How To Play A College Of Lore Bard in Dungeons and Dragons 5e

this week's episode of our show has been sponsored by the incredible grim hollow players guide which is now available for pre-order this book is jam-packed with player options for dark fantasy settings including two new subclasses for every class in dungeons and dragons six of which we got to write we got the opportunity to write some really cool subclasses for this book including the highway rider rogue and the oath of pestilence paladin as well as many other awesome youtubers like xp to level 3 and runesmith who also contributed subclasses to this book this book is also jam-packed with options for transformations to turn your characters into vampires or werewolves as well as a blood magic system the book is totally compatible with fifth edition and jam packed with character inspiration ideas for your next game so check out the links below to pre-order your copy of the grim hollow players guide and now onto this week's episode greetings my name is monty martin and i'm kelly mclaughlin and we are the dungeon dudes welcome to our channel where we cover everything d including advice for players and guides for dms we upload new videos on tuesdays and thursdays so please subscribe to our channel so that you never miss an episode today we are talking about how to play a college of lore bard in dungeons dragon's 5th edition this is one of the og bard subclasses introduced in the player's handbook and it still holds up incredibly well even after so many expansion books new bard subclasses it remains one of my favorites for its incredible versatility and all the extra fun that you get to play with the bard's magical secrets several levels earlier than other bars get to lore bars are extremely customizable there's a lot of choices that you have to make along the way but many different options on how you could build your laura bard so we're going to take a look at how monty and myself built a lore bard at various levels from tier one two three and four as well as our character creation options there's a lot to discuss today so let's get rolling so as we dive into the college of lore bard the biggest question on our minds is why would we want to play this class what part what roles does it excel at in the party and what role-playing opportunities does it give us i love bards because they are not only a great charisma based class they are spell casters but they also have a lot of unique features and options as one of their abilities implies they are the jack of all trades and this really comes to life when you play a bard in one of our previous videos kelly and i identified seven different roles that player characters can take up in an adventuring party the frontliner the beatdown utility support negotiator explorer and investigator how does the lore bar shape up with each of the each of these roles well when we start off looking at front liner i don't think any lore bards are going to be standing toe to toe with paladins fighters and that sort of mix by by the same token i think you would really have to go pretty far with your selections for a lore bard to make them a really good beat down or front liner i think for frontline i'm going to give them a d and for the beatdown a c you could do better with this with your spouse selection but i really think you're going to be stretching it yeah i think even if you dedicate your spell selection to being the beat down you're still not going to excel as many of the other options out there not at all but when we come to utility and support this is where i think the lore bard comes to life with the bardic inspiration ability that all bards get this is already immediately a support and utility option you get to dish out dice to help your teammates out in dire situations and the bard has a fantastic spell list with some of the best utility spells and some of the best support spells depending on how you want to build your bard i really think that the the lore bard reaches into the upper echelons of the s tier the only thing that um holds them back and perhaps gives them maybe puts them more in the a plus category here is that the lore bar doesn't have anything to augment on top of their spells they have a great choice of all the spells but unlike say a sorcerer um but unlike say a sorcerer or a wizard who might have options to make their spells even better the lore bard not so much i think in that case if we look at utility i think we should give them an a because they are extremely well versed at offering utility options with their spell selection but when it comes to support i think the addition of bardic inspiration as well as cutting words yes that puts them into the s tier for support yep when we look at the roles of the explorer the investigator and the infiltrator i think that this is also where it comes down to what spells are you going to choose and how are you going to build your bard i think that the most challenging thing with the lore bard is i think that you will be you will based on your spell selection either be s here in one of these categories a tier or b tier in one of these it's very easy for your character to double down on say a skill proficiency a feat and um a good spell selection and propel yourself over into the s tier with one of these categories um but then you're gonna have to kind of give up a little bit there like you could see a lore bard who really doubles down on spells like invisibility and pass without trace and has expertise and stealth and a high dexterity score and is a really great infiltrator but then you can take it the other way with a bar that takes like the actor feat and suggestion and really amps these up and what you're going to realize is that well you the lore bard can be estier in any of these you're not going to be able to be asked here in all of them at the same time i do think that there is a case to be made that you could be a tier in two of them and beat here in another yeah what's great though is that the bard won't fall into the c or d tier on any of these no no not at all i think especially with the lore bard you're going to have enough adaptability there to compensate you might find that if you're trying to