College of the Flaming Dance (5e Bard Archetype)

## Al'naar: **College of the Flaming Dance**

Emulating the roaring songs of the firebird, your college is one that is based on the fiery wrath of the sun's heat combined with the grace of glorious birds. Bards of the College of the Flaming Dance often wear clothing that symbolizes the blazing avatars they control, such as wearing masks that resemble a beak, or having a feathered cloak on their back.

### **Bonus Proficiencies**

When you join this bardic college, at 3rd level, you gain proficiency in medium armor, and proficiency in Performance if you did not have it already. If you are already proficient with Performance, you instead gain proficiency in another skill of your choice.

### **Blazing Avatar**

Beginning at 3rd level, you control a flaming avian spirit, known as a blazing avatar. You can form or dismiss your blazing avatar, as a bonus action. When you form your blazing avatar, it appears at a point within 10 feet of yourself. While your blazing avatar is formed, the following rules apply:

* The avatar moves when you do, and has a speed equal to your own movement speed.
* The avatar can never be further than 10 feet from you; if an effect would shove you further than 10 feet away from it, it is moved along with you until it is within this boundary once more.
* Whenever you take the Attack action, you can replace any number of attacks with unarmed strikes or attacks with melee weapons made by your blazing avatar. Unarmed strikes made by your blazing avatar are melee weapon attacks with a reach of 5 feet that you are proficient with, and adds your Charisma modifier to its attack rolls. On a hit, your blazing avatar's attacks deal fire damage equal to your bardic inspiration die size + your Charisma modifier.
* Whenever your blazing avatar hits a target with an attack, you can expend a bardic inspiration die. The die is then rolled twice and added to the damage roll.

Your blazing avatar can wield and use any magical weapon, as if it were you. Weapons wielded in this way deal fire damage instead of their normal damage type, and use your Charisma modifier instead of your Strength or Dexterity modifier for both attack and damage rolls.

### **Extra Attack**

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

### **Piercing Fire**

Also, at 6th level, your blazing avatar's attacks ignore resistance to fire damage.

### **Exploding Critical**

At 14th level, the force of your avatar's critical hits are explosive. Whenever your avatar scores a critical hit on a creature, you can use your reaction to expend a spell slot of 3rd level or higher to cast the *fireball* spell centered on the target of the attack. You can use this feature even if you do not know the *fireball* spell, and you are immune to the fire damage of this spell when cast in this way.

### **VARIANTS: Other Colleges**

While the most celebrated and respected primordial bird is the firebird, there do exist colleges that emulate the acidbird, frostbird, shadowbird or thunderbird. With your DM's permission, you may choose to be a member of one of these rarer colleges, instead. If you do so, you replace all mentions of fire damage (including the fire damage dealt by the *fireball* spell from Exploding Critical) with the listed damage type below, and remove the Piercing Fire feature.

 Frostbird
 Shadowbird
 Thunderbird