College of Valor Bard: D&D 2024 Optimisation Guide - Dungeon Mister (2024)

Fight with a flourish with the updated Valor bard for D&D 2024

At a glance

What’s changed for a Valor bard in D&D 2024?

Not a lot. You get the benefits of an updated bard class and a few small, but important tweaks to existing features which include:

• Bonus proficiencies: You can now use your weapon as a spellcasting focus
• Extra attack: You can now make one of your attacks using a cantrips
• Battle magic: You aren’t limited to just casting bard spells to use your bonus action attack

College of valor features

The features of a Valor bard enable them as solid combatants that can combine this with spellcasting and their bardic inspiration enhancements.

Bonus proficiencies – Lv3

How it works

Gain proficiency in medium armor, shields and martial weapons. You can also use your weapon as a spellcasting focus.

Tactics

This is challenging as in theory, you could make a strength bard viable by taking 14 dexterity and investing in strength. But with charisma and constitution also a priority, you just end up with too much of a spread of abilities.

The reality is, you’re just best dumping strength and sticking to a shield and a rapier which is a 1d8 finesse weapon anyway. Medium armor might help if you’ve not gotten your dexterity high enough yet (though this should probably be a focus for a Valor bard).

This means that in reality, if creating an optimal build, the best you get out of this is a shield. This remains solid as you’ll need the extra AC, but I’d avoid being too tempted by the fancy martial weapons.

Combat inspiration – Lv3

How it works

When you grant inspiration to an ally, they can now use your bardic inspiration die to add to the weapon damage they deal or to their AC against an attack.

Tactics

• These uses of bardic inspiration are even more useful offering additional usefulness in crucial rolls.
• They’re best handed to martials who will be making weapon attacks and likely taking a lot of attacks too.
• The best use of your bardic inspiration is likely down to the enemy being fought. Against Spellcasters and enemies that don’t do high damage (especially with a single attack, like a monk) then more damage is best. Against high damage enemies (like rogues or even just big nasty beasts) avoiding a hit from an attack will be best.

Extra attack – Lv6

How it works

You can make an extra attack when you use the attack action. You can choose to replace one of these attacks with the casting of a cantrip with a casting time of an action.

Tactics

• Great ability that at a basic level, means you can just attack again and deal more damage to your foes.
• Adding cantrips into the mix is where things get interesting. Your cantrips scale in damage much better than your attacks will so you should always look to use a cantrip where you can. You can do this with ranged cantrips or melee ones depending on how you want to play.
• Thunderclap is one of your best options from the bard spell list and can damage multiple enemies at once. You want to avoid getting surrounded though so thankfully, bards do now get another damage dealing cantrip in the form of starry wisp so you don’t need to invade other classes’ spells lists for some of these.

Battle magic – Lv14

How it works

When you cast a spell with an action, you can use your bonus action to also make a weapon attack.

Tactics

• You don’t need to choose between spells and attack, you can now do both.
• Cast something like greater invisibility on yourself to strike your enemies with advantage and relative safety. Or fireball your enemies and finish the stragglers off with a crossbow attack. You could cast hold monster then attack with advantage against your enemy. There are loads of great ways to combine these benefits.

Building a college of valor bard

Valor bards need to mix spellcasting prowess with slick swordsmanship. This makes them a little tricky to optimise as you need to focus on multiple areas but it is possible to do this effectively. Below is some advice on how you can manage this.

Ability scores

Recommended options

• Charisma: Important for spells and face skills.
• Dexterity: Perhaps slightly more important than charisma for a Valor bard (depending on your play style). You’ll need it for AC and attacks.
• Constitution: You’re a relatively vulnerable melee warrior so anything spare should go towards constitution.

Options to avoid

• Wisdom: Of little use to a bard.
• Intelligence: Of little use to a bard.
• Strength: It’s possible to build a strength based Valor bard, but you end up dividing priorities too much. I’d suggest just dumping.

Skills

Recommended options

• Deception: Important for a face (which you surely will be as a bard) especially if you intend on lying a lot.

