Feylock 2/lore bard X, divine soul 2/lore bard X, or bard 2/divine soul X

[PhoenixPhyre]

As a backup character, I'm looking at a bard-based support.

I want to try multi-classing to get a little of the at-will damage output that bards (especially lore) tend to lack.

*Race is anything published except monster races
* Stats are 16/15/13/13/13/12 (rolled)
Options (as I see them) are:

Fey Warlock 2 (for agonizing) -> Lore Bard X

Divine Soul 2 (3?) (picking up cleric spells) -> Lore Bard X

or Bard 2 (for skills) -> Divine Soul X

Rest of the party is

* Ancients V. Human Barbarian
* Gnome Evoker Wizard
* ???? Paladin

Thoughts?

[Easy_Lee]

I say pure bard, actually. Your party appears to have damage taken care of. If you wanted to go Life Cleric 1 / Lore Bard, that would also be quite good.

[Waazraath]

"At will damage" screams Warlock, doesn't it?

[KorvinStarmast]

Feylock 2 Lorebard X looks very good, and in time you may want to get it to Feylock 3. Why? Your familiar.
I had a feylock (campaign is on more or less permanent hold, sadly) who took Entertainer background and did all that he could (obviously outside of combat) to pass himself off as a bard to anyone not in the party. Pact of Chain, selected a sprite for the familiar. (Good little scout, and a good little watchman when the party was resting). Good fun to play. Best wishes.


Stats are 16/15/13/13/13/12 (rolled)

If you go for half / elf ... Str 13 Dex 16 Con 14 Int 12 Wis 14 Cha 18
If you go vHuman, Str 13 Dex 16 Con 14 Int 12 Wis 14 cha 16
Feat: Healer or Alert. (Or lucky) I'd probably lean toward Healer.

If you go Aasimar ... might be cool, depends on your party's preferences. Anyway, the world's your oyster since you can mix and match to suit your fancy.

[Vogie]

Why Feylock? If you go Raven Queen lock 2, you get the sentinel raven familiar and have the Raven Queen’s Blessing as an optional second invocation; alternatively Celestial Warlocks give the ability to heal without using spells as well as 2 extra cantrips, which includs Sacred Flame.

Then you can still pick up Agonizing Blast

[PhoenixPhyre]

Why Feylock? If you go Raven Queen lock 2, you get the sentinel raven familiar and have the Raven Queen’s Blessing as an optional second invocation; alternatively Celestial Warlocks give the ability to heal without using spells as well as 2 extra cantrips, which includs Sacred Flame.

Then you can still pick up Agonizing Blast

Raven Queen isn't published, it's UA. Celestial might work well. I'll probably do both, just with different backstories/personalities.

I was thinking Fey because the personality I had in mind was a Disney Princess (Sleeping Beauty mold), but male. Birds just flock to him, animals love him, but he's not so fond of them. Criminal background, trading Stealth for Perception since he worked as a lookout/distraction. The idea is that he did something stupid as a young man (slept with the wrong person?) and ended up with the pact as a "reward."

For celestial I'd have to say he's an urchin who made a pact with a servant of Milil to try to get into a bard's college but was rejected (due to lack of social standing). His bardic power will awaken over the course of the campaign.

[Keravath]

Why not use the hexblade from Xanathars?

I have a level 6 AL character ... 4 lore bard/2 hexblade ... at the moment that is a lot of fun. He trades off being two levels behind on spells ... for eldritch blast + agonizing blast, medium armor (breastplate though you could go half-plate if stealth isn't an issue) and shield, proficient with martial weapons, hex, the shield spell, devil's sight, uses charisma as the attack stat on one weapon, hexblade's curse and two first level short rest spell slots. The character is variant human and I took the resilient constitution feat to start with since the bard has quite a few concentration spells and it helps with starting stats. His AC is 18 with the possibility of 23 with the shield spell when needed (and with the bard spell slots, the shield spell is a much more viable option than for a single classed hexblade). He started level 1 as a hexblade for the Wisdom save proficiency. Multiclassing to bard gets an additional skill so you end up with the same number of proficient skills (9) either way. (3 from classes, 2 from background, 1 from v human and 3 from lore bard level 3). Starting stats can be 8, 14, 14, 12, 12, 16 with 27 points, resilient con and +1 to two stats from vhuman.

In practice, I have found the eldritch blast to be really useful since there are times when using long rest spell resources isn't that useful and the weapon attacks for a bard don't scale the way eldritch blast does.