Introduction
Gracing the pages of the new 2024 Player’s Handbook as the only Bard we haven’t seen a real printing of, the College of Dance Bard appears as a slightly toned-down version of the one from the UA playtest we covered… but not nearly toned down enough. Much more than just a Jack of all Trades, this subclass does Monk better than any Monk in the book, does a pretty fantastic job of being a Paladin, and, thanks to the mind-bogglingly good change to Magical Secrets, also does a pretty solid job of being a Wizard, Cleric, and Druid. This subclass can basically fulfill any of the traditional Party Roles.
Genuinely, I can’t think of a better character to build if you’re playing in a one-person adventure. It’s a Charisma-based full caster, so it can talk its way out of whatever problems it can’t solve with spells. Thanks to Influence now including Performance, there’s even a not-irrelevant chance that some good roleplaying will get you permanent Advantage on social interactions. It can heal, it’s got a much higher AC than it should, and it does decent single-target damage when played properly and great AoE damage at level 10 onward.
I would have loved this subclass if all it was was an excuse to throw on my least good Brazilian accent and get to breakdance fighting against Tony Jaa. Instead, it’s probably the single most powerful subclass that WotC’s released for doing anything except breaking the math for your whole team.
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Disclaimer
- College of Dance Features
- College of Dance Backgrounds
- College of Dance Species
- College of Dance Ability Scores
- College of Dance Feats
- College of Dance Weapons
- College of Dance Armor
- College of Dance Multiclassing
- Example College of Dance Build – Harlequin Solitaire
- Ability Scores
- Background
- Species
- Skill and Tool Proficiencies
- Feats and Ability Score Increases
- Levels
Disclaimer
RPGBOT uses the color coding scheme which has become common among Pathfinder build handbooks, which is simple to understand and easy to read at a glance.
- Red: Bad, useless options, or options whichare extremely situational. Nearly never useful.
- Orange: OK options, or useful optionsthat only apply in rare circ*mstances. Useful sometimes.
- Green: Good options. Useful often.
- Blue: Fantastic options, often essentialto the function of your character. Useful very frequently.
We will not include 3rd-party content, including content from DMs Guild, in handbooks for official content because we can’t assume that your game will allow 3rd-party content or homebrew. We also won’t cover Unearthed Arcana content because it’s not finalized, and we can’t guarantee that it will be available to you in your games.
The advice offered below is based on the current State of the Character Optimization Meta as of when the article was last updated. Keep in mind that the state of the meta periodically changes as new source materials are released, and the article will be updated accordingly as time allows.
College of Dance Features
- Dazzling Footwork: This ability has four clauses and they’re all incredible. Permanent Advantage on any Performance check involving Dancing is going to feel super satisfying, getting Charisma to AC rewards you for leaning into your spellcasting ability, Bardic Damage is required for the subclass to function, and Agile Strikes is going to do some heavy lifting immediately and then ramp into overtime come level seven.
- Inspiring Movement: If this ability had no synergy, it would still be worth rating blue. As it is, it’s also a reliable way to punch something before waltzing away and saving your friend the other squishy for good measure.
- Tandem Footwork: I honestly don’t understand why they thought printing this was fine. Thanks to the edition update, you’re already getting four d8 dice every short rest and the ability to generate more easily. Giving your whole party an initiative bonus of 4.5 (which will keep increasing over time) is going to provide incredible consistency for whatever opening volley you’ve put together. Admittedly, this only leaves you three or four Bardic Inspiration dice for the rest of the fight, but that’s still enough for one per turn if you don’t burn them on Reactions.
- Leading Evasion: Evasion didn’t really need to be better, but here we are.
College of Dance Backgrounds
We must take Charlatan, Entertainer, or Wayfarer for the correct ability score increases.
- Acolyte(PHB): Bad stats
- Artisan(PHB): Bad stats
- Charlatan(PHB): Skilled is the least good origin feat available to us as we already get three proficiencies from our class, two from our Background, and maybe one or two more from our species. Only choose this if you’re struggling to fill all the roles which you need to fill, especially in a small party.
- Criminal(PHB):
- Entertainer(PHB): I would argue that tap shoes are an instrument and that I can just distribute Heroic Inspiration along with Bardic Inspiration by dancing.
