I’m home-brewing a bard college called the “college of comedy” it was a thought I’ve had for some time; even more after playing darkest dungeons, so I decided to final start writing things down, and a spell to go along with it! I was hoping to kinda post what I have down and get some feedback before I fully commit and make a it a full subclass. If anyone is willing to take a look just reply! I’ll send everything I got lol.
Laughter, something you usually get once you tell a good joke to a crowd of people. Laughter is intoxicating, it can put people at ease—it’s as contagious as the plague! Comedy comes in many shapes and forms, people’s senses of humor are as unique as snowflakes, bards of the college of laughter know this very well and can tap into everyone’s sense of humor, however, they don’t all do this for the good of all, bards of this college see the good and the bad within art and performances, they value sock and buskin seeing them both as necessary for any performance, any good joke. When tragedy strikes, comedy is usually a great way to heal it and bring people closer together, these bards realize that and aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty in order to deliver.
Bards of the college of comedy can either be a great company, or a terrifying omen.
Laughters the best medicine:
Starting at level 3 you use the magic of comedy to help your fellow man or woman feel better. When rolling a medicine check or attempting to patch up a teammate you can give them a bardic inspiration die plus your charisma modifier towards their hit points.
Strike of tragedy:
Starting at level 3 you turn to the dark side of comedy and performance, focusing on the tragic side of things. You can change your bardic inspiration die to strikes of tragedy die. Unlike bardic inspirations, strikes of tragedy remain a d6 no matter the level, strikes of tragedy affect a creature in 60 feet of you that can hear you. You can choose an ability score of a creature and roll a d6 to negatively affect its modifier (so for example, if a creature has a +3 strength and you roll a 2, their modifier would be a +1) for 30 seconds. A creature can make a saving throw with the affected ability score to get rid of the strike. A creature can only be affected by one strike of tragedy, however, after 30 seconds another strike could be placed on a creature.
Slave of laughter
At 6th level, you gain the ability to make a person laugh uncontrollably. As a bonus action , you cast hideous laughter, without expending a spell slot. Your words for a minute are fueled by humor, as if everything you’re saying is a joke, for 1 minute you’re able to cast this spell as a bonus action.
After this feature is used it can’t be used again till you finish a long rest.
Last laugh:
At 14th level, your horrible time has caught up to you at your worst moment. If your hit points drop to zero you’re able to use a reaction to cast finale without using a spell slot, before you fall unconscious. The finale spell does an extra 2d8 points of psychic damage if the targeted opponent is afflicted by a strike of tragedy. If the opponent dies, you don’t fall unconscious and are given 1 hit point and 1 bardic inspiration die. This ability can’t be used again until you finish a short or long rest.
Finale:
Level 5 enchantment
Casting time: 1 action
Range: 80 feet
Duration: instantaneous
Classes: bard
You focus your power down to a single point of your performance. Your opponent must make a charisma saving throw, on a fail your opponent takes 9d8 points of psychic damage. You can roll a performance check, if your check beats your spell save dc then you add 1d8 to the damage roll. After casting your knocked back 10 feet from the sheer power of your performance.
everything looks great except a:it does not get free vicous mockery b:it is a bit sporadic c:strikes of tragedy is a bit strong at 3rd level and a bit weak at 14
I was debating whether or not the class should focus more around strikes of tragedy. Could be that at level 6 you can apply another to a creature, at level 14 if you’re on the brink of death you can use finale and if the creature is under the affect of two strikes of tragedy and haven’t saved to remove them you’d get 4d8 to their finale.
or I could remove that portion of level 14 and replace it with something else.
also for how it’s pretty sporadic with the laughter is the best medicine down to last laugh, I thought to have the abilities gained kinda reference the wildness of comedy and its unpredictability lol
i think strikes of tragedy is just a bad mechanic in general (versatile score depletment is not something players are ever supposed to have) i would replace it with vicous mockery that deals your bi die damage and remove the strikes of tragedy part from 14 and replace it with a something else
How about having the strikes of comedy affect the bards spells, so they could add a strike of tragedy to a spells damage roll.
