Please Critique this Bard College!

[Grear Bylls]

Hey guys! Before you post on this, I've been trying to get mods to move this to homebrew, as well as another thing I posted here, instead of there. However, they haven't done that, so I am going to post this same subclass in the homebrew area. If you want to critique this, please do, but do it there, as people who want the 5e thread to be about 5e, probably are fed up with me. Please let this OG thread die, and help me in the other place. Thank you!

I wanted to write up my own bard college for Necro-dancers, but couldn't find one. I brewed this one up, and I wanted your take on it. Please tell me what's good, bad, too good, too bad, and the like!

Edited beyond this point!

14th level feature added, and one name changed.

Here it is: Bard College of Midnight

Bards of Midnight are a variety of bards that tend to stand back in fights, providing music to accompany their dancers in their endeavors. However, these dancers have a sinister twist: they are undead. The Bards of Midnight control heaps of shambling dead in performance, and in combat. They have learned wretched secrets which allow them to drain life energy, and reanimate the lifeless beings that they kill. Bards of Midnight are often shunned by others, seen as twisted and eerie, perverting the music and reputation of all Bards.

Haunting Echoes: At 3rd level, you have begun to learn how to control the powers of death. When you reach this level, choose a Necromancy cantrip from any class list to learn. In addition, whenever you damage a creature with a Necromancy spell, you can expend a use of your Bardic Inspiration to tether that creatures life to your music. On each of your subsequent turns, you may use a bonus action on your turn, to have that creature make a Constitution saving throw against your spell save DC. On a fail, it takes Necrotic damage equal to your Bardic Inspiration die + your Charisma modifier. This tether breaks after 1 minute, or until you damage another creature.

Dance of the Shambling Dead: Also at 3rd level, whenever you reduce a Humanoid to zero hit points with a Necromancy spell of First level or higher, or your Haunting Echoes feature, you can use your reaction to cause that creature to dance in an undead state. When you do this, that creature rises as a zombie with temporary hit points equal to your Bard level + your Charisma modifier, under your command for 24 hours, after which, it crumples to the ground, dead. You can also cause it to die at any moment you choose (no action required). You can only have one of these zombies under your control at one time. Once you use this feature, you can't do so again until you complete a long rest.

Thrilling Dance: At 6th level, your control over undeath has improved. You learn the Animate Dead spell. This doesn't count against the number of spells you know, and you can't forget or replace this spell. Additionally, you may use an action on your turn to begin a Thrilling Dance. While your Thrilling Dance is active, all undead under your command gain the following benefits:

• They each gain temporary hit points equal to half your Bard level + your charisma modifier. These hit points disappear after your Thrilling Dance ends.
• They add your Charisma modifier to their attack and damage rolls.
• They add your proficiency bonus to all saving throws they make.
• They can take the dash, disengage, or dodge action as a bonus action on their turn.

Your Thrilling dance lasts for one minute, or until your concentration is broken, as if you were concentrating on a spell. You then can't use this ability until you complete a long rest.

Dance Beyond Death: At 14th level, you have become a master of directing the Dead, and it's power has bled into you. Whenever you are reduced to zero hit points, you may use your reaction to destroy all undead under your command. All of your undead explode into Necrotic energy, dealing damage to all creatures adjacent to them, excluding you or your allies, equal to your Bardic Inspiration die + your Charisma modifier. A creature affected by this damage may make a Constitution saving throw equal to your spell save DC to take half damage on a successful save. You then regain hit points equal to the Necrotic damage dealt to each creature. Once you use this feature, you can't use it again until you complete a long rest.

[MarkVIIIMarc]

Not bad at all. I have an image of a Rob Zombie, Living Dead Girl Bard stuck in my head.

The Level 6 ability seems a little long winded. I keep comparing it to the Lore Bard Level 6 Magical Secrets and I don't think its OP at all. I'd be curious if everyone else thinks its equal.

At Level 3 the Living Dead Girl College of Midnight graduate probably gets better upgrades than a Lore Bard does with Cutting Words. I like both abilities you have created but feel they would be really really strong. Maybe that offsets by Level 6? A lot of my games spend most of their time L3 to L6 though.

Overall this is a neat concept that I believe is UA worthy! Keep ironing it out!

[Grear Bylls]

Not bad at all. I have an image of a Rob Zombie, Living Dead Girl Bard stuck in my head.

The Level 6 ability seems a little long winded. I keep comparing it to the Lore Bard Level 6 Magical Secrets and I don't think its OP at all. I'd be curious if everyone else thinks its equal.

