D&D 5E Basic Build Series: Bard

Author: Esker

The Bard is one of the most powerful and versatile classes in the game due to its excellent spell list (especially at spell levels 3 and up), access to Ritual Casting, and the ability to fill gaps by picking spells from other classes’ lists with their Magical Secrets feature. On top of being great spellcasters, Bards also get an excellent support ability in Bardic Inspiration, as well as strong skills. This build, part of our Basic Build Series, uses the College of Eloquence subclass to enhance the things Bards already do best, making it one of the best choices for a player who wants to build a no holds barred Bard that Bards hard.

Race: Human (Variant)

Ability Score Increases – +1 Con, +1 Cha. Our Spellcasting is based on Charisma, so we want to start with 16 there. Constitution helps us survive, and also helps us maintain concentration on our spells, which are our main contribution in combat.
Feat – Moderately Armored. One of the weaknesses of the Bard class is its defenses. With only light armor and no shield, and no access to the shield spell that wizards and sorcerers get, a Bard is likely to be sitting on at most 15 AC indefinitely without help. Fortunately, unlike Wizards and Sorcerers, we qualify for the Moderately Armored feat, which will eventually allow us to bump our AC up to 19 with half plate and a shield. That’s a lot of value from a single feat.
Skill – Perception. One of the most important and often used skills in the game.
Languages – Common, Undercommon. Our choice of bonus language isn’t critical, and if you have any information about what languages you might encounter in your campaign then let that guide you. One consideration is that the command spell requires that the target understand us, so you may want to pick languages that enemies who don’t understand Common are likely to understand.

Class: Bard

Tools – Horn, drum, pan flute. The choice of musical instrument proficiencies is not super important, although as a wind instrument, the pan flute qualifies us for certain magic items, such as pipes of haunting.
Skills – Acrobatics, Persuasion, Deception. Acrobatics proficiency helps us escape from being grappled, and Persuasion and Deception will synergize with the Silver Tongue feature we will get at 3rd level.
Bardic Inspiration (d6) – You only have three uses of Bardic Inspiration per day for now, so use them judiciously. Handing them out to your allies when you’re in (or, ideally, about to get in) a big fight will let them boost an important attack roll or saving throw.
Spellcasting – For Bards in 5E, this is what it’s all about.

Detect magic – This ritual is good for somebody to have in every group, though if there’s a Wizard in the party, then you should let them be the one to take it since it doesn’t use a preparation slot for them. Alternative potential picks for this spot are Tasha’s hideous laughter and dissonant whispers.
Healing word – Emergency use for picking someone back up from 0 hit points. 
Sleep – This is our most powerful spell at this level, though it won’t be for long. 
Unseen servant – This ritual can be used for out of combat utility, and can also be directed to deliver potions of healing in combat.
Minor illusion – Versatility limited chiefly by imagination. 
Vicious mockery – Bard’s don’t have a lot of options for cantrips with reliable use in combat, so this will have to do.

Ability Scores

10 Str, 13+1 Dex, 14+1 Con, 8 Int, 12 Wis, 15+1 Cha

We want high Charisma for our spells, high Constitution for hit points and saving throws, and we want 14 Dexterity to take full advantage of wearing medium armor, which we can achieve by buying a 13 and then putting the +1 we get from the Moderately Armored feat there. By starting with 15 Constitution, we set ourselves up for Resilient (Constitution), which we will take soon. We split the remaining points between Strength and Wisdom. Having 10 Strength is nice when playing on a grid, since the horizontal distance a character can jump with a running start is equal to their Strength score, so 10 gives us two squares, vs the one square you’d have with 8 Strength (since that rounds down to 5). Wisdom is one of the more common and important saves and also contributes to our Perception skill so we put our remaining points there.

