College of the Dirge

Every living being brims with a universal energy. Growing with their power, you can hear and interact with the aura of a creature as if they themselves were a work of music. Channeling the music of life through yourself, you've also learned to manipulate those organic songs, ushering living creatures toward their ends, or extending the lifetime of a piece that has already ended. You bring about both death and undeath as partners in a waltz to these natural symphonies. You are the student of the dirge.

Cyclical Coda

At 3rd level, you gain the ability to reap life energy from creatures you kill with your spells. Once per turn when you kill one or more creatures with a spell of 1st level or higher, you regain hit points equal to a roll of your bardic inspiration die, or two rolls if the spell belongs to the School of Necromancy. Alternatively, you can deal damage to a creature of your choice that you can see equal to a roll of your bardic inspiration die, or two rolls if the spell belongs to the School of Necromancy. You don’t gain this benefit for killing constructs or undead.

Song of Mortality

You've learned to feel the unique melody created by each living creature, faint alteration to the universe that each person, plant, and animal causes simply by existing. You've also learned to manipulate those vibrations, and in this case, enhance them. You perform throughout the course of a short rest, aligning your music with the chorus of life around you, lending your audience some of your music's power.

When you choose this school at 3rd level, you learn to bolster the vibrations of creatures around you. When you use your 'Song of Rest' feature, instead of restoring Hit Points, you can bestow temporary hit points equal to 1d6 plus your charisma modifier to yourself and any friendly creature who can hear your performance. The die used for this feature scales alongside the Song of Rest die.

Compose the Dead

At 6th level, you add the animate dead spell to your known spells if it is not there already. This does not count against your number of Bard spells known. When you cast animate dead, you can target one additional corpse or pile of bones, creating another zombie or skeleton, as appropriate.

Whenever you create an undead using a necromancy spell, it has additional benefits:

• The creature’s hit point maximum is increased by an amount equal to your bard level.
  The creature adds your bardic inspiration die to its damage rolls.

Rallentando of the Grave

Your connection with death has allowed you to lend necromantic energy to a creature in peril, staving off the transition between life and death. As a reaction, when a creature you can see and that can hear you falls to 0 Hit points, you may expend a roll of your bardic inspiration die as a reaction. The creature immediately regains a number of Hit points equal to the number rolled.

Once you use this feature, you cannot use it again until you complete a long rest.

March to the Grave

At sixth level, you've learned to guide a soul to rest, shortening the duration of a creatures song of life. When you deal damage with a spell, you can expend one or more bardic inspiration die, and add 2d8 necrotic damage to the spells damage roll for each use of bardic inspiration you expend. When your bardic inspiration die changes, so does the damage die used by this feature.

Alternatively, when you cast a spell or use an ability that requires a saving throw, you can target a creature, and expend a bardic inspiration die, to reduce that creature's save by an amount equal to the number rolled plus your charisma modifier (minimum +1). You may use this ability after the creature has rolled. 

Encore

Starting at 14th level, you can use magic to bring undead under your control, even those created by another spellcaster. As an action, you can choose one undead that you can see within 60 feet of you. That creature must make a Charisma saving throw against your Bard spell save DC. If it succeeds, you can’t use this feature on it again. If it fails, it becomes friendly to you and obeys your commands until you use this feature again.

Intelligent undead are harder to control in this way. If the target has an Intelligence of 8 or higher, it has advantage on the saving throw. If it fails the saving throw and has an Intelligence of 12 or higher, it can repeat the saving throw at the end of every hour until it succeeds and breaks free.