do all of these things at the same time you quickly run out of spells known so i think if we are divvying this up do we want to give an s or a b or do we think that it's a's i think that by default it's very hard to not be an s tier negotiator as a bard i think that almost anyone if if you take expertise in persuasion and take one spell that will help you out in negotiation situations like suggestion or detect thoughts you're going to be in the top tier of negotiators in the game yeah um so i think you're probably i think you're in a situation where you'll definitely be an s here negotiator and whether or not you are an a in infiltration or exploration is going to depend on your other spell selections i think when it comes to role playing the bard is one of the most role playable classes in the entire game absolutely and i think that it's one of the biggest things with bars though is not falling into the trap of thinking that your bart has to be a musician yeah dancing around with a loot i think with the college of lore bard there's a really interesting opportunity here to make a character that rather than being a musician is perhaps a poet or an orator or a writer or a storyteller i kind of have this idea in my mind of a lore bard inspired by hunter s thompson who's a gonzo journalist right out of fear and loathing in las vegas there's a lot of famous musicians that a lot of people base their bards on you could do like david bowie jack black beyonce lady gaga there's there's so many i don't have a billy eilish bard a billy irish bard why not uh there's like take your favorite pop star or a musician and make your bard based on that what about your your favorite from rupaul's drag race uh you could definitely there is an artistry to the to to drag so i think that if you wanted to take your favorite drag queen and turn them into a bard 100 that is a performance unto itself i think the big the biggest challenge i think with a bard is making the character more of a character and less of a caricature this is the biggest pitfall with role playing a bard is to not let the meme of the bard take over your character's personality it's really easy to fall into the trap of caricature if you're drawing inspiration from a musician or a drag queen or johnny depp in fear and loathing in las vegas and end up with a very memey sort of character that is a bit of a bit unfortunately and ironically one note i do think that some of the great examples i've seen in my home games i've seen a bard that was based on bob ross and i've seen a bard that was based on exotic dancers as well which also at the time i was like really an exotic dancer bard but it came to life in such magical ways and like there was there was a dance and movement to the casting of spells cool and and just like thinking of little things like that how does your bard use their art to cast their spells if you're a bob ross bard you might have a palette of paints with you and a small canvas and you are painting while casting your spells there's a lot of ways to play with this idea i think of anything the college of laura bard really allows itself to be open to a polymath sort of character the type of artist that might have followed followed in the tradition of what we would think of as the renaissance man someone who is a painter a musician a storyteller a writer that really has a diverse set of skills and that might be a really cool way to build that appreciation and for that character uh you might even draw inspiration from classical renaissance uh artists like leonardo who was just as much a painter as he was an engineer and inventor so when we get into our choices for building our bards monty when you were doing character creation what did you start with so i think the first thing we have to look at is how we're going to put our ability scores and how we're going to choose our lineage so starting up for character creation we want to look at our ability scores and our lineage i always like considering these things together at the same time because they ultimately are going to inform the ability scores together and so for me i went with a half elf college of lore bard because first of all i love the charisma boost i love the the floating plus the extra two ability square boosts as well and i think for the lore bard getting the extra two skill proficiencies kick skill proficiency into overdrive because you're gonna your character's gonna feel like you're proficient in every skill with this what about you for myself i went with the halfling and the reason for that is purely role play i find that the lore of halflings really speaks to this sort of humble artist they love their poetry they love their song and dance they'll be drinking ale while dancing on a table we all love that scene in lord of the rings and i just think that that really speaks to what i imagine the the more the more humble bard to be cool and so we did point by for ability scores this time and so i went with an eight in my strength same i uh cranked my dexterity with point by all the way to 15 and put one of my plus ones from half elf there i put my second plus one in con and one with a base of 13 so i end up with 16 dexterity 14 con 10 in both my intelligence and wisdom and i put 15 in my charisma which get then with a plus two makes it 17. i also use point by i went a little bit more along the lines of the standard array though where i put my 15 into charisma i had a 14 in dexterity a 13 in constitution and then i believe i did a 12 in wisdom a 10 in intelligence and an eight in strength for my for my bonuses from being a halfling i put my plus two into charisma and my plus one into dexterity so beyond picking our cantrips we both did the same choices we picked minor illusion and vicious mach mockery they're they're the go-to options for a bard you have to have vicious mockery in there it's like the essential can't trip for a bar bards are the only ones who get access to it you got to take it and i think minor illusion just really plays into the feeling of a bart uh and we both ended up with taking the entertainer background yeah uh again a little cliche i feel like with a bard you could go like charlatan you could go like um a charlatan