What is so wrong with Bards?

[tdenmark]

Sept 29, 2020 18:31:15 GMT -6 Piper said:

Have you ever read Jordan's Wheel of Time series?

No. They seem a bit much.

But since Brandon Sanderson finished them I'm actually interested. I love Sanderson's authorial voice.

[Piper]

There are some great ideas to mine for one's campaign from the series. The nature of magic, using alternate planes as a means of travel, artifacts, etc. It's a long read, yes; but I thought it made a pretty entertaining tale. I'd encourage you to reconsider.

[howandwhy99]

In terms of campaign paths a new class could follow without stepping on the toes of others (just getting less of each across the board like all do), the is an obvious choice to me. The field is largely undeveloped, broad, and other classes only receive a small bit within their own focus, just like existing standard classes.

However, to me an adventuring crafter would be a bit sketchy, like a crazy architect exploring unknown worlds in order to find new styles. It's a bit of a stretch for module design.

Adventuring Merchant is another possibility, but I think the Thief would feel stepped on, if not all the classes.

[Red Baron]

An interesting solution might be to replace the thief class with the bard class.

-can only use daggers, no weapons/armor (or limited weapons/armor as per the thief class)
-gets thief skills
-learn +1 language per level

[tkdco2]

Weren't bards in the Dark Sun more like assassins? IIRC, they couldn't cast spells but knew a lot about poisons.

[bobjester0e]

I offer my players the option of playing Doug Schwegman's (Strategic Review) version of the Bard for my 0e game. It has a ton of lore - about its lore abilities, more than, IIRC, the 1e version.

Now that I look at the 1e Bard through the modern lens, yes, I see that it is the 1e prestige class, but this is still not a good argument to get me to like the 1e Bard any more, perhaps less. This is most likely because of the nature that my campaigns has taken overall (and not just because its 2020, lol) because its hard to grow a character from 1st to even 6th level, let alone to the levels required to finally, fully BE a bard in 1e. We, as players just no longer find the time. I prefer to play a class from the get-go in a game that is most likely going to be short-term, unfortunately.

Using a bard in the 0e game opens the game up to another mode of play that is complimentary to the other character types like the thief is, but on its own requires thinking through encounters completely differently. A bard by itself would be a different campaign altogether.

The bard's tactics have to be subtle and fully based in the con - as in confidence, an influencer on NPCs and monsters moreso than the brute force that the fighter/cleric/magic-user combo usually filters down to.

Even more than the thief, as the thief is sneaky until it doesn't have to be, or the jig is up and its time to tie up loose ends.

The bard shouldn't try to ever let the jig be up, and tying up loose ends isn't what they endeavor to do in the fields where they gain the most - in those tiny points of civilization on the map - not the dungeons.

Useful in dungeons? absolutely, but I feel that the bard was specifically designed to be at its best in a social situation. That is usually best represented in the game as "the city" environments.

[Vile Traveller]

My problem is that decades of reading Asterix has fixed Cacofonix in my mind as the archetypal bard, and I simply cannot see any place for him in an adventuring party.

[tkdco2]

It's also a lack of definition that plagues the class. In 2E, the bard was kind of a thief/magic-user. But I really can't see a bard casting fireball. I have toyed with the idea of limiting bards to the enchantment and illusion schools of magic, as those schools seem to fit the class better than the others.