College Of Dance Bard: D&D 2024 Optimisation Guide

Fancy footwork and deadly dancing makes the newest bard subclass a strong support option. See how to play one in our guide.

What is the college of dance?

Bards are performers but often we conflate this with them being musicians (they do often carry a lute or other instrument around after all). But many are actors, perform death-defying tricks of swordsmanship (think knife jugglers and sword-swallowers) and traders of stories and secrets. However, some bards are also dancers and a true dancing bard hasn’t really been represented in D&D as a subclass before. That is until now!

Bards trained in the college of dance can use their rhythm and powerful bodies to fight toe-to-toe with their enemies in unarmed combat. In some respects, this is like a monk, but with poise and timing that only comes from endless hours perfecting a shimmy!

Their dance becomes a deadly whirlwind of kicks, flicks and flourishes. And it’s not just for your own benefit. Dancing often requires a partner, making dance bards a great option for hit and run warriors fighting in tandem.

The college of dance is a brand new subclass for the bard, introduced in the D&D 2024 Player’s Handbook. It’s a unique and effective martial option for the bard that’s adept at hit and run tactics and providing support to allies while striking their opponents. My guide below will explain how they work and how to optimise one for your game.

At a glance

Utilise the power of dance in combat
Great option for hit and run specialists
Co-operate with allies to enhance them
Works best with allies but will struggle if left isolated
Fluid movements make you hard to hit, especially when unarmored

Related articles

College of dance features

The college of dance turns your bard into a capable hit and run melee specialist with features that turn your bard into a halfway monk (but with better teamwork).

Dazzling footwork – Lv3

How it works

This feature grants you a few different things:

Dance virtuoso: Any skill check you make that involves dancing is performed with advantage.
Unarmored defense: Like monks and barbarians, dance bards get a boost to their AC when wearing no armor or shield equal to 10 + dexterity modifier + charisma modifier.
Unarmed strikes: Dance bards performing an unarmed strike will do bludgeoning damage equal to their bardic inspiration die + their dexterity modifier. This scales with levels starting at d6 and eventually reaching d12.
Agile strikes: Alongside this, when you make a use of your bardic inspiration as part of your action, bonus action or reaction, you can also make an unarmed strike as part of that same act (without expending another bardic inspiration die). This means that you can both buff your ally and kick your enemy in the nuts at the same time (is this what tough love looks like)?

Tactics

This is a meaty feature with a lot of moving parts so let’s break it all down by each aspect:

Dance virtuoso: It’s obvious that you’d be great at dancing, but this is a highly situational ability. Nothing tactical to do here other than find opportunities to get your groove on.
Unarmored defense: A dance bard’s effectiveness is reliant on their ability to operate in close combat. But you’re not mega durable. The good thing for the dance bard is with unarmored defense, your AC ceiling is much higher, but unfortunately, the investment required in ability scores to get there is also much higher. You’ll need to invest heavily in both dexterity and charisma (your main ability scores anyway), probably at the expense of any additional feats.
Unarmed strikes: If you want to be an effective warrior, invest heavily in dexterity both to ensure you hit and deal maximum damage. It’s not hard to outperform your best weapon options here either. A rapier at d8 is the best damage dealer for a bard anyway, but you’ll want to avoid even having one of these at low levels so you can get your extra unarmed strikes which will work out as more damage overall.
Agile strikes: You’ll want to make sure that you’re passing on your bardic inspiration as often as you can, but doing so while in melee range of an enemy (otherwise part of your bardic inspiration is wasted by not getting to strike your opponent again). The important thing to note here is that this extra unarmed strike can occur whenever you use bardic inspiration. So if you use bardic inspiration as part of a reaction (yes, dance bards do get a reaction that can use their bardic inspiration as you’ll see below) then you can deal even more attacks.

Inspiring damage – Lv6

How it works

If an enemy ends their turn within 5ft of you, you can use your reaction and a bardic inspiration to move up to half your movement speed without provoking opportunity attacks. You can then also allow an ally within 30ft of you to do the same.