there's the anthropologist or the archaeologist the bards again being being such a versatile and jack of all trades you can really go anyway but the entertainer just feels classic ironically we also chose the exact same first level spells uh fairy fires in there you need to have dissonant whispers and then i picked uh sleep and healing word now for me i think of these first level spells the only one i'm gonna keep with this character is healing word i'm probably gonna retrain out sleep pretty early yeah um dissident whispers has some play for quite a while um but i probably also might uh switch it out as well as potentially fairy fire because eventually you just get to this point where you're concentrating on something else and there's not much room for fairy fire i i actually think i held on to fairy fire the whole time but i do agree that uh as we level up there's more options for your concentration so it becomes a harder choice but sleep definitely is one of those spells that you pick at this level but you're going to plan to get rid of it later ultimately first level my character ended up being proficient in seven skills so i ended up with acrobatics deception investigation perception performance and persuasion as well as stealth and once again kelly you ended up taking almost the same skills but because you're not a half elf you didn't get investigation and perception i feel like there is this sort of classic vibe that the bard has and both of us are really playing into that so from character creation we take our characters up to level four where we're going to get our fourth level feet but also finally actually become a college of lore bar at level three where we're going to get the really good stuff like cutting words where we can now use a reaction to use bardic inspiration to give a penalty to an enemy's attack role which is amazing it's it's one of the best abilities and i think that's honestly what makes the lore bard stand out to me off the bat cutting words is a superb use of bardic inspiration yeah um you're going to be using a lot of reactions for this ability especially at fifth level when your bardic inspirations come back on a short rest now also we do get to choose three more skills to be proficient in and two more to be experts in what did you pick so for my three new skills i picked arcana performance and sleight of hand cool i'm planning to play this um this character a little bit on the stealthy side so i wanted that stealth and sleight of hand so that he can kind of mess around with maybe picking some pockets or dropping things where he needs to but also i want him to be knowledgeable about the magic of the world and so arkana felt like somebody needs to have arcata now my expertise i doubled down on the charisma of a bard and i went with deception and persuasion as my expertise i did the same thing for my expertise deception and persuasion but then i picked up arcana history and insight as my three extra skills so your character's a little bit more insightful mine's a little bit more sneaky yeah i feel like with our skills i'm going a little bit more on to the inves like in investigator explorer i feel like you're looking a little more infiltration yeah as we move up to level four we also do get our ability score increase or our feet choice i just rounded up my dexterity and my charisma okay i actually took telepathic all right um this is gonna give me plus one to my charisma but also give me the ability to communicate telepathically at least send telepathic messages and also cast tech thoughts without any components once a day and add that to my spells known i really feel like this is going to give me lots of options for social interactions across the character's lifespan in particular because i'm also going to pick up suggestion and invisibility with my other spells you get an additional cancer about this level as well so i picked up mage hand so did i that's has to be and then i also grabbed uh heat metal suggestion and invisibility as my additional spells so now we're gonna crank our characters up through tier two and go all the way to level 10. along the way we're going to get one of the big barred features for the lore bard which is additional magical secrets which is two spells known from any classes spell list this is a big deal what did you pick i went with find familiar and counter spell that's an amazing combo they are two of the most important spells in the game and i think that you can never have enough people with counterspell as an option even if you have one or two people with counterspell being able to bring that in just to help defend against spellcasters is really important also i think that bards having a familiar feels really appropriate i love the little animal companion it just it feels really on point and we all know how useful find familiar is we've done entire videos about it this is an absolutely agonizing choice because third level spells are some of the best spells in the game and you have a smorgasbord of options as well as cherry picking the best first and second level spells from other classes i labored over whether i wanted to take revivify fireball whether i wanted to take counterspell like you did which i ultimately did um i look i took ended up taking counter spell in tash's mind whip myself um and when i get mine whip i'm gonna get rid of dissonant whispers and that's kind of gonna be my go-to like battlefield control kind of one-two punch but i do really think that there's so many things to consider like i've seen people uh actually make a college of lore bard more of a damage dealer by taking spiritual weapon and spirit guardians you could even take a cantrip here and pick up eldritch blast and hex there are so many options and i really think it's difficult to say what is the best option to take to take here if you really want to give some of the other more marshally minded bards a run for their money you could take shadow blade here and uh shield and end up being a better swords bar than a swords bar in many cases i definitely was contemplating going with the uh the spiritual weapon and spirit guardians but i think that that actually would look really good on on a sword's bard when they get