Background (Custom)

Skills – Stealth, Insight. 
Tools – None.
Languages – Primordial, Sylvan. These are languages often spoken by elementals and fey, respectively, which will potentially add flexibility to our command spell.
Feature – False Identity. This feature comes from the Charlatan background, lets you assume another persona and forge documents. Could be useful.
Creator’s Note – Making a custom background is RAW, the PHB on page 125 states, “The sample backgrounds in this chapter provide both concrete benefits (features, proficiencies, and languages) and roleplaying suggestions. To customize a background, you can replace one feature with any other one, choose any two skills, and choose a total of two tool proficiencies or languages from the sample backgrounds.” Using this, we are making a custom background and using the Charlatan feature.

Equipment

Bard Starting Equipment

• Rapier (25gp)
• Entertainer’s pack (40gp)
• Lute (35gp)
• Leather armor (10gp)
• Dagger (2gp)

Charlatan Background Starting Equipment

• A set of fine clothes (15gp)
• Disguise kit (25gp)
• Set of weighted dice
• 15gp

Because we’re starting with medium armor proficiency and not relying on weapons, the default Bard starting equipment is not ideal for us, so if the DM allows buying starting equipment with starting gold, that’s likely the way to go. If not, the list above includes relatively high value items that you can try to sell at half cost so you can buy things you actually want. The highest priority early acquisitions off the bat are medium armor (likely scale mail to start, which costs 50gp) and a shield (10gp). If you sell off most of your starting gear at half price (keep the lute since you need a spell focus) you can just about afford both with a few gold left over for cheaper clothes.

Purchasing Goals

• Scale mail (50gp)
• Shield (10gp)
• Half plate (750gp)
• Potions of healing (50gp and up)
• Material components for spells (varied)

We don’t have too many material needs, but we should upgrade our armor once we can afford half plate, and make sure we have any spell components that have a gold cost attached.

Level 1 Strategy

In combat at this level, we’ll mostly be using vicious mockery, or just attacking with a rapier or throwing a dagger. Our big play is sleep, which at this level can end entire combats all by itself. It’s probably a good idea to try to save a spell slot for a healing word in case an ally goes down (which happens often at level 1), but if you can end what looks like might otherwise be a tough fight using another sleep, you probably should. We only have two spell slots, so our other picks are useful rituals.

Level 2 Bard

Song of Rest (1d6) – Recharging pseudo-hit die for the whole party.
Jack of All Trades – This feature gives us a half proficiency bonus to all of our ability checks that don’t already benefit from proficiency. This includes non-proficient skills, and, importantly, initiative rolls. Later it will also apply to spells like dispel magic and counterspell that sometimes require spellcasting ability checks.
Magical Inspiration (Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything Optional feature) – This lets spellcasting allies add Bardic Inspiration dice to one damage or healing roll. Your uses of Bardic Inspiration are most likely better used to change misses into hits or to make saving throws, but it’s nice to have the niche options to finish a creature off with a little extra damage or heal an ally from 0 hp a little bit more so they might survive an extra hit.
Spell Changes: +Tasha’s hideous laughter.

Tasha’s hideous laughter – A single target control spell that gives us an alternative “big gun” option which is useful in somewhat different situations than sleep. Remember that enemy spellcasters immediately drop concentration if they are incapacitated!

Level 3 Bard

Bard College – College of Eloquence.
Expertise – Perception, Persuasion. The best skill in the game and our specialty, respectively.
Silver Tongue (College of Eloquence feature) – Puts a floor of 10 on our d20 rolls for Persuasion and Deception checks. Combined with Expertise in Persuasion, this means that we can’t roll below a 17 on Persuasion, and this floor will increase as we level.
Unsettling Words (College of Eloquence feature) – Unsettling words allows us to use our Bardic Inspiration as a bonus action to penalize the next saving throw an enemy makes before the start of our next turn. With our d6 inspiration die, we can effectively increase our spell DC by 3-4. For now, it can be used with suggestion and Tasha’s hideous laughter to great effect.
Spell Changes: +shatter, +suggestion, –sleep.

Shatter – This isn’t a spell we’ll hang on to for long, but it’s a decent area of effect damage option at this level, whereas sleep is probably starting to get unreliable as most monsters are  going to have more hit points than it can cover. 
Suggestion – This pairs well with Unsettling Words, with only one target and one save. Expect variability from one DM to another in what they consider a “reasonable” suggestion, so check with yours before you count on this spell to do any specific thing, but something like “run away and save yourself” is probably reasonable for most enemies without strong agendas.

