The party’s musically gifted bard challenges the tavern’s house band to a musical duel. The two face off and make a performance check. The DM and bard explain the scene, but it’s all good fun, and partygoers are awarded a free night’s drinks and lodging.
The rest of the party, however, doesn’t do much. Sure, the Rogue messes with the opposing band, and the Loud Barbarian heckles the band to disrupt them, but that’s it. They’re supporting characters. They’re not given equal time in the spotlight.
What if everyone in your party pulled out their instruments and challenged themselves to a band of their own instead? A battle of the bands breaks out in the quaint tavern in the village square. Everyone joins in and together we can defeat the rival band!
The second option sounds better, right? Absolutely.
Does figuring out how that works seem like a lot of work? It certainly does.
Thankfully, Leon Barillaro has given us a fully fleshed out musical combat system in Bard-Core Brawlers that everyone can participate in, not just the bard or musically gifted members of your party.
It’s an ingenious, yet easy to learn system that brings a change to a game focused on dungeon exploring and monster slaying.
Rigorous formatting and editing
Revising and adapting 5e’s combat rules is no small task, but what’s even more difficult is explaining the various tweaks and new mechanics in an easy-to-understand way.
That being said, I had no trouble reading and understanding the various mechanics of musical combat, and Sadie Lowry’s expert editing made Bard-Core Brawlers very easy to get through.
The content is concise and to the point, yet packed with information.
Add to this Willy Abeel’s excellent layout and you have a tasty, enjoyable read. Style and flavour ooze from the pages of this supplement, but none of it gets in the way of the subject.
The PDF also comes fully bookmarked, making it easy to navigate through the 21 pages of supplementary material. Truly, Leon and team have thought of everything to make Bard-Core Brawlers an easy and enjoyable read.
Incredible artwork
Firstly, the cover art by Aly Hüber complete with Willy’s logo makes for a fantastic cover, with a tiefling and dragonborn dueling on guitars and strumming power chords in front of an excited crowd, perfectly capturing the feel of this supplement.
But the amazing artwork doesn’t stop after you turn the cover.
Leonardo Bóia consistently displays some of the best character art I’ve seen on the DMs Guild. The supplemental adventure, Larksbury Music Festival, features a wide variety of NPCs that make up the various bands, and Leonardo captures them all perfectly.
A complete and creative overhaul of 5e combat
Musical combat plays out like a typical 5e combat – there’s an initiative order, and everyone attacks and casts spells on their opponents in an attempt to subdue them – but there are some key differences.
Rather than utilizing physical attributes (Strength, Dexterity, Stamina), musical combat utilizes mental attributes (Wisdom, Intelligence, Charisma).
Wisdom, along with the creature’s character level and hit dice, are used to determine the MP or morale points that act as the band’s strength in musical combat. Yes, that’s right, the band shares a pool of MP, meaning that if MP drops to 0, the entire group is finished.
I like this change because it makes the band feel more like a cohesive group – once your MP runs out it’s over, so you can’t just carry the band on your own.
Charisma is used for attacks and damage rolls using the instrument, however unlike normal attacks, attacks using the instrument are called “riffs” and deal “riff damage” that targets the band’s MP rather than a traditional damage type.
Intelligence determines a character’s Resolve Class (RC), which is the equivalent of AC in musical combat.
One difference between AC and RC is that a creature’s RC increases by 1 each time it is riffed. A creature’s RC resets to its original value at the end of the creature’s turn, but it can be useful in discouraging bands from attacking one of the rival bands.
Overall, despite a lot of changes, musical combat still feels true to the spirit of the standard 5e combat system.
Think Marshalls!
One of the big concerns I had about musical combat was that it would be bard-centric, and while bards certainly have great talent in this area, incorporating both Wisdom and Intelligence into musical combat opens it up to any caster class.
More precisely, it is open to anyone with the motivation to utilize at least one of these capabilities and throw in some ASI.
But if a combat-focused martial arts character chooses to forego these three stats, they’ll be at a huge disadvantage in musical combat. Right?
Wrong!
All of the Bard-Core Brawlers’ instruments have weapon properties: Two of these properties, Heavy and Finesse, allow the wielder to make lift attacks using Strength or Dexterity, respectively, instead of Charisma.
