Quick Links
Bards are one of the most flexible classes inDungeons & Dragons. They can sweet-talk NPCs, they can go on the offensive with a well-placed Vicious Mockery, or they can serve a more supportive role, hyping the party up and inspiring them.
Bardic Inspiration is one of the most iconic abilities a bard has at their disposal. With it, your allies can succeed in the rolls, turning failure into victory. And with the 2024 Player’s Handbook, Bardic Inspiration got even stronger, so it’s worth refreshing yourself on what it can do.
What Is Bardic Inspiration?
Bardic Inspiration is anon-spell ability, meaning you don’t need to prepare it and it doesn’t use any of your spell slots. As a bonus action, you can allowany single creature within 60 feetto roll an additional d6 when they fail a d20 roll in thenext ingame hour, and add the amount rolled to it.
Don’t forget Bardic Inspiration isa bonus action, so you can do it alongside moving, attacking, casting spells, and any other action you’d carry out in a turn of combat. You can also do it outside of combat.
Bardic Inspiration improves as you level up in a number of ways. The number of uses between rests is based on yourCharisma modifier, so as that goes up, so does the number of times you may use Bardic Inspiration.
All your uses of Bardic Inspiration willrefresh after a long rest.
The dice rolled will also increase, depending on the bard level of your character.
1d6
1d8
Ten to 14
1d10
15+
1d12
How To Use Bardic Inspiration
As mentioned, Bardic Inspiration can be used as a bonus action, so you can use your turn to get into position, deal some damage, andthen set up an ally for a particularly good turnor skill check.
Any roll that uses a d20 die can be buffed with a Bardic Inspiration. This could be anability check,like seeing if a rogue successfully picks a lock, anattack rollforyour barbarian, or even asaving rollon a dying party member.
Even if the person you inspire fails a roll,they don’t have to use the Bardic Inspiration just yet, as it’s optional.They could save it for another roll coming up, as long as it’s within the one-hour time window, and as long as they fail the roll they want to buff. That being said, asa character can only have one inspiration die at a time, they’ll likely want to use it as quick as possible.
Outside of combat, you’d mention that you’d like to use Bardic Inspirationwhen discussing whether a player should do a skill check of some sort. In the example of a rogue picking a lot, you’d let your DM know you’d like to use Bardic Inspirationbefore your rogue rolls to lockpick.
How Is Bardic Inspiration Different In The 2024 Player’s Handbook?
The2024 Player’s Handbookpowered up Bardic Inspiration in a few key ways.
The first is that the duration was increased fromten minutes to one hour.This lets your recipients hold on to a die a bit longer, waiting for the perfect roll to use it on.
It’s also easier for your target to receive the inspiration, as now they have to be able tosee or hear you, as opposed to only being able to hear you.
In older editions, you could choose to use the die after rolling, but before your DM confirms if it’s a success or a failure. This often resulted in you needlessly buffing rolls that have already passed, wasting the Bardic Inspiration.
In the 2024 Player’s Handbook, this has been changed. Now, you canonly use the Bardic Inspiration die if the roll has already failed.You decided whether or not to use it once you know the outcome of the roll, not before, making it much less of a gamble.
You could still fail a roll after using a Bardic Inspiration if you rolled low enough on both dice.
A small change is that the 2024 edition uses the new phrasing“D20 Test”.This is simply shorthand of an ability check, attack roll, or saving throw. It doesn’t mechanically change how Bardic Inspiration works.
