How do YOU play a bard?

[TracerBullet42]

I think it would be fun to play a "Grandpa Simpson"-type of bard...

One who is really old and has a story for EVERYTHING...

"...like the time I took the ferry over to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for my shoe, so I decided to go over to Morganville, which was what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days nickels had pictures of bumblebees on them. 'Give me five bees for a quarter,' you'd say. Now where was I? Oh yeah...the important thing was that I had an onion tied to my belt...which was the style at the time. You could not get any white onions, because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones..."

Now THAT could be lots of fun...

 

[DGFan]

Imagine a 6' 6", 250 lb muscle-bound bard complete with the floppy shoes and hat with bells.......in Ravenloft

 

[der_kluge]

For anyone that is looking for something a little different.

I present the Archaeologist:
http://www.enworld.org/forums/showthread.php?t=82464

I welcome any feedback you might have. But please, direct it to that forum.

 

[rounser]

It's a basic disconnect between the numbers we see on the sheet, a player's interpretation of those numbers as "roleplaying," and the audience's (GM, other players) comparison of his efforts and their own interpretations.

Yup. That's why I reckon that D&D should ideally remove the ability scores which are actually roleplaying determined (intelligence/wisdom/charisma) and replace them with something more neutral that has bearing on game-meaningful things like saves and spells, but with no bearing on roleplaying (e.g. magical aptitude, divine aptitude...or analogous terms to those, such as mana and spirituality).

The arguments against such an approach seem to boil down to "it scuttles the skill system" and "it's wrong, because then a dumb player can't play a smart archmage". I see the responses to these criticisms as self-evident - removing them scuttles the skill system because it was designed with mental ability scores in mind, and a dumb player won't be playing a smart archmage anyway, simply because he has a 28 in the intelligence slot. (Note that this discussion of the bard class points it out to be perhaps the biggest victim of this weakness in the system - the discrepancy between stats and roleplay.)

Note too that such an approach opens up new roleplaying possibilities, such as the gullible high priest, and the simple archmage, which otherwise aren't exactly practical without severe compromises...or ignoring the big stat numbers.

Of course, this will never happen. I can't think of a bigger sacred cow than the one which is so fundamental to people's assumptions that it's not even recognised as a sacred cow...