At Level 3 the Living Dead Girl College of Midnight graduate probably gets better upgrades than a Lore Bard does with Cutting Words. I like both abilities you have created but feel they would be really really strong. Maybe that offsets by Level 6? A lot of my games spend most of their time L3 to L6 though.

Overall this is a neat concept that I believe is UA worthy! Keep ironing it out!

Thanks for the feedback!

I would consider checking out the whispers bard ability, as it deals extra damage, or even swords bard. They get more damage (whisper) or more effects (sword). Also remember that Lore bard gets another 3 skills.

I'm glad you think this is balanced, as I tried to make this cool, yet not OP.

Again, thx!

[nickl_2000]

I feel like Haunted Echos needs to have a save on every turn for the person effected to break free. Here's how I would do it, but this is my opinion.

During your initial turn you bind them. They get no save and you can bonus action to hurt them with using the inspiration (this way it isn't wasted and works like valor).
At the start of each enemy turn, they get a save to break free.


Being able to flat out damage and they can't break free is to much to me, but if they get a save every turn I think it works perfectly fine.

[Vogie]

Makes me think of the Dresden Novel Dead Beat. Love it.

[Grear Bylls]

Thanks for the feedback thus far!

I'll start fixing some of the more unbalanced features, like 3rd level one. How much better would the 6th Level ability be if it refreshed on a short rest? Oathbreaker a and necromancer get a similar ability all the time, so...

[Grear Bylls]

Updated with some balance stuff:

Haunting Echoes: At 3rd level, you have begun to learn how to control the powers of death. When you reach this level, you learn a Necromancy Cantrip of your choice from any classes spell list. You also learn either the Inflict Wounds spell, or Ray of Sickness spell. These spells count as Bard spells for you, and don't count against the number of Bard spells you know. In addition, whenever you damage a creature with a Necromancy spell, you can expend a use of your Bardic Inspiration to deal extra damage equal to you Bardic Inspiration + your Charisma modifier, and you tether that creatures life force to your music. On each of your subsequent turns, you may use your bonus action to cause the target to make a Constitution saving throw. On a fail, they take the damage again. On a success, the effect ends. This effect also ends after 1 minute, that creature dies, or you damage another creature.

Dance of the Shambling Dead: Also at 3rd level, whenever you reduce a Humanoid to zero hit points with a Necromancy spell of First level or higher, or your Haunting Echoes feature, you can use your reaction to cause that creature to dance in an undead state. When you do this, that creature rises as a zombie with temporary hit points equal to half your Bard level + your Charisma modifier, under your command for 24 hours, after which, it crumples to the ground, dead. You can also cause it to die at any moment you choose (no action required). You can only have one of these zombies under your control at one time. Once you use this feature, you can't do so again until you complete a long rest.

Thrilling Dance: At 6th level, your control over undeath has improved. You learn the Animate Dead spell. This doesn't count against the number of spells you know, and you can't forget or replace this spell. Additionally, you may use an action on your turn to begin a Thrilling Dance. While your Thrilling Dance is active, all undead under your command gain the following benefits:

• They each gain temporary hit points equal to your Bard level + your charisma modifier. These hit points disappear after your Thrilling Dance ends.
• They add your Charisma modifier to their attack and damage rolls.
• They add your proficiency bonus to all saving throws they make.
• They can take the dash, disengage, or dodge action as a bonus action on their turn.
• You can cast any Bard spells with a range of touch through them, as if you had cast the spell. It must use it's reaction to do so. It uses it's attack modifier to attack if it requires an attack roll, or your spell save DC if the spell requires a Saving Throw.

Your Thrilling dance lasts for one minute. You then can't use this ability until you complete a short or long rest.

Dance Beyond Death: At 14th level, you have become a master of directing the dead, and it's power has bled into you. Whenever you are reduced to zero hit points, you may use your reaction to destroy all undead under your command. All of your undead explode into Necrotic energy, dealing damage to all creatures adjacent to them, excluding you or your allies, equal to your Bardic Inspiration die + your Charisma modifier. A creature affected by this damage may make a Constitution saving throw equal to your spell save DC to take half damage on a successful save. You then regain hit points equal to the Necrotic damage dealt to each creature. Once you use this feature, you can't use it again until you complete a long rest.

[Daithi]

I like it. It also seems pretty balanced to me. Nice job.

I've never played a bard, but if I did, I think my "instrument" would be the Minor Illusion cantrip where a ghostly music just started emanating in the air around everyone. I can imagine your character playing Zombie by the Cranberries as his undead begins killing everything around them. Plus, you'd need to get an Iron Golem at some point just so you can play Black Sabbath's Ironman.

[Grear Bylls]

Thx Daithi!

For my character concepts, I was thinking a Mariachi, Day of the Dead bard with a guitar, who has painted skeletons that he controls.

