Bards - The Greatest of All Classes

[MetalBard]

I hope you don't see that "and" as some kind of causal statement. Gygax's inspiration came from that particular novel but the paladin class references a grail knight/warrior saint pretty strongly.Can you give an example of what that could mean in mechanical terms? "Not nerfing" -- no -- you're not asking them not to nerf something; you're asking them to consider a rules variant you want to propose that works for some settings and not others. And I agree with you to an extent.

I think there's a variant bard in Monte Cook's Book of Eldritch Might. I haven't seen it, so I don't know if it would fit with Gizmo's "Real Ultimate Power" bard, but it may serve as an alternative.

Maybe someone who owns the book could chime in...

 

[gizmo33]

But then, as I said, mystical ability to actually come up with my own flavor text appropriate to a campaign. I guess I'm just special.

You are special Takyris, I hope I didn't say anything to suggest otherwise.

Seriously though - I think your ideas about bard/minstrel archetypes are very interesting. My rants purpose was for folks to consider that bards could, in fact, occupy the first tier of DnD classes, along with fighters and wizards, if one were to delve a little deeper into interpreting how powerful bardic lore could really be. The support/guidelines for such a change IMO are right there in ancient literature. True, they're anachronistic, but as I've already said that's not a problem.

And even without a single rule change, the bards of your campaign are going to be making "bardic lore" checks. The success/importance of such an ability is really *strongly* in the hands of the DM, and I would encourage DMs to consider the possibilities before they do what all DMs seem to do when faced with subjective rules. DMs are a very cautious lot.

Of course introducing yet *another* way that PCs can "beat" a DMs dungeon is bound to cause some stress, but I always assume that rule zero applies.

 

[tarchon]

True. true. Your bard-fu is indeed strong. But now enlightened, my point still stands. Calling someone elses statements "indirect or evasive" is a judgement that can say more about the background of the reader than anything else. I might call some lawyer's contracted "oblique" if I didn't have a background in his specialized knowledge. In spite of how "sure" scholars are that the oral tradition of these cultures was indeed broken at times, and changed over time, my opinion is that the cultures themselves did not believe this. And since these cultures are the ones that have informed us about dragons, and since we believed them with that, why are we such sticklers about realism in this area? The consequence is a bard class at times that is barely playable.

Let me explain obliquity then. If the bard player says "I want to roll bardic knowledge to find out what fire elves are" and gets a 30 result, and I give him the above statement, it is "oblique" because it does not directly answer his question. A non-oblique answer would be something like "fire elves are basically elves with the fire subtype."

I don't think I'm going out on a limb by saying that it's a common and accepted idea among DMs that games are more intesting if you give players indirect clues to work out important puzzles. Otherwise, instead of having the PCs solve a mystery in a game, we would just say "Roll your Solve Mystery check! 23? OK, the the butler did it."

 

[gizmo33]

Can you give an example of what that could mean in mechanical terms?

A character in a Jack Vance story once made a comment along the lines of "when making a controversial criticism of a situation, it is best to have a constructive solution as a shield". Sadly, I have only the vague inklings of a "solution". Mostly I intended to stop the transformation of bard to rumor-monger second fiddle that I see occuring in alot of the d20 literature.

What I would advocate, rather than a reworking of the class, would be a requantification of the bardic lore ability taking it out of the "second tier" of character abilities and making it a primary feature.

 

[CyberSpyder]

What I would advocate, rather than a reworking of the class, would be a requantification of the bardic lore ability taking it out of the "second tier" of character abilities and making it a primary feature.

I'd imagine everyone who has read this thread understands that you want bardic lore to be more powerful. The question was, "In what way?"

I can certainly understand how it might be difficult to the point of frustration to do so - information does not easily lend itself to aiding combat, without resorting to giving everything an achilles' heel, either physical or metaphysical, that the bard can uncover. What I don't understand quite so much is the condescending hostility which has underlaid virtually all of your posts here.

 

[gizmo33]

I don't think I'm going out on a limb by saying that it's a common and accepted idea among DMs that games are more intesting if you give players indirect clues to work out important puzzles. Otherwise, instead of having the PCs solve a mystery in a game, we would just say "Roll your Solve Mystery check! 23? OK, the the butler did it."

You're right. The hiding of information is a time honored tradition among DMs and is in direct conflict with the bardic lore ability.

