Bards - The Greatest of All Classes

[gizmo33]

What I don't understand quite so much is the condescending hostility which has underlaid virtually all of your posts here.

I intended my "condescending hostility" to be only in proportion to the "condescending hostility" that I think most persons bring to any discussion about the value of oral traditions of knowledge. I figured that calling someone "modern" would be an insult that would be pretty easy to shake off (laugh at). I think the fact that the WLD and the condescending attitude of it's first 20 pages had a negative influence on how I chose to frame my thesis (and I agree with whoever alluded to his). I NEVER intended to cast aspersions on any individual's knowledge of important subjects (if there are any), and I assumed that my blanket statement to "read the Iliad" would be shrugged off by a community containing a great proportion of persons who have. To those of you that have volunteered specific facts, I respect your knowledge on the subject, and I intended to only ask (demand? ) that you reconsider the interpretation of your specific facts in a different light. But my fanatacisms and theater were never intended to be threatening or counter productive - I assumed that the safety of the computer screen and the fact that I were advocating for *bards* of all classes would keep you all safe. I guess a wise bard would probably tell me something about "catching more flies with honey".

 

[kigmatzomat]

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

Yup. Matter of fact it's also a time honored tradition of mythos. Fire, weapons, hunting, tracking, language, writing, metalcraft, domestication of animals, etc have all appeared as information hidden from man in one legend or the next. Since those are often the content of bardic lore I think that any concept of bardic lore that contradicts the content needs revision.

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.

A poor analogy closer to a fallacy. The Thieving Lore requires opposed checks. The thief "moves silently" while the giant tries to "hear" him. The thief also has to "hide" as the giant attempts to "see" him. He then has to repeat the process only carrying the grail this time.

This is comparable to the fighter using his abilities to beat the giant into the ground.

Bardic lore is unopposed, except by the GM in the form of high DCs.

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.

I'm good with that. Why don't you work on a few example concepts and we'll see if the existing bard falls down and if so how to fix things.

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.

Crap, you lost me again. The bard comes from a culture of knowledge. Period. The media is irrelevant. In a fantasy setting the bard should look on our own world, current or past, as severely limited. The color-communiques of the squid-people, thermal odes by fire elementals, and epic aromatics that a dog appreciates more than man. Your poems and my books are quaint and provincial forms of knowledge that are a small portion of the fantasy bard's culture of knowledge.

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)

Campaign style. I've been in groups without clerics; the combat is either more intense due to player fear of character death or non-existent. Bards are nice but not necessary in a group of rogues or scholars. In a game of hard-scrabble survival escaping a vast desert a bard is irrelevent if there are no secrets that aid in survival.

 

[takyris]

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.

Hugely good point.

I made my bard-playing player happy by letting his bard discover useful stuff without giving away everything. So if he said, "Do I have any idea what the enormous bleeding eye with the electricity shooting out of it means on that guy's shield?", and rolled well, I'd say something like, "After a moment, something jogs your memory -- a line in an old song about the battle between a giant king and a demon warlock. The giant king defeated the demon warlock in battle, but as he died, the demon gouged out its own eyes with the spikes on his shield, and a flash of lightning sprang from his dying eyes and blinded the giant king forever."

This usually results in the bard saying, "Crap. Hey, don't look at the shield!" And this makes the bard's player feel good and doesn't really detract from the utility of the Shield of Blinding, or whatever it turned out to be.

 

[fusangite]

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

What utter rot! Of course a DM can have very high DCs for certain pieces of information. Why is a DM required to set a rollable DC for any check someone is rolling on. A really wide chasm can have a Jump DC beyond anything a player can roll; a carefully guarded secret of great antiquity can have a Bardic Knowledge DC beyond anything a player can roll. I can't fathom the difference here.

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.

