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Magic feels more naturally related to music than prayer or math to me. As a consequence, I love bards as full casters, and it's almost always my choice when I want to play a caster. When I play a cleric, I usually incorporate singing or dancing into my spell casting as well since it just feels better and more natural than simply saying prayers.
As to the play style of the bard, I love the composition cantrips acting as a beat that dictates the pace of the battle. I think spell casting is generally more powerful than harmonizing a second cantrip, so that option doesn't seem like it dictates my turns. Using Haste or lingering composition to sneak in move actions depending on the battle situation feels pretty natural to me, so I never felt a lack of options as a bard.
Bards and story telling feel very core to the adventuring spirit to me, and a fantasy system without them feels quite lacking unless a charismatic rogue type fills that role.
The class is a wonderful concept, but there aren't a ton of role models for it in fantasy media. Kvothe is a good one, though.
Language and music are also pretty much the closest we have to actual magic in the real world. Our entire civilization hinges on it. Hell, language is the very basis of Tabletop RPGs in the first place. Bards are definitely a concept that belongs into this game and they're much better than the flavorless fighter whose niche is "best at combat" or the rogues with their niche of "best at skills", two things that are mechanical aspects that every single character is expected to engage with.
Bards, and minstrels, are a very interesting concept that offers a myriad ways of approaching character creation, being a musician is but one venue one might use to create. You can role-play all kinds of characters using the framework of a Bard, from beautiful singers and instrumental virtuosos to rhetoric masters and charismatic generals that give great speeches.
The possibilities are varied and completely supported by a mechanically strong chassis and class options, which makes it a successful class (we can even say top tier). When compared to Alchemists, a class in which regardless of your choices always arrive on the same playstyle (a crafter handing out their items. Basically an item dispenser) this idea of "not getting the Bard" is definitely a "hot take" in my opinion.
Type 1) My character was a performer or wandering minstrel that became an adventurer because reasons (good so far) that casts mind warping and negative energy Occult spells because LOL (hmm...).
Type 2) My character is a seeker of occult mysteries and strange powers (good) that uses music in combat because LOL (sigh...)
I respect your opinion and not gonna lie when I was creating my bard I had a similar problem starting out. However the occult list allows for so much creativity and freedom to mold your character however you want. Also it’s always nice to remember that bards tend to receive magic almost as a coming of age arc. So it could simply be, “I’m a bustling minstrel who roams towns playing music and touring, I noticed when I play certain notes on my *instrument* I feel a greater power grow inside of me, I’m learning how to harness this and I’m using adventuring as a means to a end.” And if your character wants to help people maybe you’re more likely to select buff spells rather than debuff spells. Remember bards are much more than just in combat skill, they are music (or other creative arts) enthusiasts and they want to share that with the world typically. It’s very easy to be caught up in the typical stereotypes of bard but if you truly work at it bards can be AMAZING characters with really interesting story’s!
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This thread has been dead for almost four years. Perhaps it is best to leave it to its rest.
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Probably...but as long as its here, I'll mention that I thought it was odd that in all the talk about "why the bard was what it was" no one mentioned the original AD&D Bard, which required dual-classing (*not* multi-classing) in Fighter, then Thief , and then finally in Bard which gave it Druid spell-casting. It required time, dedication and an insanely good stat line.
But that's where the Jack-of-All-Trades tradition for Bards came from -- they kept changing classes.
I'm happy that with the Zoophonic Bard added in Howl of the Wild we get a little more of that Druid energy back -- that will lead me to playing my first bard in 2E.
Probably...but as long as its here, I'll mention that I thought it was odd that in all the talk about "why the bard was what it was" no one mentioned the original AD&D Bard, which required dual-classing (*not* multi-classing) in Fighter, then Thief , and then finally in Bard which gave it Druid spell-casting. It required time, dedication and an insanely good stat line.
But that's where the Jack-of-All-Trades tradition for Bards came from -- they kept changing classes.
I'm happy that with the Zoophonic Bard added in Howl of the Wild we get a little more of that Druid energy back -- that will lead me to playing my first bard in 2E.
