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Druids and Bards Ain't No Different - Stephen Lawhead's Pendragon Cycle
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<blockquote data-quote="innerdude" data-source="post: 6742712" data-attributes="member: 85870"><p>So on a whim I picked up the first Pendragon book, "Taliesin," on Kindle a while back, and thoroughly enjoyed it. But I was most interested how, if Lawhead's historical research is to be believed, that the concept of a "druid" and a "bard," at least in the 200-400 A.D. time period in Britain, were conceptually identical.</p><p></p><p>The notion that "druids" were wise, worldly naturalists and earth worshippers while "bards" on the other hand were a separate group of entertainers, poets, lyricists, and musicians was entirely false. They were the same people. The druids WERE the bards, and vice-versa. </p><p></p><p>And to be perfectly honest, this suddenly made the entire concept of BOTH CLASSES as presented in "traditional" D&D suddenly make sense to me. Don't get me wrong, I've always loved playing bards in D&D, but I've never been able to exactly pin down how their magic is supposed to work. How exactly is "bardic" magic supposed to work like a sorcerer, but be tied to their "performance" class attribute? Along those same lines, why was it a druid's "nature" magic somehow worked differently than "divine" magic even though mechanically it was identical?</p><p></p><p>To be more historically accurate, the current "druid" and "bard" concepts should basically be rolled up into a single "sage" class, where their focuses change based on character background, feats, and skill selection. If someone wants to keep the current druid concept of a "militant naturalist," it would be easy enough to fit it in as a ranger variant/background/sub-class.</p><p></p><p>It sounds crazy, but taking this approach suddenly makes a huge difference to the concepts behind them, with significant changes to "traditional" D&D world-building that just make a whole lot more sense.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="innerdude, post: 6742712, member: 85870"] So on a whim I picked up the first Pendragon book, "Taliesin," on Kindle a while back, and thoroughly enjoyed it. But I was most interested how, if Lawhead's historical research is to be believed, that the concept of a "druid" and a "bard," at least in the 200-400 A.D. time period in Britain, were conceptually identical. The notion that "druids" were wise, worldly naturalists and earth worshippers while "bards" on the other hand were a separate group of entertainers, poets, lyricists, and musicians was entirely false. They were the same people. The druids WERE the bards, and vice-versa. And to be perfectly honest, this suddenly made the entire concept of BOTH CLASSES as presented in "traditional" D&D suddenly make sense to me. Don't get me wrong, I've always loved playing bards in D&D, but I've never been able to exactly pin down how their magic is supposed to work. How exactly is "bardic" magic supposed to work like a sorcerer, but be tied to their "performance" class attribute? Along those same lines, why was it a druid's "nature" magic somehow worked differently than "divine" magic even though mechanically it was identical? To be more historically accurate, the current "druid" and "bard" concepts should basically be rolled up into a single "sage" class, where their focuses change based on character background, feats, and skill selection. If someone wants to keep the current druid concept of a "militant naturalist," it would be easy enough to fit it in as a ranger variant/background/sub-class. It sounds crazy, but taking this approach suddenly makes a huge difference to the concepts behind them, with significant changes to "traditional" D&D world-building that just make a whole lot more sense. [/QUOTE]
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Druids and Bards Ain't No Different - Stephen Lawhead's Pendragon Cycle
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