And for level 14 their finally is already empowered by a strike of tragedy, removing the impact it has on an opponents modifier, but acting like a buff to a spell. So if you casted a spell that does 1d8 and you’re a level 3 you can do an extra 1d6 points of damage with the strike of tragedy powering the spell.
How about having the strikes of comedy affect the bards spells, so they could add a strike of tragedy to a spells damage roll.
And for level 14 their finally is already empowered by a strike of tragedy, removing the impact it has on an opponents modifier, but acting like a buff to a spell. So if you casted a spell that does 1d8 and you’re a level 3 you can do an extra 1d6 points of damage with the strike of tragedy powering the spell.
that first one sounds great idea if we do that though we need it to scale with bi
Yeah, I would remove the portion where strikes of tragedy don’t scale with bardic inspiration.
maybe another 6th level portion could be that you can add two strikes of tragedy to a spell so it can scale up a bit better? And so it could make sense why the finale is empowered by 2 strikes of tragedy
Laughter, something you usually get once you tell a good joke to a crowd of people. Laughter is intoxicating, it can put people at ease—it’s as contagious as the plague! Comedy comes in many shapes and forms, people’s senses of humor are as unique as snowflakes, bards of the college of laughter know this very well and can tap into everyone’s sense of humor, however, they don’t all do this for the good of all, bards of this college see the good and the bad within art and performances, they value sock and buskin seeing them both as necessary for any performance, any good joke. When tragedy strikes, comedy is usually a great way to heal it and bring people closer together, these bards realize that and aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty in order to deliver.
Bards of the college of comedy can either be a great company, or a terrifying omen.
Laughters the best medicine:
Starting at level 3 you use the magic of comedy to help your fellow man or woman feel better. When rolling a medicine check or attempting to patch up a teammate you can give them a bardic inspiration die plus your charisma modifier towards their hit points.
Strike of tragedy:
Starting at level 3 you turn to the dark side of comedy and performance, focusing on the tragic side of things. You can change your bardic inspiration die to strikes of tragedy die. Strikes of tragedy scale up with bardic inspirations. You can use your reaction to cast a strike of tragedy to your damage roll on a spell or melee attack. (Ex. If you attack with a rapier, you add 1d6 to the damage roll) if an ally is within 30 feet of you and cast an attack you can see or react to, you can empower their attack with a strike of tragedy.
At level 6 your able to apply two strikes of tragedy to an attack. At 14th level you’re able to apply 3 strikes of tragedy to an attack.
Slave of laughter
At 6th level, you gain the ability to make a person laugh uncontrollably. As a bonus action , you cast hideous laughter, without expending a spell slot. Your words for a minute are fueled by humor, as if everything you’re saying is a joke, for 30 seconds you’re able to cast this spell as a bonus action.
After this feature is used it can’t be used again till you finish a long rest.
Last laugh:
At 14th level, your horrible time has caught up to you at your worst moment. If your hit points drop to zero you’re able to use a reaction to cast finale without using a spell slot, before you fall unconscious. The finale spell is empowered by two strikes of tragedy. If the opponent dies, you don’t fall unconscious and are given 1 hit point and 1 bardic inspiration die. This ability can’t be used again until you finish a short or long rest.
Finale:
Level 5 enchantment
Casting time: 1 action
Range: 80 feet
Duration: instantaneous
Classes: bard
You focus your power down to a single point of your performance. Your opponent must make a charisma saving throw, on a fail your opponent takes 9d8 points of psychic damage. On a save they take half damage. You can roll a performance check, if your check beats your spell save dc then you add 1d8 to the damage roll. After casting your knocked back 10 feet from the sheer power of your performance.
Hey there. The ideas you have here really do add a flair of the dramatic to the bard, which is something I imagine a lot of players would enjoy roleplaying! I would enjoy Strikes of Tragedy for that reason alone, as the bard would narrate a fighter's relatively low roll to suddenly deal 6 more damage, gravely wounding a foe with a seemingly shallow strike. Great stuff.
There's four main things I'd like to give feedback on:
The first is that your wording and formatting could use some work. It'd make the class and features a lot easier to read. You don't have to be perfect, even WotC has editors to help out with that, but take a look at the style guide if you can spare the time.
