Best Feats for Spirits Bard 5e
by Prince Phantom
The whole concept of this subclass is wild and incredibly unique among the Bards. Ignoring the wonderful flavor, we have a wild magic-like table to roll on to provide entirely beneficial effects to our allies, the ability to learn any divination or necromancy spell for a day, and a damage and healing bump to our spells that doesn’t actually work because so few of those spells for Bards require a material component for us to actually use that feature. Huh, wait a second, the effects on this table are pretty lackluster actually. Yeah, we’ve got a subclass that’s more flavor than function here, and it falls pretty flat, but only in comparison to the amazing subclasses that Bards usually get.
This subclass is still good and will give you plenty of cool new things for your character to do, those things just aren’t quite as good as what some other Bards get. The biggest problem is the fact that we don’t get to choose what effect on the table of tales that we get to use. Some players (myself included) love this sense of randomness, but you cannot argue that unpredictability is suboptimal. Still, there’s a really cool character to be built here, so let’s see what feats can help us get there.
Best Feats for Spirits Bard 5e
Moderately Armored (ASAP): Listen to your mother and don’t go outside without the proper clothes on. The world is a scary place, too scary for you to just be wearing some slightly tough leather. This represents a potential boost to our AC from 14 to 19, which will really help you stay alive in the early to mid tiers. We also have no problems holding a shield, as our hands aren’t particularly full.
Telekinetic (Lv 4) : If you find that you have few enough combats a day to where you can use bardic inspiration every turn, then you probably don’t need this or any other bonus action alternative. If you play in a tougher campaign, this might be a good selection to both bump your Charisma and get a very useful 5ft shove bonus action. As a refresher, this can be used to keep enemies in area of effect spells, save allies from grapples, push people off ledges, etc.
Fey Touched (Lv 4): If you don’t need an alternate bonus action option, I’d go for this instead. Misty Step is great, and since we already have Silvery Barbs from our class, we are free to pick some other great spell like Bless or Gift of Alacrity. The boost to Charisma is also greatly appreciated.
Resilient Constitution (Lv 8): Bards are not good at maintaining their concentration, as they can’t normally inspire themselves to boost that check and don’t have proficiency in Con saves inherently. This mostly fixes that issue. Make sure your Constitution is an odd number so this boosts your modifier as well.
Inspiring Leader (Lv 12): Be your party’s best friend and dole out a frankly absurd amount of temporary HP. Don’t forget that this benefit can extend to as many creatures as you can spare 10 minutes for, so get your Paladin’s mount, the Ranger’s companion, the Wizard’s skeletons, and the Druid’s conjured animal army in on this as well.
Gift of the Metallic Dragon (Lv 16): If you didn’t pick up Shield through a 1 level Sorcerer dip (you should have), this is a somewhat suitable replacement for it, but to be clear it is nowhere near as good as the Shield spell. The big difference is that this can only boost AC against one attack, whereas Shield boosts for the entire round. Still, this will save you from a few hits as the boost and number of uses are high at this level.
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