Bard College of Eloquence 5e
Review by Sam West, Twitter: @CrierKobold
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. Stack on top of this its ability to empower some of the most potent save effects in the game to land more consistently and a ton of added consistency and usability to your Bardic Inspiration and you’re left with a subclass that oozes potential and feels great to play.
See Also: Best Feats for Eloquence Bard
3rd Level: Silver Tongue and Unsettling Words
Silver Tongue is the most contentious feature outside Magical Secrets I see talked about for bards. It basically sets your minimum from 1 + Persuasion/Deception modifier to 10 + skill modifier. Critically, this mechanic only affects the worst of the worst rolls you’d want to empower; it doesn’t increase your ceiling, but significantly improves your floor.
Managing this as a DM can feel impossible; with Expertise layered on top of it, Silver Tongue can give 3rd level bards easily a minimum of 17 on every single Persuasion and Deception check they make. That passes nearly every moderate to challenging difficulty check you could make, guaranteed.
Unsettling Words, too, is very powerful. Bards get Magical Secrets, offering them access to any spell in the game, which includes some outrageously powerful save-based effects where a failure is utterly debilitating. Unsettling Words sets you up to get those effects landing consistently. Even before Magical Secrets, bards have no shortage of save-based spells they’ll gladly attach Bardic Inspiration to in order to boost their chances of seeing the best-case scenario come to fruition.
6th Level: Unfailing Inspiration and Universal Speech
Unfailing Inspiration should be a base element of Bardic Inspiration. It feels like a huge quality of life improvement that reduces the moments where you feel like you wasted a resource to near zero in the case of Bardic Inspiration. It has little to nothing to do with Eloquence; Wizards of the Coast, please, include this in the base bard class next edition. For now, it contributes to Eloquence bards feeling good to play, as you’re incapable of wasting you’re nearly incapable of wasting inspiration dice past 6th level.
Universal Speech basically is Tongues as a 6th-level feature, which is pretty unimpressive. It gives you a free use, then “drops” the spell cost to any spell slot as opposed to third, but there just aren’t a ton of situations where this is that applicable. On the bard dedicated to articulateness, it makes perfect sense and feels like a ribbon alongside Unfailing Inspiration.
14th Level: Infectious Inspiration
Infectious Inspiration fives you basically double the inspiration dice pool when those dice are spent inspiring allies. This is somewhat at odds with Unsettling Words, as you can’t get these bonus dice when you’re spending your inspiration worsening enemy saves. Still, doubling your inspiration dice pool when it already basically guarantees some amount of value on the target thanks to Unfailing Inspiration will lead you to feel like an unending swath of motivation.
All Together
The bulk of College of Eloquence's power is baked into their 3rd-level features with the rest feeling like base improvements to the bard class and their Bardic Inspiration feature. Infectious Inspiration tends to be a bit of overkill, especially when you consider you’ve got Unsettling Words to set up some yucky good save or dies. Silver Tongue can be a bear for some DMs to manage and work with, as a base of 17 on every Persuasion or Deception check quickly becomes difficult to challenge. As a player, the whole of the option will make your bard better at doing their inspiring thing by reducing feels-bad moments of wasted inspiration and successful saves against your high-level save spells. If you want consistency, College of Eloquence will add a ton to your sheet.
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