Laughter is the Best Medicine Again falls off pretty hard as the party gains more spell slots and magical healing becomes more available. The first features are usually the core of a subclass, so this feels like a bit of a waste.
Last Laugh. At 14th level, your spell save, assuming 20 CHA, is 18. If you used expertise on performance, however, you will only need to roll a 3 or higher to make that check. Whenever your proficiency bonus goes up, your spell save DC goes up by 1 and your performance (if expertise) goes up by 2, so you can roll a natural 1 and succeed at 17th level. You might want to consider changing that roll to feel more meaningful.
While most of the time you wouldn't want to plan your strategy around dropping to 0, personally, I'd limit the feature to once per long rest to avoid suicide bombing shenanigans, as a free 11d8 (49.5 average) psychic damage on a CHA save is nothing to sneeze at.
Lastly one minor thing. This is personal taste, so take the following with a grain of salt. I'm somewhat averse to using reactions on your own turn. In light of being often played as a support class, Strike of Tragedy feels to me like it'd be more interesting thematically and mechanically to only apply to others their attacks.
Thank you for the reply! I’ll definitely be taking this to consideration. I’ll probably change laughters the best medicine to something like, you can choose one person, make a performance check to beat your own DC, if they do then the person who needs the healing, heals the full hit die, so they don’t have to roll for a potion, they’d get the max amount or something like that.
as for the last laugh and the finale spell, I could change it so it’s a straight charisma roll. Or change it up entirely and have them roll a d20 for a random affect to happen 16-20 could have the extra damage.
Hey there. The ideas you have here really do add a flair of the dramatic to the bard, which is something I imagine a lot of players would enjoy roleplaying! I would enjoy Strikes of Tragedy for that reason alone, as the bard would narrate a fighter's relatively low roll to suddenly deal 6 more damage, gravely wounding a foe with a seemingly shallow strike. Great stuff.
There's four main things I'd like to give feedback on:
The first is that your wording and formatting could use some work. It'd make the class and features a lot easier to read. You don't have to be perfect, even WotC has editors to help out with that, but take a look at the style guide if you can spare the time.
Laughter is the Best Medicine Again falls off pretty hard as the party gains more spell slots and magical healing becomes more available. The first features are usually the core of a subclass, so this feels like a bit of a waste.
Last Laugh. At 14th level, your spell save, assuming 20 CHA, is 18. If you used expertise on performance, however, you will only need to roll a 3 or higher to make that check. Whenever your proficiency bonus goes up, your spell save DC goes up by 1 and your performance (if expertise) goes up by 2, so you can roll a natural 1 and succeed at 17th level. You might want to consider changing that roll to feel more meaningful.
While most of the time you wouldn't want to plan your strategy around dropping to 0, personally, I'd limit the feature to once per long rest to avoid suicide bombing shenanigans, as a free 11d8 (49.5 average) psychic damage on a CHA save is nothing to sneeze at.
Lastly one minor thing. This is personal taste, so take the following with a grain of salt. I'm somewhat averse to using reactions on your own turn. In light of being often played as a support class, Strike of Tragedy feels to me like it'd be more interesting thematically and mechanically to only apply to others their attacks.
Those are my 2 cents, good luck with finetuning!
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Hiraeth!
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I’m home-brewing a bard college called the “college of comedy” it was a thought I’ve had for some time; even more after playing darkest dungeons, so I decided to final start writing things down, and a spell to go along with it! I was hoping to kinda post what I have down and get some feedback before I fully commit and make a it a full subclass. If anyone is willing to take a look just reply! I’ll send everything I got lol.
Hiraeth!
i would like to take a look at this bard subclass
Check out my homebrew subclasses spells magic items feats monsters races
i am a sauce priest
help create a world here
Laughter, something you usually get once you tell a good joke to a crowd of people. Laughter is intoxicating, it can put people at ease—it’s as contagious as the plague! Comedy comes in many shapes and forms, people’s senses of humor are as unique as snowflakes, bards of the college of laughter know this very well and can tap into everyone’s sense of humor, however, they don’t all do this for the good of all, bards of this college see the good and the bad within art and performances, they value sock and buskin seeing them both as necessary for any performance, any good joke. When tragedy strikes, comedy is usually a great way to heal it and bring people closer together, these bards realize that and aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty in order to deliver.
