An Alternate Bard: Truly Inspirational!

[Christopher Delvo]

Hey there folks! I'm back! And this time, I brought a bard!

But why? For all the folks out there clamouring for monk fixes and rogue fixes and fighter and wizard and gunslinger fixes, why the bard? The bard's not broken, is it? It doesn't have some glaring fault or failing, right?

Well, yeah. The bard, as it exists in the Core Rulebook, is a pretty solid class. However, it's not really what I'm looking for in a bard, so I decided to use it as a template and make a new one.

My problems with the bard are as follows:

Bardic Performance just feels wrong to me. I just can't picture a character busting out a lute and playing an inspiring ballad while his allies are cutting things to pieces (or being cut to pieces) when he could be doing other, much more useful and interesting things.

Versatile Performance is effectively useless and misleading. The skills it grants you are almost all skills that the bard is going to invest points in anyway, effectively making you waste skill points as you go. Additionally, the skills covered by each performance often overlap, meaning that the ability is effectively self-defeating.

The bard is one of the least-customizeable classes in the game. All of its performances are set in stone without archetypes, and its spells are spontaneous, meaning its list is incredibly short. For a class that's supposed to be about surprises and vibrancy, it's kind of dull.

So, I changed the class...

...in the following ways:

Inspiration Pool: An idea half-stolen from the 3.5 factotum, the bard can use the inspiration pool to gain temporary class abilities, such as Sneak Attack or Smite Evil, bringing a whole new meaning to "Jack of all Trades".

Spells: The bard now uses a spellbook and prepares its spells ahead of time, still using its Charisma modifier as its casting stat.

Versatile Performance: Gone. Moving on.

Muses: Replacing performances is the concept of muses. Effectively performances with the "performance" fluff removed, they're fueled by the inspiration pool in a manner similar to the bardic music of 3.5, lasting a number of rounds equal to the bard's level+1 after you activate them.

Divine Inspiration: A new capstone tops off this bard, giving the bard a +2 bonus on Charisma, as well as the ability to take 20 with any skill check as a standard action.

In essence, I tried to make a more neutral bard that focuses less on dancing or playing music to buff their allies, and more on the concept of inspiration and being inspired by the world/people around you, and then using those muses to improve yourself and your allies.

The class is in google doc form. Feedback, both positive and negative, is encouraged. May I just ask, though, that if you have something negative to say, make it constructive criticism. "You suck" should always be followed by "here's why" and "here's how you can fix it". This is effectively an Alpha build of the class, and I'm always looking to improve my work.

Google Doc: The Bard v1.0

Thanks, and enjoy!

...Catch Phrase,
-Chris

[Nightwish]

In my opinion, the Versatile Performance was one of the better things they added to the bard. The ability to effectively raise three skills for the price of one frees up a lot of skill points so the bard isn't forced to dump points into their social skills.

[Christopher Delvo]

Nightwish wrote:

In my opinion, the Versatile Performance was one of the better things they added to the bard. The ability to effectively raise three skills for the price of one frees up a lot of skill points so the bard isn't forced to dump points into their social skills.

Understood. If I might explain my position a bit better:

As a bard, I found that a lot of my skill points were going to go into social skills anyway. Now, at early levels, that's not a problem. Putting ranks in Perform (Act, Comedy, Etc.) is definitely nice when your first versatile performance comes up. But when you get into higher levels, I start looking at the versatile performance as a bit of a hindrance. Oh, I can put ranks into Perform (Oratory, Wind, String) to get a bonus on diplomacy! Except...I'm a bard. I've likely already put ranks into diplomacy. And bluff, and intimidate. Likely handle animal and acrobatics, too. In fact, everything offered through Versatile Performance but Fly seems pretty standard for a bard. So, effectively, the ability would do nothing for me, becoming a dead level.

Now, this wouldn't be a huge problem if it was just one ability that applied to all perform skills at once. BAM, suddenly you get the option to diversify. However, the fact that you only get ONE each time effectively makes you choose between specializing in the actual skills you want early on, or waiting to specialize in these skills at 10th, 14th, 18th level, when you FINALLY get around to versatile performance. Up until that point, you're just putting ranks into a perform skill, which, practically, does the exact same thing as the other 4 perform skills in which you put ranks. The only time it becomes special is 4 levels after your last perform skill became special. 4 levels is a long time.

So, again, I think there's definitely some cool stuff in Versatile Performance on paper, and I think if it was an All-In-One ability, where all 9 perform skills became special all at once, I could definitely dig it. But in practice, I find it's far less interesting and useful than many people believe. In fact, if my bard was still focused around performing, I likely would have kept that in.

...Catch Phrase,
-Chris