Best Feats for Whispers Bard 5e
by Prince Phantom
Do you want to play a Rogue but actually be a powerful character? Does your campaign center around subterfuge and political intrigue? Is the spy your favorite class in TF2? Then boy have I got the subclass for you. Whispers Bards specialize in deception, infiltration, and above all else, not playing by the rules.
We really only get one combat feature, Psychic Blades, which is alright for giving us a decent attack option when we need it. The rest of our options lean heavy into exploration, roleplay, and subterfuge, so we will try to strike a balance between combat and out of combat feats, as I’m assuming you’re not picking this subclass for a combat heavy campaign.
Best Feats for Whispers Bard 5e
Moderately Armored (ASAP): Bards famously have very low defense, from low AC, low HP, and not great saves. This feat at least fixes our AC, bringing us up to a 19 with half plate and a shield. A lot of our subclass wants us to be alone with someone, and that means we are vulnerable, as sometimes the dice just don’t roll in your favor. This will keep us alive when things go south.
Magic Initiate (Lv 4): Obviously we’d love to have a familiar, and we definitely will pick that spell up, but I’m actually more excited about Booming Blade. As we level up, this cantrip will do more and more damage, and since we don’t get extra attack, there’s no penalty for using it. We can also throw our Psychic Blades on top of this attack, further increasing the damage. For example, at level 5, we could cast Booming Blade, attacking with a rapier, dealing 2d8+our dexterity, 3d6 from our Psychic Blades, and 2d8 more if the enemy moves during their next turn. Assuming a dexterity of +3, that would be an average of 22 damage, plus 9 if they trigger the extra damage by moving. Not bad for someone who’s taken no actual damage boosting feats, and it continues to scale as we level up.
War Caster (Lv 4): Assuming you took Moderately Armored, you’re probably holding a shield and rapier in your hands, which can make spellcasting a bit awkward since you can’t cast spells with somatic or material components. War Caster fixes this, let’s us use Booming Blade for our opportunity attacks (which we might get more frequently thanks to how many of our features inflict fear), and most importantly, gives us advantage on concentration checks. A good Bard will generally cast one big concentration spell and then do other things in combat, for us probably making attacks with our Booming Blade. Holding concentration is very important, don’t neglect it.
Actor (Lv 8): So our 6th level ability is a bit unclear about a couple of things. It gives us a very good disguise as a humanoid we saw die, and gives us enough of their memories to pass as them convincingly to people who would know them, but it says nothing about changing our voice. I get the feeling that the designers intended for it to have us mimic this humanoid’s speech, but it doesn’t explicitly say that. If your DM rules that you can’t mimic their speech, Actor lets us do it perfectly as long as we’ve heard them talk for a bit before killing them, which hopefully isn’t too difficult. It also gives us advantage on the important checks we make when being disguised, and boosts our Charisma. This feat also works very well with Disguise Self, a spell that I feel goes really well with this type of character.
Fey Touched/Shadow Touched (Lv 8): Both of these feats offer an increase to our Charisma and 2 spells we can cast once for free and then more with our spell slots. Normally I rate Fey higher than Shadow because the spells it offers are better, but Invisibility just feels like a great feat for this type of character, and same for Silent Image, the other spell I’d normally take. Fey still offers really great spells, so just take your favorite. Hey, maybe even take both if you want!
Telekinetic (Lv 8): Another great choice that also boosts our Charisma, Telekinetic gives us Mage Hand and a 5ft push as a bonus action every turn. We don’t have a great use for our bonus action, so this allows us to do more during combat. The push can be used to throw enemies into our own area of effect spells or get our friends out of grapples, along with many other uses like disengaging with enemies.
Resilient Constitution (Lv 12): This gives us even more help with maintaining our concentration. I highly recommend you start with an odd Constitution so this feat rounds us up to a new modifier.
Poisoner (Lv 12): This recommendation comes with a few caveats. If you’re noticing that you’re mostly dealing with things that are immune to poisons, definitely don’t take this. At its base level, this lets us add a bit more damage to our one melee attack that we make on our turn, which is quite nice, especially if we are trying to play more of an assassin playstyle. If your DM makes more exotic poisons available, this becomes leagues better. Standouts for poisons to apply to our weapon include Wyvern Poison (DC 15, 7d6 dmg), Crawler Mucus, Drow Poison, and Oil of Taggit (DC 13, inflicts poison and either unconscious or paralyzed), and the king of all poison, Purple Worm Poison (DC 19, 12d6 dmg). You’re also a Bard, so you can use Silvery Barbs to force enemies to reroll their save against the poison, and I just love the imagery of you slowly driving the poison coated knife into your victim’s chest while whispering in their ear the one thing that makes them despair the most. D&D sure is fun you guys!
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