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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 6102380" data-attributes="member: 2067">Bard.That wasn't an accidental choice for the parent class.Bards know the power inherent in words. They calm storms, they raise the dead, they know the cadence and the rhythm of life, the threads of power upon which mortal souls vibrate. They know the moment at which to speak, and they speak with piercing skill. Words are their weapons and their spells and their divine power. Words are their tools to shape the world they live in. Words are what they use to fight back the tide of darkness, to explore the unknown frontier, and to achieve their desires. This particular bard focuses the power of his words on the rhythm and cadence of battle. This isn't just arbitrary flavor text, but key to how the character functions. He knows when to speak, how to speak, and who to speak to, in the moment when blades clang and warriors cry.A bard's word carries with it a power, a potency that others cannot invest in their words. Perhaps it is magic -- sometimes, like calming a storm, it almost certainly is. Perhaps it's just an elite skill -- certainly a war bard or a trickster bard could credit their subtle power to control and precision. A lot of your points seem to pretty much ignore the "I'm a frickin' bard, so when I speak, the world itself turns to listen to me" side of the equation, here. And this particular bard is a master of the ebb and flow and rhythm of a fight, conducting the combatants like an orchestra. He knows just when to turn up the strings and cause an ally to stab, just when to turn down the percussion to force an enemy to flinch. Yeah, of course Mialee and Tordek can't do this. They don't have this skill, this power, this ability, this focus and dedication. They haven't trained their Voices under the tutelage of bards known to destroy city walls or convert demons to sainthood. It's not just talking, it's the Bardic Voice. A few of your other points, like this, seem to view D&D combat differently than I do. I don't see D&D combat as a stop-motion scene of stop-and-start actions. I see it as a slow motion scene, where the rules don't specify each thing your character does. In between attack rolls, you're constantly weaving, dodging, parrying, feinting, watching, waiting, and otherwise anticipating your opening (or your enemy's). So when the bard, the Bard! looks at you and calmly, in a moment of silence, intones the word "MOVE.", and points at your left side (which you've surprisingly left open!), you can, in the moment, while your foe is harassing you, slide your gauntleted arm a little to the left, helping to deflect the blow. Or, when the bard makes a stabbing gesture and says "NOW," you can take advantage of that little gap in the goblin's armor before that goblin shifts. With that in mind, Directed Strike is the bard telling you the goblin's left his flank open, Threaten is the bard telling the goblin he better not hurt you, Burst of Speed is the bard telling you to move more quickly. You listen to the bard because that's what the Bard does -- makes you listen -- and this particular bard knows the cadence and flow of battle intimately enough that they're as aware of when to strike or fall back as a highly trained fighter. The bard was chosen because of the Voice, and the fact that the baseline Fighter likes high armor, high HP, and has an ability score bonus that isn't Warlord-esque. As I pointed out in the post, I think the fighter could do this, too, just not the current playtest version of the fighter (export some of the proficiencies to fighting styles, make the high HP thing perhaps a specialty feature, and allow any ability score bonus, and we're good!). Like I pointed out in the post, the rules fobs need some massaging. That's not a dissociation/metagame issue, though, it's just an issue with iteration of the thing. It's rough. As a post on a message board intended to get across a conceptual idea, I figured that would be fine. Let me end by pointing out that the intent with this class design isn't to make everyone under the sun want to play as one, either. I think the best case scenario is that the people who love the warlord are happy with it, and the people who hate the 4e warlord wouldn't mind as much of a character played one of these -- it wouldn't ruin the game for them. I'd expect this bardic tradition to be as optional as the paladin or the monk, really: an option in the standard game, but just an option, and one that a DM is under no obligation to include.</blockquote>

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