- Farmer(PHB): Bad stats
- Guard(PHB): Bad stats
- Guide(PHB): Bad stats
- Hermit(PHB): Bad stats
- Merchant(PHB): Bad stats
- Noble(PHB): Bad stats
- Sage(PHB): Bad stats
- Sailor(PHB): Bad stats
- Scribe(PHB): Bad stats
- Soldier(PHB): Bad stats
- Wayfarer(PHB): Lucky is always good
For information and advice regarding Origin Feats, including those granted by your Background, see the College of Dance Feats section, below.
College of Dance Species
Before getting access to Magical Secrets, you’re going to have a hard time fulfilling the Blaster role unless you plan for it. Conveniently, the 2024 rules have the best version of Dragonborn yet, not only giving you a PB/Day breath weapon, but flight when you need it too.
Goliath offers some interesting utility, particularly Hill’s Tumble. Punch something Prone, Bonus Action punch again with Advantage.
Otherwise, same as a typical Bard.
College of Dance Ability Scores
You’re already leaning into Charisma, but now you need Dex as well. You already needed Dex because you were a Bard, but, well, more now.
Str: Dump.
Dex: This is how we’ll be making our Unarmed Strikes and surviving with no armor in melee.
Con: Maintaining Concentration is even harder when you’re up in the fray. It’s especially hard if you run out of hit points.
Int: Dump.
Wis: Good for saves. Give it whatever you have left over.
Cha: Powers spells and several class features.
| Point Buy | Standard Array | |
|---|---|---|
| Str | 8 | 8 |
| Dex | 15 | 14 |
| Con | 15 | 13 |
| Int | 8 | 10 |
| Wis | 8 | 12 |
| Cha | 15 | 15 |
College of Dance Feats
Thankfully, we have an incredibly consistent way of using our Bonus Action, so Telekinetic isn’t automatically one of our best possible options.
Grappler: Seems amazing at first blush, but careful readers will notice that, unlike the Monk’s Martial Arts, Bardic Damage doesn’t replace how you get to set your Grapple Save DC. With that said, Martial Arts is only a one-level dip and can lead to a very powerful combination as you’ll see below.
Inspiring Leader: Already a Bard staple, but look how it synergizes with our propensity to burn through Bardic Inspiration dice even faster than our flat-footed classmates.
Speedy: As a melee Bard, you need to close in to punch things. It also gives you five more feet of run away with Inspiring Movement.
College of Dance Weapons
It’s just more Feets.
College of Dance Armor
We’ll wear the Leather we start with until level 3. After that, no need. Just dance harder.
College of Dance Multiclassing
This section briefly details some obvious and enticing multiclass options, but doesn’t fully explore the broad range of multiclassing combinations. For more on multiclassing, see our Practical Guide to Multiclassing.
I can’t think of a single Bard that would want to multiclass less. Usually. Everything scales off of your Bardic Inspiration Dice, so we want as many of them as big as possible.
I could see a world (again, a solo campaign) where you’d want six levels of Paladin for the huge boost to saves, the mount for another body in combat, and the Extra Attack. I wouldn’t call it wrong, per se, but that’s a huge investment when you’re giving up the exponential scaling inherent to the class. You’re also giving up Wish.
One level of Monk will let you punch things as a Bonus Action without expending a Bardic Inspiration die, which is useful for stretching your resources, but also means you’re not handing out as much Inspiration. It also changes the way you set your Grapple Save Dc, which can lead to an excellent abuse case described below.
Example College of Dance Build – Harlequin Solitaire
If you’re in our Patreon Discord, you’ve seen my profile picture: a green and gold painted model done for me by my friend who inspired our original Aberrant Mind Sorcerer example build. I’ve been going by Harlequin (among other names) in the gaming space since I first read the unofficial Harlequins codex for Warhammer 40K 3rd edition in 1999 and was mesmerized by the solitaire: a singular unit capable of making hilariously short work of most groups of enemies by delivering way too many melee attacks.
You might be seeing where I’m going with this. Tyler got there first with the Scribes Wizard, but I’ll be damned if I won’t fit a self-insert into this website too.
