D&D 5E Anyone else think the Bard concept is just silly?

[Garthanos]

Here is an apologetic that fits part of the oddity, and kind of goes with your model and his (Ironically I prefer a amorphous mix of the two with magical blood-lines backing heroes) ... Higher level characters even resist healing magic more. Its a piss poor instinctive response by their life force, but its still a quasi magical reason that external magic heals worse than internal at high level

There can also be reincarnating heroes where the power is carried over from life time to life time and they have to gradually remember it. Or fated ones where luck twists around to help them the further along the path they go... it isn't necessarily skill and it isn't tied to a divine heritage or dragon blood necessarily, just a story on the Wheel of Time that refuses to not be told.

That works.

Most people just shrug off the inconsistencies or don't notice them.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

While actually in combat? No. No amount of encouragement is going to convince me that we all wouldn't be better off just having the guy pick up a sword and start fighting next to us.

Agreed! He IS valuable.. He just looks silly LOL

Memes aside, seriously, why would the Bard ever not be doing both?

And the idea of a guy singing while slaying may seem silly to some folks today, but it very much did not before the modern era. In the Middle Ages? Absolutely nothing remotely silly about singing a heroic ballad while fighting.

The Bard doesn't turn music into magic because someone had a weird dream one day. The Bard uses music as magic because for 99% of human history, music was vastly more than just entertainment, in the minds of humans. Language was vastly more than just communication! Magic and Poetry have been inextricably linked for at least as long as we have written record of anything!

The idea of a person speaking the right words, singing with a beautiful enough voice, playing an instrument so exquisitely, or speaking with such incredible, clever, and/or expressive command of linguistic form, that literal beasts are moved, gods weep, miracles occur, rivers are becalmed, trees from from burnt husks, and grown warriors are made unable to raise arms in combat, didn't become anything other than a core part of the fabric of the human understanding of the world until at least the Renaissance.

I keep forgetting about this thread, and then coming back and being shocked anew that anyone could have any amount of that knowledge and consider the Bard a silly concept.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I looked at it on wikipedia and its indeed quite similar.
If I take the invocations from the PoE's Chanter and translate them to D&D 5e, we could have something like this:
''...Gernisc Slew the Beast, but Soon Faced Its Kin''-» Mirror Image
''At the Sound of His Voice, the Killers Froze Stiff...'' -» Hold Person
''Blessed Was Wengridh, Quickest of His Tribe''-» Longstrider

and so on. It makes the bard something of a Truenamer/Binder of ancient memories.

I would say that this is precisely the inspiration of the Bard. This is the mythic bard, the bard of follklore and mythology.

As i've said before, the Bard doesn't capture that well in 5e, IMO, but that doesn't change what the bard is, conceptually.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

LOL Big bad Marines have died of minor wounds .. human response to injury is so erratic a "realistic system" would be based on saving throws entirely

Hilarious

Wait for it, soon it'll be a condescending diatribe about how you don't know what roleplaying is and your opinion on role playing games is therefore irrelevant, and then you get blocked. LOL

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Each Time the the Player is hit, it creates a Wound. Someone that is hit 10 times for 50 HP is still hit 10 times whether the wound is a Deep bruise or their hand is cut off. The dude with 6 HP that got hit for a 10 HP would..? He fell on the sword and it punctured his lung. Get it? I can explain it to you, but I cant understand it for you.

That sort of explanation worked a lot better before 4E. It's kind of hard to reconcile any significant physical wound with the idea that you can recover from 1 up to full after a short rest. But, if you take the tiniest scratch beyond that, you could be bleeding out on the ground. But if you happen to stabilize, instead of bleeding out, then you can be back to full health after a short rest.

The default healing rules in 5E are, as a baseline, completely inconsistent. They are the single biggest flaw in the entire game. I can't imagine trying to run a serious campaign in 5E without a significant overhaul to the healing rules. I've seen a PC spend ten rounds swimming in the Tarrasque's stomach acid - which is fully capable of killing a rhinoceros within six seconds - and be fine after a short rest. It is just dumb.

 

[Hussar]

Good grief. I go away a couple of days and this turns into a HP=Meat wank?

Look, it's simple. At least in 5e. The top half of your HP do not represent meat. That's straight out of the rules. You actually do not show any signs of physical damage until you go past half your HP.

So, NO, not every hit means a wound. Full stop.

You can argue it until you're blue in the face, but, this ship sailed with the release of 5e. The HP=Meat crowd lost this argument. Better luck next edition.

 

[cbwjm]

Good grief. I go away a couple of days and this turns into a HP=Meat wank?

Look, it's simple. At least in 5e. The top half of your HP do not represent meat. That's straight out of the rules. You actually do not show any signs of physical damage until you go past half your HP.

So, NO, not every hit means a wound. Full stop.

You can argue it until you're blue in the face, but, this ship sailed with the release of 5e. The HP=Meat crowd lost this argument. Better luck next edition.

Didn't that ship sail with 4e? This is just the bloodied condition isn't it?

 

[Hussar]

Didn't that ship sail with 4e? This is just the bloodied condition isn't it?

Shhh, not so loud. Do you want people to hear you?

But, yeah, this is a 4e ism that has stealthed its way into 5e pretty much unopposed after years of HP=Meat wankery. About the only hold out now in this little debate is damage on a miss. And I imagine they'll sneak that in sooner or later.

 

[ArchfiendBobbie]

Except doesnt it take a full rest at low level and full rest at high level in the game?

Not entirely. You don't fully regain lost hit dice after a full rest.

Most people just shrug off the inconsistencies or don't notice them.

I have experience arguing with people in the DnD online community. I've learned that having a quick explanation that fits the rules mechanic is pretty much required -.-

Good grief. I go away a couple of days and this turns into a HP=Meat wank?

Look, it's simple. At least in 5e. The top half of your HP do not represent meat. That's straight out of the rules. You actually do not show any signs of physical damage until you go past half your HP.

So, NO, not every hit means a wound. Full stop.

You can argue it until you're blue in the face, but, this ship sailed with the release of 5e. The HP=Meat crowd lost this argument. Better luck next edition.

Eh, I would advise being careful in enforcing that text as being a case of "the writers didn't think this through" due to the logic bomb it potentially creates. It runs across a problem of things like being paralyzed, where HP literally cannot represent your ability to dodge blows since you can't move at all. You can be paralyzed at full health, in which case you need an explanation for how that first half of HP avoids wounds. Thus, the "magic literally makes you healthier" stance I've been suggesting.

Shhh, not so loud. Do you want people to hear you?

But, yeah, this is a 4e ism that has stealthed its way into 5e pretty much unopposed after years of HP=Meat wankery. About the only hold out now in this little debate is damage on a miss. And I imagine they'll sneak that in sooner or later.

Technically, it went away during 3E. Just no one ever bothered to read that section of the rules. If they did, they would have realized that falling from orbit would have been extremely lethal in that edition, and that higher-level characters would have a much higher chance of dying than people thought (massive damage rule).

 

[Hussar]

Meh. Expecting D&D rules to give plausible, believable results 100% of the time is not something I'm interested in. Again, the Sim-Ship sailed years ago and now we're just left with people sticking their fingers in their ears and shouting.

HP measure one thing and one thing only - how much plot protection does your character have?

And the only hp that actually matters in the physical world is your last one. Everything else is just people insisting on their own biases.