D&D (2024) Bard Playtest discussion

[Kobold Avenger]

Yeah thinking about it we can just fluff a short sword as a shorter rapier.

Most people here tend to wrongly think that the Rapier is the Modern Fencing Foil, it isn't. A Foil is based off a Smallsword. And I'd say a Smallsword is in fact a Shortsword.

However I still picture Bards using a sword that's roughly with a blade that's 1 meter long and 2 cm wide with a complex hilt. It fits the image I have of the Bard, even if their the type of Bard like a College of Glamour Bard who'd rarely engage in melee combat. I think they should have the same weapon proficiencies as a Rogue.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Well, we don't know that, do we? Most bard subclasses interacted with Bardic Inspiration, and most of them gave an additional way to use them. For example, the Glamour Bard could use it to give temp hp and free movement. Right now, for One D&D, 100% of all Bard players are dealing with this issue, and it could end up being a design choice that persists through the subclasses. I'd rather catch it now, and call it out, then find that they end up making the majority of Bard's work this way and have all bardic inspiration abilities be a reaction instead of bonus action or reaction.

Additionally, I disagree with your assessment of how often this may come up. The use of healing to stabilize an ally may be rare, but the use of Bardic inspiration vs cutting words is going to happen every single combat. Because every combat is going to have allies failing saving throws or missing attacks, and every combat is going to have enemies making attacks or succeeding saving throws. And it is very much one or the other now, where previously you could do both, even if it did burn through your resources faster.

No, it won't come up every combat.

Because resources are finite and not every combat will present a situation where you want to burn both in the same round.

You start with two Inspiration. For 6-8 encounters per day. At 7th that goes to per Short Rest and you have reached what, three Inspiration? So that's still not often. It'd have to be a hell of a round to make burning two make sense.

Most other subclasses don't have the same sort of issue, though some do have a problem with the Inspiration not sticking around.

 

[shadowoflameth]

Making a thread to discuss the changes to Bards specifically, hopefully others can make them for other classes. Will edit in the changes I note as I go through:

1) Changed from Simple + trad Bard weapons to just Simple weapons. Odd change because an awful lot of Bards use Rapiers, but a simplification.

2) Bardic Inspiration changed to a Reaction on someone failing a roll or taking damage, which potentially makes it a lot more flexible and makes Bards very good at getting people up who just got downed. PB/long rest uses at L1, PB/short rest (so they do still exist!) from L7. Also at L7, if the roll a 1 it doesn't use up the Inspiration, nice!

3) Spell Preparation. If I'm reading correctly this now works more like they're a Cleric/Druid? I.e. they choose what spells to prep from a list, and can change on a long rest, including cantrips. That's pretty big.

EDIT - It's a subset of the Arcane list, I see - Only Divination, Enchantment, Illusion or Transmutation. However this overall still feels like a buff.

4) Expertise in 2 skills at L2, 2 more at L9 nice.

5) Songs of Restoration - Always have healing spells prepared so no excuse to not have them/cast them! Kind of seems like a 4E role vibe there, but certainly technically a buff.

6) Magical secrets - Now it's pick a spell LIST and you can memorize 2 spells from that. At 14th pick a different list and get the same. Simple, flexible and useful.

7) Capstone is now 2 uses (up from 1) on rolling initiative and L18 like all capstones.

College of Lore (only subclass for now):

8) Still not available until L3 despite WotC saying this wasn't something they liked, interesting.

9) Gives Arcana, History and Nature instead of letting you choose ensuring you can't be awful at knowing things lol.

10) Cutting Words is explicitly rolled after a SUCCESS, so that's great. Also does psychic damage from L10!

11) Inspiration dice are rolled with Advantage from L6 lol nice.

12) Peerless Skill changed to be "after you fail" instead of the ludicrous "before the DM says if you succeed or fail" approach.

Overall my impression?

I don't have any complaints. This is a straight upgrade that addresses virtually all the major issues with Bard gameplay. Yes, it is slightly more restrictive, in that it's forcing you to be competent at your role, but I had no problem with that in 4E and have no problem with it here.

I like the spell groups, arcane, primal and divine but if they end up doing spell preparation this way for all classes, then how will the wizard be affected? A prime ability of the wizard is learning new spells in a way that others can't. If that is no longer relevant, will he just get all arcane spells? To the point on the bard though, being able to choose 2 spells from any list and then at 15th potentially 2 from a third list gives the bard at least some access to every spell in the game, and he can change his choices after a long rest. That, I think is too much. You can have a character then that can do high level healing and high level area attacks. Also, if this means taking away the added Magic Secrets from the Lore bard I'm not a fan. That's the Lore bard's signature ability, more lore. Making Cutting Words a reaction could be beneficial. I like that. I would tentatively suggest making 2 Magic Secret spells from another list bard spells for you and those are your choices. You could still change when you gain prepared spell slots, and instead of Cunning Inspiration, let the lore bard have 2 more at 6th. You could still say those are always prepared and don't count against his limit. It would still be potent for a bard to have 4-6 spells from anywhere at high levels without giving him everything under the sun.

 

[renbot]

Sorry if this is a bit tangential but...

