College of Dance

Bards of the College of Dance seek to master their own bodies. Far more athletic than most, they seek out styles of dance from around the world and combine them into their own routines in order to impress others. Many such dances they learn are also based in the same martial arts that monks learn, making these bards deadly even when unarmed and unarmored- a situation they are not unfamiliar with.

Dancer's Body

At 3rd level, your practice of dancing gives you mastery of combat styles that use unarmed strikes and dancing weapons, which are any melee weapons that don’t have the two-handed or heavy properties. Additionally, you gain proficiency with the scimitar. You gain the following benefits while you are unarmed or wielding only dancing weapons and you aren’t wearing armor:

• While you are wearing no armor and not wielding a shield, your AC equals 10 + your Dexterity modifier + your Charisma modifier.
• You can use Dexterity instead of Strength for the attack and damage rolls of your unarmed strikes.
• You can roll a d4 in place of the normal damage of your unarmed strike. This die changes as you gain Bard levels, as shown in the Unarmed Strike column of the College of Dance table.
• You can use a dancing weapon you are proficient in as a spellcasting focus for your Bard spells

Battledance

You can only enter a Battledance while you are unarmored or wearing light armor, and you are not wielding a weapon that is not a dancing weapon. Your Battledance ends early if you are incapacitated, or if you equip medium or heavy armor or a weapon with the heavy or two-handed properties. It also ends early you are unable to move 5 or more feet on your turn and you do not make an attack against another creature, but if you fulfill one of these two conditions, your Battledance continues.

While your Battledance is active, you gain the following benefits:

• You can use your bonus action to take the dash or disengage actions.
• Your movement speed increases by 5 ft. This speed increases as you increase in level, as shown in the Movement Speed column of the College of Dance table.
• When you use the Attack action with an unarmed strike or a dancing weapon on your turn, you can make one unarmed strike as a bonus action. For example, if you take the Attack action and attack with a rapier, you can also make an unarmed strike as a bonus action, assuming you haven’t already taken a bonus action this turn.

Extra Attack

Starting at 6th level, you can attack twice, instead of once, whenever you take the Attack action on your turn.

Counterstep

Starting at 14th level, when a creature misses you with an attack, you can use your reaction to make a single attack with an unarmed strike or dancing weapon against them.