Ability Scores
We need a strange stat spread to be able to multiclass the way we’d like to. It leaves us a little squishy, but we’ll have some tools to keep ourselves alive. We’ll put our +2 into Charisma and our +1 into Dexterity to get it up to 16.
| Base | Adjusted | Level 20 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Str | 10 | 10 | 10 |
| Dex | 15 | 16 | 21 |
| Con | 10 | 10 | 10 |
| Int | 8 | 8 | 8 |
| Wis | 13 | 13 | 13 |
| Cha | 15 | 17 | 18 |
Background
Entertainer. I rated it blue above, and, besides, I need to be able to blow everyone away when I perform Slaanesh in the Dance Without End.
Species
Since I have to be a Spess Elf, Astral Elf it is.
Skill and Tool Proficiencies
Entertainer gives us Acrobatics, Performance, and a musical instrument. We’ll take Intimidation, Stealth, and Persuasion from our class and then wake up every day and choose violence Sleight of Hand from our Species since we have the Dex to neatly qualify for the Scout role.
Feats and Ability Score Increases
At level 1 we get Musician as our Origin Feat from the Entertainer Background.
At level 4 we’ll take Inspiring Leader to triple down on short rests.
At level 8 we’ll take Grappler.
At character level 13, Bard level 12, we’ll take Elven Accuracy to capitalize on Grappler’s Advantage.
At character level 17, Bard level 16, we’ll take an ASI to cap Dexterity.
At character level 20, Bard level 19, for our Epic Boon, we’ll take Combat Prowess so the first punch always lands, activating Grappler. If we somehow get another Boon, take Speed to round out the Dexterity.
Levels
| Level | Feat(s) and Features | Notes and Tactics |
|---|---|---|
| Bard 1 | Bardic Inspiration 1d6 Spellcasting: Spells Prepared | Levels one and two are going to look pretty generic because, well, we haven’t graduated College yet. We therefore rely on typical Bard tactics: Charisma as high as it can be at level 1, Healing Word, Hideous Laughter to keep something out of a fight, Faerie Fire for a damage multiplier if you catch many things clustered, and Dissonant Whispers for when you need big damage. As far as Cantrips go, Sacred Flame and Starry Wisp may seem redundant because of damage type but a) they both have niche uses where one is better than the other (like Starry Wisp taking advantage of the… well, Advantage from Faerie Fire), and b) a Solitaire really isn’t going to go around insulting things, no matter how iconic it is for Bards. Make sure you’re remembering to use Musician’s ability to distribute Heroic Inspiration every time you rest. Your party will love you for it, and may well reward you with Heroic Inspiration they earn when it overflows because they already have some from you. |
| Bard 2 | Expertise Jack of All Trades Spells Prepared: | We agree with half of the PHB recommendations and pick up Persuasion and Stealth for our Expertises since we’re about to have permanent Advantage on the Performance rolls we care about which is roughly as good as Expertise until level 13. We’ll start running into more magical things and we can cast rituals as rituals now, so we take Detect Magic, which doesn’t compete for our precious spell slots. |
| Bard 3 | Bard College: College of Dance Dazzling Footwork Spells Prepared: Retrain Spell: Dissonant Whispers -> Mirror Image | Oh boy. We take off the leather armor we’ve been wearing since character creation and our AC goes up by 2 points. We still can’t use a shield, but a 16 AC is respectable, especially when you can heal yourself for roughly ⅓ of your HP as a Bonus Action spell. It’ll also go up to 17 at next level. So get close enough that you can punch things with Bonus Actions when you hand out Bardic Inspiration and then scurry away. Hitting for 1d6+3 twice in a turn is even more damage than swinging a greatsword. Admittedly, you can only do that 3 times a day, but that’ll change soon. We learn Shatter to be our primary area damage for a while, but far more importantly we retrain our prior single-target damage spell into defense since we can just use our hands for single-target damage in a far more reliable fashion if we’re not worried about dying. |
| Bard 4 | Feat: Inspiring Leader (Charisma 17 -> 18) Cantrips: – Mage Hand Spells Prepared: | Get people used to taking those Short Rests now (in case Musician’s Heroic Inspiration wasn’t already enough motivation). Eight temp HP per person may not seem like a lot, but that’s 32 points of healing no one has to do per fight, which is a huge extension of resources, and it’ll scale every time we level. Phantasmal Force can shut down single targets very easily, provided that your DM plays along. |
