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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Charlaquin" data-source="post: 8252842" data-attributes="member: 6779196">I love the idea of music being a source of magical power as potent as arcane study or devotion to a god or the spirits of nature or what have you. The problem for me is that the bard’s relationship with music is extremely noncommittal, especially in 5e. Yes, they get proficiency with several musical instruments and can use them as spellcasting foci, but there’s nothing about bard casting that’s intrinsically tied to music, or even to performance. They also have a spell list that just doesn’t feel bard-like to me, and Arcane Secrets giving them access to everyone else’s spell list doesn’t help. Furthermore, I’m a big proponent of different power sources having different gameplay feels. Yes, bardic performance should be a source of magical power on par with wizardry, but it shouldn’t feel or play exactly like a wizard with a slightly different spell list. And just having known spells instead of preparing spells isn’t enough to make that difference to me (also I think if bards are going to cast spells, it actually makes more sense for them to be prepared casters than known casters IMO).I think it says something that “use the warlock chassis” gets suggested as a fix for basically every class. The warlock is, in my opinion, the single best-designed class in 5e, and every class could benefit from following its lead. Of course, if you actually do that you get 4e, and everyone gets mad for some reason.I emphatically agree. A lot of my biggest issues with 5e come from compromises on the design vision that were made in service to the majority opinion (which doesn’t even reflect the majority opinion these days).I think it’s the natural conclusion of the bard as jack of all trades. If the bard is going to be the generalist, they need to be competent in all roles, which includes the party caster role. I don’t think that’s a good design choice for the bard, but it’s what the class has been shoehorned into.</blockquote>

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