Become a dueling wand-wielder with this damage and cantrips focused bard subclass.
The art of the duel can very much be a performance with magical flourishes and high stakes combat. This is where the college of wands excels, in magical duels. Some use these skills for entertainment, others as spies or smugglers, but either way, they’re quick to react and know just how to fire off cantrips for maximum impact.
If you take this subclass, you can expect improved initiative rolls and heightened cantrip damage and effects through your bardic inspiration.
The college of wands bard is a 3rd party subclass created by Keith Baker and Visionary Productions and Design for their 3rd party supplement; Frontiers of Eberron: Quickstone. The book was released for D&D 5.5e on D&D Beyond and is also available on DM’s Guild.
At a glance
- Full spellcaster
- Leans more heavily into damage dealing than buffs
- Specialises in dealing damage through cantrips
4/5 – If you’re after a damage-dealing bard subclass that loves to duel with cantrips and deal plenty of damage, then the college of wands does this quite well. I might have wanted a more consistently usable initiative boost on a subclass that’s all about quickly drawing their wand, but that’s minor for a subclass that is genuinely pretty solid.
College of wands features
Bonus cantrip (Lv3) – 3/5
An extra cantrip is always good. Unfortunately, the best cantrips a sorcerer has (especially for damage, which you quite want on the college of wands) are shared with the bard spell list. This means true strike, mind sliver and thunderclap. As there are many good cantrips to grab, this is still useful and you can even grab a utility option like minor illusion or mage hand as well.
The practicalities of spellcasting foci are useful for some of the new feats in Frontiers of Eberron.
Wandslinger’s presence (Lv3) – 2/5
Initiative order definitely counts so sometimes, this is great, but how often do you fight something you’ve already spoken to for more than a minute? That’s very campaign specific but I reckon at best, we’re talking 10-20% of encounters. Maybe lower. But it will work better in different campaigns. Like ones with more antagonists that can actually speak and with more social elements between combat.
There is a bit of clunkiness to mechanics here too. You kind of have to establish the full combat order and then declare and work out who needs to take this test which can be an imprecise metric.
At your fingertips (Lv3) – 4/5
The damage boost to your bard cantrips is considerable here. I looked into whether something like thunderclap will work on multiple targets in the same turn. It won’t sadly so there’s no advantage opting for AoE cantrips.
This is a transfer of resource so you’re swapping a d20 test boost for boosted damage. It’s not necessarily a straight swap as bards get a lot of bardic inspiration from level 5 onwards so you’re unlikely to use it all. On top of that, this preserves your bonus action for other things. In fact, you’ll likely want this available at level 6 when this feature gets a boost from your bonus action.
Got your back (Lv6) – 4/5
This makes at your fingertips much more worth using as you get an equivalent boost like your normal bardic inspiration while also getting the damage boost from the same use. It costs your bonus action, but bardic inspiration typically does this anyway. It is limited to saving throws, but these are common enough to be often helpful, especially considering it’s worth using your bardic inspiration just for the damage boost anyway.
Ain’t big enough for the both of us (Lv14) – 4/5
Technically, when you use bardic inspiration in the usual way, this works twice (when you expend the bardic inspiration and when they add it to their d20 test). But it does also work with at your fingertips. It’s a decent extra to these and if you’re casting lots of cantrips or using your bardic inspiration a lot, you should have lots of chances to cause short debuffs in the form of the frightened condition.
How good is the college of wands subclass?
The college of wands is not really what I expected when I first saw the subclass. I was expecting a wand-wielding specialist, but the only wand specific feature here is that you can use a wand as a spellcasting focus. In theory, you could look more like a college of orbs, rods or musical instruments while using these features as these all work as spellcasting foci too.
Instead the, college of wands focuses on a reimagined gunslinger if they were quick on the draw with spell-slinging instead. Wands are more of a hypothetical option for your replacement gun. This subclass swaps buffs for attacks focusing on quick reactions and a focus around cantrips and enhancements from that.
I wonder if a bard was the right choice for this subclass. I kind of feel like a wizard might have been a better option here. I also wish the initiative boost was a little more broadly applicable. Surely the archetype suggests they’re just quick on the draw anyway.