Level 4 Bard

Ability Score Improvement (Feat) – Resilient (Con). Adding proficiency to concentration saves is the big draw for us, but other Constitution saves are quite common too, including most saves vs poison, paralysis, and effects that do necrotic or cold damage. We also get +1 to Constitution, giving us 16 and bumping up our modifier to +3. That means that overall this feat increases our bonus to Constitution saves from +2 to +5, decreasing the chance that we’ll fail a DC 10 save from about 1 in 3 to about 1 in 5. We’ll get additional increases when our proficiency bonus goes up. The Constitution increase also gives us a few more hit points.
Spell Changes: +aid, +command, +light, –detect magic.

Aid – We should be looking to rest cast this if we have any second level slots left near the end of a long rest. It’s also usable in combat as a multi-target heal: since it increases current as well as maximum hit points it can bring up downed allies.
Command – A nice non-concentration option that can disable a creature (or two, if we decide to upcast it) for a round, and potentially generate opportunity attacks from our melee allies in the process if we use the “flee” option.
Light – Helpful since we don’t have Darkvision.

Level 4 Strategy

We’re still relying on vicious mockery or a rapier or dagger (or simply taking the Dodge action) as our go-to at-will options to use once we’re concentrating on something else, but we now add command to our arsenal as a way to pour extra non-concentration resources into tough fights.

Level 5 Bard

Bardic Inspiration (d8) – Inspiration dice were good when they were d6s; they’re even better as d8s. 
Font of Inspiration – We get our Bardic Inspiration dice back on a short rest now, which often doubles, and sometimes triples the number of uses we get on the day. Excellent.
Spell Changes: +hypnotic pattern, +Leomund’s tiny hut, -shatter.

Hypnotic pattern – This is one of the best spells for its level in the game, becoming our biggest play in hard fights. It incapacitates and immobilizes creatures in a 30’ cube who fail a Wisdom save, and they don’t get any additional saves in subsequent turns. Their allies can use an action to break them out of it, but even if they do, that’s more creatures doing things with their turns that aren’t attacking you. The biggest limitation of this spell is that it doesn’t work on creatures immune to being charmed. We can cast it twice a day at this level, though if we don’t need it twice, we can use the other slot to upcast aid.
Leomund’s tiny hut – This provides the party with a comfortable and fairly well protected shelter that sticks around long enough to take a long rest inside. We can cast it as a ritual, which means it doesn’t compete for spell slots with hypnotic pattern.

Level 5 Strategy

This is a big level for us, as for most builds. With the benefit of Font of Inspiration we can use Unsettling Words on most if not every big debuff spell we cast, and probably sometimes even with command. Note that even though Unsettling Words only targets one creature, increasing our hypnotic pattern DC for even one target is well worth it. It could sometimes still be worth handing out regular Bardic Inspiration if you have an ally with attacks that do a lot of damage when they hit, such as one with the Sharpshooter or Great Weapon Master feat, or if you expect them to have to make important saves, but you’ll likely want to save most of your dice for your debuff spells (or those of an ally).

Level 6 Bard

Countercharm – A pretty situational and challenging to use ability. You have to start using it before anything happens, which means you have to predict ahead of time that there’s going to be a dangerous charmed or frightened effect, and you have to use your action every turn to maintain it. It might come up, but you may never use this.
Unfailing Inspiration (College of Eloquence feature) – Makes your Bardic Inspiration dice stick around if they don’t do their job. Not bad, especially since you’re likely using most of them for Unsettling Words, so having the ones you do use for “regular” Bardic Inspiration be more reliable is nice.
Universal Speech (College of Eloquence feature) – As an action you can cause any number of creatures within 60 feet of you to be able to understand you for an hour. That means your command spell just works against anything that’s not undead. The requirement to use an action makes it a little harder to use in combat, but casting a concentration spell Round 1, using this Round 2, and then command Round 3 isn’t the worst idea if you wouldn’t otherwise be able to use it.
Spell Changes: +plant growth.