their magical secrets the trick with the lorabard here is that you're gonna get these bonus magical secrets and i think it's also worth noting when you do choose your magical secrets is you think about the other spells that you're gonna be taking just from the bard spell list because there are amazing spells here as well it's really tempting to pick up a really amazing battlefield control spell but bards already get hypnotic pattern they already get polymorph they already get dimension door another one that's worth considering is actually haste too um sometimes it's worth even finding out what are the other spells that your party members are going to take because maybe you do need to take that gap filler spell maybe no one else in your party has revivify in which case it might be clutch we also got more magical secrets at 10th level so what did you pick for those i went with wall of force and fine greater steed interesting my philosophy is if you can take while the force take while of force it just is a warping spell in the in the effect that it has on on gameplay and find greater speed steed it's kind of just to kind of floss on the paladins who have to wait for a bunch more levels to get it but i can have mine now for my 10th level pick up for magical secrets i went with conjure woodland beings and evards black tentacles i really like evart's black tentacles as a battlefield control spell again playing on the utility of my character being able to tie up a group of enemies is just a lot of fun but i also really like with my fine familiar there's this sort of animal companion vibe yeah and so with conjure woodland beings again with my halfling i feel like he was like a gardener in his past life or he just really was like close with nature so conjure woodland beings is a phenomenal spell and also i think speaks to the the persona that i'm creating here i will say that the new tasha's summoning spells are all great picks for bards the ones that they don't already get uh and for a six level magical secret conjure animals is a good pick too if you really want to get in on that a little bit earlier bards do actually make pretty decent summoners especially with the lore bard getting the magical secrets earlier yeah yeah now when we look at our feed choices because we do get another one on the way up what did you take i did not take a feet i just took plus two to my charisma score bump that up to 20 don't look back fair enough i went with shadow touched at this point so now i'm bumping my charisma up to a 19 and i'm also to take well i get invisibility okay and i'm going to take disguise self now both of these are already on the bard spell list but my reasoning here is that the lore bard for me is the most spell casting of the bards and by taking these two spells that i want in my package anyway it leaves me open to take even more spells so i'm actually going to drop invisibility from my normal picks because i picked them early and now i'm going to use that spot to take something a little bit better yeah for my other spell picks i am going to retrain out some of those first level spells so that i can get other options in here like this guy self i also will be taking major image because i think that it is such an amazing utility but also potentially battlefield control spell i just love having it in my toolkit as a bard because i never know how i'm going to use it and it always ends up being a creative solution to an interesting problem um and from there you know polymorph dimension door kind of round out the kit so with dropping invisibility i picked up aid because i think it's a very useful spell i also grabbed hypnotic pattern tiny hut polymorph raised dead seaming and synaptic static nice um i made sure to also pick up aid along the way i picked up scrying as a bit of a an add-on there and i do have animate objects as well so now as we move on to top tier play we're going to level up our characters to 16th level we get a few more features and we get more feats and more spells what features do we gain so bards just get the 14th level feature here which for the college of lords bard is peerless skill when you make an ability check you can immediately use your bardic inspiration to boost your skill check result um which is pretty handy but we got some pretty high skill bonuses already at this level so it's it is useful um in kind of turning that clutch role into a success when you need to um beyond that though we're going to get two ability score increases one at level 12 one at level 16. i myself took inspiring leader and then i took warcaster i would love to be able to take these earlier but i really like to get my ability scores up first so it's a bit of a tough call here i was tempted by a lot of other feats too but these were the ones that i settled on i almost took inspiring leader but for myself i ended up going with actor which pushes my charisma now to a 20 and also just doubles down on the whole being able to disguise myself being able to uh lie my way into almost any situation now with my expertise and deception plus this guy's self plus the actor feat i think that package makes a really good infiltration bard the other feat that i took was resilient constitution this rounds up my constitution to a 14 and gives me proficiency in those saving throws solid pick at level 14 the bard also gets to choose more magical secrets from any class spell list uh so these can be up to seventh level spells what did you pick kelly well i grabbed contingency so did i my other pick was finger of death because uh not only is it a really brutal spell but you might get a zombie friend i myself i went with reverse gravity i do want to mention that you could also take simulacrum here but again that's going to depend on how far the power level of your campaign goes if you can't take it and your cable is comfortable with that level of power go for it because having a clone of yourself is amazing um but otherwise if we're being a little more conservative a little more more fair i went with reverse gravity we also get to pick up some sixth seventh and eighth level spells along the way uh to sixteenth level what did you choose i went with mass suggestion force cage and glibness