WHAT IF Whispers Bard is really Frightening!?
Channel: Funky Dungeon Master
Date: 2022-05-15

You found the "dooblydoo"!

In D&D 5e, Whispers Bard ability just doesn't do enough, right from level 3. And here's my Balancing, Simple, and Flavorful BUFF for the subclass: adding a frighten effect with saving throw for its damage-only 3rd level ability:

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**Psychic Blades (3rd level)**

When you join the College of Whispers at 3rd level, you gain the ability to make your weapon attacks magically toxic to a creature’s mind.

When you hit a creature with a weapon attack, you can expend one use of your Bardic Inspiration to deal an extra 2d6 psychic damage to that target. That target also needs to make a Wisdom saving throw against your spell save DC or be frightened of you for 1 minute. It can attempt the saving throw again at the end of its turns, ending the effect on a success. You can do so only once per round on your turn.

The psychic damage increases when you reach certain levels in this class, increasing to 3d6 at 5th level, 5d6 at 10th level, and 8d6 at 15th level.
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Click for Treantmonk on the Whispers Bard: https://youtu.be/NamYbFs_QnE?t=1851
Click for RPGBOT's analysis of the Bard subclasses and Whispers Bard: https://rpgbot.net/dnd5/characters/classes/bard/subclasses/

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I'm an avid consumer of D&D optimization content like Treantmonk and RPGBOT. And I want to use that knowledge to make the game more fun for optimizers and non-optimizers alike.
Thus, born the Thien's Balance Homebrew series for D&D 5th edition 🥂: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOlGNxI48E1xaHdQJCdVRNd0fcSf-aBqT
By making all the player options balanced, I hope to remove trap options for players that don't like to worry much about the nitty-gritty game mechanics. Also, when all the player options are roughly equivalent in power, we can worry a bit less about picking a powerful option and more about which option brings out the flavor we want.

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Support me on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thienthenguyen while I meme more music and D&D content.
All the music in my videos are made by me. If ya wanna duet my music, check me out on Tiktok @makeitbetter01
The songs used in the videos are wrote just for this occasion. Let me know in the comments if I should release them as standalone "OST" for community usage.
Bandcamp: https://thienthenguyen.bandcamp.com/
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/6Z2C9rBETpD3aRkKZvUVAO?si=oER5XzxVSvyx-0jQIe1jtg

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More elaboration on Whispers Bard weakness:

The Whispers Bard subclass only has 1 combat ability, and a mediocre one at that, Psychic Blades.

Psychic Blades requires the us to spend an action to attack with a non-primary stat when we could be casting spells instead. You know, being full spellcaster and all. Furthermore, using bardic inspiration on Psychic Blades instead of giving it to our allies is always a trade-off, too.

A Hexblade dip will make Whispers Bard good. But Hexblade dip also makes Swords Bard way better. And more importantly, using a broken multiclass option to make Whispers Bard viable doesn’t it mean that it is a good subclass to begin with. Do you know I’m also slightly nerfing the OP Hexblade multiclassing dip for my balance homebrew series? Link: https://youtube.com/shorts/Be5J_cqpXYI?feature=share

Now, credit where it is due, Psychic Blades is not all bad. It could be used instead of Vicious Mockery for more focus fire damage in between casting and concentrating on big spells. Focus fire damage is usually not a strong suit for Bards, not until they gain very high-level spells anyway. The ability has a good foundation, just not fully there, coupling the fact that the subclass doesn’t have any other combat ability, the full package lackluster.

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