Bards of the college of comedy can either be a great company, or a terrifying omen.
Laughters the best medicine:
Starting at level 3 you use the magic of comedy to help your fellow man or woman feel better. When rolling a medicine check or attempting to patch up a teammate you can give them a bardic inspiration die plus your charisma modifier towards their hit points.
Strike of tragedy:
Starting at level 3 you turn to the dark side of comedy and performance, focusing on the tragic side of things. You can change your bardic inspiration die to strikes of tragedy die. Unlike bardic inspirations, strikes of tragedy remain a d6 no matter the level, strikes of tragedy affect a creature in 60 feet of you that can hear you. You can choose an ability score of a creature and roll a d6 to negatively affect its modifier (so for example, if a creature has a +3 strength and you roll a 2, their modifier would be a +1) for 30 seconds. A creature can make a saving throw with the affected ability score to get rid of the strike. A creature can only be affected by one strike of tragedy, however, after 30 seconds another strike could be placed on a creature.
Slave of laughter
At 6th level, you gain the ability to make a person laugh uncontrollably. As a bonus action , you cast hideous laughter, without expending a spell slot. Your words for a minute are fueled by humor, as if everything you’re saying is a joke, for 1 minute you’re able to cast this spell as a bonus action.
After this feature is used it can’t be used again till you finish a long rest.
Last laugh:
At 14th level, your horrible time has caught up to you at your worst moment. If your hit points drop to zero you’re able to use a reaction to cast finale without using a spell slot, before you fall unconscious. The finale spell does an extra 2d8 points of psychic damage if the targeted opponent is afflicted by a strike of tragedy. If the opponent dies, you don’t fall unconscious and are given 1 hit point and 1 bardic inspiration die. This ability can’t be used again until you finish a short or long rest.
Finale:
Level 5 enchantment
Casting time: 1 action
Range: 80 feet
Duration: instantaneous
Classes: bard
You focus your power down to a single point of your performance. Your opponent must make a charisma saving throw, on a fail your opponent takes 9d8 points of psychic damage. You can roll a performance check, if your check beats your spell save dc then you add 1d8 to the damage roll. After casting your knocked back 10 feet from the sheer power of your performance.
Hiraeth!
everything looks great except a:it does not get free vicous mockery b:it is a bit sporadic c:strikes of tragedy is a bit strong at 3rd level and a bit weak at 14
Check out my homebrew subclasses spells magic items feats monsters races
i am a sauce priest
help create a world here
I was debating whether or not the class should focus more around strikes of tragedy. Could be that at level 6 you can apply another to a creature, at level 14 if you’re on the brink of death you can use finale and if the creature is under the affect of two strikes of tragedy and haven’t saved to remove them you’d get 4d8 to their finale.
or I could remove that portion of level 14 and replace it with something else.
also for how it’s pretty sporadic with the laughter is the best medicine down to last laugh, I thought to have the abilities gained kinda reference the wildness of comedy and its unpredictability lol
Hiraeth!
i think strikes of tragedy is just a bad mechanic in general (versatile score depletment is not something players are ever supposed to have) i would replace it with vicous mockery that deals your bi die damage and remove the strikes of tragedy part from 14 and replace it with a something else
Check out my homebrew subclasses spells magic items feats monsters races
i am a sauce priest
help create a world here
How about having the strikes of comedy affect the bards spells, so they could add a strike of tragedy to a spells damage roll.
And for level 14 their finally is already empowered by a strike of tragedy, removing the impact it has on an opponents modifier, but acting like a buff to a spell. So if you casted a spell that does 1d8 and you’re a level 3 you can do an extra 1d6 points of damage with the strike of tragedy powering the spell.
Hiraeth!
that first one sounds great idea if we do that though we need it to scale with bi
Check out my homebrew subclasses spells magic items feats monsters races
i am a sauce priest
help create a world here
Yeah, I would remove the portion where strikes of tragedy don’t scale with bardic inspiration.
maybe another 6th level portion could be that you can add two strikes of tragedy to a spell so it can scale up a bit better? And so it could make sense why the finale is empowered by 2 strikes of tragedy
Hiraeth!
