True Bard Archtype / Vanilla Bard Overhall


Homebrew and House Rules


Premise:
In both 3.5 and Pathfinder, I've long been dissatisfied with the way the bard works. It isn't about them being either underpowered or overpowered, but it's more about the blahness of their core class power, the bardic performance. This overall is an attempt to address this issue.

Introduction/ Bard 'roles'
A guiding question for me was "what should the bard be uniquely good at?"
In pathfinder, the answer seems to be a 'jack-of-all-trades,' at least in my opinion, since I would rate this as the bard's strongest set of abilities. I like this role, but don't feel it should be the best one, rather, I think it should be one out of several equally good roles a bard can fulfill.

With this in mind, I decided that, with as few changes as possible to the vanilla bard, the roles that one might focus their strengths into fulfilling would be: Combat Aid, Saboteur/Enchantress, and Jack-of-All-Trades. I'll describe these below, but first I want to just say that these aren't set paths that a bard must rigidly adhere so much as models I thought of to make sure bard players would have abilities to enhance their 'role' as they progress should she decide to make a specialist bard. A player is free to pick and choose whatever abilities they like regardless of what 'role' that power up falls into.

Descriptions of roles: (note that a ! indicates a revised or new ability)

Combat aid: what most people think of first with a bard. Wins the day by helping everyone else function better. Classic tactics include inspire courage, competence, heroics, and greatness; buff spells; and battlefield tactics like aid another and flanking; as well as the newer abilities Spell power!, paragon of hope, and mighty guard!

Saboteur/Enchantress: manipulates the battlefield and opponents directly. Both focus on diminishing opponents' ability to fight effectively, but the enchantress does so more through magical means and relies more heavily on mind-affecting effects, whereas the saboteur relies on more roguish methods. They also often exert their influence over several cumulative effects. Sample tactics include mockery!, distraction!, fascinate!, countersong!, dirge of doom, diva of disaster!, cloak and dagger!, suggestion, and deadly performance, as well as their proficiency with whips and access to various saboteur spells.

Jack of All Trades: Probably what most people think of for bards outside of combat, the jack-of-all-trades focuses on filling in the cracks in the party. They make the most of their skills, and even borrow features from other classes to ensure that they have an answer for most every situation. Jack-of-all-trades abilties include: bardic knowledge, lore master, versatile performance, trapfinding!, jack-of-all-trades, as well as their moderate spell casting combined with moderate melee or range fighting ability.

http://i.imgur.com/nAeCmbK.png?1

New Rules:

Perform Skill Checks: perform checks during Bardic Performances can raise (or lower) the DC to resist your Bardic Performance. The Performance Skill Check DC is 15. Exceeding or failing the check results in a bonus or penalty to the DC to resit your Bardic Performance, respectively. The formula for the bonus/penalty is as follows: (perform skill result / 5) -3

New Performance types: the following are additional performance types a bard can invest ranks in. Listed with them are the associated skills a bard can substitute as per the Versatile Performance talents:

Perform (charlatan): sleight of hand, Use Magic Device
Perform (pantomime): stealth, bluff

Bardic Performance: As before, use bardic performances to aid yourself and allies in battle or to achieve other effects. The DC for unwilling creatures to resist your performance is 10+1/2 Bard Level+CHA mod.
Newly changed is that you may start and maintain any number of bardic performances as you have available actions. Maintaining a performance is now a move action, though the talents coordinated performance I and II reduce this to a swift and free action, respectively. Each new performance effect must also be made with a separate performance skill (dance, singing, instrument, oratory, ect...). This allows a low level bard to use both his move action and standard action to maintain 2 bard performances at the same time, a low-mid level bard with the coordinated performance can maintain 3 performances at the same time, and a high level bard with coordinated performance II can maintain as many performances as he has perform skills of the appropriate rank.

Finally, if a performance takes more than 1 round to complete, this means a bard must 'maintain' the performance for those rounds rather than spending X continous rounds of actions to achieve the desired effect. This goes for masterpieces as well.

New Feats: Extra Bard Talent*, Mesmerizing Performer (raises the DC to resist your bard performances by 1), Enthralling Performer (prerequisite Mesmerizing Performer) (raises the DC by an additional 1)
List of Bardic Performances: (grouped by how many ranks a bard needs in order to learn). Any time a Bard may learn a new performance, he may instead choose to learn a Masterpiece for which he qualifies.

(I want to apologize for the lousy formatting on these lists. I originally tried to do these on google docs, but the links wouldn't work on the site for some reason)

List of Bardic Performances:

http://pastebin.com/eZhRiXuT

List of Bard Talents: Arranged in order of availability by level. Prerequisites are put in parantheses

http://pastebin.com/8535Qmvg

* you may select this ability more than once, each time you do, it's benefits applies to a new song or talent.

Overcome Immunity: During his travels, a bard gradually learns to move the unmoveable through their performance. At first level, and every level divisable by 4, a bard chooses one of the following abilities, which enables his mind-affecting performances and spells to function against creatures of the appropriate type, although these creatures receive a +2 bonus on will saves to resist.

Requiem: Undead
Pied Piper: Vermin
Avant-Guard: Abberations
Basso Profundo: Oozes
Plain Song: Plants
Acoustic Maestro: Constructs

Music of the Spheres: at 20th level, your performance can tap into the music that binds all things in the cosmos, allowing your performance to affect any creature even if they are normally immune to such effects with no penalty to your your DC. Against humanoids, your DC is 2 higher.

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