Plant growth – A powerful battlefield control spell when you can use it that doesn’t require concentration. The Bard list doesn’t contain a lot of battlefield control in the form of spells that affect an area and don’t offer a save (as opposed to something like hypnotic pattern which disables specific creatures if they fail a save), so when that’s what’s called for, for example, if there’s a horde of enemies approaching the party from a distance, it can be a nice tool to slow them down and let the party handle a few at a time. Ask your DM how they interpret the mechanics of the spell, though, since it’s ambiguous whether you need existing plants, and if you do, whether they expand to fill the area or if the spell only affects the parts of the area where they already are. If the latter, it’s probably not worth taking unless the campaign is plant-filled, but with either of the first two interpretations it’s quite a strong spell even if somewhat situational. We discussed this spell more in What to Ask Before Playing a Druid.

Level 6 Strategy

We have three 3rd level spell slots, which might well mean that we cast hypnotic pattern three times. But if a good use of plant growth presents itself, it can be an as good or better round 1 option. Alternatively if it’s a really big fight, we can cast one and then the other on back to back rounds. Command continues to be a non-concentration option for situations important enough to spend a spell slot after round 1. But don’t use big spells willy-nilly: weigh their value now against the value of having aid tomorrow.

Level 7 Bard

Spell Changes: +dimension door, +polymorph, -Tasha’s hideous laughter.

Dimension door – A good “back pocket” option to get away from danger, or to get into a location you want to be in. Note that unlike lower level teleportation spells like misty step and thunder step, dimension door doesn’t require you to be able to see your destination, just describe it.
Polymorph – Very powerful at this level, and versatile too. It can be used together with Unsettling Words to take one enemy out of the fight – although suggestion should be able to do this with a lower level spell slot if the enemy understands you and can be charmed, a lot of enemies don’t meet those conditions. Probably more often, though, you’ll use this on an ally to turn them into a giant ape, which both buffs their offense and gives them a big pool of HP to absorb any damage they take before their own health is touched. 

Level 7 Strategy

Going into a tough fight with enemies you expect to be immune to being charmed, you might want to polymorph one of your damage-dealer allies into a giant ape, although you should ask for their consent first. Casting it during a fight when somebody is about to go down is helpful, but since at this level especially it’s both a sack of hit points and an offensive buff, you’ll get more use from the slot if you use it earlier.

Level 8 Bard

Ability Score Improvement – +2 Cha. Boosting our Spellcasting Ability Score makes our spells harder to resist, and also gives us an additional use of Bardic Inspiration each short rest. With one short rest in a day that’s two more uses. Unsettling Words with a d8 Inspiration die effectively boosts your spell DC by 4-5, which is better in most cases than imposing disadvantage. This is like a Sorcerer using Heightened Spell Metamagic, which costs three sorcery points. So two extra uses is kind of like getting six sorcery points, on top of the other benefits Charisma provides for us.
Spell Changes: +dispel magic, +mage hand, -vicious mockery.

Dispel magic – Versatile, and is made more reliable by way of your Jack of All Trades feature. If you cast it to remove a spell that winds up being above the level of the slot you used on dispel magic, you’ll need to make an ability check with your Charisma. This is an ability check that does not benefit from proficiency, therefore it qualifies for the “half proficiency” bonus from Jack of All Trades.
Mage hand – We make use of the Bardic Versatility option introduced in Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything to swap a cantrip. Vicious mockery is not doing a lot at this point – if it’s worth using our action offensively it’s probably worth casting something like command, otherwise we’re probably best off taking the Dodge action to preserve our concentration, so we may as well pick up a utility cantrip.

Level 9 Bard

Song of Rest (1d8) – Slightly more healing for our allies when they spend hit dice during a short rest.
Spell Changes: +animate objects.

