College Of The Moon Bard: D&D 2024 Optimisation Guide

Draw on the power of the moonwells to harm and heal simultaneously while being very difficult to pin down.

Originally hailing from the Moonshae Isles, bards of the college of the moon were entrusted with compiling the tales and history of the isles and it’s druidic circles. From this partnership, these bards became able to draw upon the powers of the moonwells to bolster their bardic magic.

Moon bards utilise evasive tactics with teleportation and invisibility that combine with their uses of bardic inspiration. They also merge damage and healing through an enhanced moonbeam spell.

The college of the moon is a brand new subclass for D&D 5e and has been released as part of the Forgotten Realms: Heroes of Faerun supplement for D&D 2024. Below I’ve analysed and given advice on how you can optimise your own college of the moon bard.

At a glance

Become very evasive with regular invisibility and teleportation
Adept as a spell-focused bard
Use an enhanced moonbeam for multi-target damage and lots of healing
Best against high numbers of enemies

5/5 – The college of the moon is an excellent subclass that capably combines damage, healing safety and buffs without overwhelming you action economy. They work best against crowds, allowing their moonbeam to provide loads of healing and damage each turn.

College of the moon features

Moon’s inspiration (Lv3) – 5/5

Teleport and turn invisible for a turn when you give a bardic inspiration die to someone. This is all part of the same bonus action and doesn’t require any extra action economy making it a really handy safety feature. I’d generally reserve this for after you’ve taken your action so the invisibility isn’t ended immediately by your action, but you might as well use it each time you grant bardic inspiration. Be aware that reaction spells or opportunity attacks can end your invisibility early too.

Adding extra healing using your bardic inspiration is decent too. If it’s a choice between granting bardic inspiration (plus teleport and invisibility) vs extra healing, I’d say you get lots more out of granting bardic inspiration. Having said that, sometimes you need to heal more and you don’t need to teleport to be away from danger so this offers a nice alternative (and you can use both options if you have enough bardic inspiration). By level 5, bardic inspiration will be more plentiful making both options more viable in most encounters.

Primal lore (Lv3) – 2/5

Druidic is just a ribbon feature. A druid cantrip is a little more useful. Guidance is probably your best option. You might often use it on yourself for a skill test boost. Alternatively poison spray gives you a higher damage cantrip (just be aware that poison damage is the most highly resisted damage type).

Blessing of moonlight (Lv6) – 5/5

Moonbeam is a solid spell and really, you want to be using it to do damage while going easy on your spell slots which means making it your magic action for the best part of an encounter. It damages even when passing through the space of another creature so you basically want to move it in a way that maximises the enemies it hits. With 60ft of movement, that shouldn’t be too hard, despite the small area.

The bonus healing is excellent. 2d4 isn’t massive, but if you cast this against a horde of minions, those failed saves can easily rack up. You can also enhance this healing with moon’s inspiration too as it’s caused by a spell. Just keep in mind the effects in turn 1 are probably smaller than in subsequent turns as you won’t be moving your moonbeam around in turn 1 so it’ll likely affect less creatures.

It almost goes without saying, but you’ll want your charisma as high as possible to maximise on getting enemies to fail their moonbeam saving throw (as well as having plenty of bardic inspiration uses).

Eventide’s splendor (Lv14) – 5/5

Adding invisibility and teleporting to creatures you grant bardic inspiration to is going to be a great option for getting allies safe and/or giving them advantage on their attacks rolls and disadvantage on attack rolls against them. This makes it great for when your wizard gets caught in melee combat or your rogue wants to land a sneak attack but is struggling to get advantage or you want to protect your fighter a bit. Again, there’s no extra action economy here or expenditure of resources, but you may want to grant bardic inspiration primarily based on who will benefit most from invisibility and teleportation.

At this point, you should always enhance healing with the d6 as it’s free to do so. Moonbeam is usually the best way to do this as it performs healing usually multiple times so that’s multiple extra d6s depending on how many creatures you can get to fail their saving throw.

How good is the college of the moon?

Really good. At least it’s really good against large groups of enemies. It diminishes in capability when there are fewer enemies or they’re very spread out.

That’s not to say that they’re useless against small groups; teleportation and invisibility are universally great safety features. You will find though that the healing and damage from your enhanced moonbeam will be maximised by being deployed against hordes or large groups.

In some ways, this can make moon bards something of a one trick pony. Moonbeam damage and healing + bardic inspiration will often be your best tactic. I actually think this is sort of overcome by the fact that enhanced moonbeam can only be used once per long rest so you will likely need other tactics too, saving this for big, nasty encounters.

This is a very strong subclass though that easily combines damage, healing and safety.

5/5

Related articles

Building a college of the moon bard

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

Moon bards are more spell-focused than the likes of valor and dance bards. As such, you’ll want to prioritise spellcasting elements in your build, especially as many of their features rely on a strong charisma. This includes needing as large a pool of bardic inspiration as possible to use their features consistently. Below I’ve given a load of advice on how to optimise a college of the moon bard:

Ability scores

Recommended options

Charisma: You’ll need this to ensure enemies fail their saving throw against moonbeam. It’ll also give you more uses of bardic inspiration (for extra bardic inspiration dice, teleportation, invisibility and healing). Your other spellcasting and face skills will also get better as a result. This should be your priority ability score.
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 or even poison spray will be better from level 5 onwards as their damage scales with your level.
Constitution: Not mega important for a moon bard as avoidance is your main method of survival, 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

Acrobatics: Choose this over athletics as a dexterity character as they’re often interchangeable.
Deception: Important for a face (which you surely will be as a bard) especially if you intend on lying a lot.

