REINTRODUCING BARDS

Fall in love with bards all over again with this major rules expansion for the whimsical and musically inclined. Explore seven new bard subclasses with the colleges of brass, the crank, crystal, hellfire, the open road, souls, and the sewer. Expand your repertoire with six new cantrips and ten new spells, all perfect for bards—and enjoy updated spell lists for other spellcasters featuring the new spellcasting options. Unearth tons of new roll tables filled to bursting with suggestions for further customizing your bard and truly making them your own. Unlock two new backgrounds, the barfly and the standard bearer, perfect for bards. And reveal universal bard characteristics, a bard class kit, new equipment and feats, a bard-specific trinket chart, a system for creating your bard's professional persona, new rules for using expertise, and much more besides. Essentially, we've included everything we could think of to improve the experience of creating and playing bard characters from the perspective of players, game masters, and game designers ourselves.

WHAT'S INCLUDED?

• The bard class, reprinted in full, along with its SRD subclass, the college of lore—plus seven unique subclasses for the bard:
  • College of Brass. Disciplined & orderly, possessing a deep understanding of military tradition. They learn how to direct, command, & bolster their allies in combat.
  • College of the Crank. Enterprising & eccentric street performers who master the art of playing the barrel organ & perform alongside an able assistant. They train an animal to aid in their performances & distract their foes—art and statistics are provided for nine actors used to play bards of this subclass.
  • College of Crystal. Unorthodox & mysterious, they learn to play songs using ultrasonic crystals that produce sounds undetectable to most humanoids. Through the use of their crystal, they are able to enhance both their spellcasting & bardic abilities.
  • College of Hellfire. Maligned & mistrusted fiendish tiefling musicians & deal-brokers with a hellish allure. They learn how to prepare binding soul contracts, greater channel the hellfire that burns within them, & even protect their allies from all kinds of flames.
  • College of the Open Road. Worldly & well-traveled travellers that cover vast distances, either patrolling or escorting others through an enormous area they know well or else bravely marching into unknown territory. They master several abilities useful during travel, both to speed up a journey & to assist in establishing camps for rest & respite.
  • College of Souls. Esoteric & bizarre hardcore musicians who typically live a rock-&-roll lifestyle & share a kinship with the undead. They learn to summon spectral instruments, converse & entertain the deceased, briefly depart the mortal coil, & even capture souls to protect them or see to their resurrection.
  • College of the Sewer. Odious & odd vermin masters, able to both conjure vermin from thin air and influence those they encounter in the dark and dank places of the world. They learn to summon & control increasingly dangerous swarms of vermin, & exert influence over any swarms they encounter in their travels—art and statistics are provided for three actors used to play bards of this subclass.
• Exquisitely detailed background and lore information about the class, including lavish vignettes depicting archetypal bards, numerous tables and charts, and new spells and feats.
• Tons of bonus materials, including helpful advice, a levelling guide, two new backgrounds—the Barfly and the Standard Bearer—, universal bard traits, a trinket chart, a class kit, a pre-generated character.

Outclassed: Bard Revisited revisits a beloved class for the 5th Edition of the world's oldest roleplaying game and expands and improves upon it in almost every conceivable way.