Last week's session was a success. I went with a half-elf bard with the criminal (spy) background. Starts are 8 Str, 16 Dex, 14 Con, 10 Int, 12 Wis, and 16 Cha. Vicious Mockery as a cantrip is surprisingly disappointing. Turns out poking a goblin with a rapier has a much better chance of negating its attack on account of death than dealing almost no damage and having a chance of giving it disadvantage. My 1st-level spells were sleep (no save, just lose), healing word, speak with animals, and heroism. And despite reading over the section three times, I somehow missed that bards get 3 skills of their choice, so I came in with just the skills from my race and background (oops). Fortunately, the rest of the table noticed something was fishy with my lack of skills (especially when I loudly and embarrassingly complained about bards not getting any skills) and managed to correct me at the end of the second session (yesterday).
The second session was just yesterday. We very awkwardly stumbled through a pair of goblin ambushes, got washed away by a flooding river trap, went in to battle with our sorcerer in the front line (twice), and otherwise somehow managed to succeed despite our total lack of tactics and coordination. So now we're at level 2. Any suggestions on what spell to pick up? I was thinking Thunderwave, since aside from Sleep it's the only multi-target offensive spell on the bard list (I think), and the only other AoE we have is the dragonborn paladin's breath weapon. Also, I apparently have a bunch of skill choices to pick. Any suggestions there? I don't think it matters that much at this level, though, since Jack of All Trades means skill proficiency is only +1 over nonproficiency.