The other would just be Michael Jackson.

[Cynthaer]

So I'm going to focus on the level 3 features, since they're the subclass-defining ones. As a general note, I'm going to follow Mike Mearls' lead and primarily compare to the PHB subclasses when designing/evaluating a new subclass, to avoid power creep or other feature drift from accumulating.

I'm also not necessarily going to assume the player has access to non-PHB spells, although that's a little less strict since this is homebrew and isn't going to be published in an actual book.

For a quick reference, here's basically what you get in the other colleges:



PHB Subclasses
Lore: skill prof, use BI to debuff enemy skill/attack/damage
Valor: combat prof, allies use BI to buff damage/AC

XGtE Subclasses (don't want to balance around these, but can be useful reference)
Glamour: charm with performance OOC, use BI to buff HP + rearrange battlefield
Swords: combat prof + fighting style, use BI to buff own damage + util effect
Whispers: frighten an NPC OOC, use BI to buff own damage

So, generally at level 3 you get some proficiencies or an out-of-combat ability, plus a new use for your BI. Often that use is flexible, with multiple possible effects, most of which apply to combat.


Bard College of Midnight

Bards of Midnight are a variety of bards that tend to stand back in fights, providing music to accompany their dancers in their endeavors. However, these dancers have a sinister twist: they are undead. The Bards of Midnight control heaps of shambling dead in performance, and in combat. They have learned wretched secrets which allow them to drain life energy, and reanimate the lifeless beings that they kill. Bards of Midnight are often shunned by others, seen as twisted and eerie, perverting the music and reputation of all Bards.

So far, so good. The idea of using music to make even the dead dance is a solid thematic archetype. I like it.

I wrote this up but never posted it before you gave the updated version of this feature, so I'm including it here in case it still offers any insight for you.


Haunting Echoes: At 3rd level, you have begun to learn how to control the powers of death. When you reach this level, choose a Necromancy cantrip from any class list to learn. In addition, whenever you damage a creature with a Necromancy spell, you can expend a use of your Bardic Inspiration to tether that creatures life to your music. On each of your subsequent turns, you may use a bonus action on your turn, to have that creature make a Constitution saving throw against your spell save DC. On a fail, it takes Necrotic damage equal to your Bardic Inspiration die + your Charisma modifier. This tether breaks after 1 minute, or until you damage another creature.

So, this basically corresponds to the "new use for BI" feature, letting you deal a bit of damage. I get the thematic idea behind tying it to Necromancy, but I think this has a couple of problems.

First off, let's be clear that "a Necromancy cantrip from any class list" can literally only mean Chill Touch (1d8 ranged spell attack) or, if you have Xanathar's, Toll the Dead (1d8 or 1d12 vs Wis save).

This is also going to be the only damaging Necromancy spell you have access to for a good long while. The level 3 spell Bestow Curse is the only one on the Bard spell list, so anything else will have to come via Magical Secrets starting at 10th level.

So I'm not a big fan of tying the tether condition to damage from a Necromancy spell, because Chill Touch just isn't iconic enough to become this big focus for a major class feature. It's not a defining feature like Eldritch Blast; it just happens to be the only Necromancy cantrip. Making it trigger off your own attacks would be more in line with the College of Swords/Whispers, and it would make it feel less like "College of Chill Touch".

Next, there's something about the tether damage that feels weird to me, but I'm not sure what it is. It might be that generally ongoing damage effects work one of two ways: Either (A) the effect ends on a successful save, or (B) there's no save and the damage comes in the form of extra damage when the victim is hit. I'm not necessarily sure you should even be getting damage from this BI die anyway, given what the next ability is.


Haunting Echoes: At 3rd level, you have begun to learn how to control the powers of death. When you reach this level, you learn a Necromancy Cantrip of your choice from any classes spell list. You also learn either the Inflict Wounds spell, or Ray of Sickness spell. These spells count as Bard spells for you, and don't count against the number of Bard spells you know. In addition, whenever you damage a creature with a Necromancy spell, you can expend a use of your Bardic Inspiration to deal extra damage equal to you Bardic Inspiration + your Charisma modifier, and you tether that creatures life force to your music. On each of your subsequent turns, you may use your bonus action to cause the target to make a Constitution saving throw. On a fail, they take the damage again. On a success, the effect ends. This effect also ends after 1 minute, that creature dies, or you damage another creature.

I like this better. Handing out some extra Necromancy spells solves the problem of there being almost no Necromancy spells on the Bard list, and lessens the reliance on Chill Touch.

