Perform and Bardic Music

[Kahuna Burger]

* Why can the fighter be proficient with every weapon, but the bard not proficient with every instrument?

Yeah!

There need to be a few rules or class abilities that make the bard the best at perform, period. Giving them all perform types for their skill points (or possibly a graduated addition of other performs with lower ranks, ala the ranger's old favored enemy progression) seems like a gimme, and IMC I've decided that certain levels of performance can only be acheived by a bard... art vs craft in the performance and all that.

The rogue can have more performance types and face skills than a well built bard... what does that say?

Kahuna burger

 

[hong]

Yeah!

There need to be a few rules or class abilities that make the bard the best at perform, period.

How about these?

Countersong (Su): A bard with 3 or more ranks in a Perform skill can use his music or poetics to counter magical effects that depend on sound....

Fascinate (Sp): A bard with 3 or more ranks in a Perform skill can use his music or poetics to cause one or more creatures to become fascinated....

Inspire Courage (Su): A bard with 3 or more ranks in a Perform skill can use his music or poetics to inspire courage in his allies....

Inspire Competence (Su): A bard of 3rd level or higher with 6 or more ranks in a Perform skill can use his music or poetics to help an ally succeed in a task....

Suggestion (Sp): A bard of 6th level or higher with 9 or more ranks in a Perform skill can make a suggestion (as the spell)....

Inspire Greatness (Su): A bard of 9th level or higher with 12 or more ranks in a Perform skill can use music or poetics to inspire greatness....

Song of Freedom (Sp): A bard of 12th level or higher with 15 or more ranks in a Perform skill can use music or poetics to create an effect equivalent to the break enchantment spell....

Inspire Heroics (Su): A bard of 15th level or higher with 18 or more ranks in a Perform skill can use music or poetics to inspire tremendous heroism....

Mass Suggestion (Sp): This ability functions like suggestion, above, except that a bard of 18th level or higher with 21 ranks or more in a Perform skill can make the suggestion simultaneously to any number of creatures....

 

[hong]

* Why can the fighter be proficient with every weapon, but the bard not proficient with every instrument?

Because enough people bitched that the 3E rule that you were proficient in as many types of instruments as you had Perform ranks was unrealistic, and the designers listened to their customers.

* If the 3.5 Bard is supposed to have more skill points (6 instead of 4) why is he then expected to sink several points into various types of Perform, making him mechanically worse-off than before?

I can't see anything in the rules where the bard is expected to sink several points into various types of Perform: all you need is the one. And, really, the categories in the PHB are incredibly broad. Perform (wind instruments) makes you proficient in ALL wind instruments; Perform (string instruments) makes you proficient in ALL string instruments; etc. It's not like Weapon Proficiency (longsword), which is completely independent of Weapon Proficiency (shortsword), or whatever.

 

[DreamChaser]

Yeah!

*snip*

The rogue can have more performance types and face skills than a well built bard... what does that say?

Kahuna burger

A rogue can have more everything than any other class when it comes to skills. It is one of the points of the class.

Its funny. I remember way back, long long ago in 3.0, most posts I saw complained that Perform wasn't more like Knowledge and Craft. "How does learning to play the flute make you a better dancer?" they would say. Sheesh. No one's ever satisfied.

Here's my fix: You, as a DM, choose: is a bard supposed to be a musical manipulator or a master performer.

If they are a musical manipulator then give them automatic skill in singing and playing all instruments. They don't have any ranks but they can make checks as though they did.

If they are a master performer, either revert to 3.0 perform for them only or grant them 2 added skill points per level (8 at level 1) that they can only use for perform skills.

Both of these would be a bard class feature called Natural Performer.

DC

 

[LazarusLong42]

The house rule I'm pretty sure I'll be using is as follows:

When you take a rank in Perform, you actually receive that rank's number of "pips" in various Perform skills. Thus, a first-level Bard with 4 ranks in Perform has ten pips, 1+2+3+4. He may not put more than his number of ranks (4) into any instrument. Thus he might have, taking Cha 16:

Perform (song) +7, Perform (lute) +7, Perform (pan pipes) +5.

