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ShortQuests -- individual adventure modules! An all-new collection of digest-sized D&D adventures designed to plug in to your game.

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="chalcedony" data-source="post: 1026238" data-attributes="member: 12426">A high-level mage with 0 ranks in Spellcraft and 0 ranks in Concentration can stop time and blast his enemies into the abyss (as gunslinger said), a high-level cleric with 0 ranks in Knowledge (religion) and 0 ranks in Concentration can ask his diety to do the same. A high-level fighter with no skill points in anything can slice through his enemies like butter. A high-level ranger with no skills can still snipe his enemies if he so much as sees a foot sticking out/dish out seven attacks with a quarterstaff. And so on. A high-level bard with no ranks in Perform (and only Perform) is party baggage. In fact, he's hardly even a Bard if he doesn't max out Perform. Perform is not only just a class skill, it is a skill that must be maxed for Bards in order to gain access to their class abilities. I wonder if a lot of the readers here ever play bards. A Rogue with no ranks in disable device STILL gains trap sense and the (permission?) to disable traps with a DC >20. A Ranger gets his feats even without any prerequsites. I'm speaking out of memory here, but AFAIK the Bard is the only class apart from sorcerors who don't get special abilities by virtue of just being in that class. (Aside from reduced ASF).So why force Bards to spend more and more points in Perform to do something that they SHOULD be good at above and beyond everyone else? Why not require that mages take Spellcraft(abjuration)/Spellcraft(divination), etc to cast their spells? Why not require, as Belen said, that Rangers take Survival(mountains), Survival(urban), etc?  You don't get it - Bards are supposed to be jacks-of-all-trades. Your build essentially has 5 skills. And as I pointed out earlier, there's gonna be an explosion of Bards who take Perform (sing) as the no-brainer skill in combat. An additional form of Perform for every 3 ranks in the skill seems reasonable to me, still.Why give Bards more skill points if he must spend it back on Peform? I am not so much complaining about having to spread my skill points in Perform (I am willing to sacrifice the points for RP), but it's just that it takes away from the other skills that Bards are by definition supposed to dabble in.</blockquote>

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