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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Aldarc" data-source="post: 7092734" data-attributes="member: 5142">Douglas Adams: "All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great deal more robust, sophisticated and well supported in logic and argument than others." But there are plenty of wizards with hooded robes carrying staves.  Do you plan on backing this assertion up? I would love to see the citations on this. If the prominent character walking the tight rope is meant to be a bard (PHB 52), then is that silly? Where is their instrument? Are you counting the depicted Halfling as a bard? Or the depicted Performer background as a bard? What is stopping the character depicted on PHB 148 from being a bard? What's stopping the Gnome on PHB 35 from being a bard? That could be a bard on DMG 303, if we take the lute as a visual cue, but is this character 1) using the lute in combat, or 2) dressed in a silly fashion? Sure, if you are defining the bard pictures as those in which "the characters are carrying instruments," then of course you will find bards carrying lutes and not find many bards not carrying lutes. If the picture of what is presumably magical music is meant to depict a bard (PHB 202), then there are certainly several things that we can notice about the picture that fly in the face of "silly" stereotypes lobbed at the bard: again, 1) the character is not playing in combat, and 2) the character is not dressed as a troubadour, jongleur, or common minstrel, but is instead decked in mail. Is she smirking or smiling? Hard to say, but the campfire scene looks positively serene as opposed to comically jovial. How many bards can you find who are depicted as the "dude dancing and spouting poetry" while being attacked by trolls or performing in combat? So how does one spot a bard in the art? The beauty of the bard is that they could be that character you think is the rogue, the warrior, or the caster. You know what's even sillier than a bard playing music in combat? Making the bard and/or their possession of instruments into some sort of conceptual offense. In the Hobbit, for example, adventurers carrying instruments was normal. We know that Thorin's Company at least had with them when they reached Bag End. We hear in lavish detail about the dwarves pulling out fiddles (Kili and Fili), viols (Balin and Dwalin), drums (Bombor), clarinets (Bifur and Bofur), flutes (Ori, Nori, and Dori), and harps (Thorin). I recall that some of the dwarves - I can't recall which off the top of my head - were excited to find magical harps in Smaug's hoard. Did they play these in battle? Of course not, but we also don't see the 5e bard do this either. And how could they anyway? Their hands will be too busy casting spells and holding their weapons.</blockquote>

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