Here is a hypothetical - say you're running an Arthurian campaign and all characters are knights. You've got a bunch of great dungeons lined up with fiercesome giant guardians and swooning damsels. At the center of the dungeon is the holy grail. Some player comes along with the new "thieves supplement" to your game system. Next thing you know, he's sneaking past the giants, ignoring the damsels, and bounding off with the grail. This is comparable to what I infer from your "butler did it" example.

So I agree - changing the bard to be more interesting and effective requires more than just handing out more information. It would probably require some organization of information into tiers (to a greater degree than what's done in the PHB). You'd really have to anticipate a bard's contribution to the adventure, and design things so that it is important but not a plot killer. But how does a DM even design such a framework when, IMO, because of our cultural biases and spotty educations on the subject (and I could include myself) we instinctively take such a dismal view of the culture of knowledge from which the bard is derived.

I DM parties of PCs who won't go on an adventure without a cleric to heal them. Most dungeons take into account that PCs will be healed in due course, and this is an important/essential contribution of the cleric. I'm saying why not bardic knowledge as well? (Well, I'm saying alot of things, but this is one of the more rational ones)

 

[kigmatzomat]

True. true. Your bard-fu is indeed strong. But now enlightened, my point still stands. Calling someone elses statements "indirect or evasive" is a judgement that can say more about the background of the reader than anything else. I might call some lawyer's contracted "oblique" if I didn't have a background in his specialized knowledge.

We're ranging into semantics but within my profession (engineering, not law) I encounter indirect and evasive statements that I do have the skillset to understand. Matter of fact, by *virtue* of that skillset I can tell that they are being evasive and indirect. A bard may be able to tell that a bit of text is evasive and know to mistrust it but should not be able to fill in the holes without other sources of information.

In spite of how "sure" scholars are that the oral tradition of these cultures was indeed broken at times, and changed over time, my opinion is that the cultures themselves did not believe this. And since these cultures are the ones that have informed us about dragons, and since we believed them with that, why are we such sticklers about realism in this area? The consequence is a bard class at times that is barely playable.

This is where you lose me. I don't see the relevance between academic meta discussions on oral-history cultures and the game. I don't see where it has entered the mechanics of the game. I don't see how your knowledge of history has such a detrimental impact on your enjoyment of a game that you know has only a passing hand-waive to realism.

Careful, your bias is showing.

I hope so!

Actually I meant your bias of English bards. (Or cornish/welsh/scottish/irish bards). If you extrapolate a bard into the D&D setting they would be loathe to limit themselves to epic sagas and song. They should be conversant in multiple mediums and have as little preference as possible.

The bias _against_ poetic sagas has been so strong in most FRP gaming literature that the bard has been relegated to some sort of "trash collector of gossip" in 3E.

I see no problem with poetic sagas in FRP. I use them, conceptually, in my games. (Can't write one and don't try so I simply state "it loses something in the translation.") The only reason I can imagine you perceive a bias against them is that people quest out hidden books for lost knowledge.

But you see, if there's someone who knows the poetic saga then the knowledge isn't lost. It may be hidden but as long as there's a sentient being who knows the story it isn't lost. Kill off everyone who knew what happened and swear the all-seeing gods to an oath and you'd best hope one of them wrote something down! Or used a memory stone, put the story in an echo chamber or taught it to a golem.

So if you think epic sagas are missing from D&D I suggest you write a few adventures that make them useful and not rewrite a perfectly functional class.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

I can't think of a single knight of Arthur's who can: heal by touch,

Lancelot did.

In fact, it is a rather important turning point in the musical Camelot. So, uh, so there!

 

[Crothian]

You're right. The hiding of information is a time honored tradition among DMs and is in direct conflict with the bardic lore ability.

Not so much hiding informaiton but an inability to give information without giving it all away. THe Bardic lore ability requires a DM tro be a bit more creative and useful in his ability to give information and that is not something many DMs can do.

 

[tarchon]

You're right. The hiding of information is a time honored tradition among DMs and is in direct conflict with the bardic lore ability.

There's no reason you can't do both, and in the two years that I played a bard, that's exactly how we did it, and it worked fine. For some fact that wasn't worth RPing about, like "Do I recall any songs that might tell me about where wolfsbane grows?", you can just say "oh, you remember an old folksong that mentions that it often grows by shady streams," or you can even just say "You know that it grows by shady streams." What I'm saying is that rather than just declaring by fiat that bardic knowledge doesn't work in order to protect really sensitive plot points, you can easily make BK function as a part of the regular information gathering process, with Gather Information, Decipher Script, Legend Lore, Intimidate, Diplomacy, Bluff, Search, Spot, etc., etc.