Saving the Bard

[GMMichael]

I like to bash on the bard, because well, what kind of adventurer brings a lute to a swordfight? It doesn't help that Monty Python makes them seem counter-productive:

...and Final Fantasy gave them the special ability to Hide...


...but I secretly think that the bard should be the best class, hands-down. Others agree that the bard needs some uplifting - D&D bumped up their hit dice, and GRR Martin made a bard King Beyond the Wall. Three Amigos: not sidekicks, but heroes (who begin the story lower than sidekicks)! The last bard I played ended up being almost a Witcher-type character: a gruff swordfighter and magic-user, who used music and tidings as payment for his lodging as he wandered.

Have you saved a bard lately? Do they need saving?

 

[Celebrim]

I think Bard is a class that really comes into its own with large parties, and only comes into its own with large parties.

Bard is largely a force multiplication class with a side light of being the party 'face' when conducting business. The bigger the party, the more the Bard rocks. If you are playing with fewer than 6 PC's, you probably don't want a Bard. But at 6 or more, the Bard's ability to buff everyone without spending significant resources is unparalleled.

My biggest problem with the class is that it's pretty boring to play mechanically, and very hard for people who aren't themselves super-charismatic to pull of in any sort of convincing way. I'm still waiting to play with a player who can make up cantrips, limericks, ditties, jingles and silly songs on the spur of the moment, because I think if you can't, then you are unlikely to make the character memorable and alive. By contrast, I've known players that can pull off even difficult classes like Paladin. Bard though requires someone I think really is IRL creative and artistically talented.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Have you saved a bard lately? Do they need saving?

The big problem with the bard in D&D is that it doesn't really feel like a bard. It's useful as a spellcaster, sure, but there's very little overlap between its power and its theme. Your useful abilities don't feel like bard abilities. When I was writing Gishes & Goblins, I felt like this was a problem that needed to be addressed.

Obviously, there's the issue that playing a lute is kind of a silly thing to do in combat; but if you aren't playing a lute, then you aren't really acting like a bard. My solution to that was multi-classing. In my game, bard exists only as a multi-class option, which any class can take in lieu of their sub-class. Nobody is only a bard. So you can be a fighter/bard, and you still get all of your primary fighter features, but you also have the option of doing bard stuff when the situation calls for it. Or you can be a wizard/bard, and you still get as many spell slots as any other wizard, but you also get bard stuff.

As for what the bard stuff does, it's mostly just AoE de-buffs for as long as you keep playing. You start with a bane effect, and progress through fear, slow, vulnerability to energy, confusion, and exhaustion. None if it is limited by rests, so you always have the option of using the right song for the situation at hand.

I also gave them disintegrate at-will, by playing a musical instrument, as their capstone ability. (If you play any of the later releases of Final Fantasy IV, the bard eventually becomes the most powerful character in the game, hitting almost every enemy in the final dungeon for 9999 damage with his harp.)

 

[Tony Vargas]

I like to bash on the bard, because well, what kind of adventurer brings a lute to a swordfight? It doesn't help that Monty Python makes them seem

TBF, that's a take on a sort of fantasy minstrel.

...but I secretly think that the bard should be the best class, hands-down. Others agree that the bard needs some uplifting...Have you saved a bard lately? Do they need saving?

The D&D Bard has actually had a pretty good run the last 20 years or so. Though it was roundly mocked in 3.x, it /was/ a full caster, could be creadible in a leader/support role, and rated Tier 3, compared to the Fighter (talked up as a natural party leader, but with no mechanical support) at Tier 5.
In 4e it was a full-function leader to rival the Cleric & Warlord, and it got a reasonably respectable treatment in the Essentials Skald.
In 5e the Bard is a full caster with 9 levels of spells, is the only non-Rogue in the PH with Expertise, and is held back from a candidate for "best class" only by being a spontaneous rather than neo-Vancian caster - even so, a case can be made that it belongs in Tier 1.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Bard’s more likely to save you.

 

[cmad1977]

Bard’s more likely to save you.

Well.. last night a DJ saved my life so...

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Well.. last night a DJ saved my life so...

Doesn't surprise me in the least.

Tho, I do love a good story...

 

[Deset Gled]

I like to bash on the bard, because well, what kind of adventurer brings a lute to a swordfight?

...

Have you saved a bard lately? Do they need saving?

I'm occasionally annoyed that a bard HAS to be a separate class. One great way to "save" the bard is to simply give the fighter a decent number of skill points and/or appropriate feat, combat maneuver, martial archetype, or whatever you call in your given edition. Then the bard can just be any warrior who happens to play some songs. In a setting where magic is real and can be performed completely silently, there's no reason the musician should have to have highly specialized magic to use perfectly realistic melodic skills.

 

[Imaculata]

One of my players multiclasses as a pirate captain and a bard. His inspirational songs fit well with a captain trying to inspire his crew in battle. Plus, since he is often at the wheel of his ship, singing is one of the ways in which he can still aid his allies in combat. A bard can be pretty fantastic, depending on how you play him.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

The crunch of gameplay mechanic can be fixed, and bards can be good deuteragonists in the hands of a good storyteller, (for example the main character of "Kubo and the two strings" is a good example) but in D&D to be a magic singer idol isn't easy. If they have to play music they aren't good for silent stealth operations, and in the battlefield to play as a "cheerleader" isn't so fun while the rest of the group are slapping bad guys. To play Patapon videogame, or Guitar Hero, would be funnier. Its music could be used as a "whistled language" to give orders to troops can't understands words from a human voice among the noises.

They can't be only a hybrid stealth-spellcaster class with some buffer gifts.

If the videogame "Brutal Legend" where a D&D world... how would be the epic metal bard, like the rockstar clas by Little Red Goblin publisher?

* TV tropes shows examples of magic music and magic singer idols. Maybe this could help to get inspiration.