College of Whistles Bard: Crooked Moon D&D 5e Optimisation Guide

Use the power of whistling to summon ghostly spirit to enhance allies, teleport the party and cast spells subtly.

At a glance

College of whistles features

Handy haints (Lv 3) – 5/5

An extra effect on your bardic inspiration is pretty nice. There’s no extra action economy or costs, but you will need to choose between 3 options. Each option also has 2 effects. One is a continuous effect for the duration of the haint and the other is a one time reaction which then ends the haint (including the continuous effect).

In practice, this means there are benefits to maintaining the haint rather than expending the reaction. The reaction effects are fairly even in power levels; enhanced damage, defence or a reroll of a saving throw, but the continuous effects are not.

Grump is the weakest, granting advantage on strength saving throws and intimidation checks which is probably a bit situational. Sad sack is excellent against ranged enemies, granting half cover (so +2AC) while scamp will be useful for combat where you need to move a lot enhancing movement speed. For me, sad sack is probably the one you want to be using most of all.

Whistling wanderer (Lv3) – 4/5

Whistled spells is handy for an often sneaky class. It means you can often use spells subtly by whistling them, but there is a risk that enemies will recognise that illusion you’re casting is someone casting a spell. great for stealthy bards.

A handy haversack is a rare magic object that’s kind of like a bag of holding which is a really handy item to have around. Both of these are pretty good utility options to have available.

Homeward bound (Lv6) – 3/5

On paper, having a level 5 spell at level 6 is really great. And teleportation circle certainly is useful, but it’s more a matter of convenience than one that will significantly impact gameplay. Basically, you get back to your homebase without the faff of travel which can easily be handwaved by a DM anyway.

Ride the rails (Lv6) – 5/5

This is setup as the equivalent of a level 3 spell, but I think it’s superior to that by a fair bit. The damage is half that of a lightning bolt, but it does have twice the width so should hit more enemies. On top of that, you push and cause deafened.

But the main thing here is with just an action, you can teleport the whole party up to 120ft away. This is kind of like dimension door for the whole party (it is a bit shorter on distance, but still quadruple that of misty step). Dimension door on its own is a level 4 spell and I think this is better. I’d have probably regarded this as a level 5 spell.

This is great for when the party need to regroup when they’re overwhelmed by enemies. An excellent option for when the group’s in dire straits.

Last stop (Lv14) -5/5

There’s quite a lot of moving parts in this one which I think makes it overly complicated. The range is huge so there’s no concern about creatures being in range.

You will need to build and play around it though. That means the whole party making plenty of psychic attacks to ensure you maximise on cursed creatures becoming frightened. You’ll also want the first psychic damage to be as high as possible as this damage has vulnerability. Power word kill or synaptic static will be ideal, but you can also fall back on lower levels psychic spells like dissonant whispers or vicious mockery.

Interestingly, having advantage against the frightened condition is meaningless as the saving throw is against being cursed which technically makes this superior to other types of fear mongering. However, immunity to frightened will still protect the creature.

If you build and play around this, it’s excellent, but if you put little into maximising on it, then it can be quite useless. My score assumes you’re maximising on the capabilities of this feature with lots of strong psychic damage.

How good is the college of whistles subclass?

The college of whistles is probably one of the best bard subclasses around. There’s an absolute load of utility and buffs as well as some decent damage dealing.

You can’t dive in unprepared though. You need to make your build around the subclass’ capabilities. That means building for stealth to use your whistling spells subtly and grabbing psychic spells to make the most of last stop. It also means getting the rest of the party on board. If you do that though, then you’ve got a really strong bard on your hands.

5/5

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Building a college of whistles bard

Largely, a whistles bard can be optimised in the same ways as other bards. If you want a full breakdown on how to do this using D&D 2024 character options, you can check out my bard optimisation guide.

As this is a Crooked Moon subclass, I’ve just looked at character options in the Crooked Moon book and given advice on which work well for this bard subclass.

Species/race

One of the challenges with the Crooked Moon species for a whistles bard, is that many of them are focused on enhancing attacks, but whistles bards tend towards buffing spells and features as well as inflicting saving throws on enemies rather than attacks. This makes some species that seem a natural fit for a bard, like the relicborn, feel suboptimal on a whistles bard.

There are still some good options though like:

• Ashborn: Some great stealth spells to go with your subtle whistle spells. Darkvision is great for a stealth build and there’s some extra resilience in there too. The natural weapon probably isn’t much use for a bard though.
• Azureborn: Flight works great for a scout and a ranged bard that wants to stay away from danger. Improving initiative rolls for the party is great for anyone and guidance works really well on a skill-heavy class. The bonus action dash is a handy option too for getting away from danger.
• Silkborn: A climb speed is very useful for scouting and stealth. More resilience against attacks is a good option too. Find familiar and web are both great options and a familiar can be a good support for scouting. You can also repeat cast these spells when needed.

Backgrounds

Unlike the Player’s Handbook, Crooked Moon backgrounds give you a choice of any ability scores to increase. Based primarily on the origin feats and proficiencies, I’d recommend the following backgrounds for a whistles bard:

Name	Ability scores	Origin feat	Skill proficiencies	Tool proficiency
Crimson aspirant	Any	Crimson ritualist	Arcana, medicine	Herbalism kit
Crossroads gambler	Any	Fate gambler	Deception, insight	One kind of gaming set
Cultist	Any	Cult initiate	Arcana and one other	Calligrapher’s supplies
Druskenvald dweller	Any	Any	Survival and one other	Choose one
Experiment	Any	Altered	Intimidation, medicine	Alchemist’s supplies
Reflected wanderer	Any	Unreflected	Deception, investigation	Disguise kit
Scholar of the forbidden	Any	Dread speech	Arcana, intimidation	Calligraoher’s supplies
Wicker weaver	Any	Charm twister	Insight, nature	Weaver’s tools

Feats

I’d consider the following feats for a whistles bard:

• Altered: Natural armor will always be good as it’s +1AC to what studded armor can manage. Night vision might be a good choice if you don’t already have darkvision.
• Charm twisted: Bless is a good buff and you can repeat cast it. Twister hex can be situational to engineer, but if you can plant it in the right place, then that disadvantage can be a real pain.
• Crimson ritualist: A decent cantrip and basically a healing potion each long rest. The better your constitution, the better the healing and while the expense of hit dice means overall, you don’t get loads of extra healing, you do benefit from healing in the moments you need it most (like in combat).
• Cult initiate: A couple of warlock cantrips and a 1st level spell can be really handy. Minor illusion and mage hand are great options for your cantrips while unseen servant can be good for stealth too or detect magic if no one else has taken this.
• Dread speech: Bane is a pretty good debuff and frightened with a bonus action is a decent option too.
• Fate gambler: It’s probably saving throws you’ll be forcing most out of this list. The heroic inspiration will be handy, as will the temporary hit points.
• Unreflected: Hiding among people is always going to be more handy for a stealth class and gives you somewhere else to go unseen (parties, soirees and busy streets).

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