Yeah. I view the Bard mental magic as psionic, using the psionics of ones own mind as the magical source. But now I agree with you, that the Bard can be understood as various other sources too, and even blends of sources, depending on character concept and the setting that the Bard is in.
In the Players Handbook, nothing in the 5e Bard class description says the Bard is arcane. Elsewhere in the chapter on Spellcasting, there is a separate sidebar about the Forgotten Realms setting and its concept of the "Weave", that mentions the Bard in passing. So it appears that for the Forgotten Realms setting, its bards are use "arcane" magic. But Bards in other settings can use different sources of magic.
With regard to the source of magic, the Bard class is highly ambiguous. It is the magic of song. But the songs can be psionic mnemonics, divine music, primal trances, and so on. It needs the setting to make a determination, if any.
For example, going by old school Bard using an old school Druid spell list, the Bard can be understood as "divine" magic. Or "primal". Or 3e "arcane". Especially, charming and mental inspiration are "psionic", along with psychic intuititive divination being "psionic".
The Bard class is excellent for building diverse mythologically accurate concepts: Native American medicine (probably mainly primal?), North Asian shaman (psionic depending on ones own mind or a psionic-primal blend depending on the minds of surrounding natural features), Nordic Sami noaidi (psionic or psionic-primal), Nordic Norse volva (strictly psioinic), Celtic fili (psionic, maybe arcane because it includes potion making with primal ingredients). The Celtic bard (such as Merlin) arguably differs from the Celtic druid (which is priestly, thus divine, or perhaps the druid is a divine-primal-arcane blend, since its worship of Celtic gods appears to accompany traditions of weather oracles, primal potion making, or so on). Note, after British Isles became Christian the words relating to "druid" came to mean any kind of magic generally, including arcane protoscience and psionic mind manipulation. Meanwhile formerly druid families self-identified with the bards that Christian culture continued to admire. (I suspect, the historical bards must have been non-priestly academics, thus remained in good Christian graces.) So, for British traditions there is often the question of "which witch is which?"
In any case, I would use the 5e Bard class to represent (accurately!) hundreds of magical concepts across many reallife ethnicities around our planet.
If I was going to make a modern American "mythologically accurate" psychic healer, I would likewise use the Bard class using psionic magic.
The Bard class is so versatile. The character concept for a particular Bard depends entirely on which spells the Bard character chooses, the tropes and themes that emerge from these choices, and the context of the setting assumptions in which these spells operate and make sense.
It is ok for a class to be agnostic about which magical source it is using. After all, a same spell that occurs in a Divine Cleric list can also occur in an Arcane Wizard list. So the magic source that a spell uses depends. Likewise, the Sorcerer class can be arcane, divine, psionic, whatever.
The same goes for the Bard. The Bard class can be of any magical source, it depends entirely on the character concept during character creation. Similarly, different subclasses can explore a specific source more explicitly.
Regarding the versatility of the Bard class. Once one puts a lute in the hands of a Bard, it is pretty much death by D&D trope. However, if one makes sure to remove that lute, and instead focus on a shaman drum, fili satire genre, volva spontaneous song, military oratory, and so on, the versatility of possible concepts becomes extremely useful.
Last edited:
