Grim Hollow Bard Subclass Guide | Colleges Of Adventurers, Fools And Requiems

Deep diving into the colleges of adventurers, fools and requiems.

In Grim Hollow players must face against hopeless odds. This is in contrast to the hopefulness and mirth normally associated with bards. As a result, many of the bards in Grim Hollow take a darker turn. Some develop a dark sense of humour and laugh at their hopeless fate. Others sing tales of death to animate the fallen into undeath. Yet there are others that seek to embody the rare, legendary heroes of the land too.

The 2024 version of the Grim Hollow Player’s Handbook has 3 bard subclasses. They are:

College of adventurers – Take on the traits and features of other classes to make them incredibly versatile and ready for adventure.
College of fools – Use mockery as a weapon, both against their enemies, and the impending hopelessness of the land.
College of requiems – Possess necromantic capabilities to animate and command undead minions and harm their foes.

In this article, I’ll dive into each subclass to provide advice as well as analyse how strong they are and which is the most powerful.

College of adventurers

What are they?

Inspired by legends of heroes, bards of the college of adventurers seek to embody past glories. To do this, they develop a wide repertoire of skills beyond those of ordinary bards.

Key abilities

Talented adventurer (lv3)

You gain an adventurer’s talent which are abilities similar to those possessed by other classes. This includes things like a weaker version of a barbarian’s rage, a sorcerer’s metamagic and a rogue’s cunning action.

As you gain levels, you can pick up to 3 of these allowing a lot of flexibility in your build.

Party planner (lv3)

Anyone with a bardic inspiration from you can use a bonus action to take the help action. This isn’t limited in uses either so this could be some kind of perpetual help action which is especially good for classes that aren’t often using their bonus action, like fighters and barbarians.

Well-rounded (lv6)

Gain a proficiency in a skill, an artisan’s tool and learn a new language. This is a bit of a ribbon feature, but you do also get another adventurer’s talent at this level.

Improvisational talent (Lv14)

You can easily swap adventurer’s talents when you take a long rest. This means you can be more adaptable and try out different combinations to see what works best for your build.

What are they good at?

The college of adventurers is really adaptable and has access to some really interesting options from other classes.

How effective are they?

The college of adventurers is all about it’s adventurer talents. Some of these work better for a bard than others. For example, if you take the fighter talent, you gain access to martial weapons, shields and a fighting style. Shields are pretty good, but martial weapon training on a single attack bard isn’t that useful and a fighting style is more limited.

Other things can be much more useful. For instance, a rogue’s cunning action or something like a wizards spells, a sorcerer’s metamagic or a warlock’s eldritch invocations.

Ultimately, I do feel like the college of adventurers remains such a jack of all trades that they are specialists in nothing. I do suspect that there could be some interesting multiclass options enshrouded in here, but as far as I can see, this is an interesting, but ultimately average subclass.

Score: 3/5

College of fools

What are they?

The college of fools chooses to laugh at the darkness, rather than succumb to it’s hopelessness. In so doing, they become resilient to fear, while also developing a somewhat crass and irreverent attitude to their circumstances.

Key abilities

Antagonistic antics (lv3)

You now know vicious mockery and dissonant whispers. You can also cast vicious mockery as a bonus action if you use the dash, disengage or influence actions on that turn.

It’s sort of like cunning action, which is useful on a bard, but with more limited uses of your non-cunning action activity. Getting out of melee danger is likely the most useful thing to do here.

Both of these are good spells and the whole feature is a bit about damage and a bit about getting out of danger.

Cruel jest (lv3)

You can add insult to injury by using your reaction and a bardic inspiration die when an enemy fails a d20 test and deal some damage and cause disadvantage on their next d20 test.

You may want to coordinate with allies to ensure they take full advantage of this disadvantage by attempting to impose a nasty save or suck effects on the enemy.

Gallows humor (lv6)

Use a reaction to regain a bardic inspiration and potentially knock someone prone and reduce their movement to 0 until the end of their next turn.

You can only use this once per rest, but it’s better than it sounds. Prone means advantage on melee attack rolls against them and disadvantage on their attacks rolls. Don’t use it on enemies allies will be shooting, but if you’ve got allies diving into melee against this creature, it can work really well. It’ll also largely nullify their attacks.

For this reason, it’s better against martial creatures than spellcaster who could just impose saving throw spells instead.

