College of Hard Knocks

Not all bards enjoy the privilege of formal instruction. For slaves, prisoners, sailors, and other members of the working class, the "College of Hard Knocks" represents the only path to minstreldom. Weathered by experience and schooled by life's harshest lessons, these individuals will write and perform work songs, union anthems, sea shanties, and field hollers to rally their kinsmen.

Rarely will one of these bards hide away to ponder the higher mysteries of the arcane. Instead, choosing to live amongst, work with, and stand beside their fellow commoners, they are guided by the collective heartbeat of the downtrodden.

All credit to u/Jaekbad for the subclass from the Unearthed Arcana Subreddit.

Blue Collar Bard

You gain Proficiency with medium armor, shields, one artisan's tool of your choice, and with either vehicles (land) or vehicles (water). At 3rd or 10th level, you can grant one or both of these tool proficiencies the benefits of your Expertise feature, rather than granting it to one or two of your skill proficiencies.

At the discretion of the DM, whenever you make a Charisma check against someone familiar with the use of on of these tools, you can use your proficiency with that tool in place of the a skill proficiency. For example, a dockworker or a deckhand's wife would be familiar with the use of vehicles (water), while a carriage driver would be familiar with the use of vehicles (land).

Solidarity Forever

Also at 3rd level, you resolve to always stand with others. Whenever you use the Help action to aid an ally's ability check or aid an ally in attacking a creature, that ally or the target of the attack can be within 30 feet of you, rather than within 5 feet of you, if it can hear you.

In addition, if you use your action to Help an ally's check or attack, you can expend a use of your Bardic Inspiration as part of the same action. When you do so, you grant the ally a Bardic Inspiration die, and before the start of your next turn, it can choose to add the die's maximum possible result to the attack roll or ability check you are helping it with, respectively. Once the ally uses the Bardic Inspiration die in this way, it is lost.

 

 

Rallying Chorus

At 6th level, as a Bonus Action, you can launch into a heartening work song to drive your comrades through hardship. Each work song can last for up to 10 minutes or until you are silenced, requires your concentration as if you were concentrating on a spell, and can only affect a number of Allies of your choice equal to your Charisma modifier (minimum of 1) at any give time.

While within 60 feet of you, affected allies able to hear your work song can ignore the effects of difficult terrain, and their speeds can't be reduced by spells or magical effects, except to 0. Once per round, each of these allies can also ignore disadvantage on one of their attack rolls, saving throws, or ability checks.

Once you have used this feature, you cannot do so again until you finish a short or long rest.

 

Layman's Lore

By 14th level, you can effortlessly bring your work songs to mind. Singing a work song using your Rallying Chorus feature no longer requires your concentration, and during your work songs, affected allies have advantage on their Constitution saving throws.

In addition, whenever an ally adds on of your Bardic Inspiration dice to a roll while it can see you, it gains temporary hit points equal to the result on the Bardic Inspiration die + your Charisma modifier (minimum of 1). These temporary hit points last for up to 1 hour.