• Intimidation: Another useful one for a party face.
• Persuasion: Your most important face skill.
• Stealth: Regularly useful and you often can’t rely on one character being good at this.
• Perception: Important for anyone in the party and highly used.
• Insight: Important face skill and you may find you need this to compensate for a lower wisdom score.

Options to avoid

• Nature: Used far too little to be of much use.
• Survival: Used far too little to be of much use.
• Animal handling: Used far too little to be of much use.
• Athletics: You’re not strength based so go with acrobatics if you want one of these.
• Medicine: You’re better off healing magically.

Species/race

There are a couple of things to consider when choosing a species for a college of valor bard:

• Resilience: You’re a bit vulnerable for a frontline warrior, so anything you can do to increase your resilience will be beneficial.
• Innate spellcasting: Bards can cast spells so this is a useful option for repeat castings and gaining some extra spell options. Bards can be a bit limited on damage dealing spells too so it can be worth trying to pick up one or 2 of these as well for better ranged combat options.
• Damage dealing: Even a Valor bard can be a little light on damage output. Consider picking up traits that can enhance your combat prowess to help you keep pace with other martials.

Recommended options

• Aasimar (2024): Resistance to necrotic and radiant damage increases your hardiness. All the celestial revelation options are great for a valor bard. You can use flight when you need to get safe or use necrotic shroud or inner radiance for a more aggressive approach. A bit of healing is decent too for a backup healer.
• Dragonborn (2024): You don’t get many AoE spells as a bard so a Dragonborn makes a good option with their breath weapon. You can use it in place of one of your attacks and combine it with thunderclap for a turn of somewhat explosive AoE damage. You also get temporary flight which is great for hit and run tactics. Plus there’s a resistance for better durability.
• Dwarf (2024): An extra hit point per level is great for a vulnerable melee specialist. And for even more resilience, you have resistance against poison and advantage on saving throws against the poisoned condition.
• Goliath (2024): Faster movement makes you even better at traversing the battlefield. Your giant ancestry grants some very useful options too. For a valor bard, I’d lean into being more durable by taking stone giant ancestry for the damage reduction as you’re quite vulnerable on the front line. If you do want to be more aggressive though, you can go with the fire giant for extra damage.
• Orc (2024): A couple of great endurance features here with temporary hit points and relentless endurance to save you when knocked to 0HP. Great for a vulnerable melee warrior.
• Tiefling (2024): Repeat uses of 4 innate spells is great for a spellcasting class. If you take the infernal legacy, you gain access to firebolt for scalable ranged damage that will outstrip damage from a light crossbow. You get a resistance to a common damage type for extra durability too.

Options to avoid

There aren’t really any bad species options for a valor bard. They can work for any of the 2024 species.

Backgrounds

Backgrounds are much more important now with D&D 2024 as the ability score increases previously tied to your race/species are now linked to your background. Remember that you can either choose to increase one of the ability score options from a background by 2 and the other by 1, or you can choose to increase all 3 ability scores by 1.

You also get an origin feat linked to your background too.

Below are the options I think work best for a college of valor bard:

Wayfarer might be your best options of the above, but charlatan and merchant also fit really well for a bard.

Weapons

Once you hit level 5, a damage dealing cantrip will be your best option for damage. However, you can only cast one cantrip and make one weapon attack, so you’ll want a weapon to supplement your spell attacks.

A heavy crossbow is uniquely useful for a Valor bard as you’re capable of wielding it for 1d10 damage but don’t need to be hampered by losing your extra attack when reloading it. Instead you use your extra attack for a cantrip for it’s greater damage dealing.

Light crossbow and longbows also make decent ranged options.

For melee combat, your best option remains a rapier with it’s d8 damage and the finesse property.

Armor

You could use half plate with your medium armor proficiency but it’s expensive and removes your ability to be stealthy. Instead, you should be investing enough in dexterity that studded leather is your best option.

You can go for some two weapon fighting, but you likely want your bonus action free for bardic inspiration. Plus, you’re best off with the extra safety a shield provides.

Other class guides

Not sure a college of dance valor is for you. Not to worry. Why not check out one of our other D&D 2024 class and subclass guides.

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