The reason this is better than standard prone is because of the 0 movement. This means they can’t just stand up on their turn meaning up to 2 whole rounds for the party to benefit from this.

Last laugh (Lv14)

When you take damage and are bloodied, you can use a reaction to restore all uses of your bardic inspiration, gain resistance to all damage for a minute and expend 3 bardic inspiration dice when you’re hit to damage your attacker for the duration (no reaction required).

This is all pretty good and with fully restored bardic inspiration, you should have enough to deal this damage at least once if you want to.

The best time to use this is when you’ve expended lots of bardic inspiration, but also in tough fights where you’ve just become bloodied (taking full advantage of your damage resistance).

What are they good at?

Debuffing enemies with disadvantage and making good use of their reaction.

How effective are they?

Bards are already quite action economy heavy on their actions and bonus action, but their reaction often goes unused. The college of fools takes full advantage of this allowing your bard to do more in a round. They’re pretty good at being slippery in combat and debuffing enemies too.

I think the college of fools is broadly useful alongside a party that works well together. They’re maybe a bit less effective in a small party where you may just need to hit harder instead of debuffing and can’t take as easy advantage of their skillset.

Still, they’re a decent enough option if your primary form of offence is a mockery of your enemy.

Score: 3/5

College of requiems

What are they?

Bards that sing mournful tales of the dead. They use these melodies to control undead minions to do their bidding.

Key abilities

Chilling melody (Lv3)

You learn 2 necromancy cantrips of your choice. There aren’t many of these to choose from. There’s chill touch, poison spray, spare the dying and toll the dead. Poison spray is your highest damage though toll the dead will equal this on injured enemies, has a better damage type and it’s a saving throw which can be good against heavily armoured foes. I’d avoid chill touch as bards usually aren’t built for melee, but spare the dying can be useful.

Pluck the heartstrings (lv3)

Your bardic inspiration dice can be used to prevent death or add extra necrotic damage to an attack. This is great for keeping allies in the fight longer and I’d say this is a more worthwhile use of your bardic inspiration, but this might often not come up. In which case, extra damage is a great way to use bardic inspiration.

Stir the bones (lv6)

You can cast animate dead and your bardic inspiration given to others, is also granted to the undead you control. They can then use this to deal extra damage to enemies too.

Animate dead can be used multiple times to animate multiple undead or can be cast at higher levels to give you an honor guard of undead at your command. But you must use your bonus action to control them (but can control all of them simultaneously in this way). This does create a conflict for your bonus action which is also used to grant bardic inspiration. As bardic inspiration lasts an hour and animate undead lasts 24hrs, the best approach here is to prepare in advance by giving bardic inspiration ahead of combat.

If you’re really leaning into the undead aspects of this spell, it’ll be hard to justify granting bardic inspiration while your undead minions are still lurching around in combat, which is a shame.

Dual death (lv14)

You can have necromancy spells that target one creature to now target 2 creatures instead. This might mean targeting 2 creatures with toll the dead, but I’d say the impact is magnified by using higher level spells like blindness/deafness, blight or finger of death. At the cost of a bardic inspiration, the cost of a double spell is very low. It also solves the issue of what you do with your bardic inspiration while commanding undead minions.

What are they good at?

Using necromancy. Commanding undead minions and providing support. From level 14, they also get a bit sorcerous with enhanced spells that can be twinned (a little like metamagic).

How effective are they?

The college of requiem is decent. They have good new uses for bardic inspiration, have slightly improved undead minions and a bit more capacity to deal damage than the average bard. Their level 14 feature is really good though, overcoming your bonus action conflicts and seriously empowering your spellcasting. If this kicked in sooner, I’d have given them a 4, but as most players may not reach these levels, they’re stuck with a 3.

Score: 3/5

Which Grim Hollow bard subclass is best?

This is actually really tough as I gave them all the same score (decent, but nothing special). And to be honest, there’s not a lot in it between the different subclasses. The college of adventurers is a really interesting utility option and might have some really creative multiclass options, but their skillset is maybe a little too diverse and lacking in specialism.

The college of fools are a great debuff option and make really good use of their reaction, but don’t possess any overly special features.

And finally, the college of requiem is a really decent necromancer alternative with an excellent level 14 feature, but much more average features at previous levels. For a higher level campaign, I’d probably say that this is the best of the 3, but before then, I think they’re all fairly similar in power, if quite different in capabilities.

What do you think of Grim Hollow’s bard subclasses? Let me know in the comments below.