Animate objects – A powerful spell for damage, and also gives us some battlefield control, since our objects become creatures who can threaten opportunity attacks, and even block enemy movement if the enemy is no more than one size larger than the object. We’re likely running into some enemies with Legendary Resistance at this level, so it’s nice to have another option (in addition to plant growth, and polymorph cast on an ally) that doesn’t provide a saving throw. Note that because the creatures have their own statistics block, they won’t be doing magical damage despite being animated by a spell, so if you’re facing enemies resistant or immune to bludgeoning, piercing and slashing damage from nonmagical attacks, this spell will do much less damage. For some monsters, choosing silver coins as the objects you’re animating may help you get around resistance!

Level 9 Strategy

We have been a potent force in combat through buffing and debuffing, but one thing we haven’t been good at doing is direct damage. Animate objects changes that, at least in one fight a day. For maximum damage output, animating ten tiny objects is your best bet, with each one having +8 to hit and doing 1d4+4 damage on a hit. That figures to be somewhere around 42 damage per round on average against enemies with 16 AC, which can be focused on a single enemy or divided if you want a bit more battlefield control. If you want to sacrifice some damage output to go further in the control direction, animating bigger objects may be called for so that your objects are only one size smaller than enemies whom you want to block. Even if monsters resist the damage, it still could be worth casting if it’s looking like a tough fight and our other options don’t seem like they’ll work, or if the battlefield control seems like it will be useful.

Level 10 Bard

Magical Secrets – This allows us to pick two spells of 5th level or lower from any class’s spell list, which is very exciting! We’ll pick find greater steed and wall of force, though an honorable mention is counterspell, which is another strong spell that, like dispel magic, benefits from Jack of All Trades when we need to make an ability check with it. If nobody else in the party has it, it’s probably worth taking instead of find greater steed, but we’ll pick up whichever of those we don’t get now at level 14.
Bardic Inspiration (1d10) – The bigger the better.
Expertise – Acrobatics, Deception. Deception is the other skill (in addition to Persuasion) that our Silver Tongue feature enhances, and taking Expertise in it synergizes with that enhancement. It also happens to be useful to be able to lie convincingly to NPCs. Acrobatics Expertise helps us escape grapples, mainly (we do have dimension door if we really need it, but why spend a 4th level slot if a skill roll will do the job?)
Spell Changes: +wall of force, +find greater steed, +mending.

Wall of force – Our other Magical Secrets pick from the Wizard list is an amazing control spell that can trap one or more enemies with no save, blocking all attacks and spells. Enemies inside can still teleport out, but even dispel magic doesn’t end the spell (disintegrate does, though, according to Sage Advice).
Find greater steed – Learned from the Paladin list via Magical Secrets, this lets us summon a flying mount that will stay around indefinitely without concentration until it falls to zero HP. Since we have no desire to be in melee, a high speed flying mount means we can stay above the action casting spells from above. A pegasus is the optimal pick here, with better saves and a higher movement speed than the griffon, though the griffon does perhaps offer a few more style points. You can learn more about this spell in our Spell Spotlight: Find (Greater) Steed.
Mending – Take this, or take a different utility cantrip that appeals to you.

Level 10 Strategy

The most impact we can have in combat at this level is likely by casting wall of force. We only have two slots for it, so use it when it would be a really tough fight without it. As a 10’ radius sphere, it’s just big enough to surround one gargantuan creature, though probably more commonly you’ll use it to enclose 2-3 large creatures who are close together or a larger number of medium ones. If you can, try to trap about half of the enemies (counting tougher ones for more) in the encounter, or slightly more if you can swing it: Since you’ll likely still have to fight the trapped ones after the others are dealt with, it doesn’t do much good to trap all the monsters, so roughly a half and half split gives you maximum divide-and-conquer. Avoid using it on arcane spellcasters though, since they can probably just misty step out.

Level 11 Bard

Spell Changes: +mass suggestion.

Mass suggestion – This can affect up to twelve targets, offers only one save, and doesn’t require concentration. Like regular suggestion, expect some table-to-table variation in what DM’s consider “reasonable,” but in most cases you should be able to use it to (quite truthfully) convince a bunch of minions who can understand you and be charmed that they are going to be better off running away than sticking around and inevitably dying. If understanding you is a barrier, you can use Universal Speech to overcome it, at least for four creatures.