The balancing factor here is that pips must be distributed by individual instruments. Thus violin, lute, lyre, harp, mandolin, etc all require separate sets of Perform pips, as do song, chant, and melodic song.

Bardic music effects are determined entirely by over-arching ability to simply Perform: A Bard can inspire courage by simply humming, and anyone with 1 Perform rank can carry a tune while humming. Thus these are determined by ranks, not pips in a particular instrument.

This allows for RP opportunities (several instruments available on which to Perform) while not forcing the Bard into using his lute while casting/inspiring if he doesn't wish to be a "singing" bard.

 

[Kahuna Burger]

Its funny. I remember way back, long long ago in 3.0, most posts I saw complained that Perform wasn't more like Knowledge and Craft. "How does learning to play the flute make you a better dancer?" they would say. Sheesh. No one's ever satisfied.

no, the people who made those posts are probably satified... I didn't make them. If you mean that there's never a time when everyone's satisfied, well... yeah....

I think knowing one type of performance can certainly help with another. I wasn't fond of the "add one rank and get another performance type at full ranks" mechanic, but a stairstepped ability would have worked better for me than the current 'fix'

Here's my fix: You, as a DM, choose: is a bard supposed to be a musical manipulator or a master performer.

If they are a musical manipulator then give them automatic skill in singing and playing all instruments. They don't have any ranks but they can make checks as though they did.

If they are a master performer, either revert to 3.0 perform for them only or grant them 2 added skill points per level (8 at level 1) that they can only use for perform skills.

Both of these would be a bard class feature called Natural Performer.

here's mine : you have one perform type (more specific than the five groups) for every two ranks in perform you have, stairstepped in ability. So if you have 6 ranks in perform, you actually have 6 in singing, 4 in pipes and 2 in harps. If you have at least 5 in any given perform type, you get a +2 synergy bonus to an untrained check on a similar one (once you have 5 in harp, you can play a lute untrained with a synergy bonus.)

So there's lots of options...

Kahuna burger

 

[Lord Pendragon]

Because enough people bitched that the 3E rule that you were proficient in as many types of instruments as you had Perform ranks was unrealistic, and the designers listened to their customers.

Problem is, hong, all the customers who didn't bitch because they were happy with the way Perform was in 3.0. The designers listened to some of their customers, who I doubt are the majority.

I can't see anything in the rules where the bard is expected to sink several points into various types of Perform: all you need is the one.

And all the fighter needs is a longsword, but he gets a lot more options, doesn't he? And at the end of the day, IME, a lot of bard players want their bards to be proficient in at least a couple different perform styles. In 3.0 that was simple. In 3.5 it means an extra skill point cost.

And, really, the categories in the PHB are incredibly broad. Perform (wind instruments) makes you proficient in ALL wind instruments; Perform (string instruments) makes you proficient in ALL string instruments; etc. It's not like Weapon Proficiency (longsword), which is completely independent of Weapon Proficiency (shortsword), or whatever.

Actually, my DM created the same broad categories regarding weapons.

Large Swords
Hammers/Picks
Axes
Small Swords
Maces/Morningstars
Bows
Spears

Not sure if these are the exact ones, but you get the idea. Paladins and Rangers only get proficiency in three. It's an attempt to limit the amount of weaponry a single person could reasonably master. But (as I stated above) what annoys me is that he still allows the fighter to be proficient in all of them, even after admitting that such is unrealistic (hence the new proficiency system in the first place.) And yet the bard, the archtypical musician and master performer, is unbearably unrealistic knowing how to play all instruments.

In my mind, the new Perform is basically a result of non-bard players wanting realism in their games, but not too close to home. They actually play fighters, clerics, paladins, rangers, and barbarians, so they don't want any realistic weapon proficiencies, but since they don't play bards, it's a fine place to make the game more realistic.