D&D 5E Bard Spells

[thommc1168]

How do bards learn/gain new spells? Does a bard have to find another bard or a bard college to learn these spells? Is the process similar to that of a cleric/druid? The main rules are rather vague in their explanation.

 

[The Human Target]

You automatically learn new spells when you level.

You can flavor that however you want, but you don't have to do anything mechanically.

 

[epithet]

The bard hears a fragment of the song of creation in the wind in the trees, the rolling thunder, the patter of raindrops, the burble of running water, a lover's sigh, the snore of a lazy guard, or in the silence before all hell breaks loose. He understands that fragment as a spell, and adds it to his list of spells known.

 

[crashtestdummy]

The bard plays whenever he gets a chance. The music warps the threads of magic, resulting in strange effects. Over time, he discovers particular tunes that do particular things, but it takes awhile before the bard has mastered those tunes. That's why he only learns new spells spasmodically (ie. when he levels up). He's restricted on how many new spells he can learn because mastering those tunes takes times.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

The bard is a jack-of-all-trades who picks up an assortment of magical tricks in the same eclectic way he picks up knowledge and skills.

 

[gyor]

How a bard learns his/her regular spells and how the Bard learns her/his secret magic spells are different.

The Bard either learns a new musical bard spell from another bard, tome, or personal musical inspiration (they basically write thier own song, but it does the exact same thing as the regular verison of the spell).

As for Magical Secret Spells, that kind of in class multiclassing, you watch a cleric or Paladin praying, you study a wizards scroll and kind of figure out how to cast that spell, or you find you have a bit of an odd ancestory, or your chosen by a God/dess that doesn't full manifest as you being a sorceror, but enough that you know a few spells,
Maybe nature spirits whisper Druid and Ranger Spells into your ear or a God of Nature sends you a mix of Divine Spells from all the the divine spell casting classes.

Unlike the rest of your spells you magical secret spells aren't automatically arcane, they're the same power source as whatever class you studied and borrowed them from, at least I think that's what the fluff suggests to me.


The Bard has 2 inheriant themes music/entertainment and being inheriantly multiclassed.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

The Bard has 2 inheriant themes music/entertainment and being inheriantly multiclassed.

Yeah. I've run games where the bard was basically a "music mage" -- Song of Creation, Music of the Spheres, all that jazz. But I think I like the more down-to-earth jack-of-all-trades interpretation better. It serves as a fun contrast with all the other magic users who have such grandiose sources of power, especially if the bard's spells just plain don't fit into their neat schemes for how magic works.

"So, do you have the blood of dragons in your veins?"
"Nope."
"Are you the vessel of a god's awesome power?"
"Nope."
"Do you revere the ancient spirits of beast and wood and stone?"
"Not especially."
"Did you bargain with the devils of Hell for forbidden power?"
"Hell, no!"
"Have you memorized Symiastor's Seventeen Principles of Elemental Balancing?"
"I scarcely remember what I ate for breakfast."
"Then how on earth are you doing that?!"
"This? Oh, it's just a little something I worked out a while back. No biggie."

tl;dr: Bards = Tom Bombadil.