Intimidation: Another useful one for a party face.
Performance: The Lesser of the face skills, but still a decent option for a bard.
Persuasion: Likely 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.
Insight: Important face skill and you may find you need this to compensate for a lower wisdom score.

Species/race

There are a couple of things to consider when choosing a species for a college of the moon 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 one or 2 of these as well for better ranged combat options.
Keeping safe: Moon bards aren’t built for the front lines (though you do gain some resilience by level 14). Instead, you’ll need to keep yourself safe and out of harm’s way. Anything that can keep you safe then is a great boon. This includes things like flight or misty step-like abilities. Yes, you already have teleportation, but bardic inspiration may not always be available.

Recommended options

Aasimar (2024): All the celestial revelation options are decent for a moon bard. 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 for some bonus resilience.
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 or just teleport away with your bonus action. Otherwise, just use your flight to stay completely out of harm’s way while you blast moonbeam and other spells and share bardic 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, but it’s generally the weaker option on a bard.
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 moon bard).
Human (2024): If you want extra skills, origin feats and heroic inspiration, then Human is a good option.
Tiefling (2024): Repeat uses of 4 innate spells is great for a spellcasting class. If you take the infernal legacy, you gain access to firebolt for scalable ranged damage that will outstrip damage from a light crossbow. 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 ability score increases and origin feats are now tied to these. You’ll obviously want to focus on increasing charisma and dexterity with constitution a possible option too.

Below are the options I think work best for a moon bard:

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
Genie touched (HoF)	Dexterity, wisdom, charisma	Magic initiate (wizard)	Perception, persuasion	Glassblower’s tools
Merchant	Constitution, intelligence, charisma	Lucky	Animal handling, persuasion	Navigator’s tools
Moonwell pilgrim (HoF)	Constitution, wisdom, charisma	Magic initiate (druid)	Nature, performance	Painter’s supplies
Spellfire initiate (HoF)	Constitution, intelligence, charisma	Spellfire spark	Arcana, perception	Ome gaming set
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, especially if you want even more skill proficiencies. If you’d rather go for enhanced spellcasting, then spellfire initiate is a good choice.

Feats

Origin feats

To help with picking your background (or if you’re playing a Human), I’ve evaluated your origin feat options for a moon bard:

Alert: Ensures your initiative rolls are higher allowing you to go earlier in combat. If you’re feeling really altruistic, you can pass your high initiative to someone more important like a sorcerer with a big AoE spell.
Lucky: Great on any class to have some extra rerolls available.
Magic initiate: Grab some extra spells known from another spell list. Something like toll the dead from the wizard’s spell list will outperform starry wisp for damage, at least if you don’t want to wait till level 10 for this from magical secrets.
Musician: A generally excellent origin feat for helping your allies out with some heroic inspiration (kind of like a slightly better lucky, you give to your friends). Not that you need proficiency with 3 more musical instruments though.
Spellfire spark (HoF): Reduce some magical damage and use sacred flame as a bonus action as you can’t always be using bardic inspiration.

General feats

At level 4, you can start picking up general feats.

Fey touched: Misty step is great if you need some extra teleportation beyond moon’s inspiration (and you don’t get it with your class). Plus you get more spells known.
Genie magic (HoF): An extra spell to cast, and it can be any 1st level spell from the sorcerer spell list. Works great for a utility class.
Inspiring leader: Temporary hit points after every rest for your whole party is very handy. Just make sure you’re boosting your charisma for this feat.
Lightly armored: You’re already proficient with light armor, but if you want to wield a shield for the +2 AC, this is the easiest way to do so. Your cantrips are usually better than weapon attacks so you won’t need 2 hands for a light crossbow so this is a good option for your free hand.
Mage slayer: Great for disrupting mages and gives you something similar to legendary resistance.
Resilient: Grab proficiency in constitution saving throws to help you maintain concentration on your moonbeam and other spells.
Shadow touched: Invisibility and an illusion spell are great for a caster class. You may already get in combat invisibility, but this will help with stealth out of combat.
Spellfire adept (HoF): Make your moonbeam and/or sacred flame deal more damage (or other radiant spells). Your moonbeam will also ignore radiant resistance.
Warcaster: Great for better concentration and spells as opportunity attacks.

Epic boon feats

At level 19, you can choose an epic boon which will grant you a super feat and an ability score increase that also allows your ability scores to go above the usual maximum of 20!

Boon of fate: Universally useful for ensuring crucial d20 rolls are passed or failed.
Boon of truesight: Tackle invisible creatures and illusions more easily.

A dishonourable mention goes to the boon of skill which seems like a nice fit for a bard, but between so many proficiencies, expertise and jack of all trades, ends up having too little impact for a bard.

The Player’s Handbook also recommends the boon of spell recall, but this is actually quite a weak epic boon as the number of spells you’re likely to recover from this is quite minimal, especially considering they’re low level spells (when you’ll be at least level 19 at this point).

I’ve also steered away from the boons of dimensional travel and boon of the night spirit as they crossover considerably with moon’s inspiration, but they can still be good options.

Weapons

Once you hit level 5, a damage dealing cantrip will be your best option for damage. You can get starry wisps as standard. Magic initiate, some species traits (like High Elf) and primal lore will give you access to some higher damage cantrips. Poison spray is the easiest to grab, but toll the dead can be a great option if you can grab it.

Before this point, you may find that a light crossbow deals more damage. A dagger is your best option for the occasional melee combat you might engage in (as it happens to be your only finesse option) but this should be used rarely.

Armor

Studded leather is your best option as you can only use light armor. It’s pretty cheap too. If you want more durability, you could grab the lightly armoured feat for shield proficiency, especially if you plan on using cantrips over light crossbows for damage dealing.