College of Dirges

Bards of the College of the Dirge, or Death Singers, believe that all life is dancing to a tune that end with their deaths. By learning of the living and the dead's tune, they can manipulate the strings of fate. Dirge bards are known as the more grim and solemn of bards, sometimes being confused for a cleric or holy man. Dirge bards are the most outcast of all bards due to the grimness of their nature and how they usually leave no corpse unturned. Dirge bards can still play exhilarating tunes that the masses enjoy, but their songs typically aim for those who are 6 feet below. Dirge bards specialize in play the tunes of the fading life known as life which changes into the never ending death. Dirge bards have found that all living beings have a tune and that this tune is somewhat like destiny. By playing this tune which they can many times can find by having it possess them, they are able to make the lingering parts of the dead's soul "Dance". This dance is sometimes seen as a spirit living their last actions, the answering of questions, or is just experienced in the bard's mind. But playing these tunes dangerous as the playing of one's death tune can lead the bard to live their death. Dirge bards experience life as a song and so they can sometimes snip and change the tunes for their purposes 

Death singing

The Dirge bard begins to sing or plays a tune and the party watches as the soul begins to dance. The tune infatuates the soul's being and the bard's is put upon the line. As the soul is dancing, the bard can change the tune a little bit to have the soul play out things it knew; it will dance out its death or play an old memory. Anything the person knew while alive, even if they were made to forget, can be portrayed. The corpse's death or horrors of its life may sometimes possess the bard and have it take some damage as they experience it and relive it first hand.

Dirge Bards can use a bardic inspiration to play a tune to the dead and attempt to make it dance. The corpse makes a save against the bard's spell casting ability. On a fail, the bard takes psychic damage equal to their bardic inspiration. The bard can then ask the corpse 5 questions. This ability follows the rules of the spell "speak with dead" but the animated soul will not lie, does not require any materials, and the bard can understand it even if the target can't speak or speaks a different language. This ability can have the soul reenact events. The corpse cannot be targeted by the same Dirge bard for the next 13 days. This is typically viewed in a more theatrical form rather then the spirit showing up and just answering questions.

 

The Dirge Bard now has access to necromancy tagged spells as spells to choose from when leveling up. Upon gaining this feature, the Dirge Bard can swap out currently known bard spells for necromancy tagged spells that are of a higher or lower level.

Dancing with Death.

Knowing death's tune, Dirge Bards can sway the song of death that may suggest that allies shall die and that enemies shall lived. Dirge bards now influence allies and enemies deaths instead of just simply inspiring them with their tunes. The dirge bard has the following effects added on to their bardic inspiration:

• Bardic inspiration also gives the target advantage on their roll.
• Bardic inspiration can be used on enemies resulting in their roll being subtracted by your bardic inspiration die, and they also gain disadvantage on the roll.
• As an action or reaction, you can use as many bardic inspiration dies that you want in order to give an ally that many death saving throw success.

Grand Dirge

At the 6th level, you gain the ability to heavily influence the destinies of surrounding creatures allowing you to influence who lives or dies. As a bonus action, you can imbue the surroundings with a tune that will change the destinies of everyone surrounding you by making it so that you do not need to use bardic inspiration for the purpose of hindering enemies or benefiting allies. For 1 minute you can also use bardic inspiration as an action without using any charges. If you were to give an ally a death saving throw success without using any bardic inspirations, you can only make them succeed on one one throw. Allies can now hold more then 1 bardic inspiration die. They lose all dies that exceed 1 at the end of the minute.

Once you use this feature, you can’t use it again until you finish a long rest.

Final note

Starting at level 14, the Dirge Bard can rewrite people's tunes in an attempt to slay or spare them. Grand dirge now lasts 2 minutes and gains the following additional effects:

• You can target an extra person for your action expending bardic inspiration by actually using a die.
• Any ally that has been affected by one of your bardic inspirations during the Grand Dirge start with 1 successful death saving throw
• Any enemy that has been affected by one of your bardic inspirations will now be executed if they could have died by an extra dice roll of an attack or a way that they take damage.