Level 11 Strategy

Mass suggestion is our once a day big play, alongside wall of force. If a situation doesn’t arise where mass suggestion seems like it will be effective, an extra wall of force is well worth your 6th level slot, even though the spell isn’t enhanced by upcasting.

Level 12 Bard

Ability Score Improvement – +2 Cha. This gets our Spellcasting Ability Score maxed out at 20, giving us a base spell DC of 17, which effectively becomes 22-23 for targets that we use Unsettling Words against. We also get 5 uses of Bardic Inspiration per short rest.
Spell Changes: +synaptic static, -suggestion.

Synaptic static – We don’t get an additional spell at this level, but we can swap one out. We’re probably not using suggestion much any more, so picking up this spell gives us another non-concentration option in case we need to be able to nova hard. Basically a “psychic fireball” but targeting Intelligence (not a great save for most creatures) and with a debuff rider. The damage isn’t great for a 5th level spell, but the rider is a doozy, making the spell quite good overall: subtracting 1d6 from enemies’ attack rolls is like giving the party +3-4 AC against those enemies. Spellcasters who fail also have to make tougher concentration saves. Not bad!

Level 12 Strategy

Our staple concentration spells are still hypnotic pattern and wall of force, and we may still find use in polymorph and/or animate objects, with the former starting to be used more often on enemies together with Unsettling Words. But we also have a number of good non-concentration options, between command, plant growth, synaptic static and mass suggestion, each of which does fairly different things, for different spell slot level costs, so despite many of our spells having some limitations (charm immunity neutralizes hypnotic pattern and mass suggestion, polymorph and animate objects run into trouble offensively vs creatures who resist nonmagical physical damage, wall of force is defeated by teleportation, plant growth likely needs existing plants, and command still doesn’t work on undead, for example), we have enough different options with different limitations that we likely still have something that will be effective for almost any situation.

Level 13 Bard

Song of Rest (1d10) – A bit bigger buff to allies’ natural short rest healing.
Spell Changes: +forcecage.

Forcecage – This is the best in-combat spell at 7th level hands-down, and it’s right there on the Bard list natively. It has a similar function to wall of force, locking up one or two tough enemies while we handle everyone else, but this one can have gaps that we can launch spells and arrows through to kill a melee-only enemy without even needing to let them out, requires a Charisma save to teleport out, and best of all, doesn’t even require concentration!

Level 14 Bard

Magical Secrets – We get to learn two more spells from any class lists, this time of up to 7th level. Since we didn’t get counterspell at level 10, it’s worth picking up now. For our other pick, simulacrum is almost certainly the most powerful choice, though at some tables it might be seen as “bad form” to give yourself a whole extra Spellcasting character. Alternative worthy picks you might consider are transmute rock, heal, or conjure celestial (level 5, 6, and 7, respectively). Think about what your party can do and where their holes are, and look to fill in one or more of them.
Infectious Inspiration (College of Eloquence feature) – Use a reaction to transfer a Bardic Inspiration die from one ally to another when it succeeds. It complements Unfailing Inspiration nicely: if it fails, they keep it, when it works, you can give it to someone else. Like Unfailing Inspiration, this helps you get more mileage out of regular Inspiration dice, leaving more uses available for Unsettling Words.
Spell Changes: +simulacrum, +counterspell.

Simulacrum – This spell is incredibly strong, letting us essentially make a copy of ourselves, which means another complement of Bardic Inspiration dice, another set of spell slots, another turn, and another concentration spell that can be active. It has half of your hitpoints, is a construct and therefore can’t be healed through normal means or be targeted by anything that can’t target constructs, and can’t regain spell slots, but other than that it’s like a second you. According to the spell text as written, it does regain its Bardic Inspiration dice on a short rest, but check with your DM on this. Don’t forget to secure the ruby dust you need for the material component (the snow and fingernail clippings don’t have a listed gold cost, so should be covered by your spell focus or component pouch, but, again, check with your DM), and then cast the spell as soon as you have enough downtime for the 12 hour cast.
Counterspell – We have hardly anything else that uses our reaction, and have +7 to spellcasting ability checks with our 20 Charisma and Jack of All Trades bonus, so even if there are other casters in the party who have the spell, we are likely the best candidate to use it first.

