The College of Blades Class for Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) Fifth Edition (5e)

Base Class: Bard

Bards of the College of Blades entertain through daring feats of weapon prowess. These Bards perform stunts such as sword swallowing, knife throwing and juggling, and mock combats. Though they use their weapons to entertain, they are also highly trained and skilled warriors in their own right.

Their talent with weapons inspires many to lead double lives. One might use a circus troupe as cover for nefarious deeds such as assassination, robbery, and blackmail. Others strike at the wicked, bringing justice to bear against the cruel and powerful. Most troupes are happy to accept a blade master's talent for the excitement it adds to a performance, but few entertainers fully trust one in their ranks.

Bards of the College of Blades who abandon their lives as entertainers have often run into trouble that makes maintaining their secret activities impossible. Being caught stealing or engaging in vigilante justice is too great a liability for most troupes. With their weapon skills and magic, some take up work as enforcers for thieves’ guilds or strike out on their own as adventurers.

Level 3: Blades Training

You gain proficiency with Rapiers, Scimitars, and Shortswords. You can use a melee weapon you're proficient with as a Spellcasting Focus to cast spells from your Bard spell list.

You also gain proficiency in either Acrobatics or Performance. If you have proficiency in both, choose another skill to gain proficiency in.

Acrobatics Proficiency

You have proficiency in the Acrobatics skill.

Performance Proficiency

You have proficiency in the Performance skill.

Proficiency: Other

You have proficiency in another skill of your choice.

Level 3: Fighting Style

You adopt a style of fighting as your specialty. Choose one of the following options. You can’t take a Fighting Style option more than once, even if something in the game lets you choose again.

Dueling

When you are wielding a melee weapon in one hand and no other weapons, you gain a +2 bonus to damage rolls with that weapon.

Thrown Weapon Fighting

When you hit with a ranged attack roll using a weapon that has the Thrown property, you gain a +2 bonus to the damage roll.

Two-Weapon Fighting

When you engage in two-weapon fighting, you can add your ability modifier to the damage of the second attack.

Level 3: Jack of All Blades

Whenever you finish a Long Rest, you can forgo the half Proficiency Bonus granted by your Jack of All Trades feature, and instead choose to focus your mind on your training with bladed weapons of all kinds. Doing so grants you the following benefits until your next Long Rest.

Active

You have proficiency with all Piercing and Slashing melee weapons except for Morningstars, War Picks, and Whips.
You can use any Piercing or Slashing melee weapon with which you are proficient as if it had the Finesse property.
You are able to use the mastery properties of two kinds of melee weapons of your choice with which you have proficiency.

Level 3: Blade Flourish

You learn to conduct impressive, mystifying displays of martial prowess. Once during each of your turns, when you attack a creature using a melee weapon with which you're proficient, you can expend one use of your Bardic Inspiration to deal bonus damage to the target, whether you hit or not. The damage equals the number you rolled on the Bardic Inspiration die, and can be either Psychic damage or the weapon's normal damage type (your choice). You can also choose one of the following additional effects.

Defensive Flourish. You add the number rolled on your Bardic Inspiration die to your Armor Class and Dexterity saving throws until the start of your next turn.
Slashing Flourish. You also deal the bonus damage to any other creatures of your choice within melee attack range, and being within 5 feet of an enemy doesn’t impose Disadvantage on your ranged attack rolls with spells or thrown weapons until the end of your turn.
Mobile Flourish. You push the target up to 5 feet away from you, plus a number of feet equal to the number you rolled on your Bardic Inspiration die. Until the end of your turn, your walking speed also increases by 10 feet, and you don't provoke Opportunity Attacks.

Level 6: Extra Attack

You can attack twice instead of once whenever you take the Attack action on your turn.

When you use your Action to cast a spell using a melee weapon with which you're proficient, you can use your Bonus Action to make a Blade Flourish against a creature that is within melee attack range.

Level 14: Master’s Flourish

When you use a Blade Flourish, add your proficiency bonus to the damage dealt.

Additionally, the rules for knocking out a creature can apply to your Blade Flourishes and thrown weapon attacks in addition to melee attacks.

Previous Versions

Name	Date Modified	Views	Adds	Version	Actions
College of Blades	3/2/2026 8:03:24 PM	1	0	Swords 2024.3	Coming Soon
College of Blades	3/13/2026 2:15:50 PM	15	2	Swords 2024.4	Coming Soon
College of Blades	5/19/2026 9:12:18 PM	32	5	Swords 2024.5	Coming Soon

BucklingSwashes

Comments

BucklingSwashes
- Acolyte
- Join Date: 11/8/2020
- Posts: 18
- Member Details
#3 BucklingSwashes

View User Profile

Send Message

Posted May 19, 2026
Hey gang! This is my latest take on an updated version of the College of Swords Bard, to better fit within the new 2024 ruleset. This latest update still has the same basic goals in mind as my earlier updated version, albeit with some balance changes to make it a bit less overpowered while also allowing for more weapon options. To summarize the main goals of this updated subclass:

Further separate College of Swords from both College of Valor and College of Dance, by further improving weapon use while keeping it restricted to bladed Finesse weapons.

Allow for spellcasting without taking away from that focus on weapon use.

Incorporate some of the updated 2024 rules.

With that said, here's a brief summary of the changes I made and some explanations for why.

Updated the subclass name to College of Blades. It always seemed odd to me that this subclass was specifically named for swords despite the description suggesting that a focus on dagger tricks would be appropriate. We're correcting that here to help set the stage for more playstyles!

Updated the subclass description to mesh with the updated name, and updated feature descriptions as needed for changes and/or improved clarity.

