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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DMZ2112" data-source="post: 6274168" data-attributes="member: 78752">Overall, I am pleasantly surprised.  It was getting worse in every edition, and I did not expect the D&D bard to ever come out from under the music problem.Well, there have always been more casting classes than not.  I've never understood the introduction of the sorcerer or warlock to a system that already included the wizard, but that ship has sailed, arrived at its destination, and is on its way home again.Honestly, I am nervous about this myself, if only because I don't want 150 pages of my 300-page PHB to be spell descriptions.  Those things take up a lot of space, and giving every class its own spell list is going to have a very real practical toll.That said, I don't actually mind the /concept/ -- thematically, casters shouldn't have a lot of spell overlap.  But it's a lot of complexity to add!Reading between the lines here, I wonder if the developers have run into balance issues with partial casters, and that's why we're seeing these changes. I feel like you are passing judgment on this too quickly.  Without seeing the bardic spell list, it's impossible to know whether the developers have failed to capture the "dabbler and dilettante" aspect of the bard.  That is something that could easily be addressed thematically rather than mechanically.You, sir, like me, are apparently a big fan of the bard -- and the right kind of bard, too, which is rare.  But as Mearls says, the bard is a solo hero in a game that poorly supports solo heroing.  He can't just be better at everything, no matter how bad we want it.Boom goes the dynamite.  This.This is completely true, and the biggest obstacle to bard design in D&D (or any class-based system).  If a bard is just a fighter/mage/rogue, then he /absolutely/ ought to just be a fighter/mage/rogue.  What I'm hoping is that the new bard spell list and the bard's increased access to that list makes him a distinct entity that is more than the sum of its parts -- without resorting to nonsense music powers.I blame the The Bard's Tale series for this.  I'm pretty sure those games were the first place where bards got music-based powers, and the archetype has been trying to recover ever since.  Not that Edward isn't spoony.  He's the spooniest bard, for certain.Bards are musical because in ancient times, music was how knowledge was gathered and passed on.  Bards were the keepers of an oral tradition in a time when history and learning wasn't written down.  The music was just a mnemonic device for the bard, with the happy side effect that it encouraged people to welcome them, feed them, and put a roof over their heads for a few nights.Maybe I got that last part backward, but the important take away is that a proper bard is not powerful because he is musical -- he is musical because he is powerful.  For my part, the bard will always be a loremaster first, a jack-of-all-trades second, and a musician third.I've always considered that in D&D bards represent a tradition older than wizardry and possibly even older than priesthoods.  In that sense, giving them their own full-access spell list makes perfect sense.</blockquote>

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