its secrets. They all can be rooted to a legendary bard whose peerless skill with wind instruments (some say flute, some say panpipes) entranced vermin. The tale speaks of how this bard traveled between cities, offering its trade to the citizens; those who paid had their vermin troubles swept away, but those who couldn’t pay its exorbitant price suddenly found themselves robbed of what they loved the most. Legends cannot tell if the story is true, if the piper did this as a service or for wicked ways, but the secrets of controlling vermin were spread between enterprising bards who wished to sway creatures to their service.

Bards of this college are mentored by experienced pipers, who teach them the secrets of the trade. They are not just skilled at entrancing music, but are experts at enchantments; the most experienced pipers can easily bend the minds of powerful beings, but they always find beasts and vermin the easiest to control. The power this bard holds can be terrifying when crossed; the tales say that pipers could take away children as punishment, a cautionary tale of how the lure of beauty, power or simple enchantment can turn into a dangerous weapon.

Spellcasting Focus

You can use a musical instrument as a spellcasting focus for your spells.

Animal Magnetism

When you join the College of Pied Pipers at 1st level, Animal Handling is added to your class skills, and you gain 1 additional skill points to spent this skill.

Fascinating Performance

You learn how to use your inspiring performance to sway the minds of those that can hear you. You can spend an action and expend one or more uses of your Bardic Inspiration in an attempt to fascinate a number of targets within 60 ft, equal to the result of your Bardic Inspiration dice. Creatures affected must make a Charisma saving throw against your spell save DC.

Creatures that fail their saving throw sit quietly and listen to the song (or watch your performance), taking no other actions for as long as you maintain concentration and continue to play (for up to 1 minute). A creature is given a new saving throw if someone spends its action to wake it up, or if it detects a new threat. The effect ends if the creature takes damage.

Beast Magic

You add conjure animals to your list of known spells. You also add animal friendship, animal messenger and speak with animals to your list of known spells if you don’t know them already; if you do, you automatically learn a spell of the same level or lower than the spell you already know. These spells do not count against the number of bard spells you know.

Improved Beast Magic

You add Dominate Beast and Insect Plague to your list of known spells; if you have learned them already, you choose two other spells of the same level or lower than the spell you already know. These spells do not count against the number of bard spells you know.

Whenever you use a Dominate Beast, Dominate Monster or Dominate Person spell, you can spend one Bardic Inspiration die to dominate additional creatures. You can only dominate additional creatures this way if you have previously fascinated them with your Fascinating Performance, and only up to a number of creatures equal to your Charisma modifier.