Bard Fluff Help?

[Hawke]

For a few weeks now I've been playing a level 5 genasi windsoul bard. I've got fantastic charisma and am having a lot of fun playing a very charismatic liar during non-combat encounters... enjoying introducing myself with several different names and always different professions and links to the storyline.

In combat, the crunch is pretty fun and useful for my party. I'm throwing guys around left and right and enjoying helping my party out.

But I'm having so much trouble grokking the intended bard power fluff - singing songs, reciting poems, etc. to get the desired results. It's easy enough to reflavor it as arcane bolts from my wand or as more of a wind-powered magic based on my genasi heritage...

I'd rather spend some energy and get my head around the intended Bard. Not necessarily cause i'm not having fun now, but I just have an inkling to understand the class that I've never played before.

Any tips? Anybody play the 4E Bard and have some thoughts on character design?

 

[Stalker0]

Just to give you some ideas, here is the bard I made.

He is not a bard, he is a mentalist.

Every power I have is against will, the dm let me change a few powers that were targetting reflex but made sense to change to will (it makes some powers more useful against certain monsters, but I don't have the flexibility at hitting different defenses that most casters do).

when I "heal" people, I'm actually taking control of their minds, and forcing their bodies to accelerate healing. Also the slide effect is me forcing their bodies beyond their normal limits. I flavor it that people black out during this procesS And of course, the one dominate power I use to good effect.

My inspire competence is me giving my party one of my memories which allows them to improve their skills.

The bard is also supposed to have a free bardic ritual per day. Since there are none yet, my Dm let me have speak with dead once per day. I use it to "rip" the memories from a once living creature and add them to my collection.

 

[Starfox]

Its real hard to say anything about Bard fluff until we actually have PH2 and the full bard description. I also have a bard in my game, and we fleshed it out with some homebrew powers. I hope that won't be too much of a break with how the bard comes across in PH2.

 

[TarionzCousin]

But I'm having so much trouble grokking the intended bard power fluff - singing songs, reciting poems, etc. to get the desired results. It's easy enough to reflavor it as arcane bolts from my wand or as more of a wind-powered magic based on my genasi heritage...

I'd rather spend some energy and get my head around the intended Bard. Not necessarily cause i'm not having fun now, but I just have an inkling to understand the class that I've never played before.

Any tips? Anybody play the 4E Bard and have some thoughts on character design?

You seem to know what the intended bard is, but I'm a bit unclear on what the issue is.

If you asked more questions, you would probably get more answers.

Until then, check this out.

 

[Warehouse23]

Playing a first level bard, I've found that the hardest part about staying in character is coming up with new and insightful insults to fling at hobgoblins (using the Vicious Mockery at-will).

Reading through the Compendium Bard information, I definitely got more of a foul-mouthed pirate feel from the 4e Bard than a sense of the classically musical bard ("Bluff, bluff, bluff the stupid ogre..."). This, of course, may have something to do with the combat focus of 4e powers....

 

[UngeheuerLich]

With the character builder demo alone i have made a bard for each race playing with multiclassing or jack of all trades to flavour him as i like...

- you can inspire competence by playing a song (stupid actually, but it could be magical)

- you could just inspire competence by talkng to your target

- you could also inspire competence by beeing present and smile a bit... (aka inspire self confidence)

war song strike is a power wich clearly inspires confidence in those around you, so i could imagine a multiclassed bard-barbarian leading the attack inspiring those around him...

or a dragonborn bard-paladin-warrior, a ministrel knight, ready to give his life for his companions...

The bard makes me want to play 4th edition, really...

The 3rd edition bard was really terrible, compared to a 2nd edition bard variant from the complete bards handbook

 

[UngeheuerLich]

This, of course, may have something to do with the combat focus of 4e powers....

combat focus is important:

how often did you try to play an "interesting" character and your combat efficiency is so low, that it is really no fun, because the best you can do is trying not to die...

I encouraged playing interesting characters in my 3.5 games, because i disencouraged powergaming...

... if noone is too good, all do ok.

With my limited experience in 4th edition i recognize, that all charaters do ok at dealing damage and receiving damage and even buff or debuff in some way, but you are a bit better in fullfilling your own roll

(in phb 2 all classes seem to explicitely state a secondary roll, which could have also be done with the PHB 1 classes)

 

[SteveC]

One thing I did for my bard was to make up a table (D20, natch... ) of words for his "majestic word" power. Whenever he uses it, I'd roll and that would be the word that would heal (sort of Dune style). I had words like "peace," "freedom," and the like.

When I used the power, I could say, "be healed with the power of <rolls D20>... antidisestablishmentarianism!"

--Steve

 

[Scribble]

But I'm having so much trouble grokking the intended bard power fluff - singing songs, reciting poems, etc. to get the desired results. It's easy enough to reflavor it as arcane bolts from my wand or as more of a wind-powered magic based on my genasi heritage...

I'd rather spend some energy and get my head around the intended Bard. Not necessarily cause i'm not having fun now, but I just have an inkling to understand the class that I've never played before.

Not sure entirely what you're asking but:

The power source for Bards is Arcane, and most (all?) of the powers we've seen so far are tagged with the Arcane Keyword.

So it would seem to me that the Bard uses magic to do what it does, but rather then chanting out special words to achieve his effects, he instead focuses his power through music.

It's a bit like (in my opinion) the relationship in our world between math and music. Music is essentially the sound of math. Perhaps in D&D music is kind of the sound of magic power.