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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Snarf Zagyg" data-source="post: 9118924" data-attributes="member: 7023840">Tell me more about the strange inclusion of the half-elf, as I've never thought of it before.[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.enworld.org/threads/rulings-not-rules-how-will-you-solve-the-bard-half-elf-dilemma.679892/[/URL]Yes, the bard rules are weird. That said, they are not as "broken" as people claim. Most people just don't bother to read through them. They suffer from a few notable issues, and only two things that I consider per se broken.*1. The bard rules allow for half elves to be bards. But half elves cannot follow the bard progression.2. The bard rules do not provide for a proficiency penalty, which means that the bard cannot use weapons that are allowed, but which the bard is not proficient in. Arguably this is covered by the "A bard always engages in combat at the level he or she attained as a fighter." This would mean that the bard's penalty is -2, which seems a fair extrapolation of that sentence.That's it.The dexterity minimum is just one of the many areas where the rules interact a certain way; it's like the two-class character rules which say you can do any class, but leave it unclear just how impossible it would be to two-class into certain classes. Moreover, people forget about magic; you can lose ability points, and you won't lose you Bard ability unless you drop below the 15 in dex- not the 17 that was required as a two-classed thief.**As for Sage Advice, you can believe what you want to, but Sage Advice was published by Dragon Magazine (part of TSR), and offered official answers to questions submitted by readers. So ... you do you on that! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />*Well, the third thing that was broken was, of course, the existence of the Bard itself.**It's the same reason you can see references to fighter and thief levels one higher than what was allowed; there was the possibility that the Bard would max those out, then later read a manual that would advance those levels by one.</blockquote>

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