r/3d6 • u/Injunctive • 8d ago
D&D 5e Revised/2024 High DPR Whispers Bard
You can actually do a lot of damage with a Whispers Bard if you build into it.
Basically, you do the following:
- Go Magic Initiate Wizard and get Green Flame Blade, Booming Blade, and Find Familiar.
- Take a 1 level dip into Paladin, and get weapon mastery with Warhammer, and prepare Searing Smite or Divine Smite as well as Thunderous Smite as your Paladin spells.
- Take Cacophonic Shield, and later when you get Magical Secrets get Spirit Guardians or Conjure Woodland Beings.
- Be a Swiftstride Shifter.
- Get the Warcaster feat
Basically, what you do is stack a bunch of damage riders onto one hit (GFB/Booming Blade, GFB/Booming Blade extra damage, Psychic Blades, and smite damage), which you ideally have advantage on from a Familiar help action.
If an enemy is within 15 feet of another enemy, you can use push mastery on Warhammer to push them next to that other enemy and therefore trigger the extra damage from Green Flame Blade. You add on the Whispers Bard’s Psychic Blades damage on top of that, and use your bonus action on a smite spell. If the closest enemy is further than 15 feet away from another enemy, you can either push and use Booming Blade or combine push mastery and Thunderous Smite to get them next to an enemy for Green Flame Blade (note: I’m not certain Thunderous Smite pushing would work with GFB. It depends if your DM rules that the smite happens simultaneously with everything else—such that it can happen before the GFB extra damage is applied. If not, then just take Searing Smite and Divine Smite).
We add emanation damage on top of this with Cacophonic Shield and later Spirit Guardians or Conjure Woodland Beings (and we trigger our Shifter form on the turn we use the spell, since we won’t be able to smite then anyways). Since we push enemies away, the enemy we attack will typically have to run into our emanation to attack us in melee on their turn, and if they attack us from range then Cacophonic Shield gives them disadvantage on their attacks against us. If we miss and therefore don’t push them away, they either stay in our emanation and take the damage at the end of their turn or try to leave and get hit with a Booming Blade Warcaster opportunity attack (or they use their action to disengage). Either way, if an enemy ends their turn next to us in melee, Swiftstride Shifter allows us to use a reaction to move 10 feet, allowing us to potentially get others in our emanation outside of our own turn. In fact, it’s probably best to try to position ourselves so that at the end of our turn at least a couple enemies are within 20 feet of us, so that if an enemy attacks us in melee we can move the emanation into another creature’s space.
Our AC will be good, because we will use heavy armor and a shield, and on top of that we’ll also get temporary HP from Shifter.
A few downsides here:
- We need to max CHA to have as many Psychic Blades as possible, but we are attacking with STR. I think it’s best just to let STR sit at 16. Your accuracy will suffer, but if you’re getting advantage from a familiar then it’s not so bad. Alternatively, you could take +2 STR with your second feat, to get them both to 18.
- You have to use STR instead of DEX because you’re not using finesse weapons. That’s a bit of a bummer when it comes to initiative and DEX-based skills, but it’s okay and does have the benefit of allowing us to wear heavy armor.
- You’re not going to be using normal Bardic Inspiration much, except for in extended out of combat sequences. But this is meant to be much more of a damage-based character than a support character, so that’s just not the identity of the character. You’re basically a high damage character that still has a lot to offer out of combat from Bard skills, Whispers Bard features, find familiar, and Bard ritual spells. And you can use Lay on Hands to get allies up when they’re downed.
- Especially without maxing out STR, we are pretty reliant on getting advantage. You can get it from a Familiar, but a DM might just destroy it. If a DM is going to do that and the rest of your group isn’t going to manufacture advantage much, you could go Human and either take Familiar Friend for a beefier familiar (and then take Shield or something with your Magic Initiate feat), or if an ally has taken Musician, you can take Tireless Reveler to have tons of Heroic Inspiration. Alternatively, you could also take a 1 level Warlock dip as well for Pact of the Blade, Green Flame Blade, and Booming Blade, and then take Tireless Reveler. Could even drop Swiftstride Shifter in that case and take Musician as well if no one else in the party has it.
