Art Imitates Life

At 6th level, your mastery of the visual arts has grown to the point of being able to bring your artistic drawings to life.

You can use your action to bring a visual depiction of a beast to life. When you do so, the beast appears in an unoccupied space that you can see within 10 feet of you. This beast must have a challenge rating of 1/4 or lower, and its form must be that of a beast that you have seen.

Add your proficiency bonus to the beast’s AC, attack rolls, and damage rolls. Its hit point maximum equals the hit point number in its stat block or four times your bard level, whichever is higher.

The beast obeys your commands as best as it can. It shares your initiative, but takes its turn immediately after yours. It can only use its action to take the Dodge action, unless you use your bonus action to command it to use one of the actions in its stat block or to take the Dash, Disengage, or Help action. It cannot take the Multiattack action if it has one.

Although the beast can't directly communicate with you, it can relay information it has observed or heard by changing its form into a visual image or written message (limited to twenty-five words or less) that sufficiently communicates whatever you command it to tell you.

The beast can also be commanded to deliver a short message of twenty-five words or less. You specify a location, which you must have visited, and a recipient who matches a general description. The beast travels for the duration of this feature toward the specified location, covering about 50 miles per 24 hours for a flying beast, or 25 miles for other beasts. When the beast arrives, it permanently changes its form into a written depiction of your message that matches your handwriting.

The beast disappears after a number of hours equal to half your bard level (rounded down), when you finish a long rest, if it drops to 0 hit points, or if you choose to revert it back to a two-dimensional depiction (no action required).

Once you use this feature, you can’t use it again until you finish a long rest.

The maximum challenge rating of a beast created by this feature increases when you reach certain levels in this class, increasing to 1/2 at 10th level and 1 at 15th level.