Tactics

Prevent yourself getting overrun with enemies by slipping in and out of combat.
Because you’re using your bardic inspiration, you can also perform an agile strike as part of this reaction. So punch that enemy in the face before you prance away. Or prance to another enemy and punch them instead.

Tandem footwork – Lv6

How it works

Grant all allies within 30ft of you a bonus to their initiative rolls with a roll and use of your bardic inspiration die.

Tactics

Get the jump on enemies by being the first to react. It can be a huge boon to ensure you get more attacks in before your enemies. Imagine having your wizard able to take out some of the enemy with a fireball before they even get to attack, or ensuring the assassin gets their all important assassination attack in on the target they need to.

Leading evasion – Lv14

How it works

When you make a dexterity saving throw to avoid taking damage, you now take no damage on a successful roll or half damage on an unsuccessful roll.

You can also grant this benefit to any creature you choose within 5ft of you.

Tactics

Extra durability is great, and many damage dealing dexterity saving throws can be devastating (like fireball). Making use of supporting an ally on this can be tricky, but you always want to fight close to allies anyway (a dance bard can easily get overwhelmed in combat on their own). Imagine fighting alongside a paladin whose auras buff you, your bardic inspiration buffs them and you dodge and strike in perfect unison. The tactic for the dance bard really, is to stay close to your allies as much as you can.

Building a college of dance bard

Dance bards are finicky fellows with quite a few moving parts (obviously) and bards themselves can be complex creatures with a lot of features to balance out. So below I’ve put together some guidance on making an optimal build for your college of dance bard.

Ability scores

Recommended options

Charisma: Important for spells, face skills and your unarmoured defense. Your most important ability score.
Dexterity: Only slightly less important than charisma. You’ll need this high for your unarmed strikes and a good AC.
Constitution: You’re a relatively vulnerable melee warrior so anything spare should go towards constitution.

Options to avoid

Wisdom: Of little use to a bard.
Intelligence: Of little use to a bard.
Strength: Of little use to a bard.

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 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.
Persuasion: 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 low 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 dance bard:

Resilience: You’re a bit vulnerable for a frontline warrior, so anything you can do to increase your resilience will be beneficial.
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.

Recommended options

Aasimar (2024): Resistance to necrotic and radiant damage increases your hardiness. All the celestial revelation options are great for a dance bard. You can use inspiring damage with flight to get extra safe or use necrotic shroud or inner radiance for a more aggressive approach. A bit of healing is decent too for a backup healer.
Dragonborn (2024): You don’t get many AoE spells as a bard so a Dragonborn makes a good option with their breath weapon. You also get temporary flight which is great for hit and run tactics. Plus there’s a resistance for better durability.
Dwarf (2024): An extra hit point per level is great for a vulnerable melee specialist. And for even more resilience, you have resistance against poison and advantage on saving throws against the poisoned condition.
Goliath (2024): Faster movement makes you even better at traversing the battlefield. Your giant ancestry grants some very useful options too. For a dance bard, I’d lean into being more durable by taking stone giant ancestry for the damage reduction as you’re quite vulnerable on the front line but if you want to punch and kick with fiery fury, fire giant ancestry is good too.
Orc (2024): A couple of great endurance features here with temporary hit points and relentless endurance to save you when knocked to 0HP. Great for a vulnerable melee warrior.
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.

Options to avoid

There aren’t really any bad species options for a dance bard. They can work for any of the 2024 species.

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. Remember that you can either choose to increase one of the ability score options from a background by 2 and the other by 1, or you can choose to increase all 3 ability scores by 1.

You also get an origin feat linked to your background too.

Below are the options I think work best for a college of dance 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
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 fits really well for a bard.

Weapons

Once you hit level 3 and earn your dance shoes, you won’t want to be wielding weapons as you’ll do more damage with your unarmed strikes.

You may want a ranged option available for when you need to get out of melee combat. A light crossbow is best for this, but even then, you’re probably best served by your spells than a single crossbow bolt, especially as you gain levels as cantrips will put perform your ranged weapon attacks.

Armor

Use studded leather armor until you hit level 3 and unarmoured defense kicks in. Just make sure your dexterity and charisma are high enough to make this work well, but it should be easy to make it better than light armor.