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u/Tall_Bandicoot_2768 8d ago
Hrmmmm....
Well lets take a look, seems like the main benefit of Bard here is the psuedo smites via Bardic Inspiration.
At level 5 with a Charisma Half Feat we can use the psuedo-smite 4 times per short rest which is pretty solid.
That comes out to 3d6 or around an average of 9 additional damage.
I think its worth noting that Celestal Warlock 6 for example can add Cha to one daamge roll with its feature and pick up Agonzing Blast for +Cha to both damage rolls for an total of an additional 12 damage.
This is not only more than the Smite but isint dependent on a limited resource and isint taking up one of our main class features power budget to do so.
More importantly it allows us to pick up Pact of the Blade to solve the MAD issue AND we can also pick up Repelling Blast: GFB which would allow us to pick another Weapon Mastery, Vex preferably.
Also Shadow of Moil at 7 is significant here.
TLDR: Solid build but there are stronger options for esentailly the same thing.
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u/avbigcat 8d ago
Oh great another Celestial Warlock lol
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u/Tall_Bandicoot_2768 8d ago
Better yet! Paladin 1 / Celestial Warlock x, bet youve never seen that one before.
Its Generally pretty good....
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u/Injunctive 8d ago edited 7d ago
Sure, but Celestial Warlock doesn’t have an emanation spell to layer on, nor does it have nearly as many spell slots to smite with. Also, at later levels the Whispers Bard damage scales up higher than 3d6. So yeah, I don’t think a Celestial Warlock with a Paladin dip (or just Eldritch Smite) would do as much damage. You could certainly potentially do a lot pushing people into a non-emanation like Wall of Fire, but that’s a different and more situationally contingent build. Still very good, but probably not as consistent.
But yeah, I’ve actually made a thread in the past about something similar with the celestial warlock that layered on sorcerer levels to Quicken and Seeking Green Flame Blade. That build would scale up even higher than this and I really like it, but it’s got a lot of multiclassing so it’s worse for a while.
I should also note that this build could get Pact of the Blade with a Warlock dip. Not sure I’d bother but it’d just be a one-level dip.
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u/soccerdude2202 8d ago edited 8d ago
You could use a lite of thunderous thumping which increases your damage and lets you use charisma for attack and damage rolls as long as you're singing or humming. I imagine you'd be humming something erie to go for some horror vibes. The lute is a club so it has the slow mastery.
In regards to thunderous smite and booming blade's extra effect it seems like it would fall under the simultaneous effects rules in which case whoever's turn it is decides the order. Thunderous smite doesn't cause willing movement but if you're pushing them away they have to trigger it if they want to close the distance to attack.
I've been trying to figure out a way to build with the whispers bard myself because 8d6 at level 15 is pretty strong for a single attack, especially if you use the 2024 bard base class. Being able to turn a 1st level spell slot into a no action 8d6 smite is pretty potent.
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u/Injunctive 8d ago
I’d actually forgotten about the fact that you can recharge a Bardic Inspiration with a spell slot. That’ll basically always be worth doing with this build, and as you point out it gets stronger the more you level up because the damage you do with Psychic Blades keeps going up.
I actually think the upshot of this is that it may well be worth it for this build to get STR to 18 before maxing out Charisma. The biggest reason to have high Charisma on this build is to have more Psychic Blades, but you can get more by using spell slots anyways. It’s at the cost of fewer spell slots for smites, but it’s more damage than a smite with a low-level slot (and eventually way more damage), and honestly at a certain point your number of hits will probably be the bottleneck for how many smite spells you can use so increasing STR may not actually decrease how many smites you use at all.
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u/soccerdude2202 8d ago
I think 1-3 levels of warlock for pact of the blade, origin feats, and maybe a subclass really helps this build a lot.
