College of Metal

Bards of the College of Metal are known for their electrifying energy and thunderous voices that even give banshees a run for their money. They can imbue themselves and their listeners with adrenaline fueled aggression to hit harder when in battle.

These bards typically play as part of a band, including, a drummer, a bassist, a rhythm guitarist, a lead guitarist and a singer but sometimes like to "go solo" and leave a band to join other adventurers. 

Some say that the genre of music played by bards from the College of Metal is, "The Devils Music." This is likely due to its aggressive nature in comparison to the more well known and contemporary bard style of music. Unfortunately this claim is more substantiated as many of these bards make pacts with powerful beings, usually of fiendish origin, in the hope to further increase their magical and musical prowess.

Bonus Proficiencies

3rd-level College of Metal feature

You gain proficiency with medium and heavy armor, as well as martial weapons. 

No bard can call themselves a true metalhead unless they have earned the right to wield an instrumental weapon. Bards of the College of Metal are given their own instrumental weapon upon graduation but sometimes these instruments are broken beyond repair, lost or stolen. In such cases, you can craft a new instrumental weapon. This process takes 4 hours and costs 30gp in materials. The instrumental weapon can take on the form of any single instrument and weapon you are proficient with. Additionally, you can use it as a spellcasting focus for your bard spells.

[To add an Instrumental Weapon, customise any weapon/s you have equipped or in your inventory and rename them, e.g. Greataxe Guitar, Longsword Bass, Club (x2) Drumsticks.]

Inspiring Aggression

3rd-level College of Metal feature

You learn to amplify your Bardic Inspiration with static electricity as you shred on your Instrumental Weapon. Whenever you give a creature a Bardic Inspiration die, the sound of your music continues to play in the creature’s mind, filling them with adrenaline fueled aggression. This effect can be seen as the creature visibly headbangs while tiny bolts of red lightning streak from the creature’s eyes, and lasts until the Bardic Inspiration die is lost. 

Immediately after the creature rolls the Bardic Inspiration die to add it to an attack roll against a target and hits, it is overwhelmed by the sheer might of your metal and strikes its target with tremendous speed and force. The target takes additional lightning damage equal to the number rolled on the Bardic Inspiration die.

Thunderous Metal

3rd-level College of Metal feature

You gain the ability to infuse your instrumental weapon attacks with thunder by cranking up the volume to 11. You learn the booming blade cantrip, which doesn’t count against the number of bard cantrips you know. Additionally when you cast booming blade using this feature, your instrumental weapon attacks score a critical hit on a roll of 11 or 20.

Deafening Scream

6th-level College of Metal feature 

As an action, you can expend one use of your Bardic Inspiration to let out powerful scream that emits a 30-foot cone of deafening sound. Each creature in that area must make a Strength saving throw against your spell save DC. On a failed save, a creature takes 2d8 thunder damage, is pushed 10 feet away from you, knocked prone and is deafened until the beginning of it's next turn. On a successful save, the creature takes half as much damage and isn't pushed or knocked prone.

Unsecured objects that are completely within the area of effect are automatically pushed 10 feet away from you and any nonmagical, glass or crystal objects in the area also take maximum damage.

The thunder damage increases when you reach certain levels in this class, increasing to 4d8 at 12th level and 6d8 at 18th level.

Mosh Pit

14th-level College of Metal feature

You break out in an epic instrumental solo, drawing the attention of all that can hear you and sending a chosen few in to a chaotic, metal induced madness.

As an action, you can choose a point within 60 feet and unleash a burst of pure metal that creates a 30-foot radius Mosh Pit that lasts for 1 minute or until your concentration ends (as if you were concentrating on a spell).

Creatures that you choose within this area must make a Intelligence saving throw against your spell save DC. On a failed save, a creature loses the ability to distinguish friend from foe, regarding all creatures it can see as enemies until the effect ends. Each time an affected creature takes damage, it can repeat the saving throw, ending the effect on itself on a success.

An affected creature must use its action to make a melee weapon attack against the closest creature to it. If there are multiple creatures equally close, it must choose the target at random from among the creatures it can see within range. If an enemy provokes an opportunity attack from an affected creature, the creature must make that attack if it is able to.

Once you use this feature, you can’t do so again until you finish a short or long rest.