Bardic Lore and Knowledge (History)

Da Man · Jan 26, 2002

Greetings d20 enthusiasts!

What do you think is the difference between Bardic Lore and Knowledge (History)?

What are the different times when one would be used over the other?

For that matter, when would having 5 ranks in any specific Knowledge be better then having 10 ranks in Bardic Lore?

As you can see, I am having a difficult time with differentiating BL from all of the Knowledges.

Thanks!

Jones

kamosa · Jan 26, 2002

I've always thought of the difference as Knowledge (History) as knowledge of facts, names and dates where as Bardic Lore is a knowing the stories that surround history and legend.

Example: Knowledge History of the old west would be knowledge about the names of towns, key figures, key dates and important events.

Bardic Lore of the Old west would be knowing about the shoot out at the OK Coral and the tall tales about Paul Bunion (SP) and Pecos Bill.

This does blur a bit in the fantasy setting as the tall tales probably happened. I think both can be used almost interchangbably, but they have flavor differences. Using the old west example, both would know about the Alamo, but one would be able to tell you when it happened and the other could tell you of the valiant way it was defended.

Herodotus was a historian, Homer was a bard.

JMTC

dvvega · Jan 26, 2002

IMC (after reading the PHB entry for Bardic Lore) I changed it to be more like the old style Bardic Lore from 1st Edition (and 2nd Edition).

If you carefully read the 3rd edition version, it implies that Bardic Lore is limited to 3 knowledges, and is like giving the bard these three for free.

So I scrapped it and just made it a roll to see if the bard knows anything, even if it's fanciful tales, about anything. Depending on the level of success of the roll (I use the optional DMG rule for degree of success) the tale could just be a tale, semi-truth, and so forth.

Yes under this system, a bard could conceivably learn the command word to activate the wand of plague wielded by the evil Necromancer Berenon during the 2nd Age Wars, however it would require miraculous rolling.

Bardic Lore and Knowledge (History)

Da Man

Explorer

kamosa

Explorer

dvvega

Explorer

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