Decades ago i played the drums, and it was common to take a cowbell, remove the wiggly part and play them like cymbals. If a bard had 2 to 4 of these on forearm bracers/gauntlets and they could use bladed weapons in their alternate hand(s) like drumsticks to play them. And that would count as a musical instrument/spell focus for a bard right?
Ive got a shortsword (vex) and scimitar (nick) assassin(13)/hexblade(5) build that would seriously benefit from a 2 level dip in bard for 2 to 3 casting of Faire Fire per day. I think swords bard can use their sword as a focus but I don't have a 3rd level to spare and don't want to use up a magic items attunement on a ruby of the war mage.
The musical instrument proficiency would probably be some variety of drum.
With some additional googling I was able to answer my own question. "Tocken" (on the approved list) are resonnence bells, typically carved out of wood but you can explicitly buy silver ones in waterdeep (i believe this is from the sword coast adventurer's guide) they're essentially a xylophone and there are xylophones small enough to be strapped to the inside of a forearm. If a gm wants to disallow on the grounds that spellcasting focus has to be held un less explicitly stated otherwise, using your fingers to press it against your wrist technically meets that requirement and should be able to be done without sheathing a short sword held in that hand, but with how liberal the 2024 rules are for sheathing and unsheathing weapons, for a dual wielding character it's just flavor text and doesn't grant any mechanical benefit. The mechanical benefit is from not having to stow/unstow the tocken/xylophone and you can accomplish the same thing for most instruments by having them hang off the front of your torso by a strap across your back... so it falls within RAW. You might just have to explicitly buy the small portable made of silver version of a "tocken" that you can strap to the inside of a forearm.
Decades ago i played the drums, and it was common to take a cowbell, remove the wiggly part and play them like cymbals. If a bard had 2 to 4 of these on forearm bracers/gauntlets and they could use bladed weapons in their alternate hand(s) like drumsticks to play them. And that would count as a musical instrument/spell focus for a bard right?
Ive got a shortsword (vex) and scimitar (nick) assassin(13)/hexblade(5) build that would seriously benefit from a 2 level dip in bard for 2 to 3 casting of Faire Fire per day. I think swords bard can use their sword as a focus but I don't have a 3rd level to spare and don't want to use up a magic items attunement on a ruby of the war mage.
The musical instrument proficiency would probably be some variety of drum.
With some additional googling I was able to answer my own question. "Tocken" (on the approved list) are resonnence bells, typically carved out of wood but you can explicitly buy silver ones in waterdeep (i believe this is from the sword coast adventurer's guide) they're essentially a xylophone and there are xylophones small enough to be strapped to the inside of a forearm. If a gm wants to disallow on the grounds that spellcasting focus has to be held un less explicitly stated otherwise, using your fingers to press it against your wrist technically meets that requirement and should be able to be done without sheathing a short sword held in that hand, but with how liberal the 2024 rules are for sheathing and unsheathing weapons, for a dual wielding character it's just flavor text and doesn't grant any mechanical benefit. The mechanical benefit is from not having to stow/unstow the tocken/xylophone and you can accomplish the same thing for most instruments by having them hang off the front of your torso by a strap across your back... so it falls within RAW. You might just have to explicitly buy the small portable made of silver version of a "tocken" that you can strap to the inside of a forearm.