I still have two big concerns, though. The first is that this may still reward Chill Touch too much as the only resource-free way to trigger the tether condition. You'd have to do some playtesting to be sure.

The second is raw power.

The PHB Bard spell list has precisely one damaging cantrip: Vicious Mockery, which only does 1d4 damage and mostly just applies a debuff. For level 1 spells, they only have Dissonant Whispers and Thunderwave as damage-dealers.

As a result, by giving 2 new spells known for free, this feature is roughly equivalent to "Additional Magical Secrets" with restrictions at level 3, in addition to everything else you're getting. I would argue that this is far too much power to pack into this feature.

(Also, I see no reason to let you use your BI die to deal repeated damage, let alone adding your Charisma to that repeated damage.)


Dance of the Shambling Dead: Also at 3rd level, whenever you reduce a Humanoid to zero hit points with a Necromancy spell of First level or higher, or your Haunting Echoes feature, you can use your reaction to cause that creature to dance in an undead state. When you do this, that creature rises as a zombie with temporary hit points equal to half your Bard level + your Charisma modifier, under your command for 24 hours, after which, it crumples to the ground, dead. You can also cause it to die at any moment you choose (no action required). You can only have one of these zombies under your control at one time. Once you use this feature, you can't do so again until you complete a long rest.

I think you should drop the Necromancy spell rider here and just tie it to Haunting Echoes. In fact, drop the damage thing altogether—make it if an enemy drops while affected by Haunting Echoes, perhaps, and then you don't have the problem of other people "stealing your kills" and invalidating your class feature just because you didn't get the last hit in.

It's not clear to me what exactly "causing a creature to dance in an undead state" entails. It sounds like they're just normal CR 1/4 Zombies that can attack and everything (except with 0 HP and only a few THP), but I think that's too powerful. Animate Dead is a 3rd level spell! On the other hand, if it's more like a familiar (a level 1 spell) and can only use the Help action, that might be reasonable.

3rd Level Ability Summary

Right now, you get:

Extra ranged damage cantrip
Extra level 1 damage spell
Use BI to buff damage, plus Cha mod, repeating
(Effectively) "Animate Dead" 1/day

Compared to Lore and Valor Bards, I think this is too much.

I propose the following:


Haunting Echoes: At 3rd level, you gain the ability to infuse your attacks with the power of death itself.

Whenever a creature fails a save against one of your spells and takes damage from that spell, you can expend one use of your Bardic Inspiration to deal Necrotic damage to that creature. The damage equals the number you roll on the Bardic Inspiration die. [This could be more interesting, but the key is I really want to keep the power from creeping up too much here.]

Dance of the Shambling Dead: At 3rd level, you learned to weave music that makes even the dead dance.

If you perform for at least one minute near a fresh corpse, you may cause that corpse to rise as an undead zombie (the DM has the creature's game statistics). This zombie has a maximum HP of 0 and temporary hit points equal to half your Bard level + your Charisma modifier. It cannot attack, but it can take other actions as normal. It acts under your command for 24 hours, after which, it crumples to the ground, dead. You can also cause it to die at any moment you choose (no action required). You can only have one of these zombies under your control at one time. Once you use this feature, you can't do so again until you complete a long rest.

In short, you (A) use BI to buff damage on your damage spells that have saves , and (B) basically get a zombie familiar, which can't attack (but can use Help!) and only kicks in after the first battle of the day.

Triggering damage off of damaging spells with saves helps to emphasize the spellcaster aspect, and it plays nicely with all of the Bard's existing damage spells, including the classic Vicious Mockery. I'm trying to keep the "necro-ish caster" flavor without exceeding the power budget by giving out free spells here. This may be a necromancer subclass, but you're still a bard, and most of your power comes from the core class features.

I have some thoughts on the later levels, but I'll post this for now and come back to it.

Level 6: Learn Animate Dead, and your zombies from "Dance of the Shambling Dead" are now identical in all respects to the zombies from Animate Dead. This means they have full HP, they can attack, the whole thing.

Basically I don't want you to have to track which zombies are which. This is functionally equivalent to "you learn Animate Dead and also have one free cast of Animate Dead per day". Since you're level 6 and Animate Dead is a 3rd-level spell, this feels about right. Maybe a tiny bit underpowered compared to Lore Bard's "Additional Magical Secrets".

Level 14: Here is where Thrilling Dance belongs, IMO. This is the payoff, a supercharged army of zombies! I think this is a better subclass "capstone" than Dance Beyond Death.

[Grear Bylls]

Thank you, Cynthaer! Please help some more, but I just wanted to let you know, as of this point, this threads idea is being moved. If you could post this post in the homebrew thread under a similar title, I would LOVE to elaborate on what you said! Very insightful