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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Libertad" data-source="post: 8667882" data-attributes="member: 6750502"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/KRsFC3D.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /><a href="https://www.dmsguild.com/product/347094/BardCore-Brawlers" target="_blank">DM’s Guild Page</a>Although most music is designed to be a team effort, it can also be competitive. After watching a certain scene from a movie about a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTdoIAGgOLg" target="_blank">Canadian fighting against his girlfriend’s evil exes,</a> the author for Bard-Core Brawlers had the idea of bringing musical fighting to a Dungeons & Dragons fantasy setting. Whether it’s a <a href="https://schottkiy.tumblr.com/post/138116723302/paladin-vs-lich-rap-battle" target="_blank">paladin and lich engaged in a rap battle</a> or <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ISlVt5nF2c" target="_blank">a roadie using another kind of axe to fight demons and monsters,</a> Bard-Core Brawlers creates a minigame tweaking 5th Edition’s combat rules for a Battle of the Bands style scenario.The rules for Band-to-Band Combat are deceptively simple, being a mere 3 pages out of a 21 page rulebook. Instead of hit points, there are morale points which are calculated with Wisdom instead of Constitution and are added into a collective for an entire band rather than for individual characters. They are recovered just like hit points during rests and are restored along with them, but cannot be restored via spells. Instead, there are special Crowd actions that can restore morale points.Attacks are renamed Riffs, which have bonuses based off of Charisma by default rather than Strength or Dexterity, while Resolve Class serves as Armor Class and is a base 11 + Intelligence modifier. Due to the diminishing returns of multiple loud instruments, someone who takes damage from a Riff gains a cumulative +1 to their RC until the end of their next turn.Musical instruments serve as weapons, and are split into simple and martial categories. This means that classes such as the Barbarian and Fighter have a wide array of musical options, but being proficient in an instrument as a tool also grants proficiency for it in Band-to-Band combat. There’s a new category, Stationary, which requires an action on top of movement to move with it, while instruments with the Finesse and Heavy properties allow you to substitute Dexterity and Strength respectively instead of Charisma for Riffs.There’s also rules on spellcasting so that the pure mages don’t feel left out. Spells that deal psychic or thunder damage can be incorporated as songs and deal damage to morale points rather than hit points. Additionally, temporary blindness and deafness as the result of a spell or ability can cause disadvantage on riff attacks during a band battle, but long-term blind and deaf musicians ignore this penalty as they have already overcome these limitations.I like this last part; people are most likely to be familiar with Beethoven, but there are many other deaf musicians in the real world who found <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdwXPZ4vu-c" target="_blank">creative ways to interact with and make music</a> by taking advantage of their other senses. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwqSuvFzDdI" target="_blank">It’s common for many of them to experience it via other stimuli, such as this professional dancer who feels the vibrations on a sound speaker to feel the rhythm as just one example technique.</a>The other big factor in band-to-band battles is the goodwill of the audience, represented as Favors. Favors are represented in points that can be spent to perform what are basically lair actions, and can be gained via spending an action and succeeding on a DC 14 Performance check, awesome in-character roleplay, or starting out with it for a particularly famous and well-loved band. The favor actions are appropriately musical, such as Crowd-surfing which grants bonus movement, getting the audience to sing along to restore morale points, and the crowd rushing the stage to negate favor actions on both sides for 1 round.<img src="https://i.imgur.com/Wv0AgCB.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />As you can see, a large amount of martial instruments have Finesse and Heavy properties which can help offset martial characters who are not as likely to have overall high mental ability scores. Voice on its own isn’t very strong, although the Light property can allow for some strange combinations: singing and playing on a trumpet at the same time via two-weapon fighting? You can totally do this within the rules!The remainder of Bard-Core Brawlers is dedicated to the adventure of the Larksbury Music Festival, sized for 4-5 5th level characters. Mick Nesbitt, slick-talking hot-shot gnome and questionable ally of the PCs, calls in a favor to invite the party to the city of Larksbury to have them participate in an annual Battle of the Bands tournament. Whether some or all of them have musical proficiency doesn’t matter, for Mick figures that they can get in enough practice. As professional adventurers, he’s quick to remind them that they’ve been in much hairier situations. As for what’s in this for the PCs, winning the Battle of the Bands can guarantee paid gigs and a touring contract along several cities of the Sword Coast.The PCs can practice at the local inn which can gain them Favor for the future festival if they roll high on Performance, and can meet with and get into arguments and drinking contests with rival band members and thus earn more Favor.<img src="https://i.imgur.com/E3feEXy.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />The PCs have to play against 3 different bands in order to win the event, and all of their competition has their own color portraits, short histories, and stat blocks. They also have their own unique crowd actions and can incorporate spells and class abilities such as Sneak Attack into uniquely musical ways. The book also recommends certain real-world bands and soundtracks to play based on the competition to help set the scene. The <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJOIqmlI65Y" target="_blank">Banderhobb Boys</a> are a pair of goblin bluegrass bards fond of getting in taunts and zingers to the competition via the incorporation of their tunes and Vicious Mockery. Up next is <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USfoTGFGARE" target="_blank">Trifling,</a> an all-girl, all-tiefling punk band who are fond of flashy pyrotechnic visuals. One of their members isn’t fond of a musician from GGROGG, feeling that there’s something off about them.<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOkSne7Vt_w" target="_blank">GGROGG</a> is a heavy metal band who lost three prior tournaments in a row, and not wanting to let the band down one of its members is planning to cheat by trapping the venue with smoke bombs to obscure the view of the stage. At which point they’ll attack and knock out the PCs, thus “winning” the contest if their competition can’t play back.There are various skill checks and methods for the PCs to learn about this. They can even avert this plan by providing proof and get GGROGG to “fight clean” during the battle of the band. If GROGG goes through with the plan, they’ll activate the trap when the band dips below 25 morale points and fight for real. Even then, a PC can talk one of the more reluctant band members to stop his teammates from doing this unsportsmanlike conduct, thus siding that against the rest of his fellows in the battle.The adventure’s conclusion is short and meant to be a springboard to future adventures for the tour. If the PCs lose, they can get some work by playing at the local bar and perhaps try again next year.Our Appendix contains 3 magic items: Drums of Paramissile which is a drum set that can turn the magic missile spell into a riff attack, Shades of Focus which grants the wearer +2 to their Resolve Class, and Medova’s Axe (wielded by the GGROGG musician of the same name) which is a guitar that can spend charges to perform an area of effect stunning blast when you hit with a melee attack with it. We also have a gridded and ungridded map for stages and a character sheet for making Bands and for the new rules and stats provided in this book.Thoughts: Bard-Core Brawlers has a cool concept, and the rules are both short and close enough to typical D&D combat that it shouldn’t take long to learn them. I also like how it gives characters who don’t have proficiency in Performance or musical instruments the ability to contribute, particularly if they otherwise have a high Charisma or other mental ability scores. My main concern is that this minigame can be a bit punishing on mage-heavy players who don’t have the right spells. <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Etc96j5GkjH28I7eb4porqFS2XzTJtK0P6DHla7_bzU/mobilebasic" target="_blank">There aren’t many spells that deal psychic damage in core 5th Edition, although thunder damage is a bit more common.</a> So certain casting classes may be out of luck or made to rely on instruments or other abilities to contribute in a band-to-band battle. I will say that the Bard class happens to have access to quite a few spells of both types, which makes sense given the musical nature of Bard-Core Brawlers.</blockquote>

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