In what parallel universe are players allowed to unilaterally amend the rules? I don't get your hypothetical. GMs unilaterally set conditions for PCs overcoming challenges. The DM should do so fairly. I don't see how Bardic Knowledge challenges this system in ways that other skills and class abilities do not.

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.

The rules can never be used to make the DM portray cultures he doesn't want to or is unable to portray. There is no way of making the rules represent a cultural setting the DM can't describe.

I DM parties of PCs who won't go on an adventure without a cleric to heal them.

I assume you include bards and druids and rogues with curing wands on that list. I agree that D&D does not encouage people to play with no healer. But ultimately, an unmodified mainstream D&D game is a game that tends to centre on combat -- so of course things that pertain very directly to combat are usually more important than things that don't. The solution is to write adventures in which bardic knowledge is as important as combat, if that's what mows your lawn.

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?

Bards can heal too; why have you assumed bardic knowledge is the centre of the class? Why not the bardic music performance? Why not the enchantment spells? Why not the divination spells? There are all kinds of things that make bards relevant all the time in dungeon adventures.

Now, let's suppose I wanted bardic knowledge to be important in a dungeon... I would make rhymes about secret passages part of songs the bard knew so that the Bardic Knowledge check could substitute for the Search check for finding a secret door. I would put artifacts and one of a kind monsters in the dungeon that the bard could know the properties and vulnerabilities of. Nothing is holding you back from making bardic knowledge an important feature of your next dungeon adventure.

 

[gizmo33]

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

Not only have you made your point, but you have the guts to reference a musical in the process. I acknowledge your high level and I beg for mercy.

 

[gizmo33]

What utter rot! Of course a DM can have very high DCs for certain pieces of information.

You're right. What I should have said was that a DMs interest in managing information and providing mystery during an adventure is at odds with the bardic lore ability. As is the fighter's desire to kill monsters easily at odds with the DMs desire to make monsters seem scary. My point in this case was only to suggest that a DM recognize their interests in these situations, and try to strike a happy medium between the two. Never meant to suggest anything about the checks being easy when it's not appropriate.

Why have you assumed bardic knowledge is the centre of the class?

My short answer - because of the name.

Nothing is holding you back from making bardic knowledge an important feature of your next dungeon adventure.

I agree! All I have left to do is copy your statement, email it to AEG, and my work is done here.

 

[Saeviomagy]

The problem with the WLD is that it's authors (at least the author of the section in which all the "these class abilities don't work" items occur) are bad DMs.

They make it fundamentally obvious that they don't get key concepts within the rules, and that they don't care which classes get screwed by their arbitrary restrictions. As such, the entire section should be viewed with extreme prejudice, if not discarded in its entirety.

 

[gizmo33]

The bard comes from a culture of knowledge. Period. The media is irrelevant. In a fantasy setting the bard should look on our own world, current or past, as severely limited. The color-communiques of the squid-people, thermal odes by fire elementals, and epic aromatics that a dog appreciates more than man. Your poems and my books are quaint and provincial forms of knowledge that are a small portion of the fantasy bard's culture of knowledge.

Oops, I missed this point earlier when you made it in the form of "why do you think bards have to be Celtic bards" (or British Isle bards, what-have-you).

My rant that started this thread, and subsequent points, have *definitely* made the assumption that the bard's technique is part of his ability. I mean - IMO the bard is a master of the spoken word, and his knowledge is contained in the poetry. A bard who does not hear and speak IMO is not a bard because my definition of bardic lore is certainly tied up in the medium.

And it's not just the Celtic cultures that have this concept of bards based on the medium. Snorri Sturlson was the Icelandic poet that rescued a huge amount of what we know about Scandanavian mythology because he feared that subsequent generations would fail to understand the kennings because of the spread of Christianity. I've already given the example of the Greek Muses, their spheres of influence are a variety of forms of poetry, and you could probably find a historian that will say that this is because poetry=knowledge in the bardic era of Greece. In fact, (realizing that I'm not providing proper footnotes) I suggest that my "narrow" definition of bardic lore is actually shared by a wide variety of cultures outside of the British Isles.