Level 15 Bard

Bardic Inspiration (1d12) – Keep ‘em coming.
Spell Changes: +mind blank.

Mind blank – Level 8 spells tend not to be the most exciting for any class (compared to 7 or 9), and Bard is no exception. However, since this is a 24 hour buff, we can cast it any time we haven’t used our 8th level slot to get some protection against some fairly nasty things throughout the next day, and getting the slot back in the morning for an extra forcecage.

Level 15 Strategy

Much like using a 6th level slot for an extra wall of force, upcasting forcecage is well worth an 8th level slot, even though we don’t get any additional benefit from the higher level (other than making it harder to counterspell, should that be relevant).

Level 16 Bard

Ability Score Improvement (Feat) – Lucky. This gives us a way to reroll failed saves, which might be important concentration saves, or might be Wisdom saves, or more rarely, Intelligence saves, both of which are a bit of an Achilles heel for us.

Level 17 Bard

Song of Rest (1d12) – A free barbarian hit die for everyone! 
Spell Changes: +foresight, +true polymorph, -healing word.

Foresight – Unlike mind blank, this one only lasts 8 hours, so rest cast it whenever possible. We can afford to drop healing word at this level since we have aid and a pegasus, and after round 1 our bonus action is often more valuable than our action, due to Unsettling Words.
True polymorph – This is just an insane spell. If you have a Fighter, Barbarian, Monk, or Rogue in the party, there’s little chance they won’t be more effective as an Adult Gold Dragon. Of course, convincing them to stop using their own character sheet is another matter, which optimization can’t help with. Note that the spell lasts until it is dispelled, without concentration, if we first concentrate for the full hour duration. So this is something you want to do when you have an hour of downtime.

Level 17 Strategy

Neither of our 9th level spells are generally going to be cast in combat. However, even if we are rest casting foresight, we still need to have the slot left for it at the end of the day, so don’t use it to upcast something unless doing so will provide more value than having someone with foresight the following day.

Level 18 Bard

Magical Secrets – This time our picks can come from any level, and as usual from any lists. Wish and maze are both Wizard spells that provide immense versatility, and a control option that fills a potentially unfilled niche for us, respectively.
Spell Changes: +wish, +maze.

Wish – This lets us cast any spell, on any list, of 8th level or lower, with a single action and no material component cost. Using wish to cast simulacrum saves you 12 hours and 1500gp, and that’s just the start of what you might use this for. You can read about wish in greater detail in our Spell Spotlight.
Maze – This spell removes a single target from a fight with no save, and requires them to make a DC 20 Intelligence check (not a save!) as an action on their turn to return. If you have an enemy with Legendary Resistance and teleportation abilities, even forcecage won’t hold them, but this will remove them at least until their turn, and use their action. And since it’s a DC 20 Intelligence check to return, Legendary Resistance can’t be used to automatically succeed. Since many creatures will not have amazing Intelligence, there’s a good chance it will keep them gone long enough for your party to wipe out the rest of the combat before they return.

Level 19 Bard

Ability Score Improvement (Feat) – Alert. The big draw is the initiative boost, which is good for anyone but especially good on a caster that uses a lot of debuff and lockdown spells, since going before those enemies means they might not get a turn at all. But being unable to be surprised, and preventing attacks by unseen attackers from having advantage against us are nice too.

Level 20 Bard

Superior Inspiration – We get one Bardic Inspiration back when we roll initiative, but only if we’re out of them. It’s… something? If you know you’re heading into a fight and only have one use left, there’s no downside to giving a die to an ally before the fight starts – it lasts 10 minutes, so they can take it into the fight, and you can get the use back.

Level 20 Strategy

We get another 7th level spell slot this level, which probably means another casting of forcecage, or if we don’t need it, maybe a very high level aid for the following day.