College of Whispers is largely built on two pillars: Psychic Blades and spooky exploration tools. It doesn’t act so much as a party support like many bard archetypes tend to lean towards.

College of Valor doesn’t offer fighting styles in the way Swords does, pushing you towards different options than it offers. Ranged valor bards are the most common and potent option, as they only need a high Dexterity and Charisma to function.

College of Swords bards are completely reasonable hybrid caster/martial characters. Bard’s spell pool gets expanded by magical secrets to offer you weapon-based spells from warlock, wizard, paladin, and cleric you’re eager to add to your two to three attacks each round.

Listen: I’m a sucker for necromancers. Something about the evil undead monstrosities and macabre, edgy evils of undead speaks to me as a player. It's my personal inner edge-lord fantasy preference, and College of Spirits delivers on that fantasy in a spectacular fashion.

College of Lore is for characters who see the utterly busted concept of Magical Secrets and just want more of it. That’s the main reason to consider the subclass; the rest of the subclass is mainly gravy or skill overkill. 

College of Glamour may be the most flavorful bard college. It takes the seductive and dazzling presentations fey and fairies are known for and offers it to the class most known for wanting to be the center of attention.

Eloquence bards have earned a somewhat notorious reputation, namely for how utterly busted their Silver Tongue feature can feel to DM for. Charisma-based social encounters become cakewalks for them, with little to no chances of failure, and personally, I adore that.

Mechanically, this subclass feels like an artificer hybrid, giving you tools to bring objects into the world and a little servant to assist you, culminating in a final feature that feels like Fabricate, but easier, ultimately ending up fairly underwhelming. 

Bards are charming, funny, witty characters whose identity is wrapped around the central idea of the show. They are a hybrid of wizards and sorcerers with a dash of rogue peppered in for good measure, dedicated to supporting the group with moments of brightness to steal the show for themselves.