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View Full Version : D&D 5e/Next brainstorming ideas for a Bardic College



The Cats
2016-12-10, 01:50 PM
Howdy howdy howdy,

I've been itching to try my hand at homebrewing some class archetypes and one idea that I'm stuck on is a bardic college of stories, for the bards who'd rather talk their tale than sing it. I haven't done any homebrewing for 5e before so I thought it'd be a good idea to throw my ideas out into the forum and build on it with the input of my more experienced colleagues.

The ideas aren't very fleshed-out yet and I won't be using the standard format for now but I'm interested to hear your opinions and ideas. Feel free to use this thread to air your own half-formed ideas for bardic colleges as well.

College of Stories

3rd level: You can use a notebook you write stories in as a bardic focus and gain proficiency in performance, persuasion and something else?

Also 3rd level: Plot Twist! You can grant bardic inspiration as a reaction after seeing the roll but before knowing the result.
I am also considering something like: Control The Narrative, giving you a few different options you can choose from for ways to use your bardic inspiration, with plot twist being one of those options. I'm having trouble thinking of other storyteller-style options though, and granting multiple options doesn't seem to fit with the 3rd level ability of other colleges. Perhaps limit it to using inspiration and only allowing a number of uses per short rest?

6th level: Bring the Story to Life. By describing something vividly for one minute you can emulate the effects of certain illusion spells. The spells you can emulate grow more powerful as you level up.
Not a combat-ability certainly and the usefulness is suspect considering bards already have lots of illusion spells in their spell list so this basically just adds a super-speedy ritual tag to a few of them.
Another option is to somehow add more realism to cast illusions. Increasing the disbelieve DC, make them have physical effects? This option is pretty similar to a high-level illusion school wizard ability so maybe not.

14th level: Deus Ex Machina. Once per long rest use a bardic inspiration for a very powerful effect. Stuff like granting legendary resistance, turning a critical hit into a critical miss, etc.
Too powerful for 14th level? Too different from the other 14th level abilities (that add some crazy-awesome utility rather than a single, powerful effect)?