Conspiratiorist posted:

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.

Gharbad the Weak posted:

D&D is fantastic, it's just that every single person involved in any way with it is just absolute trash.

Every single person.

Gharbad the Weak posted:

D&D is fantastic, it's just that every single person involved in any way with it is just absolute trash.

Every single person.

KittyEmpress posted:

The amount of poo poo that d&d nerds feel necessary to give to anything anime, effeminate, or etc is weird. Like I've seen people in d&d communities randomly go on rants about girly elf men and how all bard males are automatically gay.

Not to mention the rages against anyone who references the tome of battle to this day, or anything semi-eastern themed. I've gotten poo poo for playing a monk because 'only weebs do that'

KittyEmpress posted:

Like I've seen people in d&d communities randomly go on rants about girly elf men and how all bard males are automatically gay.

Arthil posted:

My only slight against Anime is I wish people would stop pausing the game to giddily show the DM something animu related and make us have to guide him back into DM-mode.

Baby T. Love posted:

As if Gimli, Legolas, and Aragorn composing and performing a song for Boromir after his death isn't the most manly thing ever.

Malpais Legate posted:

lol as if loving another dude isn't the mostly manly thing ever

Arthil posted:

We're including us the players, right?

Gharbad the Weak posted:

EVERY SINGLE PERSON

Gharbad the Weak posted:

D&D is fantastic, it's just that every single person involved in any way with it is just absolute trash.

Every single person.

lightrook posted:

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.

Conspiratiorist posted:

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.

TheGreatEvilKing posted:

Eh?

A flask rogue or spiked chain fighter is more useful than a guy running around with low spell DCs on low level enchantments. Sure, you can turtle with mirror image and whatnot, Alter self is cute but not particularly good without splatbook access. Now you have the problem that martials suck in core without copious amounts of multiclassing, sure, and classes like monk are particularly worthless, but I'd take a spiked chain tripper or spirited charge lancer over a bard any day.

Elfgames posted:

ki is just mastery of the body and mind and should be a martial power and thus monks should be unnecessary because fighters and rogues should be doing cool anime poo poo

Elfgames posted:

ki is just mastery of the body and mind and should be a martial power and thus monks should be unnecessary because fighters and rogues should be doing cool anime poo poo

Farg posted:

people want...less anime bullshit in their dnd?

clusterfuck posted:

Farg posted:

are you telling me some people aren't delivering speeches about the power of hope and friendship while fighting the manifestation of despair or whatever

Fruity20 posted:

as someone who watches anime and has an art style influenced by it, i can't help but everytime i see dumb neckbeards getting prissy when someone rolls a monk. hey there's a thing called "leaving" use it sometime.

jokes aside, i love it when people fuse anime with dnd. makes it way more fun in my opinion. but that's basically fairy tail or the war of lodoss.


despite my love of anime, this is a cliche I freaking hate.

Fruity20 posted:

as someone who watches anime and has an art style influenced by it, i can't help but everytime i see dumb neckbeards getting prissy when someone rolls a monk. hey there's a thing called "leaving" use it sometime.

jokes aside, i love it when people fuse anime with dnd. makes it way more fun in my opinion. but that's basically fairy tail or the war of lodoss.

Nazgul posted:

I've recently experienced one of the best sessions in a long time.

To lay the scene, there's a full moon out tonight and our cleric Faere and Sorcerer Val were busy investigating the town of Blackhollow after the party spent a few nights in the woods staying out of the sight of the werewolves known to traverse these woods. Leon, my Paladin wasn't willing to bother the townsfolk so late at night, and went to the inn to eat with Gingko the Barbarian and Travel the Bard and his talking sword, Mash.

Val, being a very aggressive socializer, basically interrogates this poor guy named Aiden about whether or not the town itself has a werewolf problem. Zone of truth revealed nothing but just made Aiden nervous. Faere told Val to back off, and leave the poor guy alone.

Then, they heard a crash at the gate, and the howling of four werewolves that came charging in. Aiden steps between the werewolves and my two party members, and transforms into a werebear.

Faere calls out for Leon, and Leon books it as fast as he can. Val unwisely tells Faere to find the mayor of the town while he holds the line with Aiden.

Val casts a decent Firebolt, but by the time Leon arrives Val was bloodied and battered, having lost half of his health. Leon sees the werebear facing the werewolves, makes the correct assumptions about who is on who's side, charges into the pack of four werewolves, picks the werewolf that attacked Val, and brought his magic longsword to bear on this monster. Nat 20, Thunderous Smite. With a deep gash in its chest, the werewolf saw a humongous crack of lightning emanating from Leon's sword and their ears were ringing from the BOOM as it went flying ten feet away from the Paladin and flat on their back.

Now we had a Paladin and a Werebear back to back, standing between the werewolves and the rest of the town.

It's the werewolf's turn. The one knocked over is still reeling from the blow. Two of the werewolves come to attack Aiden, their claws barely leaving a scratch against his hide. One of them goes for Leon. Their claws rake against the Paladin's shield like it was a chalkboard.

Then the werewolf leans over and sinks its fangs into Leon's arms. Ten damage, Leon is undeterred from the desire to defend Val and the town. Then, the DM tells me to roll a constitution saving throw.

Natural 1.

Immediately, Leon transforms into a seven foot tall werewolf with glowing red eyes and a distaste for this unexpected development.

The battle was tough, fought tooth and nail and fang and claw, the tide turning as the waitress from the inn brings out her flintlock with silver bullets, and the mayor, also a werewolf, comes to fight alongside his son Aiden. Turns out there were werewolves trying to break into the other sides of the town but the townsfolk were either werewolves/boars or plain used to fending off these attacks, so the night went without much blood spilled out of anyone who wasn't a sorcerer.

Now I have Leon, my Paladin, trying to deal with the fact he has been cursed with Lycanthropy and now he's gotta find a cure for it while completing the main tasks set up for him with the party.