Bard Subclass: College of Electrifying Sports Entertainment

[DaFlipp]

The College of Electrifying Sports Entertainment

Every bard has an instrument. Most favor a traditional musical instrument, such as a lute or harp. Some bard colleges favor more esoteric choices, such as blades (College of Swords), words (College of Eloquence), or even the raw primordial forces of creation itself (College of Creation).

Members of the College of Electrifying Sports Entertainment have transformed their own bodies into living instruments, performing feats of strength and engaging in epic battles designed to thrill and inspire those around them to even greater heights. Although they can be eccentric even by bard standards (often spinning the events around them into some sort of melodramatic ongoing narrative), none can deny their raw power on the field of battle.

Class Features:

Bonus Proficiencies
When you join this College at 3rd level, you gain proficiency with unarmed strikes and improvised weapons. You can also use your own body as a spellcasting focus (generally through either flexing muscles, taunting an opponent, or performing an otherwise meaningless feat of strength), but cannot do so when using a shield or wielding a non-improvised weapon.

No-Sell
When you join the College at 3rd level, you gain the ability to deflect the blows of your enemies through sheer force of personality. When unarmored and not using a shield, your Armor Class counts as 10 + your Constitution + Charisma modifiers. Notably, Dexterity is not involved – bards of this college rarely truly dodge attacks, instead taking hits and reacting as if they did not even hurt.

Fighting Style
At 3rd level, you gain proficiency with the Unarmed Fighting fighting style (see: Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, p. 42). In short: 1d6 unarmed strikes, 1d8 if both hands empty, 1d4 bludgeoning at the start of each round to grappled creatures.

Wrestling Moves
At 3rd level, you learn to utilize special techniques when fighting your opponents. You can only use one of the following moves per turn.

• Chokehold. You expend one use of your Bardic Inspiration when you successfully hit an enemy with an unarmed attack while grappling them, and deal extra damage equal to the number you roll on the Bardic Inspiration die. In addition, the enemy must succeed on a contested Athletics check against you; if they fail, they are unable to speak or use verbal components of spells, and they take an additional 1d4 bludgeoning damage at the start of each of the bard’s turns as long as the grapple is maintained.
• Slam. You expend one use of your Bardic Inspiration when you successfully hit an enemy with an unarmed attack while grappling them, and deal extra damage equal to the number you roll on the Bardic Inspiration die. In addition, the enemy must succeed on a contested Athletics check against you; if they fail, they are knocked prone. This ends the grapple.
• Whip. You expend one use of your Bardic Inspiration when you successfully hit an enemy with an unarmed attack while grappling them, and deal extra damage equal to the number you roll on the Bardic Inspiration die. In addition, the enemy must succeed on a contested Athletics check against you; if they fail, they move in a straight line up to 15 feet (three squares) in the direction of your choice. If they collide with another creature during that movement, their movement ends and both creatures take bludgeoning damage equal to 1d6 + the bard’s strength modifier.
• Taunt. You can use your Action to taunt a hostile creature of your choice. You must roll an opposed Charisma (Intimidation) roll against the opponent’s Wisdom saving throw. On a success, the bard regains 1d4 uses of Bardic Inspiration, without exceeding the maximum uses available per rest. Regardless of whether the taunt succeeds or not, the Taunted enemy has advantage on all attacks against the bard until the end of the bard’s next turn.

Extra Attack
Starting at 6th level, you can attack twice, instead of once, whenever you take the Attack action on your turn.

Championship Grappler
Starting at 6th level, the bard is capable of grappling creatures much larger than he would normally be capable of, albeit to a lesser effect. In addition to being able to grapple creatures up to one size larger than themselves as normal, the bard can also grapple a creature two sizes larger than himself (Huge for a Medium character, Large for a Small character), but a creature grappled in this way does not have its Movement reduced to 0; instead, their movement is halved.

Starting at 14th level, the bard is capable of grappling creatures up to three sizes larger than himself in a similar manner. Creatures two sizes larger than the character can now have their movement reduced to 0 when grappled.

Non-Stop Momentum
Starting at 14th level, whenever you use a Wrestling Move that requires a Bardic Inspiration die, you can roll a d6 and use it instead of expending the Bardic Inspiration die.

