Arcane Tradition: Bladesinger Revised

Restriction [Faerûn]: Elves Only

Only elves and half-elves can choose the bladesinger arcane tradition as it is a closely guarded secret in Faerûn.

Your DM can lift this restriction to better suit the campaign in mind. The restriction reflects the story of bladesingers in the Forgotten Realms, but it might not apply to your DM's setting or your DM's version of the Realms.

Training in War and Song

When you adopt this tradition at 2nd level, you gain proficiency with light armor and two one-handed melee weapons of your choice. If you're proficient with a simple or martial melee weapon, you can use it as a spellcasting focus for your wizard spells.

You also gain proficiency in the Performance skill if you don't already have it.

Bladesong

Starting at 2nd level, you can invoke a secret elven technique called the Bladesong as a bonus action. While your Bladesong is active, you gain the following benefits if you aren't wearing medium or heavy armor or using a shield:

• You gain a bonus to your AC equal to your Intelligence modifier (minimum of +1) .
• Your movement speed increases by 10 feet.
• You have advantage on Dexterity (Acrobatics) checks.
• You gain a bonus to any Constitution saving throw you make to maintain your concentration on a spell. The bonus equals your Intelligence modifier (minimum of +1) .

Your Bladesong lasts for 1 minute. Your Bladesong ends early if you are knocked unconscious, if you don medium or heavy armor or a shield, or if you use two hands to make an attack with a single weapon. You can also dismiss your Bladesong at any time you choose as for free (no action required) .

You can use this feature twice. You regain these uses each time you complete a short or long rest.

The number of uses increases by 1 at 14th level.

Extra Attack

Starting at 6th level, you can attack twice, instead of once, whenever you take the Attack action on your turn.

Song of Celerity

Starting at 10th level, whenever combat stirs, you can act unnaturally fast. Whenever you roll for initiative and aren't surprised, you can choose to immediately invoke your Bladesong. In addition, whenever you make a melee attack against a creature while your Bladesong is active, that creature can't make opportunity attacks against you for the rest of your turn.

Song of Defense

Beginning at 10th level, you can direct your magic to absorb damage. Whenever you take damage while your Bladesong is active, you can use your reaction to expend one spell slot and reduce the damage you take by an amount equal to five times the spell slot's level.

Song of Victory

Starting at 14th level, while your Bladesong is active, you add your Intelligence modifier (minimum of +1) to the damage of your melee weapon attacks.

need to have occur more often, or, at least, it should last longer than how it starts at 2nd level at later levels. I believe additional uses could solve both issues. Although, two uses proves to be enough uses at lower levels through playtesting.

The Extra Attack at 6th level helps the bladesinger being a front line spellcaster. If I were to change it, then I think I would cause the Eldritch Knight to be competing with it more than it should. An additional feature at 6th level may overload the early benefits of the arcane tradition, so I decided,

alongside the feedback I obtained, to include additional features at later levels, i.e. 10th level and/or 14th level.

At 10th level, the Song of Defense proves great for bladesingers in reducing damage taken akin to Monk's Slow Fall feature. It should not be changed. Although, I did include another feature to be gained at this level to aid with the previously mentioned issues. Upon researching previous implementations of the Bladesinger in other editions of Dungeons & Dragons, I found another song that bladesinger used to utilize. Song of Celerity would aid in the lack of mobility benefits that bladesinger had. I thought about using this song to aid in my revision to this arcane tradition. User HerpDerp1909 (/u/HerpDerp1909) provides the best solution to include this would-be feature without overstepping the benefits of your Bladesong. However, I did not wish to take away from War Magic wizards, so I did not include the initiative bonus equal to your Intelligence modifier. I did include the other suggestions.

The final benefit of being a bladesinger comes from Song of Victory. With my current feedback on this revision, I realized the true potential of this feature. Since Dexterity proves important to this arcane tradition in addition to Intelligence, I understand how replacing more of the need for Dexterity would be undermining it due to how its presented in both features and lore. I decided, like the Extra Attack, to leave it unchanged. Furthermore, with the current revisions, the later levels are supported more than before, so I may not need to change it anyways.

If you have any suggestions to improve upon the current version of this revision to Bladesinger, please go to this Unearthed Arcana subreddit link.