If a character chooses to do so, Strength or Dexterity also adds to Rift damage instead of Charisma.
It’s a simple yet elegant design choice that I’m completely drawn to. It would be easy to forget about a combat-focused martial character, but this mechanic allows you to ditch WIS/INT/CHA and still excel in musical combat.
Get the crowd moving!
Part of the joy of a concert is playing in front of a live audience, and great bands always find different ways to involve the audience to liven up the event and add extra fun to their performance.
The Favor mechanic is how bands can borrow the power of the crowd during musical combat: bands have a pool of Favor that they can spend in a variety of ways, such as crowd surfing to allow them to move freely or getting the crowd to sing along to restore the band’s MP.
Bands with big fanbases often start the battle with an advantage because they have more fans in the audience, but any band can earn money to spend when the time comes by playing to a crowd or doing something cool onstage.
It’s like a combination of inspiration and lair actions, and it’s a fun and unique mechanic that sets musical combat apart from typical 5e combat.
Further Adventures: Larksbury Music Festival
The mechanics alone are worth the price of admission, but Leon ties it all together in this supplement with band-style adventure battles for 5th-level characters.
The party has been convened in Larksbury by his friend Mick Nesbitt and is already set to take part in a Battle of the Bands. The members of the party may or may not already be famous bands – Mick doesn’t care, he just wants to win the prize: a music tour of the Sword Coast.
But winning the Battle of the Bands is no easy task: to take home the prize, a party must outdo three established bands.
3 different bands
To win the Battle of the Bands, a party must defeat all three challengers. If a party loses at any point in the competition, it’s over.
The first challengers are bluegrass band The Bandherhobb Boys, a devilish duo who love to rile up and taunt their opponents onstage, but become stand-up boys when they’re done playing.
Trifling, a powerhouse group of tiefling girl punks, were the second placed band in the competition and are my favorite of the group. Each member has a different skill set in musical combat, and when they all combine together they make a formidable group of enemies.
Bands work together and use each other’s strengths to weaken, demoralize, and defeat their competitors.
GGROGG is the third and final group the party must defeat to win the prize. This power metal group is brutal and desperate to pull off a win this year after a major defeat last year.
This adventure has many ways to show how musical combat can differ from encounter to encounter, which is great. NPC bands might pull off some unique boon moves during combat, or use spells and abilities in creative ways to give the party ideas for their next musical combat.
Plus, role-playing opportunities abound throughout the adventure: various NPCs from the band will come looking for parties before and after their performances, and like any music festival, there are plenty of parties to join.
DM Preparation Tips
What I like about this adventure are the DM tips: each section for each band has a paragraph or two to give the DM ideas on how to play in musical combat.
I also liked that the Vanderhob Boy was a generic stat block, and since there are two Vanderhob Boys, you’ll need to scale the encounter for larger groups, and one of the tips for the Vanderhob Boys was to add a third member who plays the violin and uses a generic stat block, like Scruggs or Flatt.
I love when modules give DMs direction for encounters, and these tips were a great addition!
What happens next?
If he can beat all three bands in the Battle of the Bands, he’ll get to embark on a music tour of 10 stops along the Sword Coast with his pal Mick.
It works as is, making it a fitting conclusion to a one-shot, but it’s also a solid storyline to kick off a campaign and get the story going – after all, there’s a lot for a (literal) party of adventurers traveling along the Sword Coast to do.
I also like that this adventure gives you the option to fail: If you lose, it’s over, but you can find some gigs at local bars and practice so you can win next year.
It’s a fun adventure that’s the perfect length to play as a quick one-shot or diversionary side quest in the middle of a campaign, plus it could easily incorporate changes of location or lore to suit settings other than the Forgotten Realms.
Final Thoughts on Birdcore Brawler
Bard-Core Brawlers is a unique refinement of the traditional 5e combat system, and Leon’s careful planning and ingenious design have transformed what I thought would be a bard-centric supplement into a universal musical combat system that any character can thrive on.
Priced at just under $5, Bard-Core Brawlers is a fantastic supplement that will shake things up at the table. It comes with all the mechanics you need to create your own Battle of the Bands style one-shots and side quests, or Leon includes ready-to-go adventures so you can choose whichever suits you best.
It’s weird, it’s funky, it’s fresh… it’s a big hit!
