Welcome back to the weekly D&D and Tabletop Gaming thread! Here’s a place where we can talk about Dungeons & Dragons or any other tabletop games that you nerds might be into. Tell us about the games you’re playing, speculate about future expansions, recruit your fellow Avocados into new groups, whatever you want.
This week’s subclass for discussion is the College of Valor Bard. Bards of this college are singers and storytellers who gather in mead halls to recite tales of legendary heroes of the past. They also travel the world to seek out new heroes and witness their great deeds first hand. 
Also at level 3, your Bardic Inspiration can make your allies more effective in battle. When you use Combat Inspiration to grant an inspiration die to a creature, that creature can choose to use that die to increase a damage roll, in addition to an attack, saving throw, or ability check. Or, they can use a reaction, in response to being attacked, to increase their AC, potentially turning a hit into a miss.
At 6th level, Valor Bards get an Extra Attack, allowing them to swing twice whenever they use the Attack action on their turn. This as an ability most martial characters get, and you should note that it doesn’t stack–if you already have an extra attack from being a 5th level Fighter, you won’t gain a third swing by increasing your Bard level to 6.
Finally at level 14, the Valor Bard learns to combine the use of magic and physical attacks. The Battle Magic ability allows you to use a bonus action to make a weapon attack whenever you cast a Bard spell with your main action on your turn.
While a Valor Bard will never be as effective a combatant as a purely martial character, like a Fighter or Barbarian, if you want to play as someone who combines supportive magic with decent fighting capabilities, this might be the class for you.
I took over the GM’s chair once again, this time running the group through the D&D 5e adventure “Forge of Fury,” found in the Tales From the Yawning Portal book. The PCs are:
- Gash the Furious, a Half-Orc Totem Warrior Barbarian (played by Otto)
- Slowclap, a Kenku Kensei Monk (played by Josephus Brown)
- Seraphina Lathander, an Aasimar Light Cleric (played by The Wasp)
- Oona Maku, a Half-Elf Hunter Ranger (played by Wafflicious)
- Fritzi Flickerfling, a Gnome Evoker Wizard (played by The Hayes Code)
- Edith Stitch, a Gnome Forge Cleric (played by Spiny Creature)
The recap this week comes from the journal of Fritzi Flickerfling, Gnomish Wizard. Thanks to Hayes for writing this up!
[spoiler title=”Inside Durgeddin’s Stronghold”]
Fritzi Flickerfling’s Journal
We continued our delve into the caves beneath the mountain in search of the lost dwarven stronghold. After a short detour to investigate the nests of those unpleasant gricks – quite a profitable one; it seems they pilfered a quantity of coinage and a bag of holding from some previous, less lucky souls – we braved the large, forbidding door on the eastern side of the room. Slowclap managed to pick the lock, revealing a set of stairs – leading up, thank goodness! No more checking myself for striges every few minutes…
And in further good news, the stairs ascended to a finished, octagonal chamber containing three dwarven statues – a good sign that we’d located the ancient ruin at last! Two obvious doors led out of the chamber. I, wary of the effluvient trap sprung upon us by the last statue we encountered, counseled a cautious approach, but Gash heard the noise of hammer upon anvil from the right, and opened the door… earning herself a blank wall and a blow from the statues’ axes for her trouble. They ought to have named her Rash, not Gash! Just a little joke.
I quickly conjured a mage hand to try the other door, and earned the same result – minus the bodily harm. Now we were in a pickle. Only two doors, and both false? The answer, though, was obvious, and Seraphina soon located a third, true exit concealed behind the easternmost statue.
Up another flight of stairs, and we triggered an alarm which began wailing in Dwarvish about intruders. 
Best to clear out the undead first and secure any treasures before our competitors do, we decided, and headed north to a small room containing an old well. Without warning, a ghost floated through the wall and attacked! My spells did some damage, but not all I’d hoped – Gash’s magically-enhanced greataxe did more, and things seemed under control, until the ghost possessed our barbarian friend and turned that same greataxe against us!
I planned to use my handy Wand of Entangle to trap Gash, but my fellow party members are a rather hot-blooded bunch, and they hastened to wring the ghost out of her the old-fashioned way. Angry at having its new plaything broken, the ghost gave us such a horrifying grimace I felt as if I’d aged ten years! We managed to finish it off anyway…and stabilize our fallen friend before we had ANOTHER angry ghost to deal with.
Beyond the ghost were halls to the west and east and a bonanza of doors to explore. We decided to hole up in the first one – the sight of a long-ago battle, and still strewn with dessicated corpses. I cast an Alarm spell on the door, a handy little trick I only recently learned, and we passed an uneasy night in the boneyard. At least Gash was able to rest and heal, and I practiced my spells for the day ahead.
Heading west, we discovered an ancient shrine to what must have been a very important dwarf. Piles of bones flanked the shrine, and a withered orc corpse lay before it. 
The spoils: some coins – good – and a lovely scroll case – better – containing two spells not yet in my book – best! As soon as I get back to town I must spend an evening adding Web and Spider Climb to my repertoire. I can hardly wait to scuttle up a wall or two!
We explored a few more rooms – one was empty, while another contained some troublesome dwarf skeletons – but little else of real interest presented itself to us. I can only wonder what lies deeper within…
[/spoiler]