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Message: <blockquote data-quote="howandwhy99" data-source="post: 6274382" data-attributes="member: 3192">I think [MENTION=2067]Kamikaze Midget[/MENTION] nailed it in a big post up thread. Bards are everything in their own special way. Here's my take on it.Bards are artists and in that they are like the Arts. Art doesn't abide any other sphere of existence. To Art, art is everything. Combat? Obviously an art. Magic? Art! Clerics? Religion is culture. All culture is the arts! There is no such thing as non-art! NPC Classes? All arts. Crafters are all artisans, a.k.a. artists. Merchants sell as all artists sell themselves. That's art. And so too with the Bard. If we're not using the crazy prestige class thingy from 1eAD&D, then we have an all encompassing class that covers what every class in the world does. Roleplaying? Bah! Who needs roleplaying? Bards craft, fight, spellcast, steal, and shout to the heavens songs, stories, dances, jokes, artistic designs, artistic places, all of it and everything to play to people's emotions and desires. And I think that's where we find the real identity of the Bard. Not in any possible limited identity, but as an attempt to be all things to all people. The Bard is squarely focused on the mythic aspects of us, people. All their acts are more like mediums to affect and effect the emotions of other people. And in this I firmly believe they are in the realm of clerics, a subclass of clerics if you will. Without people Bards don't have an audience to play to, to feint against, ensorcell, to entwine others in their mystical realm of aesthetics. Just like the majority of Clerics (not Monks) other people are their purview.So... What might be done is to consider a potential cleric system with an option where one type of practitioner, the Bard, is fundamentally arcane at root. No divine source is called upon. Instead all of the game material cleric players discover and master through play is also covered by the Bard, but with a distinctly arcane viewpoint. Think of it as a sort of non-deity option at cleric, but not ever called "mundane" or dull.This Bard doesn't overlap with Fighters so much as they don't focus on success in battle as battles for them are meant to be great stories and amazing spectacles. They don't overlap with Wizards so much as Bards aren't interested in how fire works, or invisibility, or any other arcane secrets of the universe. Rather Bards use the universe to entertain others. And they don't overlap with Thieves so much as Bards aren't interested in trickery and theft ultimately. They fool others to only teach them not to trust so much (making Bards commonly Alignment Neutral). And they don't overlap with NPC Sages because they aren't interested in cataloging the knowledge of the world, but rather in engendering great deeds to be done by relating those of others.I believe there is enough of a focus here to identify Bards as a class, a game focus, and one capable of being captured in game mechanics. (By which I mean a game system, not a "bard stuff" check.) How this might be done in 5e I'm not as sure.</blockquote>

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