College of Necrodancy

Bards of the College of Necrodancy are those who use the power of music to rouse the dead. Few and far between, these bards can go their entire lives without meeting another practitioner of their arts. Often Necrodancers discover the secrets to their necromantic songweaving in aged scrolls or forbidden tomes. Only very rarely does a Necrodancer learn from another Necrodancer.

These bards often visit grave sites across the land, using song and lyric as a tool to raise the dead in order to gain lost knowledge from those who lived long ago. Because of this specific power, Necrodancers are often historians, anthropologists, or archeologists. They can also, however, use similar tunes to rouse the dead into aiding them in battle, sending unusually lively skeletons dancing towards their enemies, slashing and bashing to the beat of their music.

Bonus Spells

Necrodancers cross between the fields of Music and Necromancy. When you join the College of Necrodancy, you gain a more profound understanding of life and death. Whenever you learn a Bard spell, you may choose from either your Bard spell list, or from any class spell list, provided the spell you learn is from the school of Necromancy. Spells learned this way count as a Bard spell for you.

You also gain the following spells automatically at the levels as listed.

Necrodancy Bonus Spells

Bard Level Spells 3rd false life 5th blindness/deafness 7th animate dead 9th legend lore

Dark Inspiration

Also at 3rd level, you learn to protect others from necromantic energy in battle. You can expend one use of your bardic inspiration to instead give a creature that can hear you resistance to necrotic damage for the next 3 hours.

Power Word Dance

Starting at 6th level, you can use an action to play a particularly upbeat tune, causing an amount of creatures equal to your Charisma modifier (minimum of one) within 10 feet of you that can hear and see you to make a Charisma saving throw against your bard spell save DC. If they fail, they dance uncontrollably for the next round. They can still talk normally, and cast spells with purely verbal components but otherwise cannot make any attack or movement actions.

Attacking the targets or moving out of range ends the effect. Once you play this song, you cannot use its

power again until you finish a long rest.

Ballad of the Grave

At 14th level you have become a master of commanding the dead with your music. Each day, choose one of the following powers. You can use the force of your song to create one of the following effects: