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Bards don't have to sing. My GM is about to run a campaign where we're part of a super racist temple carrying out an inquisition/crusade against any nonhumans, heretics and "witches". He said it's up to us whether we decide to run ourselves into the ground, or whether we have an awkward moment where we realize we're the bad guys and try to pull a U turn. We rolled our characters last week but still have a few sessions left to finish off our current campaign. While there are literal paladins in our party, a lot of our characters deviate from the fluff in their classes. Our barbarian is a zealot who'll rile themselves up in a spiritual fervor. Our rogue is an inquisitor who'll use any means necessary to achieve the greater good. Then there's me. I am mechanically a college of glamour bard who will play the role of a preacher drawing inspiration from pentecostal televangelism. Sure if you read the book it's all fey magic, but that's not how we're playing it. The ability to draw a crowd; a spell that causes people to break down in laughter; the ability to curse someone in the name of our God; the ability to fill someone with a spirit that (bardic) inspires them; laying on hands to heal someone. I don't need to sing. I just need to sound confident and religious while doing the lord's work, guided by his spirit. Hallelujah.
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Sep 27, 2018 08:39
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RAW bards don't need to sing or play anything anyway. You can use an instrument as a focus and need a component pouch or other substitute otherwise but that's it. Most of your spells have somatic components but what they actually are is usually not specified, and even Song of Rest's actual description just says "a performance".
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Sep 27, 2018 08:49
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A bard whose performances are all variations on "guess how many spiders I can fit in my mouth".
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Sep 27, 2018 08:52
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Bards don't need to sing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkKwyjsJGxk&t=12s
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Sep 27, 2018 08:54
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A grapplebard with bagpipe proficiency who casts spells by grabbing enemies and artistically strangling them.
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Sep 27, 2018 09:01
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Azza Bamboo posted:Bards don't have to sing. Yeah, last time I played a Bard I was a librarian, just because it made more sense and let me be extra sassy. Last 2 Bards I've run for have been a DJ and
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Sep 27, 2018 09:05
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One of the past PCs in the game I'm currently playing was a Glamour Bard who didn't bother with instruments due to a lack of opposable thumbs. (Ancient Blue Dragon trapped in cat body, so dragon mental stats with house cat physical stats and a supernaturally melodic meow.) I am also honestly considering multiclassing into bard for a paladin with no real experience with a musical instrument, but plenty of experience with lovely poetry. The flavor text for the class seems broad enough that there's probably lots of ways you can do it.
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Sep 27, 2018 11:39
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gandhichan posted:One of the past PCs in the game I'm currently playing was a Glamour Bard who didn't bother with instruments due to a lack of opposable thumbs. (Ancient Blue Dragon trapped in cat body, so dragon mental stats with house cat physical stats and a supernaturally melodic meow.) Azza Bamboo posted:Bards don't have to sing. and this is why i love bards ao freaking much. i could never warp my head around folks who think they're useless.
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Sep 27, 2018 13:13
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Fruity20 posted:and this is why i love bards ao freaking much. i could never warp my head around folks who think they're useless. Well because in 3rd ed.............they were. 3e/3.5e bards were lovely rogues and lovely casters....and if you were focused on diplomacy......you really should have just learned to jump good. http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?444052-The-Jumplomancer-are-you-serious In 4th ed Bards were decent leaders..............but why play a bard in 4e when you could be a Warlord? The greatest strength of 5e is making bards awesome
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Sep 27, 2018 13:16
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Madmarker posted:Well because in 3rd ed.............they were. 3e/3.5e bards were lovely rogues and lovely casters....and if you were focused on diplomacy......you really should have just learned to jump good. http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?444052-The-Jumplomancer-are-you-serious You have no idea how 3.5 worked because Bards were actually quite good
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Sep 27, 2018 13:26
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Piell posted:You have no idea how 3.5 worked because Bards were actually quite good Compared to Wizards or Clerics or Druids or Spell-to-Power Erudites or Sorcerers or Psions? Like I'll agree they were better than most martial classes, but they were pretty meh to play. Only good bard I ever saw was the souped up words of creation thing, which was really cool...........but seemed better as a cohort rather than to actually play.
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Sep 27, 2018 13:35
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Madmarker posted:Compared to Wizards or Clerics or Druids or Spell-to-Power Erudites or Sorcerers or Psions? I mean, you basically listed all the tier 1 full casters there. And even then, there's a prestige class that makes the bard a full caster.
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Sep 27, 2018 13:42
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My wife played a Kenku Bard that was amazing. All based around imitating and mocking things she'd heard before.
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Sep 27, 2018 14:37
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Bards were in that weird place where they sucked at everything in 3.5, and it was not helped by the official WotC position being that they were the fifth party member that did everything poorly but maybe you cared? You could totally make a useful bard, but it required a lot of splats or dumpster diving to match a specialist in any given area (or get bardsong to crazy levels). Yea, you were better than a fighter, but that wasn't really a high bar to clear.
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Sep 27, 2018 14:45
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Madmarker posted:Well because in 3rd ed.............they were. 3e/3.5e bards were lovely rogues and lovely casters....and if you were focused on diplomacy......you really should have just learned to jump good. http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?444052-The-Jumplomancer-are-you-serious
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Sep 27, 2018 14:50
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lol anyone who says that about 4e bards never met a well built War Chanter.
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Sep 27, 2018 15:07
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The only way a 3e Bard is a "bad" class is if your yardstick is "not as good as a Wizard/Druid/Cleric", in which case, there's very few other classes that would hit that benchmark anyway. Against the class selection as a whole, Bards are absolutely ahead of the martials just by merit of being a partial spellcaster, and a prestige class allows them to become full arcane spellcasters anyway. 4e on the other hand gave Bards the basic "spell attack" ability, and while they're not Warlords, they also fit into their own niche, what with their Leader powers generally being in the vein of increased mobility. The Bard does end up being the most powerful class in 5e, but that's more a symptom of 5e's class balance being very similar to that of 3e's, except this time they do make Bards have full spellcasting on the same scale as Wizards, Druids, and Clerics, but they also have effectively full BAB, plus Vicious Mockery, plus spell-list poaching. But they were never "bad" by any stretch of the imagination.
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Sep 27, 2018 15:21
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Guess I 'm wrong and just never saw one played well. : :For myself 5e is the first time I haven't felt hamstrung playing a bard compared to some other class.
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Sep 27, 2018 15:26
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I'd guess part of the stigma against bards is their "jack of all trades" nature, which often leaves them without a particular niche to fill in the party. And the one niche they tend to fill, the "face" character that is good at talking to people, tends to be useless if you're in a party of murderhobos who just default to killing everything. Another part is that they tend to be pigeonholed into the "comic relief" role, which does nothing for the people who want to run dour humorless GRIMDARK games. The default image of the bard ends up being the foppish minstrel with a lute who spends all his time trying to seduce everything that moves. Wyvernil fucked around with this message at 17:37 on Sep 27, 2018 |
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Sep 27, 2018 17:10
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They suffer the monk and to an extent druid problem of their default fluff being really at odds with that of the rest of the classes.
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Sep 27, 2018 17:20
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They're also the only class that really demands you react to them. How dare you declare that my grim barbarian/genius wizard is inspired by your silly music. Grogs said the same things about warlords - if I could make more attacks I would have, what are you adding to this equation? Emotions? Adrenaline? Pfft. When a cleric heals it's nominally faith-based but you can still claim it's just magic words and lighting effects.
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Sep 27, 2018 17:30
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Conspiratiorist posted:They suffer the monk and to an extent druid problem of their default fluff being really at odds with that of the rest of the classes. this is just opinion, but monks ( the kung fu ones) feel a bit out of place to be fair. in a medieval setting full of knights, dragons, and castles, a monk sticks out like sore thumb unless you flavor them differently. like don't get me wrong, i love the monk in concept and mechanics and you could explain away reasons for why your monk is here. ultimately, dnd is suppose to be fun and it doesn't matter at the end of the day.
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Sep 27, 2018 17:49
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Bard would be a good class for a maiko. If you can dip into some Cleric spells and levels it might also be a good fit for a caster/support-focused miko.
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Sep 27, 2018 17:51
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Fruity20 posted:this is just opinion, but monks ( the kung fu ones) feel a bit out of place to be fair. in a medieval setting full of knights, dragons, and castles, a monk sticks out like sore thumb unless you flavor them differently. like don't get me wrong, i love the monk in concept and mechanics and you could explain away reasons for why your monk is here. ultimately, dnd is suppose to be fun and it doesn't matter at the end of the day. Punching dragons is silly. Hold on. Let me wish it dead. That's way more realistic in imagination land.
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Sep 27, 2018 18:09
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I'd have to assume people praising the 3E bard are following the tier-driven mindcalk of All Casters>All Half-Casters>All Martials in All Situations Ever when the reality is a lot more complicated. A properly specialized Bard is blatantly, hilariously overpowered in regards to social circumstances. It's basically a 100 Speech Fallout character even at level 1, and is essentially a mind control wizard from level 8 onward. But this is actually a problem from a design perspective, because social encounters are the least-used D&D "pillar" and have *by far* the most DM adjudication and control. So unless you cast Charm Person willy-nilly, it's very possible that the DM will simply ignore your Diplomacy rolls. And despite being great at social encounters, they are merely ok in combat if given EXTREME specialization--and this is with all the great options Bards get in PHB2 and 3. In a PHB1 only game, it's practically impossible to make a Bard useful in combat as anything but a living aid bonus. And it doesn't end there:
Even if the Bard somehow was good for more than Inspire Courage and social encounters with a lot of optimization, it wouldn't really matter in my eyes because Bards are definitely among the least intuitive classes there are--maybe not as bad as the Rogue, where shanking people in melee is one of the least effective things you could be doing, but still pretty bad as far as "user-friendly optimization" goes. If your DM doesn't allow you to integrate features from absurdly specific and obscure books, your best option is to get a 1 level dip in Crusader so you can actually do things in combat, and exploit the gently caress out of spells that the Wizard gets more use of (and gets earlier) like Grease, Glitterdust, and Haste. No one interested in the Bard as it is portrayed would be able to figure this out without being told. It should also go without saying that a character that has loving mind-control powers but is at best slightly above average in combat, flavored as a twee theatre student, is basically a perfect recipe for disaster and particularly appealing towards people with little sense of tact, as noted from the awful stories earlier on in the thread.
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Sep 27, 2018 18:19
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There was no PHB3 in 3e so I don't trust you
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Sep 27, 2018 19:12
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Fruity20 posted:this is just opinion, but monks ( the kung fu ones) feel a bit out of place to be fair. in a medieval setting full of knights, dragons, and castles, a monk sticks out like sore thumb unless you flavor them differently. like don't get me wrong, i love the monk in concept and mechanics and you could explain away reasons for why your monk is here. ultimately, dnd is suppose to be fun and it doesn't matter at the end of the day. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqc_27cpQ80 just replace "hamon" with "ki" the thing i find pretty dumb about monks is that there's this amazing mystical energy called ki that they learn to harness, but nobody else in the universe seems to care about it. wizards aren't studying it; sorcerers don't use it; fighters and barbarians aren't strengthened by it; clerics and druids don't channel it. It's sort of just there only for monks. compare it to arcane magic and divine magic, which are completely fundamental to the logic of D&D's world, and it's obvious that ki doesn't really exist in the setting.
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Sep 27, 2018 19:30
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Cephas posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqc_27cpQ80 was that a jojo reference  jokes aside, when you look at dnd by a fluff or worldbuilding standpoint, some parts fall apart. but hey if someone wants to roll for a monk they should. i could argue that ki is just another word for mana but that's just a silly headcanon of mine.
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Sep 27, 2018 19:38
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It's like psionics, really. Except even psionics are their own thing, canonized by the setting in certain iconic creatures like aboleths and mind flayers.
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Sep 27, 2018 19:38
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Cephas posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqc_27cpQ80 Are you saying they haven't written enough overwhelming lore about ki to justify it in a DnD setting? So there's groups of people who harness a mysterious power from within their own bodies, so what? Fighters and barbarians are clearly nonsensical in their power levels, everything is weird magic in DnD.
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Sep 27, 2018 20:04
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poorlifedecision posted:Are you saying they haven't written enough overwhelming lore about ki to justify it in a DnD setting? So there's groups of people who harness a mysterious power from within their own bodies, so what? Fighters and barbarians are clearly nonsensical in their power levels, everything is weird magic in DnD. I think it's just you could do more with it. Pathfinder melded ki and psionics into one larger occult power source, and that's paid out dividends to all the classes in it. A Pathfinder monk can get at-will fly before a wizard gets 3rd level spells, for example.
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Sep 27, 2018 20:08
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Cephas posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqc_27cpQ80
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Sep 27, 2018 20:13
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Ki exists just like divine/arcane magic, it's just that, instead of producing wizards, it produces monks. I'm sure there've been a lot of advances in the realm of mopeds, but most people won't care.
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Sep 27, 2018 20:19
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in my headcannon, the same ability that lets barbarians rage and rangers hunter sense allows monks to fly.
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Sep 27, 2018 20:22
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Just so we're clear, we're not talking about your individual homebrewed settings or headcanons, but about the lack of explicit MONK INTEGRATION in official published material. It's all a private divine and arcane boys club in the books.
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Sep 27, 2018 21:02
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beeoi posted:I'd have to assume people praising the 3E bard are following the tier-driven mindcalk of All Casters>All Half-Casters>All Martials in All Situations Ever when the reality is a lot more complicated. TL, DR: Punish not the class for the sins of the player. Sounds like the problem is player knowledge and not class design, then. I get that bard optimization is not intuitive, but neither is anything else in 3.5, so I don't think that's a fair knock on bard when literally all the Core half-casters and full-martials are basically steaming dumpster fires under the same circumstances. I realize a lot of power for a lot of classes and concepts come from splatbook material, but bards hold up pretty well straight out of the box, too. Obviously they can't compete with full casters, but even with 2/3 casting, they're still head-and-shoulders above pretty much everything else. There's a lot of chaff in their spell list, but there's also enough winners to fill out your spells known allowance without issue. Durability is... acceptable but not great, and still comparable to the other light-armored martials, and that's before access to defensive spells like Mirror Image and Blur. And then there's the Alter Self exciting can of worms... I don't disagree with your points, but I think they're more symptomatic of deeper, systemic problems with 3.5 and maybe cultural problems with the DND player population than issues intrinsic to the bard class specifically.
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Sep 27, 2018 21:04
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I guarantee the weird negative stereotypes about bards came from a cultural place before they came from a mechanical place - after all, actual AD&D bards were intensely badass. It's because Those Kinds of Nerds hated the theater kids and made bards into a punchline, but because they're Those Kinds of Nerds, there's no actual joke to the punchline.
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Sep 27, 2018 21:55
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ProfessorCirno posted:I guarantee the weird negative stereotypes about bards came from a cultural place before they came from a mechanical place - after all, actual AD&D bards were intensely badass. It's because Those Kinds of Nerds hated the theater kids and made bards into a punchline, but because they're Those Kinds of Nerds, there's no actual joke to the punchline. I believe the culprit is this motherfucker right here: 
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Sep 27, 2018 21:59
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Well clearly it's because magic singing is silly in this very serious game about elves and orcs fighting each other.
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Sep 27, 2018 22:00
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Well the thing is Elves fighting Orcs is a thought-provoking allegory on the plights of Western Civilization. Of course silly magical singing has no place in it.
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Sep 27, 2018 22:02
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