Because, then, poetry is the medium of choice for bards, I do not consider exclusively written knowledge, including heiroglyphs, to be an area of interest to bards. As I suggested earlier, I believe it to be the case that members of socieities without writing thought bardic knowledge to be ALL knowledge, and if a DM were to want to treat bardic knowledge favorably, they would take this into account. IMO, to take bardic lore as I would have it, it parallels written knowledge about the world. As I said earlier, if it's written down, if someone knows it, then it's a candidate for information to be learned.

And the reasons my comments were broader than just mentioning WLDs poor handling of the matter is because I constantly see bardic lore interpreted as a sort of "gather information" check. Whether or not it's in the flavor text - I still think it unduly influences DMs to short-change the bardic lore ability because so much of the bardic ability is a matter of DM interpretation.

3E Players Handbook: "A bard picks up a lot of stray knowledge while wandering the land and learning stories from other bards." (emphasis mine)

I acknowledge that I've already been advised to make up my own flavor text, and that's fine. But I'm petitioning for some respect in the core rules and in the FRPG community, even outside of DnD, for bardic knowledge. Calling it "stray knowledge", I believe, does not do the archetype of the bard justice.

 

[gizmo33]

The problem with the WLD is that it's authors (at least the author of the section in which all the "these class abilities don't work" items occur) are bad DMs.

They make it fundamentally obvious that they don't get key concepts within the rules, and that they don't care which classes get screwed by their arbitrary restrictions. As such, the entire section should be viewed with extreme prejudice, if not discarded in its entirety.

You all don't know how close THIS was to being the subject of my rant instead of bards. (And you're probably cursing your luck.) But the details would have sounded like a long list of things, one of which was: "why doesn't this certain author understand what it means to take 20 on a skill check", which would be a thread whose purpose was to slam one particular author - and of no use to people in general who DO understand the rules of 3E.

However, the author's attitude about bards was something I found to be representative to varying degrees of a wide variety of FRPG authors.

 

[CyberSpyder]

I intended my "condescending hostility" to be only in proportion to the "condescending hostility" that I think most persons bring to any discussion about the value of oral traditions of knowledge. I figured that calling someone "modern" would be an insult that would be pretty easy to shake off (laugh at). I think the fact that the WLD and the condescending attitude of it's first 20 pages had a negative influence on how I chose to frame my thesis (and I agree with whoever alluded to his). I guess a wise bard would probably tell me something about "catching more flies with honey".

Probably so. Oddly enough, an insult is remarkably easy to view as an insult, no matter what actual words are used - when you use 'modern' to mean 'ignorant,' it shows.

My first reaction, in any case, would be something like that the World's Largest Dungeon is hardly a place to look to for good GMing tips and worldbuilding suggestions. While I'm sure it's a fine product, dungeons at their best are faintly ludicrous, and something made to be the Largest of them is only going to be moreso.

Personally, I feel that oral history is given a quasi-mystical significance here in the 'modern day' that overvalues it - the spread of literacy and of the printed word happened for a reason, after all. But in a fantasy campaign, that's of little consequence - many unlikely or impossible things, magic being the most obvious, have a great deal of utility in the game.

A major problem with the bard-as-ultimate-sage, though, is that many GMs, as others have intimated, find it important to restrict the flow of information. A large part of many adventures is the thrill of discovery, and the thrill of already knowing can be a poor substitute. In many ways, D&D is already too free with information - the ability to discern the moral and ethical leanings of an individual with a first-level spell is a notorious example of that.

In any case, many people in your situation, dissatisfied with the way the rules treat a particular archetype, have come up with their own rules to cover it more faithfully, or simply better. It might be a good project for you, as you've clearly done a great deal of study into the subject already. If what you produce serves the game sufficiently well, it's hardly inconceivable that it might spread.