Went to go read the first version of the bard after opening my AD&D 1e book to verify what you said. So yes, in "1e" ad&d the bard must get levels as a fight, a thief and then a druid in sequential order until they can finally get bard levels well beyond a total level of 10. However the first introduction of the bard is in "The Strategic Review Volume 2, Number 1" which introduced them as a bespoke class with none of these requirements and immediately describes them as a jack of all trades, and true to form they can use any weapon, can use theif skills and cast spells from the magic user list. They are more limited in armor and a whole bunch of other weird crap that is difficult to read and I'm not going to bother. To get to the point there is a spot wr2 the bard in ad&d that implies the bard doing what it does leveling these classes sequentially is a balancing factor and even says your DM can just say no to the class. From the get go the bard was intended to literally do everything
Edit to add this little bit:
After reading both of these entries and thinking about how the bard functions in 3.X and how in ad&d2 the bard is a rogue subclass, I think I settled on how I would handle a bard class if it was up to me, and I had to include a bard at all(I don't like them). I would put the bard in the category of classes like the commander playtest and the kineticist with legendary class DC and also like the thaumaturge in some ways. I would bring back the gish energy here by giving them magical abilities that use class DC, or whatever proficiency is shared with kineticist in this hypothetical future edition. These abilities would have your inspire courage, charm, and other occult magical spell-like abilities, but reduced from a full spellcaster, maybe even stopping at master class DC if it makes sense, but they can also swing a sword well. This would be a charisma magical occult martial-ish class with an emphasis on buffs but also some debuffs. Then I would promote the psychic to the premier occult spellcaster. I think this would be unpopular though
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Why do people want to revive old threads just to say "I disagree with you from several years ago and I had to say it" and how do they find the threads to disagree with in first place
Anyway, I've seen bard multiclassed into champion being main tank of the party and its funny. There I've contributed to topic x'D
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Why do people want to revive old threads just to say "I disagree with you from several years ago and I had to say it" and how do they find the threads to disagree with in first place
Probably google'd about bards and Pathfinder 2E and then the person in question found this thread and posted without checking the date. That's how I've necro'ed one or two things over the last fifteen years.
Why do people want to revive old threads just to say "I disagree with you from several years ago and I had to say it" and how do they find the threads to disagree with in first placeProbably google'd about bards and Pathfinder 2E and then the person in question found this thread and posted without checking the date. That's how I've necro'ed one or two things over the last fifteen years.
Almost certainly the case and I decided I just wanna take advantage of this now since it happened
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I'm gonna ask that people take any discussion of necroing to this thread on the topic that nobody has posted in for two years. (I kid, I kid.)
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I'm gonna ask that people take any discussion of necroing to this thread on the topic that nobody has posted in for two years.
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People can always play a multiclass fighter/rogue/sorcerer who specializes in enchantment spells.
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Why do people want to revive old threads just to say "I disagree with you from several years ago and I had to say it" and how do they find the threads to disagree with in first place
Personally, I think it's kinda funny, if anything. It has never bothered me at all, at worst it was an opportunity to badmouth necromancers in a light-hearted way.
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I mean, I disagree with myself from several years ago in this very thread! I said:Why do people want to revive old threads just to say "I disagree with you from several years ago and I had to say it" and how do they find the threads to disagree with in first placePersonally, I think it's kinda funny, if anything. It has never bothered me at all, at worst it was an opportunity to badmouth necromancers in a light-hearted way.
I just straight up don't like bards, how they work in any of these games, and mostly flavor wise. It's at a weird intersection of it struggling to have a niche, and when it does have one it's at the expense of other classes much like the rogue, [all the rogue(thief) stuff was designed in 1e to be done by the wizard(magic-user) before their introduction.] which bard was introduced to DnD as a variation of the rogue. It's kind of ludacris to me that a bard, which is a real world thing, would have magic and especially magic at the level of a wizard and be adventuring, fighting demons n shit. It now being occult is even stranger to me and I haven't got my copy of secrets of magic, but it low-key feels like the occult as a whole is being reshaped around the bard... As someone mentioned, it being a core class is also strange. I think something like the psychic should have been the premiere occult class, and if we have to have bards I would prefer they not be a spellcaster on the level of the wizard having all the way up to tenth level casting, they should probably go back to being a rogue archetype/subclass
While I still do not like bards, and I don't like them being able to cast spells at rank 10 and have legendary spells proficiency, and I even still think they are a rogue archetype (in the general sense, not the game specific sense), I now understand what occult is supposed to be and why it fits the bard in a way I did not understand back then. I'm okay with bards having occult themes now given what occult is. I do however think they should fit into the space where thaumaturge, commander and kineticist sort of fit into, thaumaturge and commander most especially. Going forward I'd like to see them replace spells with spell like abilities like those three classes
I don't think I'll ever take bardic performance seriously when each round is 6 seconds. That's not so much a performance as it is your party playing Heardle. Kills the fantasy a decent amount for me that the performances in combat aren't actual.
I'm gonna ask that people take any discussion of necroing to this thread on the topic that nobody has posted in for two years. (I kid, I kid.)
Only two years? Nah, it hasn't matured enough.
Personally, I think it's kinda funny, if anything. It has never bothered me at all, at worst it was an opportunity to badmouth necromancers in a light-hearted way.
Everyone likes to badmouth necromancers :(