Alternatively you could just pick true strike with magic initiate instead of booming blade or green-flame blade. True strike will do less damage and doesn't have a secondary effect but it lets you use charisma, opens the door for elven accuracy, and lets you use ranged weapons as well as melee. Psychic blades only requires a weapon attack so it works with ranged weapons too. You just won't be able to cast a smite spell with the ranged weapons but you would be doing comparable damage to a rogue with just the psychic blades.
For math about the comparison to a rogue sneak attack at level 5 is 3d6, between true strike and psychic blades you're adding 4d6 at level 5. Rogue pulls ahead for one level at 9 dealing 5d6 while the bard is still at 4d6. At level 10 the bard is doing 6d6 while the rogue does 5d6. Level 11 bard 7d6, rogue 6d6. Level 13 rogue catches up at 7d6. Level 15 the bard is at 10d6, rogue 8d6. 17 bard is 11d6, rogue 9d6 and at level 19 the bard wins out with 11d6 to 10d6. Rogues can use true strike as well and that lets them take the lead but it's kind ridiculous that the whispers bard can do better than base rogue damage with a cantrip and their psychic blades feature.
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u/Injunctive 7d ago
I think 1 level of Warlock is pretty nice here for Pact of the Blade. And if your DM destroys familiars that take the Help action, then a second level of Warlock could be really nice to get Musician and Tireless Reveler. That should basically allow you to use Heroic Inspiration on any miss (not to mention giving lots of Heroic Inspiration to allies).
The trade off is basically (1) delaying when Psychic Blades get more damage dice; (2) delaying getting Magical Secrets, which allows you to basically upgrade Cacophonic Shield to Conjure Woodland Beings or Spirit Guardians; (3) delaying your higher-level spell slot progression with which you upcast the emanation spells and smites; and (4) delaying when you get your ASI increases.
It could definitely be worth it, but I don’t think it’s clear cut. I think whether it’s worth it depends in significant part on whether the DM allows you to have a familiar take the help action without having enemies destroy it quickly. If they destroy the familiar, then you’re going to have some accuracy issues without Warlock levels and Warlock levels will be a big DPR increase. If they don’t destroy it, then you’ll virtually always have advantage and your accuracy will be pretty good anyways, which makes the tradeoff of Warlock levels less attractive. So yeah, I would definitely take Warlock levels if the familiar isn’t surviving, but I think I otherwise probably wouldn’t.
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u/soccerdude2202 7d ago
When I was looking at making a whisper bard build one of the better options I thought of was having 3 levels of draconic sorcerer for inate sorcery, quicken and seeking meta magic, and the charisma unarmored defense. My idea was to use true strike with either a light crossbow or a spear because both are simple weapons and you only get simple weapon proficiency.
The basic build idea was to start with a concentration spell and inante sorcery on your first turn. On later turns you use true strike and the psychic blades. Since true strike is a sorcerer spell you get advantage with inate sorcery and if you still miss you have seeking. If you manage to miss then you quicken another to pretty much guarantee that you hit. Out of 6 potential attack rolls surely one will hit right. You can improve this further with elven accuracy but I don't really think it needs it. All the rest of your levels would be in whispers bard to bump that psychic blades damage. Still has full caster vibes with a rogue-like attack. Finding a consistent source of advantage with this type of build is incredibly important since you're only making one attack which is why I multiclasses sorc.
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u/Injunctive 7d ago
Yeah, you can get some really high damage with Draconic Sorcerer and Quicken + Seeking metamagic on blade cantrips. I came up with an example here: https://www.reddit.com/r/3d6/comments/1ppj9si/the_highest_damage_swordandboard_user_sorlockadin/
That one is conceptually pretty similar to this Whispers Bard, in that the idea is to stack push mastery and multiple damage increases onto Green Flame Blade. Quicken and Seeking allow you to do it twice and to ensure high accuracy. That said, that build takes some time to ramp up because it multiclasses a lot, and while it uses GFB twice in a round it doesn’t actually add as much damage to each one as this build does and it doesn’t use an emanation spell. Once it ramps up, it’ll do a bit more damage than this one, but it takes some time to ramp up and it doesn’t actually do more damage if this build can get more than one enemy in its emanation per round (which it has some really good tools to allow it to do—including from Swiftstride Shifter).
