For April Fool's Day, I thought it would be fun/funny to make drafts of subclasses designed to fulfill the opposite of the class design. Obviously these are very thrown together subclasses with no playtesting and no balance changes, so use them at your own discretion! I also decided after writing a few that I'm going to release them one by one.
Bard College of Remedial Math
While some bards pursue the study of lore, blades, or even public speaking, you never quite excelled at those classes when you when to bardic college. In fact, you didn't even get to take them until your senior year, so all you got was the basics. No unfortunately for you, you were shuffled into other classrooms, weekend lectures, summer school, and remedial classes. You're lucky you can read, but that doesn't stop you from going out to try to tell stories and share your experiences, as challenging as it might be for you.
Elementary Skill
When you join the College of Remedial Math at 3rd level, or rather, when you are placed here, your learning is limited, and the maximum largest die you can roll is a d6, and the largest modifier you are able to add from one source is +/-2.
Thus, if you have a Charisma score of 18 (+4) at 1st level, with a proficiency bonus of +2, you are only able to add 2 + 2 to corresponding rolls. In addition, you make those rolls with a d6, because math is too hard to use bigger dice yet. If your GM is forgiving, they can treat max rolls on your given die as a natural 20, to help curb the embarrassment of not being able to add 3+3 until level 5.
As you level up, your maximum die and modifiers increase, as shown on the table below.
Level | Max Die | Max Modifier |
3 | d6 | +/- 2 |
5 | d8 | +/- 4 |
10 | d10 | +/- 6 |
15 | d12 | +/- 8 |
20 | d20 | No limit. |
Big Words
Despite some subjects being more challenging for you, you aren't a fool by any means. Although school is hard, you are able to compensate with natural talent. At 3rd level, and each level on the above table, gain one spell with total characters in it's name equal to or less than your max die number of characters. This does NOT have to be a spell you can cast (although you obviously cannot cast it without the appropriate level spell slot). Do not count spaces in a spells name as a character. These spells are Bard spells for you, and do not count against your spells known.
Inspired By Learning
At 6th level, you've gained confidence in your ability to learn. Whenever you roll a maximum result on your die, gain a charge of Bardic Inspiration. You may inspire yourself as a free action when you do so.
Prerequisites Met
By 14th level you've passed most of your remedial classes and you can be accepted into a proper Bardic College at this time. Select an additional bardic college, you gain all the features of that college in addition to this one.