Bard College - College of Nobility

Many bards herald from noble families who send off their children to learn the bardic ways to bring glory to their family. Those who study at the college of nobility are more dedicated than others to the task, putting their keen minds to work and honing the oratory skills to their absolute peak.

Comprehensive Studies

While many nobles live in luxury, your upbringing required significant studies. When you take this archetype at 3rd level you gain proficiency in the History skill, or another skill of your choice if you already had this proficiency. You double your proficiency bonus for any ability checks using the History skill. You also apply your Intelligence modifier on any Charisma ability checks while dealing with nobility.

Diligent Inspiration

While many bardic inspirations can be somewhat random, your inspiration is naturally better, owing to your noble pedigree. From 3rd level whenever a creature rolls your bardic inspiration dice, roll it a second time and take the higher result of the two rolls. If both dice roll the same number, add a +1 to the final number.

Elective

Not all noble studies are focused on discourse, one must also be able to perform in other areas. When you reach 6th level in this class, choose one of the following feature and gain the bonuses described. The Elective you choose can be changed when you gain a new level in this class. At 18th level in this class, you can choose to have two different Electives at once.

Elective Ascetic. You can choose to calculate your armour class as 10 + your dexterity modifier + your charisma modifier. If you are wearing magical armour the magical armour's bonuses also apply to this calculation, even if you do not use it for your normal armour class calculation.
Elective Berserker. You gain the Reckless Attack barbarian feature. Whenever you make a weapon attack and the attack roll is 5 or more higher than the target's AC, you automatically critically strike, and add your bardic inspiration dice to the damage roll.
Elective Duelist: You gain the ability to Sneak Attack, as the rogue feature, with a number of dice equal to one fifth of your bard level. If you have Sneak Attack dice from another source, these dice stack.
Elective Hunter. You gain the Favoured Enemy and Natural Explorer features, as a 1st level ranger. Once per turn you can deal additional damage equal to your Charisma modifier to your Favoured Enemy.
Elective Inventor. You learn and can utilise one 2nd level Artificer Infusion. At 10th and 18th level you are treated as a 6th and 10th level Artificer respectively for this instead.
Elective Naturalist. You gain Wild Shape (as a 2nd level druid) once per short rest. At 10th and 18th level in this class, this improves gain the features of a 4th and 8th level druid respectively.
Elective Performer: Your bardic inspiration dice is increased by 1 dice size, to a maximum of 1d20 at 15th level.
Elective Sage: You gain an additional spell slot equal to one level lower than your highest level spell slot. This continues to improve as you gain additional spell levels.
Elective Warrior: You gain one Fighting Style of your choice, and you add +1 to all weapon attack and damage rolls that you make. Whenever you Inspire a creature with Bardic Inspiration you may make a weapon attack as part of the same bonus action.

Noble Connections

A noble is nothing without the bonds they've formed. From 14th level you can exploit these connections in order to commission a special item for yourself. You gain a special item attunement slot in addition to your normal three. At the end of a long rest you may request a magical item of Uncommon rarity or lower that requires attunement, which appears in your possession. Only you may attune to this item, and it can only occupy the special attunement slot from this feature.

You may exchange the item requested for another one on completion of a long rest either after 7 days or when you gain a level in this class. When you reach 17th and 20th level in this class the rarity of the item you can request increases to Rare and Very Rare respectively.

Should you ever lose the item and become unable to exchange it for another, you are expected to pay a gold premium in order to regain access to your trading connections. This amounts to 1000gp for an Uncommon item, 4000gp for a Rare item, and 7000gp for a Very Rare item. This can be paid magically at the end of any long rest.

While this feature is intended to allow flexibility and show the full power of your Nobility, the DM has final say on if a specific item is available to request in their world.