| Bard 5 | Bardic Inspiration (1d8) Font of Inspiration Spells Prepared: Retrain Spells: Tasha’s Hideous Laughter -> Leomund’s Tiny Hut | This is an incredible level for us. Font of Inspiration means we should be handing out Bardic Inspiration with our Bonus Action nearly every single turn of every fight (after getting ourselves next to an enemy to punch them for their troubles). That punch had its die go up to a d8, making our average damage 7.5, a 15% increase. Admittedly, we’re a point behind on the Fundamental Math if we’re looking at Dexterity, but don’t worry too much about that. Faerie Fire can help a lot there if we don’t have to concentrate on anything else. Anything like Hypnotic Pattern, which will also give us Advantage (admittedly only on the first attack), but is also one of the biggest off switches in the game. Since we have Phantasmal Force covering single-target shutdown, we trade Hideous Laughter for Tiny Hut so that we always have a warm, safe place to sleep. It’s a ritual, which is great when we’ve spent a day burning our spell slots for more |
| Bard 6 | Inspiring Movement Tandem Footwork Spells Prepared: | We are going to be absolutely demolishing our spell slots for more dice. If you ever roll Initiative and don’t activate Tandem Footwork, you’re just doing it wrong and I don’t have a better way to say that. Meanwhile, Inspiring Movement will let you punch someone before leaving, allowing us to conceivably attack three times in a round. Cantrips improved recently, so we’ll still want to use Starry Wisps before closing into melee for a Bonus Action fist, then a Reaction fist and walk away without drawing Opportunity Attacks to do it all again on our next turn. This puts us at 14.5 DPR, roughly 10% over Target DPR before even talking about spells. If we’re using two Bardic Inspiration Dice per round every round of combat, we’re going to burn through 7 per fight (including the one for Inspiring Movement). We’re only getting 4 per short rest, meaning we’re burning 3 spell slots per fight, or 9 total per day. That unfortunately leaves us… one spell slot. Better make it count. Of course, we can also drop a punch and come down to 10.3 DPR, halfway between Low and Target. This will let us save our Bonus Action for things like healing our party members. Still, the fact that we can get a Bard over Target DPR on a single target without spellcasting is pretty great. |
| Bard 7 | Countercharm Spells Prepared: | They appear to have explicitly added this spell for Dance Bards and Moon Druids with Multiattack. If we turn this on, we still get two punches the first round thanks to our insane action economy optimization. Every round after that we’re at almost 28 DPR, just shy of High DPR as a Bard. If you have something increasing your accuracy like a Bless or advantage from other people, it’s going to be even more beneficial than it is for most characters because our Attack Bonus isn’t where it’s expected to be. |
| Bard 8 | Grappler (Dex 16 -> 17) Spells Prepared: | Charm Monster is a powerful tool when used correctly, and it won’t compete for Concentration if you decide to use it in combat. Grappler, meanwhile, is already okay and will become great shortly. The Punch and Grab feature only works once per turn, but we spend most of our existence punching people at the end of their turn as well, allowing you to trigger it twice in a round. This is great if something has broken the grapple, but decided to stay next to you (or if something else walked up in the interim). Also, since it makes trying the grapple free, the fact that our save DC is only 11 (for now) means things might still fail from time to time, giving us Advantage thanks to Grappler’s Attack Advantage feature, which dramatically improves our DPR as described above. Finally, the part about non-hindered movement? That will apply to the Inspiring Movement Reaction as well, allowing you to drag unfortunate targets into the middle of your team to be systematically picked off. |
| Monk 1 | Martial Arts Unarmored Defense | This version of Unarmored Defense doesn’t matter to us in the slightest, but Dextrous Attacks immediately takes our Grapple Save DC from 12 to 15, making it hugely more likely to land. This will trigger all the good stuff we talked about last level. Martial Arts also allows us to make an Unarmed Strike as a Bonus Action without expending our limited Bardic Inspiration Dice, and you can still use Bardic Damage rather than the 1d6 of level 1 Monk. |