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Design Philosophy

I know there are umpteen “bard/barbarian pro wrestler” builds out there, as well as plenty of homebrew wrestler subclasses for barbarians, but I felt like there was room for a pure-Bard pro wrestler archetype. In my mind, for all their muscles, a proper wrestler in the vein of modern pro-wrestling should be more entertainer and showman than actual warrior (even if they insist that they are, in fact, the Greatest Warrior Ever), and while they can certainly do a decent amount of damage in melee, they’re most useful for controlling the battlefield with their spells and wrestling moves.

Not wanting to completely reinvent the wheel, I started with the College of Swords as a starting point, since they share a somewhat similar core philosophy – entertaining the masses through feats of combat. The majority of the features above have a corresponding entry in that subclass – for example, replacing the choice of Duelist/Two-Weapon Fighting with Unarmed Fighting, replacing the armor proficiency with No-Sell, and replacing the Flourishes with Wrestling Moves. Extra Attack is the same as always, of course, and Non-Stop Momentum is just a renamed Master’s Flourish.

I suspect the most controversial/prone-to-abuse aspect is the No-Sell feature. I realize that options that replace the usual armor calculation are usually the Monk and Barbarian’s wheelhouse, but I just really wanted a chance for a (non-Tortle, non-Warforged) character to have a decent AC without necessarily being high-Dex (especially since the build is already relying on high Strength, Constitution, and Charisma for viability). Plus, the fact it can’t be combined with shields (unlike the Barbarian’s Unarmored Defense) hopefully prevents it from being a multiclass dip-abuse option (especially compared to Hexblade 1 which I suspect will still remain a much more preferable option for Cha casters looking to beef up their defenses).

The only things that don’t really have clear equivalents on the College of Swords are the Taunt move and the Championship Grappler feature. I think the former isn’t especially broken, especially since nine times out of ten 5e combats reward overwhelming offense above all else, so wasting a turn taunting to set up future Wrestling Moves is more of a character choice than anything else. In fact, part of me worries I nerfed it too much – would it make sense to let it stack with Vicious Mockery (but still result in advantage on all incoming attacks so there’s a clear opportunity cost)? Possibly as a higher-level option? Or is it just too fiddly to include at all?

As for Championship Grappler, that’s mostly meant to allow them to keep using their wrestling moves even during high-level play, instead of losing access to most of their core skillset as soon as, say, Giants and Dragons start showing up. Yes, I realize that practically speaking, it makes no sense to allow a Medium adventurer to grapple the Tarrasque or an Ancient Dragon (let alone execute a chokeslam on it), but it sure as hell is *fun* to allow it anyway, and changing the grapple effect from “speed to 0” to “speed to half” feels like a fair way to keep it balanced (for example, this means Huge and Gargantuan opponents can still stand up from Prone if they got knocked down while Grappled). Note they still can't grapple things outright immune to the Grappled condition, though!

Thoughts?

[LibraryOgre]

Non-Stop Momentum
Starting at 14th level, whenever you use a Wrestling Move that requires a Bardic Inspiration die, you can roll a d6 and use it instead of expending the Bardic Inspiration die.

I might, instead of letting them get a "free" inspiration die, simply let them do the thing without the die, if they so choose.

Also, you need a sleeper hold. And a leap from the turnbuckle.

[DaFlipp]

I might, instead of letting them get a "free" inspiration die, simply let them do the thing without the die, if they so choose.

Also, you need a sleeper hold. And a leap from the turnbuckle.

The "free" die is pretty much identical to the College of Swords' Master's Flourish, so unless it's overpowered there too I figured it'd be fine here.

The Wrestling Moves are meant to be generic enough to encapsulate a range of moves - for example, the sleeper hold would be one of the various forms of Chokehold (along with most other submission moves), and the Slam move theoretically covers everything from chokeslams to power bombs to DDTs.

I did toy around with the idea of doing a high-flying attack, but wasn't really sure what that would look like mechanically, plus I didn't want to codify every single possible wrestling move out there (for example, there's no Finisher in there either, but presumably a player could portray a critical hit as such). I also didn't want to give it tons of different moves when I was basing it off the College of Swords, which only has three Flourishes to its name!