Artists channel expression into impact—whether through voice, blade, signal, or myth. In a fractured galaxy, they are storytellers, tacticians, manipulators, and assassins, each turning performance into power. Where others use weapons, Artists use presence—and reality listens.
Artist Profession in MechD20:
While mechanically identical to the 2024 Bard class, the flavor of this profession shifts toward expression as a force of manipulation, resistance, and resonance. Their powers are embedded in neural songbanks, encoded into story fragments, or burned into gesture through muscle memory. Some say Artists tap into deep memetic frequencies or cosmic archetypes—echoes of extinct civilizations still shaping the thoughts of the living.
Examples of Artists in MechD20:
- Drift-Chanters: Solo performers who travel alone between void stations, transmitting encrypted songs that stir rebellion in systems they’ve never visited.
- Synesthetic Coders: Neuro-modified Artists who perceive music as color, movement as code, and weave them together into weapons-grade expression.
- Echo Cartel Bards: Propaganda specialists embedded in black-market networks, trained to destabilize public trust through viral memes, slogans, and psionic whispercraft.
- Story Nomads: Oral historians who pass down cosmic myths through long-haul freighter crews, secretly shaping galactic memory through performance.
- Battle Conductors: Battlefront tacticians who sync their team’s neural implants to rhythm-based coordination routines, turning squads into symphonies of violence.
Artist Subclasses in MechD20:
At Level 3 of Artist, you will have the ability to choose a subclass, as per standard D&D. At 4th level Artist, you will be given a Core Power for your subclass. Remember that if you have multiple Core Powers, you can only have one active at a time, and it must be chosen during a Long Rest. All of these are rethemed from classes in the Player’s Handbook 2024.
Phase Artist (College of Dance)
Technique Type: Primal
Phase Artists are masters of precision and momentum, blending creativity with calculated lethality. They don’t move through space—they slip between possibilities. Their art is one of motion, misdirection, and blade geometry too refined to belong to physics. In the void, they are silent choreographers of destruction, etching death into the battlefield like a signature. Phase Artists aren’t killers. They’re editors—removing you from the story mid-scene.
Core Power – Pulse Feedback
When you use your Bardic Inspiration, you may teleport 10 feet before or after the action you inspire. If you move through an enemy’s space during this movement, they take Force damage equal to your Charisma modifier Following the teleportation, you gain advantage on your next Performance or Acrobatics check before the end of your next turn. This ability can’t be used again until you take a Short or Long Rest.
Propaganda Artist (College of Glamour)
Technique Type: Psionic
Not all Artists deal in fantasy—some deal in belief. Propaganda Artists are the architects of allegiance, weaving suggestion into speech and encoding loyalty into image and sound. Their performances override instincts, reshape truths, and spread like mental malware. Whether working for a rebellion, a corporation, or no one at all, they manipulate the minds around them with precision and intent. What they perform isn’t art. It’s reality, rewritten.
Core Power – Mind Echo
When you use a power that attempts to dominate, charm, or suggest another target, you may use one use of your Bardic Inspiration to add a penalty to the target’s saving throw equal to the result of your inspiration. Once this power is used, it can not be used again until you take a Long Rest.
Storyteller (College of Lore)
Technique Type: Cosmic
Some Artists perform to entertain—Storytellers perform to endure. Their words carry the weight of forgotten empires and dying stars. Every tale is a legacy, every performance a ritual to bend fate through meaning. They don’t just share stories—they decide which ones survive, encoding them into neural archives, transmitting them across generations, or embedding them directly into the minds of listeners. In the dark between worlds, a good story is more valuable than a weapon. A Storyteller carries thousands.
Core Power – Archive Burst
When you expend a Bardic Inspiration die, you may instead roll a d6 + your Charisma modifier and apply that result to any Intelligence or Wisdom check made within 30 feet (no action required). Additionally, once per long rest, you may declare a creature’s combat action a “False Archive” as a reaction. If the triggering action was an attack roll, it has disadvantage; if it instead caused a saving throw, one target of the spell (your choice) gains advantage against the saving throw.
Tactical Artist (College of Valor)
Technique Type: Tech
To a Tactical Artist, combat is choreography and war is an act of design. They map conflict like sheet music—controlling tempo, inserting pressure, and inspiring action with every calculated note or gesture. Some command with embedded speaker arrays and resonance modulators; others with raw presence, amplified by mechbone implants or optic-threaded battle flags. Whatever the method, they turn chaos into rhythm—and their allies learn to fight in harmony with the battlefield’s pulse.
Core Power – Dramatic Expression
Once per long rest, when you roll initiative, you may immediately grant Bardic Inspiration to two allies without expending any of yours. Additionally, once per Long Rest, if you fall below half your hit point maximum, you can use your reaction to unleash a Vox Howl—each enemy within 10 feet must succeed a Constitution save (DC = 8 + Proficiency Bonus + Charisma Modifier) or suffer a -2 penalty to all of their Attack Rolls and Saving Throws until the end of your next turn.