Despite these nitpicks, this is a good subclass. If you want to play a bard that focuses more on damage than buffs and debuffs, then the college of wands is a great choice. Even better if you’re keen on the flavour of wizardly duels in the vein of Harry Potter (even if the inspiration is more gunslinging westerns).
4/5
Building a college of wands bard
While a wands bard plays quite differently from a standard bard (with more focus on damage than debuffs), this actually changes very little about how you build them.
For a full breakdown on how to build a bard, you can check out my bard guide. For this article, I’ll just recommend options available from Frontiers of Eberron that work well for the college of wands.
Species
Largely you’ll want a species that enhances your spellcasting and ability to deal damage. Extra resilience is decent too, but evasiveness for a bard is better. I’d say the following are your best options from Frontiers of Eberron:
- Gargoyle: If you want more resilience, then a gargoyle is a decent route to go. Poison resistance and improved AC are quite useful. Bards can be pretty good at sneaking too and the ability to appear like a statue could be useful there.
- Goblin: Some extra damage on some of your cantrips (fury of the small works with spells too). Most creatures will be larger than the small Goblin so this is easy to be applying. Disengage as a bonus action can be useful if you want to escape a creature’s reach.
- Harpy: Flight for evasiveness, performance to add to your face skills and a bunch of spells known that suit a bard quite well is all very good.
- Medusa: A face skill is always good for a bard. An enhanced gray gaze is also helpful for restraining while you damage and you can boost this with extra damage using your bardic inspiration. There’s also a bunch of useful spells too.
- Tiefling: Extra spells to play with is handy for a bard. A damage resistance is also good and there’s more options here too. Sakah is interesting for its advantage on wisdom saving throws against magic and some deception leaning spells. There are some other interesting spells on these lists too like shatter and blindness/deafness.
- Warforged: The Warforged in this book is largely the same as the version in Forge of the Artificer. +1 AC and poison resilience will help you last even longer. Great if you want even more resilience.
Backgrounds
For a wands bard, you’ll want a background that enhances your charisma, dexterity and/or constitution. Below are the backgrounds from Frontiers of Eberron that I think combine great ability scores with good origin feats and skills for the college of wands.
| Name | Ability scores | Origin feat | Skill proficiencies | Tool proficiency |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dragonmarked bravo | Strength, dexterity, charisma | Lesser dragonmark | Athletics and intimidation | None |
| Dragonmarked foundling | Dexterity, constitution, charisma | Lesser dragonmark | Insight and stealth | Thieves’ tools |
| Wandslinger | Dexterity, intelligence, charisma | Magic initiate (wizard) | Intimidation and sleight of hand | One kind of gambling set or woodcarver’s tools |
Feats
- Hewn for battle: If you’re a Gargoyle and you want to invest less in dexterity, then you could pick this up for some quite good AC which is handy if you maybe want more feats than ability score increases (or just better AC with a high dexterity).
- Lesser dragonmark: Not all of these are going to be great on a bard, but some grant great spells and handy skill improvements. I’d probably suggest the lesser dragonmarks of passage (for misty step and longstrider), sentinel (for perception proficiency and shield) and shadow (for stealth proficiency, darkness and some illusions).
- Orb expert: Some improved attacks/spellcasting and improved evasiveness are great for a bard. Despite being a wands bard, you can also use an orb as a spellcasting focus.
- Shadow’s gift of stone: Quite a few extra spell castings as you progress in levels is going to be very useful for a bard.
- Voice of the fury: Similar to shadow’s gift of stone, this gives you a bunch of free spell castings each long rest which is useful for a bard.
- Wand expert: The college of wands sometimes has improved initiative and you should also have a decent dexterity, this means you should be taking your turn ahead of other creatures a fair bit. Wands bards also make plenty of spell attacks meaning a decent amount of advantage in the first round of combat and you’re not hampered by melee range. I don’t see drawing and stowing a wand being much of an issue for you though.
- Wings of stone: Flight is always useful. If you want that and are a gargoyle, then this could be handy.
More from Eberron
There are several 1st and 3rd party releases dedicated to Eberron, including Keith Baker’s Exploring Eberron and Frontiers of Eberron and the 1st party Forge of the Artificer. Check out all our coverage on these releases.
