D&D 5E Bardic college. Please help balance.

[abrichuk]

Wanted some opinion on a homebrew bardic college. This is my first home brew so need some opinion if this is well balanced.

College of Protection

Bards of the college of protection are watchful poets that twist the strings of fate to protect the heroes in their party. They learn to extend the protection of their shield through voice, aiding their allies in defense. These bards are never the heroes of extravagant adventures, but any adventuring group would be a fool not to have one of them in their midst. They become the defensive overseers of the group and have the power to turn a good defense into a strong offense.

Bonus Proficiency:

When you join the College of Protection at 3rd level, you gain proficiency with medium armor and shields. In addition, you learn to use your shield as an offensive weapon. You can use a shield as a spell casting focus for your bard spells.

Defensive coordinator:

Also at 3rd level, you are able to forewarn allies of incoming attacks. When an Ally that you can see within 60 feet of you is attacked or needs to make a saving throw, you can use your reaction to expend one of your uses of Bardic Inspiration, rolling a Bardic Inspiration die and adding the number rolled to the Ally’s AC or saving throw roll. Additionally, allies that have a Bardic Inspiration die from you can use a bonus action to roll that die and add twice the number rolled as temporary hit points.

Shield Blast:

At 6th level, you learn to use your shield to temporarily distract enemies and lower their defense. You can use your shield to cast shield blast as a bonus action on your turn. When used, a blast of energy extends from your shield in a 10 foot cone dealing 1d8 + your Charisma modifier force damage. Each creature affected by the blast must make a dexterity saving throw against your spell DC or be distracted by the blast. On a failed saving throw, affected creatures suffer a penalty, equal to your charisma modifier, to their AC and all saving throws until the end of your next turn. You can use shield blast 3 times per day. All uses of shield blast are recovered after a long rest. The damage die for shield blast increases to 1d10 at 10th level, and 1d12 at 15th level.

Aura of Security:

At 14th level, you have mastered being a defensive strategist. When there is no hostile creatures adjacent to you, allies within 30 feet of you increase their AC by 2 from hostile creatures you can see.

 

[Dualazi]

Some thoughts:

Defensive coordinator needs some work. For one, there's nothing stopping you from giving an ally Bardic Inspiration, then popping your reaction use of it to double down on the effect. At high levels this more or less guarantees a save regardless of DC. Likewise, the temp HP this can give gets ridiculous. Even at low levels, with a CHA of 20 you'd be looking at effectively 10d6 temp HP, scaling up to 10d12 at endgame. Furthermore, the ability to add your die to AC is probably out of line. This basically gives you 3-5 on-demand shield spells that you can use on behalf of others, potentially in conjunction with the actual shield spells for untouchable AC.

Shield Blast also needs to have some things addressed. For one, negatives like you describe are very rare in 5e, and usually are presented as disadvantage. On this note, either option is insanely powerful, with spammable semi-reliable save penalties that you can also benefit from (since it lasts until the end of your next turn) being very dangerous. While the AoE is small, you can still catch multiple enemies with this, which only adds to the absurdity. The damage progression on the ability is largely meaningless, however, as you're only going up by 1 point of damage on average at each stage. Lastly, you describe it as a distraction but then say it's a dex save, which makes no sense. If it's a mental compulsion it should be a mental save, and ostensibly be listed as a charm effect.

Aura of Security: Again, raw numeric bumps, especially to AC, are very rare in this edition and for good reason. If your group has found any AC increasing items this feature can push character's AC into the stratosphere. It's also kind of weird that you designed this feature to be counter-intuitive with the rest of the subclass, since you're heavily encouraging the player to treat this as a melee bard, which would shut down this ability quite often.

 

[abrichuk]

Some thoughts:

Defensive coordinator needs some work. For one, there's nothing stopping you from giving an ally Bardic Inspiration, then popping your reaction use of it to double down on the effect. At high levels this more or less guarantees a save regardless of DC. Likewise, the temp HP this can give gets ridiculous. Even at low levels, with a CHA of 20 you'd be looking at effectively 10d6 temp HP, scaling up to 10d12 at endgame. Furthermore, the ability to add your die to AC is probably out of line. This basically gives you 3-5 on-demand shield spells that you can use on behalf of others, potentially in conjunction with the actual shield spells for untouchable AC.

Shield Blast also needs to have some things addressed. For one, negatives like you describe are very rare in 5e, and usually are presented as disadvantage. On this note, either option is insanely powerful, with spammable semi-reliable save penalties that you can also benefit from (since it lasts until the end of your next turn) being very dangerous. While the AoE is small, you can still catch multiple enemies with this, which only adds to the absurdity. The damage progression on the ability is largely meaningless, however, as you're only going up by 1 point of damage on average at each stage. Lastly, you describe it as a distraction but then say it's a dex save, which makes no sense. If it's a mental compulsion it should be a mental save, and ostensibly be listed as a charm effect.

Aura of Security: Again, raw numeric bumps, especially to AC, are very rare in this edition and for good reason. If your group has found any AC increasing items this feature can push character's AC into the stratosphere. It's also kind of weird that you designed this feature to be counter-intuitive with the rest of the subclass, since you're heavily encouraging the player to treat this as a melee bard, which would shut down this ability quite often.

Lol thanks for the tips, bet you cant tell i am new to dnd.
I am assuming the comment about the temp hitpoints is if a bard uses all bardic inspiration die on one player, say before a big npc battle?
As far as shield blast, on further review it is to OP. is it enough to change it to a 10 foot line effect with a wisdom save instead of dex. On a failed save, the next attack against affected enemy has advantage.
Aura of protection change that to a 60 ft radius and grants advantage to dex and charisma saving.
Ill readjust defensive coordinator later.

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