| Bard 9 | Expertise – Perception – Performance Spells Prepared | With two more Expertise we get better in Perception and finally Performance because Expertise and Advantage on the same roll just feels incredible. For our spell, we have the opportunity to reposition during other people’s turns, and love both being in melee and making things prone so we can kick them with Advantage. There are basically no downsides to this apart from it also taking Concentration. |
| Bard 10 | Bardic Die (d10) Cantrips Magical Secrets(see text) | We’ll finally learn Jazz Hands to go with our dance routine. The increase in Bardic Die means a slight DPR increase, but Magical Secrets is why we’re in love with this level. We immediately learn Revivify unless two other party members already know it and retrain Aid into Fire Shield. |
| Bard 11 | Spells Prepared: – Create Undead Retrain Spells: Shatter -> Fireball | We pull a couple We can also finally drop Shatter for the king of area damage. |
| Bard 12 | Elven Accuracy (Dex 17 -> 18) Retrain Spells: Charm Monster -> Contingency | We’re back to only being one point behind now on the Fundamental Math and with two bites at the apple every turn with Grapple. If we manage to grab them, we have super advantage with the rest of our fists, and they have a spectacularly bad time. Action Font of Moonlight, Bonus Action hand out Bardic Inspiration for a punch, grapple and damage them, hold them still on their turn and then pull them back and punch at the end of said turn. If they don’t break the grapple, DPR on following turns is over 51, putting us roughly 20% over High DPR. Add in the ghoul claws for good measure and you’re up to just shy of 60. Meanwhile, Charm is cool, but Contingency is probably the second most broken spell in the game behind Wish. |
| Bard 13 | Spells Prepared: – Simulacrum | Simulacrum is a surprise tool that will help us later. If no one else in the party can cast Teleport or Plane Shift yet, retrain Faerie Fire into whichever you need more. |
| Bard 14 | Leading Evasion | If you still need one of the spells from last level, turn in Yolande’s Regal Presence for it. If not, turn Yolande’s into Greater Invisibility. |
| Bard 15 | Bardic Inspiration (1d12) Spells Prepared: | Steel Wind Strike counts as 5 melee attacks, so it will get full benefit from Fount of Moonlight. You’re still one point behind on Fundamental Math, but, if you somehow have Advantage on all the attacks (perhaps a Greater Invisibility from a friend or Simulacrum), this one spell combo will do 215 expected damage thanks to Elven Accuracy, more than double Dude Stop DPR. |
| Bard 16 | ASI: Dexterity 18 -> 20 | Completely boring, but it gets our Attack bonus finally caught up to the Fundamental Math and our AC up to 19. |
| Bard 17 | Spells Prepared: – Wish | Infinite naked Interestingly, my interpretation of strict RAW would be that, if you used Wish to duplicate Simulacrum, it would prevent the Simulacrum from casting Wish based on the wording of the text of Simulacrum. There are, perhaps, points to be made on either side (particularly about RAI, which is clearly the prevention of this nonsense in the first place), and the fact is that, due to my interpretation I just mentioned, since your Simulacra are no longer capable of casting Simulacrum themselves, for any of the abuse cases of Wish that you’d like to take advantage of (the permanent Resistance springs to mind) you actually need to cast one instance of Simalcrum yourself with the real spell, 12 hours, and a pile of snow and ruby dust. |
| Bard 18 | Spells Prepared:- True Polymorph | Once your infinite naked Bard army has run out of spells, turn them into anything I rated blue in that article. Demilich is funny considering your other undead, but I think having an army of dragons you can ride is almost as good as jetbikes, especially because they can then use Change Shape to assume other forms with Innate Spellcasting and continue casting spells. Also, as they’re no longer the Simulacrum construct, they no longer have the clause about being unable to benefit from Short or Long Rests. |
| Bard 19 | Epic Boon: – Combat Prowess (Dex 20 -> 21) Spells Prepared: | Time Stop is our emergency button for if something goes wrong in combat, while Combat Prowess is there to ensure that our combo works. Sadly, we won’t get our 20th-level Bard feature since we took a 1-level dip into Monk. |