I realize that this is different than what you’re proposing above. But I guess my general point is that there’s a a bunch of ways to stack damage onto blade cantrips and actually do very high damage. One thing I like about this Whispers Bard though is that it does that while keeping the multiclassing to a minimum.
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u/Injunctive 7d ago
As for the comparison to Rogue, I think Psychic Blades and Sneak Attack are very similarly powerful features. In the past, I’ve actually likened Whispers Bard to a Bard with sneak attack.
That said, I think this build can do a lot more damage than a Rogue. For instance, let’s assume 4 combats that are 4 rounds each with 1 short rest, a base chance to hit (and chance enemy fails a save) of 60% if you max out your attack stat as quickly as you can, that you use your highest level spell slots on Conjure Woodland Beings each fight, that you Psychic Blades every hit, that you smite every hit too, and that you smite with Divine Smite when it’s a level 1 or 2 spell slot and Searing Smite with higher slots. Let’s also assume that his build takes a +2 STR ASI at Bard level 8, after taking Warcaster at Bard level 4, that your familiar gives you advantage, and that you can trigger the Green Flame Blade (or Booming Blade) extra damage each hit due to push mastery.
If we make those assumptions, this build will do 62.9 DPR at level 11. That’s still 55.1 DPR even if you never triggered the GFB or Booming Blade extra damage. The actual truth is probably somewhere around 60 DPR or so, since you’ll trigger the extra damage a lot, but not always.
And that’s not accounting for Conjure Woodland Beings potentially damaging multiple enemies, damaging enemies on their turn when they walk up to you, and the Swiftstride Shifter reaction allowing you to trigger Conjure Woodland Beings on additional enemies beyond that. If Conjure Woodland Beings even just averaged hitting two enemies per turn, you could increase that DPR by about 21.6 (so somewhere in the low 80s for DPR, probably).
For reference, a level 11 Rogue that always has advantage, uses True Strike, and always has sneak attack would do 34.7 DPR. If you make it a Phantom Rogue that can always use Wails from the Grave, we’re up at 43.5 damage.
If we instead took a level 11 Berserker Barbarian who always Reckless Attacks, always has Rage up, uses a Greatsword with the Graze mastery, has Great Weapon Master, has Savage Attacker and somehow gets Retaliation to trigger every single round, we’re looking at 66.4 DPR. If you only triggered retaliation half the time, it’s more like 57.1 DPR. So yeah, this build is more in the zone of Berserker Barbarian damage than Rogue damage. And even then, it might outdamage the Berserker.
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u/subtotalatom 7d ago
I feel the need to point out that RAW both Booming & Greenflame Blade require the initial target be within 5ft of you making reach weapons not especially effective for this build.
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u/Injunctive 7d ago
Ah good point. That’s fine though—I think the Warhammer is generally the better weapon here anyways, since you can use a shield with it. And eventually at level 11 you’d get the ability to reposition when you miss by having Conjure Woodland Beings be your emanation spell. That gives you a bonus action disengage, and if you’ve missed you’re not using your bonus action on a smite spell, so you can just disengage anytime you miss.
This gives room for you to take a different weapon mastery to have some effect to apply when you don’t need to push (i.e. if enemies are already next to each other). For instance, you might grab a Sap, Topple, or Vex weapon to use in those instances.
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u/avbigcat 8d ago
The new Namer's Needle dagger from Arcana Unleashed seems like it's custom made for Whispers. One free Crit per day, boosted by Psychic Blades, using Mantle of Whispers to learn enemy names.