Added proficiency for Rapiers and Shortswords. It felt most appropriate to give proficiency for all bladed Finesse weapons. Daggers are already there with the existing Simple Weapons proficiency for Bards, but adding Rapiers and Shortswords (on top of the original Scimitar proficiency) ensures we cover all Finesse blade options.

Removed Medium Armor proficiency. This never felt quite right to me for the subclass, and taking it away gives Valor a specific advantage in armor options and keeping the focus of College of Blades on mobility and pure weapon talent.

Added an additional skill proficiency (Acrobatics, Performance, or any other skill if you have those already). Another way to set this apart from Valor, while also befitting the original subclass description of a talented showman.

Added Thrown Weapon Fighting as an option for Fighting Style. Again, feels obvious based on the subclass description. Now you can play a knife-juggling hotshot.

Added two Weapon Masteries. These feel sorely underused in the current 2024 ruleset already simply because so few classes have access to them. Considering that this Bard is expected to be a maestro of their chosen weapons, I felt it would be especially appropriate to introduce this as an option, again separating this from College of Valor.
NEW: Added a new feature, Jack of All Blades. After a Long Rest, can ignore the skill check bonus from Jack of All Trades. You instead gain proficiency with all bladed melee weapons, can wield all of them as if they had the Finesse property, and are able to use Mastery properties of up to two melee weapons. The name of this feature was just too good not to make it a thing. I wanted to give Blades Bards a way to wield more types of weapons effectively, especially if they wanted an axe-wielding or even greatsword-wielding playstyle. You must switch this feature to "Active" in your Features list to gain the benefits. Note that this does NOT remove STR requirements for wielding Heavy weapons, though!

Updated Blade Flourish to no longer require hitting the target. Arguably the biggest and most controversial change, but one I felt was necessary to help make this subclass more viable in combat long-term while also ensuring that a later change to the Extra Attack feature would be implemented sensibly. Blade Flourishes have always been the standout feature of this subclass, and I wanted them to be able to be an effective use of Bardic Inspiration without forcing the player to dump fully into Dexterity or multiclass.

Blade Flourish can now do either Psychic or normal weapon damage. A simple change, but one to help sell the idea that Blade Flourishes are a display of skill meant to astonish and confuse enemies, not necessarily directly attack them.
NOTE: Blade Flourishes now specify that they must be made with a MELEE weapon. This was intended in the previous version but I wanted to be sure it was clear in the descriptions. This further separates Blades from College of Valor by restricting their flourishes to melee weapons. No BG3-style hand crossbow antics here.

Removed the general speed bonus when activating Blade Flourish, instead restricting it to Mobile Flourish. This is partly to further differentiate the subclass from College of Dance, and partly to just simplify Blade Flourish abilities in general so that they aren't so confusing to explain/use during play. Now, Blade Flourishes simply add the bonus damage, and the type of Flourish you choose adds the additional effects.

Added a Dexterity save bonus to Defensive Flourish. Defensive Flourish has always been a solid choice, but making it focused strictly on AC kept it from being effective against spells or other area damage effects. It felt appropriate to add this so that it's more useful in more types of scenarios.

Removed the "immediately move to target" aspect from Mobile Flourish, and replaced it with ignoring Opportunity Attacks against creatures you attack. With the 2024 update to the Mobile Feat (now Speedy) removing the way to avoid Opportunity Attacks, I felt adding that as an aspect of Mobile Flourish felt especially appropriate. However, I removed the ability to immediately move to the pushed target; the bonus speed and method of avoiding Opportunity Attacks already allows that, and it made more sense to me for the user to be able to utilize that extra 10 feet of movement in more varied ways instead of essentially requiring them to move to the pushed target to make the most of the ability.

For Extra Attack, added the ability to take a Bonus Action to Blade Flourish against nearby enemies when spellcasting using your weapon. This is College of Blades' response to Valor's cantrip/spell + weapon attack option or Dance's Agile Strike unarmed attacks. Being able to use your weapons to cast spells suggests that the actual act of spellcasting would be a flourish of sorts, so I wanted to add a way to make spellcasting a viable option with the subclass instead of restricting the player to weapon attacks to use the Blade Flourishes.

Updated Master's Flourish to add your proficiency bonus. With all of the ways to regain Bardic Inspiration in the 2024 rules, the old Master's Flourish just didn't feel worthwhile. This just gives a simple, flat damage increase to your flourishes.
NEW: The wording has been updated so that this no longer adds your proficiency bonus to the additional effects of your flourishes, which made Defensive Flourish much stronger than intended.

Master's Flourish also adds the option of knocking out enemies with your Blade Flourishes or thrown weapons. Another minor addition but again, a way to make this subclass feel a bit more unique and allow for more playstyles. At this point, your flourishes and blade skills are so impressive that you can disable creatures without outright killing them, so you no longer have to restrict yourself to standard melee attacks to render a target unconscious.

A couple of quick notes regarding the implementation:

Skill choice for Blades Training includes options for Acrobatics, Performance, or "Other", even if you don't have either of the initial two options already; there wasn't a good way to incorporate a restriction into the builder, so you can theoretically choose any skill, but this at least allows you to select a skill within the UI instead of having to add one manually within the character sheet.

Blade Flourish options are all available in the character sheet as actions under the "Other" category, with their full descriptions, and with dice rolls that properly scale based on Bardic Inspiration dice and the eventual Master's Flourish upgrade. Nice!

Homebrew options didn't allow me to automatically disable the skill check bonus from Jack of All Trades while the Jack of All Blades feature is set to Active, but you can do so manually in your character sheet by setting the Skill Proficiency Level of each of your non-proficient skills to "Non-Proficient".

Anyway, please enjoy, and absolutely chime in with your opinions!
Rollback Post to Revision RollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.