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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kobold Stew" data-source="post: 6617529" data-attributes="member: 23484">I'm with you on this 100% Capn' Zapp. The problem, as I see it, is the way that they've implemented the magical focus. It's spill out from that rule that adversely affects bards. Because with focus comes rules of material components, proficiency, and interactions with drawing/stowing rules and "common sense". In some of the play test materials, the magical focus, for any spell caster, allowed you to add your proficiency bonus to rolls to hit or save DCs. That made using a focus a choice, and it made sense for rod/staff/wand/orb/mistletoe/holy symbol to occupy one hand. But there were edge cases, and enough of them that it was (evidently) a worry: holy symbols on shields, eldritch knights using weapons as foci, etc. Those were ways that let you have two other useful things in your two hands, other than a focus while still getting the bonus. The solution they adopted was to (a) water down the effect of having a focus (it now replaces minor material components) (b) allow essentially free-swapping of equipped items. That's not the only way they might have gone, of course (I wanted casters to have to "wield" their focus, so that it had to occupy a hand like a weapon), but it's the route they took. Enter Bards. Bards are proficient in certain weapons as tools (and there's a choice of dozen options, instead of broad categories such a strings, wind, etc.); they can be proficient in the skill performance; and they have a magical focus which can be an instrument. Bard instruments are OVERDETERMINED, with the result that you don't need to be proficient in an instrument to use it as a focus, or play an instrument in which you are proficient when performing, or even use a musical instrument to cast spells since a mc pouch will work just as well. Let alone that "common sense" (and the joke answers in this thread) suggests you can game it so that some instruments are mechanically superior to others; which you shouldn't be able to do. Unlike the other edge cases (above) the problem with bards is that performance and musical ability properly requires both hands for most musical instruments, increasing demands rather than reducing them. By catering to one side of the equation, the rules leave bards in a space of "it's better not to think about it", which (I think you and I agree) is suboptimal. there is no good solution, because there can't be without rethinking magical foci for other spellcasters. That's where the problem lies.</blockquote>

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