great choices i feel like with mass suggestion we're just doubling down on i mean it's a barred spell it feels appropriate with force cage i mean never leave home without it yeah and glibness again feels like it's appropriate on the bard it's just gonna make sure that i can now deceive my way in and out of any situation i need to i love glibness i was really tempted by feeble mind as well but ultimately i didn't take any eight level spells like you i did choose mass suggestion in force cage but i also picked up heroes feast as well as teleport just because i felt that that gives me lots of extra utility and i'm gonna be able to stack the effects of aid heroes feast and inspiring leader all on top of one another to really boost the hit points of my entire party i really think that that's a great package because well temporary hit points don't stack heroes feast and aid increase a character's hit point maximum and because they are effects with different names they stack so aid heroes fees inspiring leader all work together and i think as a as a high-level combo it's just a huge way to boost my entire party's hit points in a really big way can i just say that looking at this it's funny that when i picked the halfling at the start i was going with the humble bard but when we actually look at it you've gone with this very like explorer um sort of uh investigator but also like healer you're the investigator you're there to help the party i mean healing word is the only healing spell that i actually picked i think with uh what i mean those like aid heroes feast like that really bolsters the party you're a party bolsterer and an investigator i want a little bit more brutal and i'm like a sneaky liar so that those are the vibes that we have going on here beyond that um when you take things up to the final tier of play really the biggest choice that you have as your bard is what what your 18th level magical secrets is going to be bards have some pretty decent spells for their ninth level spell slots but it really comes down to what you're gonna take with your last magical secrets we both took wish was there another ninth level spell that you wanted to pilfer now if i was picking another ninth level spell i mean when things have to die and they have to die now i always love grabbing meteor swarm you kind of went with a little bit of a blaster bar right here you know higher levels towards higher levels i wanted a few spells that i could end combat with yeah i already feel like i have so many support and utility options that kind of being able to oh no there's a horde of enemies in front of us oh they got meteor swarmed or one enemy and i get the finger of death um these feel important to have these in my back pocket yes now as a ninth level pick just as we level up our bard i went with psychic scream because it just feels like i get to wail on my loot and scream and pop everybody's heads off it's a it's an amazing spell i went with true polymorph because if you can be a dragon you should always choose to be a dragon yeah and i want to turn into a dragon my other magical secrets pick here is going to be prismatic wall because i have reverse gravity and prismatic wall yeah yeah we've talked about this in our spell combo video um as one of the most devastating combos you can do prismatic wall is a orb above them and then reverse gravity into the ceiling yeah yeah so you know just pick that one up as a fun uh fun uh campaign ending uh concerto so as we look at this kind of the builds that we end up having kind of proved the point that these are really jack of all trade characters oh oh yeah and i think that the biggest thing in building a bard from level one to 20 really that you find is that bards are adaptable they are versatile but it turns out you can't be everything at the same time and that's the biggest struggle especially with building a college of lore bard is that you can be a bit of a generalist but you do have to decide what kind of character you want to be overall and what strengths and weaknesses you want to have i do think what's important though is if you look at both of our picks of feats and spells and magical secrets what you get is again a focus on support utility but also i kind of went with the infiltrator you kind of went with the explorer and like we said those boost us to i think that my character is an s-tier infiltrator he not only can turn invisible and sneak his way in but he can lie his way into any situation whereas you have a lot of tools that you can use for exploration and gaining intel yes between detect thoughts and having scrying and those tools in there you can build that up even further if you want to really lean into the investigator role i went with kind of the smattering of having good support good utility good negotiation good investigation because i wanted those to be my strengths and then i was okay with kind of the infiltration you know for for me if i need to infiltrate i'll make myself invisible and hope my stealth checks carry me through so this has been a look at how to play a lore bard in dungeons of dragon's fifth edition tell us about some of the choices you made with your laura bard in the comments below the videos that we create on our channel are made possible thanks to the incredible generosity of our patreon supporters if you enjoy the work that we do here on youtube please consider becoming a patron of our show by following the links in the description below and don't forget to check out our live play shadows of drakenheim which is tuesday nights at 6pm eastern on twitch you can find all the previous episodes right up over here and we have plenty more how to play guides for various other subclasses in dnd 5e right up over here please subscribe to our channel so that you never miss an episode thanks so much for watching we'll see you next time in the dungeon

Channel: Dungeon Dudes

Views: 95,843

Keywords: dungeons, dragons, tabletop, gaming, roleplaying, games, accessories, rules, rule, gameplay, play, game, rpg, d20, player, character, D&D, 5e, DM, PC, tips, advice, guide, guides, review, dice, books, book

Id: Nw52gU9tD9Q

Length: 30min 41sec (1841 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 02 2021