Of Bards, Power Sources, and future classes

[Exen Trik]

It always seemed to me that the magic of bards and that of wizards and sorcerers were different things. Sure both were arcane, but considering all magic was either arcane or divine that doesn't say much. Bards didn't simply have a different selection of spells, they could heal, their spells all had verbal components, and in 3.5e their magic worked without a spell failure chance in light armor. And I don't imagine any of that will change much in 4e.

Now, I'm not necessarily suggesting they should be given a special Music power source (who else would use it?) but it does make me wonder what range of future spellcasting classes, 3rd party or otherwise, will fall under the umbrella of Arcane or Divine, and how many will just come up with their own power sources. And will a classes designated power source be nothing more than fluff, or will it involve some important mechanic?

Thoughts?

 

[Scholar & Brutalman]

It always seemed to me that the magic of bards and that of wizards and sorcerers were different things. Sure both were arcane, but considering all magic was either arcane or divine that doesn't say much. Bards didn't simply have a different selection of spells, they could heal, their spells all had verbal components, and in 3.5e their magic worked without a spell failure chance in light armor. And I don't imagine any of that will change much in 4e.

Now, I'm not necessarily suggesting they should be given a special Music power source (who else would use it?) but it does make me wonder what range of future spellcasting classes, 3rd party or otherwise, will fall under the umbrella of Arcane or Divine, and how many will just come up with their own power sources. And will a classes designated power source be nothing more than fluff, or will it involve some important mechanic?

Thoughts?

I've written before that if there is ever a Nature or Wild power source, the bards should be the Nature Leader. Why? Cause Bards and Druids are a team, that's why.

As for the mechanics uses of power sources, my guess from the 3.5 fighter and Star Wars Saga is that one thing they'll be used for is to label feats: all feats in the PHB1 will be General, Arcane, Divine and/or Martial. And instead of classes getting bonus feats every two levels, as fighters and the Saga base classes do, they'll each get a feat from their power source every two levels ie for fighters, rogues, warlords it'll be talent(*), Martial feat, talent, Martial feat..., for clerics and paladins talent, Divine feat, talent, Divine feat etc.

Why I think they're going to do this is WotC seem to like bonus feats - - they've used them for fighters and other classes in 3.5 and for all the base classes in d20 Modern and Saga - but they have a problem. Every time they publish a supplement any new feats have to be labeled if they're available as bonus feats for every class that uses bonus feats. If they tag new feats by power source, and provide bonus feats by power source, then Wizards will be able to easily add any new feats as bonus feats for previously released classes.

This is pretty much how it works in 3.5e for the psionic classes and for metamagic feats for Wizards, so it makes sense to me that they'll expand this to all the classes.


(*) Talents or whatever replaces them in 4e. As far as I know, Talents haven't been confirmed yet. Bruce Cordell was very positive about feats when asked, so I'm fairly sure they're in there.