College Of The Dirge Singer Bard: D&D 2024 Optimisation Guide

Use your knowledge of combat and strategy to enhance your allies on the battlefield.

Bards of the college of the dirge singer are more than just poets and musicians; they are students of war, history and strategy. In maintaining this knowledge, they are able to instruct and inspire allies to heroic feats in combat.

Originally formed in the empire of Dhakaan, this tradition and knowledge has spread during the last war and its discipline has been adopted by many colleges. This makes it a discipline available to all species and backgrounds.

Keith Baker, the legendary creator of the Eberron setting, has released a revised version of his 3rd party book, Exploring Eberron. It’s been updated for D&D 2024 and adds extra lore and character options for the Eberron setting and is available on D&D Beyond now. In this article, I’ll take you through the updated dirge singer bard subclass from this book including tactics, optimisations, how good the subclass is and what’s changed.

At a glance

Works well as the party face
Adept as a spell-focused bard
Dish out more bardic inspiration more quickly than any other bard
Enable allies to make attacks with their reactions

5/5 – The dirge singer is everyone’s best friend. They dish out some serious enhancements with lots more bardic inspiration that can be shared more quickly than by any other bard. On top of this, they can enable regular reaction attacks for allies and easily enhance ability scores and saving throws. They are a top-tier teamworking subclass that’s possibly a little too powerful.

What’s changed?

Largely, the college of the dirge singer has been made more powerful with the following changes from the 2014 version:

Bardic inspiration dice no longer reduced: The original dirge singer had smaller bardic inspiration dice, but this is no longer the case.
Changed skills and expertise: You now gain proficiency in both history and performance and expertise in either you already have proficiency in.
Commanding voice: This is no longer a reaction you take, but a reaction others take when they have your bardic inspiration dice and you make an attack or use a magic action. This allows up to 2 allies to make use of this at the same time.
Battle hymn replaces master commander: With the changes to countercharm, the dirge singer now has battle hymn which grants all nearby allies +d4 to ability checks and saving throws for a round.

College of the dirge singer features

Broad inspiration (Lv3) – 5/5

Bardic inspiration on 2 creatures simultaneously is excellent and the wording indicates that it still only expends a single use of bardic inspiration. It states “you can also confer that Bardic Inspiration die to a second creature…”. This sounds like that one bardic inspiration you conferred on the original target is also conferred on the 2nd target, not that another bardic inspiration die is conferred on the 2nd target.

So this is double bardic inspiration conferred more quickly, plus you get guidance which is a really handy cantrip.

Keeper of history (Lv3) – 2/5

History and performance as skills are only OK, but you can grab expertise in these quite easily. Whether you’d want to invest twice in these skills is another matter. It’s a ribbon feature and while not the best skills, 2 proficiencies and the potential for both to gain expertise is quite good as ribbon features go.

Commanding voice (Lv6) – 5/5

Easy reaction attacks for 2 allies is quite good and probably the best way for your allies to be expending their bardic inspiration. You can start your turn with a bonus action to grant bardic inspiration to 2 allies, then make an attack or a magic action to allow your inspired allies to trigger reaction attacks so this is easy to make work within a turn.

This does mean that casters that mostlyuse spells aren’t as good a target for your bardic inspiration, but martial allies will benefit a lot. This is especially the case for rogues who can attempt to land a second sneak attack this way.

Battle hymn (Lv14) – 4/5

Whenever you can’t dish out bardic inspiration, you’ll likely want to maintain a battle hymn. It has no usage limits and will enhance your allies’ ability checks and saving throws by a small amount. The challenge is just that bardic inspiration is so useful and so plentiful at this stage, that squeezing in a battle hymn can be tricky. It can be used out of combat too as a more flexible version of guidance. Just be aware that it’s noisy.

How good is the college of the dirge singer subclass?

Dirge singers are excellent at making their allies shine. More bardic inspiration to more allies allowing them to make more attacks and perform skills and saving throws better means your allies are just much better. These improvements are in significant ways too.

A dirge singer might struggle in a very small party, or one without a couple of martials, but most party compositions will probably benefit a lot from a dirge singer. I do feel like dirge singers really push at the boundaries of what might make a subclass just a bit overpowered, but I don’t think they’re game-breakingly overpowered. Players probably won’t mind either because it’s such a teamwork focused subclass that everyone gets to enjoy the benefits anyway.

5/5

Building a college of the dirge singer bard

Human college of lore bard DND 2024 — Human bard: Wizards of the Coast

Dirge singers work like most bards. They enhance others and cast spells for buffs and debuffs. This means you can build your dirge singer like most other bards with a focus around spellcasting and skills over martial combat.

