D&D 5E Legends & Lore 03.10.2014: Full-spellcasting Bard

[Ainamacar]

I think it's probably possible to create an interesting fusion of the bardic inspiration and spells, and perhaps one that lets the bard choose how much to concentrate on spells proper vs. the various magical or quasi-magical abilities they have long had.

For example, suppose one could semi-permanently sacrifice a spell slot to gain the equivalent of a bard song. (This is obviously a common structure in many games, but in 5e it could be a unique way to model the bard's fluid relationship with the notion of arcane magic.) The bard song essentially becomes an at-will or permanent ability, although some may be activated and/or be enhanced by expending bardic inspirations.

The main thing in my mind is to make sure these abilities wouldn't behave like one-off spells. Something like "spend one bardic inspiration to make a suggestion" is rather pointless if one could just cast suggestion instead. (I could perhaps see the occasional exception if one wanted to trade a high-level spell slot for the ability to use a low-level spell limited by bardic inspiration rather than spell slots. Mostly that'd be boring, but with the more limited slots in 5e perhaps it wouldn't be quite as underwhelming as it was in 3e.) Contingencies, sharing proficiencies, bard-themed "metamagic", highly contextual inspiration (e.g. a ranger fights a favored enemy, a wizard casts a signature spell, a character suffers the mechanical effect of one of their flaws) and things of that ilk sound better to me.

In this approach, a high-level bard that has traded in all 3 7-9th level spell slots but kept the rest would likely play quite differently from one that has a expended 5 or 6 lower level slots, but kept room for big spells. A multiclass bard would still have sacrificed the appropriate slots, but the overall progression of slots would be unchanged.

We could also use this to do most of the heavy lifting on subclassing. Some abilities might focus on manipulation or combat. Some might focus more specifically on the means of inspiration, so that there is room for music or poetry as opposed to something more plain-spoken. If one wanted a bit more differentiation, I think we could have class abilities that grant different side-effects whenever one spends bardic inspiration for any purpose. The vanilla bard might grant a small skill bonus, the skald might incite the party against an enemy (grant extra damage), and the warlord might allow some minor healing.

Just thinking out loud.

 

[Jester David]

I'm not thrilled by this. They only made one public attempt at the bard, which is arguably one of the harder classes to really get right. And there's no easy way for them to get feedback on how well they've responded to concerns on that bard. It took multiple attempts to really perfect all the other classes.


I'm not happy with the idea of a full spellcaster bard. Spells are a generic ability and more spells just means fewer bardic abilities.

It also means more iconic bard abilities will be pushed to higher levels. It's unlikely we will start with both Bardic Inspiration and Bardic Knowledge now. This makes the bard less of a Jack-of-all-Trades and more of a spellcaster who can kinda do other stuff. Instead of picking a focus (or two): melee weapons, ranged weapons, spells, or skills the game is defaulting you to spells. It even says as much in the article, that the bard can stand in for a cleric or wizard but it says nothing of a rogue. As they've worked hard to make sure wizard spells don't negate the need for a rogue, this might make it tricky to be a stealthy bard.


The playtest bard could already add 1/2 proficiency to skills. So that's not news. And doubling your bonus just breaks bounded accuracy at high levels.


Bardic inspiration sounds cool but I'd need to see it in play. Adding a d6 to any d20 roll is handy, but I can forsee a lot of times where +3.5 to a roll makes no difference, either the roll is too high or too low and so the bard wasted a daily power. It's also a bonus to a single roll making it only really useful a couple rounds each day.


This article also says little about the upper end of bard abilities. Bards really stopped getting anything interesting or bardic after level 7 (excluding subclass benefits). Although, now that they'll likely have 7 dead-ish levels (where they only get spells) I imagine it will be easier to spread out what few good abilities they did get.

 

[Gadget]

Count me as cautiously optimistic. We will have to see the implementation, especially the spell lists, to be sure, but it sounds encouraging. Of course, I've been one who has never cared for the Bard in D&D; it's to muddled of an archetype and to unfocused mechanically, IMHO. I never liked the jack-of-all-trades, nor the traveling troubadour vibe, so any attempt to try a little some thing new sounds good. I expect DEFCON 1 up thread had the right of it: "Most 'special sauce' abilities in a class are being subsumed into the spells system it possible."

I was kind of disappointed that they were going with half-spellcaster progression in the Ranger and Paladin, but I can kind of see how they are using the spell system to consolidate a lot of special abilities, it just makes sense that they are doing the same with the Bard.

 

[Wyckedemus]

But those who do, tend to be full casters..

What? Where in the world do you get that assumption? Think about it. If there are 10 classes in a PHB, that does not mean 10% of all classed characters are Warlocks. Or Paladins. (Unless the DM wants that to be true.)

