D&D 5E Bards. They are silly. Is there a way to make them NOT silly?

[Celebrim]

The main difference being that they stopped singing and started fighting when the battle started in earnest. D&D bards on the other hand tend to continue singing.

No, that's entirely wrong. When the Rohan are singing as they slew, Tolkien is channeling the pre-Romanic/Pre-Christian culture of Europe emphatically and openly. He is intensely familiar with European pre-Christian cultural traditions. Quite the contrary, in antiquity, if the singing stopped, it was likely taken as a sound to retreat. Indeed, the side that was singing the less loudly, probably took this as a sign that they were losing and it was time to drop their shield and skedaddle.

In the Kalevala, when Väinämöinen joins battle, he begins singing and his enemies wail in dismay and beg him to stop and seek to surrender, because they know that there own voices will never be more powerful than his, and as a result of his singing being more powerful, they have no chance of defeating him.

Compare with Tolkien's Tom Bombadil, that sings the barrow wight to its destruction, "Get out, you old wight! Vanish in the sunlight! Shrivel like the cold mist, like the winds go wailing, Out into the barren lands far beyond the mountains! Come never here again! Leave your barrow empty! Lost and forgotten be, darker than the darkness, Where gates stand for ever shut, till the world is mended."

UPDATE: Various accounts are mentioned on this Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Celtic_music

Note the accounts of Celts singing both before and during the battle, and singing while taking shelter from missiles beneath their shields, or even singing while engaged in single combat with a foe. Of course, many of these accounts are accounts less of battling against a bard in the sense of a battle leader, but battling against a bard-beserker - a barbarian singing as they rage.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I don't hand out the healing, extra bonuses, flanking, etc to those who disrespect me.

Good on ya!

 

[mrpopstar]

Solution: De-emphasize the "music is magic" idea and instead emphasize a romeo so badass he makes the Weave swoon whenever he speaks or strums a lute.

There's this persistent idea that speech and music are formulaic in some way comparative to the spells cast by wizards (which confuses the whole bard concept). It's this idea that serves as the foundation for silliness such as "We Are The Champions" being sung by a player every time a valor bard uses their Combat Inspiration feature.

The bard needs to be decoupled from the song of creation, words of power, truename stuff. None of it is essential to the core of the class.

#twocents

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Sure, blow those bagpipes, mock your foes with bawdy tales, strum an upbeat chord - but when the fighting starts, for the love of my limited imagination, shut up and get stuck in. Even so called warrior-poets realised the value of putting a sock in it to instead focusing on cracking skulls.

You could do this easily with the 2E bard, because singing and music was only ever a small part of their skill-set. They could influence people outside of combat, or specifically counter sound-based magic by counter-singing, but their main contribution to combat was as a secondary fighter and secondary wizard.

Fifth edition doesn't really support the bard being that concept anymore, though. The 5E bard is all performance, all the time. The best fix for the 5E bard class is to ignore it entirely, and use the optional multi-class rules to create some sort of fighter/wizard/rogue hybrid character.

 

[mrpopstar]

As an aside, we already did this thread (here) this past spring.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

You could do this easily with the 2E bard, because singing and music was only ever a small part of their skill-set. They could influence people outside of combat, or specifically counter sound-based magic by counter-singing, but their main contribution to combat was as a secondary fighter and secondary wizard.

Fifth edition doesn't really support the bard being that concept anymore, though. The 5E bard is all performance, all the time. The best fix for the 5E bard class is to ignore it entirely, and use the optional multi-class rules to create some sort of fighter/wizard/rogue hybrid character.

Eh? And yet I've done it. Okay, so I was a secondary wizard/secondary diplomat instead of secondary fighter/secondary wizard, but I still ignored the performance aspect entirely in favor of the "lore" aspect. If I'd been a Valor Bard instead of a Lore Bard I would have come across as more of a fighter/wizard.

And BTW the "lore" aspect was pretty strong with the 2nd edition Bard as well. One of their best abilities was the ability to identify magic items. 5% chance per level IIRC.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Eh? And yet I've done it. Okay, so I was a secondary wizard/secondary diplomat instead of secondary fighter/secondary wizard, but I still ignored the performance aspect entirely in favor of the "lore" aspect. If I'd been a Valor Bard instead of a Lore Bard I would have come across as more of a fighter/wizard.

Bards in 5E cast spells by singing, as far as I know. They've integrated spellcasting into performance, and then escalated spellcasting to their primary class feature. Of course, that's mostly going by what bard-apologists in this forum have been saying, so it's entirely possible that they're reading something into it that isn't there.

And BTW the "lore" aspect was pretty strong with the 2nd edition Bard as well. One of their best abilities was the ability to identify magic items. 5% chance per level IIRC.

As I said, performance was only a small part of their skill-set. They also had some thief skills, in addition to identifying items.

 

[mrpopstar]

Bards in 5E cast spells by singing, as far as I know. They've integrated spellcasting into performance, and then escalated spellcasting to their primary class feature. Of course, that's mostly going by what bard-apologists in this forum have been saying, so it's entirely possible that they're reading something into it that isn't there.

Truth! (Emphasis mine.)

Their primary class feature should be inspiration, followed closely by lore and a knack for opportunity to contribute in useful ways.

 

[Gardens & Goblins]

If anyone can share the research on folks singing while fighting from history, I'd appreciate if they shared it - should be a good read in the bath!

Singing while actually trying to stab someone and avoid being stabbed seems far fetched, though I haven't got the texts to read up on it. My casual googling has shown accounts of folks singing the manliness of a duelist before, and trash talking the opponent during - which seems very D&D bard, and all kinds of cool.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Bards in 5E cast spells by singing, as far as I know.

Maybe this is a house rule that you're forgotten is a house rule, but in 5E it's not the case. Bard spells are just spells. Nowhere in the Bard's rule text for Spellcasting does it suggest otherwise. Bards can use musical instruments as magical focii for their bard spells in the same way that wizards can use staves or crystals for their wizard spells, but in both cases there is also the option to use actual material components, if any are required, or a "component pouch."

Further evidence: if Bard spells were "singing," which they are not, spells with no Verbal components such as Hypnotic Pattern and Counterspell would be have to have Verbal components when cast by bards. But they don't.