I'm not a fan. But then I don't see how I could have been given that 1D&D "isn't a new edition" and "will be 100% backwards compatible." Bard is my favorite class to play, but whenever I'm playing one I wish I had fewer spells and more cool bard stuff. Of course I cast the spells because the party needs me to, but spells just feel kinda basic compared to cutting words or mantle of inspiration or blade flourish,

The new bardic inspiration is simple and powerful and makes sense. The flip side of that is that any other uses for BI will have to be awesome to compete. Add to that the fact that you are limited to 2 uses per day for 4 levels, 3 per day for another couple levels, and then finally a handful of uses per SR after 7 levels (the halfway point of many games) makes me sad.

But again, they weren't going to overhaul the Bard to be warlock-esque or a half-caster so I was fated to be disappointed.

Apologies again for the topic-adjacent-ish post.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

Maybe martial weapons come with at-will maneuvers? It seems kind of petty to take rapiers away otherwise. That average 1 more damage they do really isn't worth rocking the boat over.

 

[Wyckedemus]

Also, can we get finally rid of either Perform or instrument tool proficiencies? The idea that someone can play an instrument but not perform with it is just goofy. Perform is such a ridiculously narrow use skill anyways. We may as well bring back Read Lips. Move Perform to the tool category of secondary skills (along w artistic ability).

In the playtest rules, if you have Proficiency with a tool, you can add your Proficiency Bonus to any Ability Check you make that uses that tool. If you have Proficiency in the Skill that’s also used with that check, you have Advantage on the check too. This means you can benefit from both Skill Proficiency and Tool Proficiency on the same Ability Check.

They work well together now.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

In the playtest rules, if you have Proficiency with a tool, you can add your Proficiency Bonus to any Ability Check you make that uses that tool. If you have Proficiency in the Skill that’s also used with that check, you have Advantage on the check too. This means you can benefit from both Skill Proficiency and Tool Proficiency on the same Ability Check.

They work well together now.

It's just so incredibly niche. In 99% of D&D games, Stealth is going to be rolled more than Perform: Tambourine, and the check outcome is going to matter more. It just matters significantly less than the other skills. Meanwile, Thieves Tools is disproportionately used more than the other tool proficiencies, so should migrate to a real skill.

And before everyone tells me about how, in their 17 year long campaign, the only time a d20 was used for Tambourine checks... that's great! But that's not reflective of published D&D adventures, which should at least serve as the default baseline.

In most games, if a player picks peform, they basically start with one less skill, or at least one replaced in almost every way with a tool. Skills are supposed to be more valuable than tools, that's why you can replace a skill with a tool/language, but not the reverse. Or gain a tool/language in downtime, but not a skill. They already moved most of what would fall under "secondary skills" to tools. Perform is the proud nail they refuse to address.

 

[Yaarel]

It's just so incredibly niche. In 99% of D&D games, Stealth is going to be rolled more than Perform: Tambourine, and the check outcome is going to matter more. It just matters significantly less than the other skills. Meanwile, Thieves Tools is disproportionately used more than the other tool proficiencies, so should migrate to a real skill.

And before everyone tells me about how, in their 17 year long campaign, the only time a d20 was used for Tambourine checks... that's great! But that's not reflective of published D&D adventures, which should at least serve as the default baseline.

In most games, if a player picks peform, they basically start with one less skill, or at least one replaced in almost every way with a tool. Skills are supposed to be more valuable than tools, that's why you can replace a skill with a tool/language, but not the reverse. Or gain a tool/language in downtime, but not a skill. They already moved most of what would fall under "secondary skills" to tools. Perform is the proud nail they refuse to address.

Perform is a worthless skill in game.

It is something that is useful in reallife, yet seems to lack an ingame point.

The designers made Chef an interesting feat. Maybe do something similarly interesting for the Perform skill.

Perhaps art can heal and refresh via morale. Perhaps it enhances social reactions to be more friendly.

I use Perform for any kind of artistic check. For objects, art can enhance the value of materials.

Art should be doing more ingame.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

In the playtest rules, if you have Proficiency with a tool, you can add your Proficiency Bonus to any Ability Check you make that uses that tool. If you have Proficiency in the Skill that’s also used with that check, you have Advantage on the check too. This means you can benefit from both Skill Proficiency and Tool Proficiency on the same Ability Check.

They work well together now.

Thanks for pulling this out, I'd actually missed that.

Perform is a worthless skill in game.

This is unfortunately true.

It'd be easy to fix.

They just need to quantize Perform. Say what it can actually do, and let it actually things (like buff people, or change their attitudes en masse). Right now it's one of the worst skills in both 5E and 1D&D and 1D&D kind of seems to be making it even worse.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It's just so incredibly niche. In 99% of D&D games, Stealth is going to be rolled more than Perform: Tambourine, and the check outcome is going to matter more. It just matters significantly less than the other skills. Meanwile, Thieves Tools is disproportionately used more than the other tool proficiencies, so should migrate to a real skill.

And before everyone tells me about how, in their 17 year long campaign, the only time a d20 was used for Tambourine checks... that's great! But that's not reflective of published D&D adventures, which should at least serve as the default baseline.

In most games, if a player picks peform, they basically start with one less skill, or at least one replaced in almost every way with a tool. Skills are supposed to be more valuable than tools, that's why you can replace a skill with a tool/language, but not the reverse. Or gain a tool/language in downtime, but not a skill. They already moved most of what would fall under "secondary skills" to tools. Perform is the proud nail they refuse to address.

So many things in the DMG make no sense if the published adventures were used as a baseline.