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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Neonchameleon" data-source="post: 5520996" data-attributes="member: 87792">No.  Which is why the best thing about the 3.X bard was Perform (Oratory).  If your bard is either singing or playing a lute in 3.X that is a personal choice, and there is nothing preventing bards from being tone deaf and just very good at speaking.  And just because you stereotype otherwise doesn't make it so.Gandalf and Merlin were primarily known for knowledge.  Not for flashy magic, but for knowing things.  Bards have Bardic Lore, Wizards do not.  Also bards have a lot of skill points.  Then they were both tricksters.  I don't know if Gandalf used fascinate or just a simple bluff in The Hobbit to deal with the trolls.  I do know it wasn't presented as spellcasting, but the bard abilities suit it perfectly.  Bardic knowledge, and the charisma and trickery heavy bardic skill list suit both characters perfectly.  The wizard fails here.  But Fascinate, Inspire Competence, Suggestion, and even Inspire Courage/Greatness are all close matches for what they actually do.  (With the reverberating duration of Inspire Courage, just naming a weakness is sufficient to grant it for the rest of the fight).Then we look at their spells.  Neither cast very many (indeed it's debatable that without his Ring even Gandalf could cast too many).  And when they do, what is it?  Some fire from Gandalf, but normally illusion, divination, or enchantment.  In other words the sort of spells that are on the Bard list rather than flashy spells like Wall of Stone, Black Tentacles, and Overland Flight (the latter of which would have made Lord of the Rings very different).  Also neither of them is ever mentioned to be Vancian.  So I find bardic casting a much better representation of both Gandalf and Merlin than wizardly casting. More accurate skills, more accurate magic, knowledge that actually works.  In just about every way I can think of both Merlin and Gandalf are 3.X Bards whereas the D&D wizard is mostly a D&D wizard. While on the subject, some of the myths, Merlin was quite literally a bard.</blockquote>

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