Ability scores

Recommended options

Charisma: Important for spells, uses of bardic inspiration and face skills.
Dexterity: You’ll need this to get your AC decent. In theory, it’ll help you out with finesse and ranged weapons which could be useful early on, but cantrips like starry wisps will be better from level 5 onwards as their damage scales with your level and true strike will be better from level 1.
Constitution: Not mega important for a dirge singer, but it will increase your durability so makes a solid tertiary ability.

Options to avoid

Wisdom: Of little use to a bard.
Intelligence: Of little use to a bard.
Strength: You can dump this.

Ability score	Point Buy	Standard Array
Strength	8	8
Dexterity	15	14
Constitution	15	13
Intelligence	8	10
Wisdom	8	12
Charisma	15	15

Skills

Recommended options

Deception: Important for a party face (which you surely will be as a bard) especially if you intend on lying a lot.
History: Decent knowledge skills that I wouldn’t normally recommend for a bard, but expertise will make you really good at this without a high intelligence.

Intimidation: Another useful one for a party face.
Persuasion: Probably your most important face skill.
Stealth: Regularly useful and you often can’t rely on one character being good at this.
Perception: Important for anyone in the party and highly used.
Performance: Not the best skill, but grabbing this will allow you to have expertise in it at level 3.
Insight: Important face skill and you may find you need this to compensate for a lower wisdom score.

Options to avoid

Nature: Used far too little to be of much use.
Survival: Used far too little to be of much use.
Animal handling: Used far too little to be of much use.
Athletics: You’re not strength based so go with acrobatics if you want one of these.
Medicine: You’re better off healing magically.

Species/race

There are a couple of things to consider when choosing a species for a college of the dirge singer bard:

Innate spellcasting: Bards can cast spells so this is a useful option for repeat castings and gaining some extra spell options. Bards can be a bit limited on damage dealing spells too so it can be worth trying to pick up 1 or 2 of these as well for better ranged combat options.
Keeping safe: Dirge singers aren’t built for the front lines. Instead, you’ll need to keep yourself safe and out of harm’s way. Anything that can keep you safe then is a boon. This includes things like flight or misty step-like abilities.

Recommended options

Aasimar (2024): All the celestial revelation options are decent for a dirge singer. You can use flight when you need to get safe or use necrotic shroud or inner radiance in case you get surrounded (though you should work to avoid this). A bit of healing is decent too for a backup healer and you get necrotic and radiant damage resistance. Not that important for a backline spellcaster, but a nice bonus.
Changeling (2024): Great species for a party face. Transform your shape for impersonations and advantage on face skills is really strong. That silver tongue will be almost unstoppable with expertise too.
Dragonborn (2024): You don’t get many AoE spells as a bard so a Dragonborn makes a good option with their breath weapon. It does mean getting a little closer to the action but with temporary flight, it’s easy to do this from some safety. Otherwise, just use your flight to stay completely out of harm’s way while you blast spells and inspiration about the battlefield. There’s also a resistance for better durability.
Elf (2024): An extra skill and darkvision will help you be a better scout and general skill guru. But you’re mainly here for the innate spellcasting. High Elf is a good option for misty step and an extra cantrip (toll the dead will make you more effective at dealing damage without expending spell slots, but you can change this around if you want too). Drow is good for buffs and debuffs with the likes of faerie fire and darkness. You could go for a Wood Elf for the better stealth if you’re the party scout.
Gnome (2024): Extra magic resilience is great. A Forest Gnome is best with speak with animals which works really well for a high charisma character while minor illusion is great if you want to get involved in stealth (which is easy to build for with a dirge singer).
Humans (2024): An extra skill, origin feat and more heroic inspiration work great on the jack of all trades class and will give you more options in your wheelhouse.
Tiefling (2024): Repeat uses of 4 innate spells is great for a spellcasting class. You get a resistance to a common damage type for extra durability too.

Backgrounds

Backgrounds are much more important now with D&D 2024 as the ability score increases previously tied to your race/species are now linked to your background. You also get an origin feat linked to your background too.

Below are the options I think work best for a dirge singer:

Name	Ability scores	Origin feat	Skill proficiencies	Tool proficiency
Charlatan	Dexterity, constitution, charisma	Skilled	Deception, sleight of hand	Forgery kit
Entertainer	Strength, dexterity, charisma	Musician	Acrobatics, performance	One kind of musical instrument
Merchant	Constitution, intelligence, charisma	Lucky	Animal handling, persuasion	Navigator’s tools
Wayfarer	Dexterity, wisdom, charisma	Lucky	Insight, stealth	Thieves’ tools

Wayfarer might be your best options of the above, but charlatan also fit really well for a bard.

Weapons

Once you hit level 5, a damage dealing cantrip will be your best option for attacks. However, true strike is your highest damage option if combined with something like a light crossbow. You may also want a melee weapon to complement this too. A spear or quarterstaff works well for this, and if you’re using true strike, can just use your charisma for those attack rolls instead of strength.