doctorbadwolf
Heretic of The Seventh Circle
Sure, but they're rare IME, and just aren't ever going to make any negative impact in a company's bottom line.I have; and while I myself don't care much, there's certainly those as do.
It really isn't tied to the celts in dnd, though. It's a nature priest guy that turns into animals. The Voice of Nature. They don't even care about magic trees or mistletoe or have any association with Bards or like any of the things folks associate with celtic druids.I don't want to get rid of the Druid name because of any Pagan connections, I want to get rid of it to cut the class loose from the single culture it's tied to now.
Skald and Scop and Fili are great types of Bards, but the archetype is the Bard. I don't need it to be an Irish or Welsh or Norse Bard, i just want it to stop being a crappy offshoot rogue with spells, and be something like a Bard.Though it would have the same tied-to-one-culture problem as does Druid, one could use the name Skald for the Bard class. Bard, though, is certainly more generic, and thus probably better even if blander.
The storyteller and lorekeeper isn't an archetype that 5e currently really does, and it's a powerful archetype that merits more than a background or one subclass in the class whose whole identity should be defined by it. Also, classes with a strong thematic need for jack of all trades type stuff are stopped from having it because it's "the bard's thing". The Ranger is literally supposed to be a versatile survivor, and would be a much better candidate for getting half-proficiency in untrained skills. Warlock is a magical weirdo criminal whose power is ill-gotten, and is thus a much better candidate for Magical Secrets. Hell, every arcane full caster is a better candidate for that one.
Even the 3e Bard, maligned by optimizers as it is, was better thematically.
Songs/performances, mastery of lore, ability to curse and bless, ability to insult someone so hard they give up and go into exile, ability to find and if necessary create vulnerabilities in enemies, basic ability to fight, build from there. Give it skyrim shouts, I don't care past the above, just don't focus it hard on spells, don't thematically nerf it's support to single target dice, don't try to lean into dumb memes that should be the other side of the broody sad boi rogue coin instead anyway.