Number of classes in a book =/= equal representation in a world. And if in your campaign it does, and you don't like it, then why did you make that choice? Change it. The world has whatever the campaign setting/DM says it has.

That is why there were *no* D&D-like "full casters" in the Lord of the Rings. Magic, yes, but it wasn't Fly and Fireball spells this way and that. It depends on the setting. Are 10% of all classes on Athas clerics? Paladins? Neither is that true on Toril, or in any world you envision that it's not right for.

... in my opinion.

 

[Minigiant]

The thing that gives me caution is how I saw the bard as a "rogue who fights and casts some spells" and not as a "spellcaster who fights and uses skills".

When an obstacle came up, the bard had 3 equal choices of weapons combat, magic spells, or skill use. Then if the problem was big enough they'd use all three. I hope this is preserved.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

Before someone got all Butthurt over the issue of Turn Undead, while it's a nice thing for Clerics to have, it's something that distracts from many concepts of what a Cleric of anything else other than the forces of life or light would typically use. I wouldn't see an entity such as the Divine Clock (a LN entity I just thought up) would even care about the undead. In years of playing Pathfinder it only got used a grand total of 3 times ever, instead of Channel Energy to heal which got used all the time.

On the other hand Bardic Music is something that got used almost all of the time by the bards of the parties, almost every time at the start of most combats. It's very much something that's far more ingrained in any of the Bard concepts and identity. Back in 3e and Pathfinder where the Bard is often seen as a maligned class, its probably the only thing others felt was useful about the bard. There would certainly be room bardic inspiration uses beyond inspiration, and many many ideas on what those things should be, but those are the kinds of things that should be more pushed into subclasses of the Bard. I doubt that full spellcasting progression is going to take away from a lot of the extra things bards do, after all Wizards get to do other things beyond just cast spells too.

 

[ForeverSlayer]

Before someone got all Butthurt over the issue of Turn Undead, while it's a nice thing for Clerics to have, it's something that distracts from many concepts of what a Cleric of anything else other than the forces of life or light would typically use. I wouldn't see an entity such as the Divine Clock (a LN entity I just thought up) would even care about the undead. In years of playing Pathfinder it only got used a grand total of 3 times ever, instead of Channel Energy to heal which got used all the time.

On the other hand Bardic Music is something that got used almost all of the time by the bards of the parties, almost every time at the start of most combats. It's very much something that's far more ingrained in any of the Bard concepts and identity. Back in 3e and Pathfinder where the Bard is often seen as a maligned class, its probably the only thing others felt was useful about the bard. There would certainly be room bardic inspiration uses beyond inspiration, and many many ideas on what those things should be, but those are the kinds of things that should be more pushed into subclasses of the Bard. I doubt that full spellcasting progression is going to take away from a lot of the extra things bards do, after all Wizards get to do other things beyond just cast spells too.

In our 3.5 and Pathfinder games, if you didn't have Turn Undead our DM would make you pay.

 

[ForeverSlayer]

I think just giving the classes spells is becoming a default for Next.

Also, what's the difference between classes having powers, such as in 4th edition, and giving most classes a spell list?

 

[Mistwell]

What? Where in the world do you get that assumption?

Because half are casters. And of that half, the most long-lived races tend to also be included as favored classes due to their ability score increases in things like intelligence.

It's a fair assumption. When half your classes are full casters, and the most long-lived people in society tend towards those classes anyway, you're going to find the people in power tend towards those classes on average.

Think about it. If there are 10 classes in a PHB, that does not mean 10% of all classed characters are Warlocks. Or Paladins. (Unless the DM wants that to be true.)

As I said, while there may not be equal representation, they will all have SOME level of representation. So the more classes you have that are casters, eventually overall you will have more casters even if you bias it to non-casters. Because that's how random charts for D&D work. Even if Fighter has TRIPLE the number in the random generator (and it won't - the random generators never bias it that strong), that still won't equal the number of casters in those charts.

Number of classes in a book =/= equal representation in a world. And if in your campaign it does, and you don't like it, then why did you make that choice? Change it. The world has whatever the campaign setting/DM says it has.

I'm of course not talking about my own campaign, I am talking about the default implied setting contained in the world-building charts used in the DMG.

 

[Mistwell]

I think just giving the classes spells is becoming a default for Next.

Also, what's the difference between classes having powers, such as in 4th edition, and giving most classes a spell list?

I think that's taking it too far. We're not talking about any classes who didn't have spells before now suddenly having spells, we're just talking about the quantity of those spells. Rangers and Bards had spells in 3.5 for example. Who do you feel they've given spells to that didn't usually have it in the bulk of D&D editions?