Bard - College of Blades
Quick-Draw Dagger, by Ovidio Cartagena
The College of Blades is for the most daring performers, artists of the sword and dagger who dazzle and entertain with deadly displays.
The College of Blades is for daredevils, the sort of performers who juggle knives or swallow swords just to see if they can. They can puncture their foes with a surprise dagger throw, hurl a fan of knives, and expend some of their magical power to fuel their stunning bladework.
Design-wise: There are two big experiments here in the design. The first is in Knife Master - the College of Blades can attack with the average of their Dexterity and Charisma modifiers. This obviously isn't as powerful as making the subclass fully single-attribute-dependent, but it helps mitigate the struggle of needing both high Dex and high Cha to function - generally their attack rolls and DCs will stay about 1 behind the party. To me, this feels like an acceptable trade for the versatility of being a full caster who can hold their own with weapons. The other big experiment is in Blade Tricks - this bard doesn't expend Bardic Inspiration to do cool things, they expend spell slots. Personally I think this is a great fix; a pseudo-martial bard who spends their BI on their subclass features winds up being a full caster with some martial bits, and not much bard. Spending spell slots instead leaves them with their fully supply of bard tools, but properly trades off spell power for martial fun.
As always, if you want to discuss this subclass or see early previews of new ones, come talk about it on Discord.