Laughter, something you usually get once you tell a good joke to a crowd of people. Laughter is intoxicating, it can put people at ease—it’s as contagious as the plague! Comedy comes in many shapes and forms, people’s senses of humor are as unique as snowflakes, bards of the college of laughter know this very well and can tap into everyone’s sense of humor, however, they don’t all do this for the good of all, bards of this college see the good and the bad within art and performances, they value sock and buskin seeing them both as necessary for any performance, any good joke. When tragedy strikes, comedy is usually a great way to heal it and bring people closer together, these bards realize that and aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty in order to deliver.
Bards of the college of comedy can either be a great company, or a terrifying omen.
Laughters the best medicine:
Starting at level 3 you use the magic of comedy to help your fellow man or woman feel better. When rolling a medicine check or attempting to patch up a teammate you can give them a bardic inspiration die plus your charisma modifier towards their hit points.
Strike of tragedy:
Starting at level 3 you turn to the dark side of comedy and performance, focusing on the tragic side of things. You can change your bardic inspiration die to strikes of tragedy die. Strikes of tragedy scale up with bardic inspirations. You can use your reaction to cast a strike of tragedy to your damage roll on a spell or melee attack. (Ex. If you attack with a rapier, you add 1d6 to the damage roll) if an ally is within 30 feet of you and cast an attack you can see or react to, you can empower their attack with a strike of tragedy.
At level 6 your able to apply two strikes of tragedy to an attack. At 14th level you’re able to apply 3 strikes of tragedy to an attack.
Slave of laughter
At 6th level, you gain the ability to make a person laugh uncontrollably. As a bonus action , you cast hideous laughter, without expending a spell slot. Your words for a minute are fueled by humor, as if everything you’re saying is a joke, for 30 seconds you’re able to cast this spell as a bonus action.
After this feature is used it can’t be used again till you finish a long rest.
Last laugh:
At 14th level, your horrible time has caught up to you at your worst moment. If your hit points drop to zero you’re able to use a reaction to cast finale without using a spell slot, before you fall unconscious. The finale spell is empowered by two strikes of tragedy. If the opponent dies, you don’t fall unconscious and are given 1 hit point and 1 bardic inspiration die. This ability can’t be used again until you finish a short or long rest.
Finale:
Level 5 enchantment
Casting time: 1 action
Range: 80 feet
Duration: instantaneous
Classes: bard
You focus your power down to a single point of your performance. Your opponent must make a charisma saving throw, on a fail your opponent takes 9d8 points of psychic damage. On a save they take half damage. You can roll a performance check, if your check beats your spell save dc then you add 1d8 to the damage roll. After casting your knocked back 10 feet from the sheer power of your performance.
Hiraeth!
Hey there. The ideas you have here really do add a flair of the dramatic to the bard, which is something I imagine a lot of players would enjoy roleplaying! I would enjoy Strikes of Tragedy for that reason alone, as the bard would narrate a fighter's relatively low roll to suddenly deal 6 more damage, gravely wounding a foe with a seemingly shallow strike. Great stuff.
There's four main things I'd like to give feedback on:
Lastly one minor thing. This is personal taste, so take the following with a grain of salt. I'm somewhat averse to using reactions on your own turn. In light of being often played as a support class, Strike of Tragedy feels to me like it'd be more interesting thematically and mechanically to only apply to others their attacks.
Those are my 2 cents, good luck with finetuning!
Homebrew creations:
Path of the Feral Trance Barbarian Class | Thread
Wyrmforge Artificer Class | Thread
Thank you for the reply! I’ll definitely be taking this to consideration. I’ll probably change laughters the best medicine to something like, you can choose one person, make a performance check to beat your own DC, if they do then the person who needs the healing, heals the full hit die, so they don’t have to roll for a potion, they’d get the max amount or something like that.
as for the last laugh and the finale spell, I could change it so it’s a straight charisma roll. Or change it up entirely and have them roll a d20 for a random affect to happen 16-20 could have the extra damage.
Hiraeth!
Hiraeth!