Saving the Bard

[TarionzCousin]

Why?
Tell us more?

It's a good story of an early medieval Irish bard with some fantastical elements thrown in.

More here: Bard: Keith Taylor: 9780441049134: Amazon.com: Books

 

[Warpiglet]

Bards do need saving, but not how you think.

When a lore bard can cast nearly anything it seems...odd.

I am happy to be beat up on for this unpopular opinion. For me, a bard focused on charms and the ability to influence through song, spoken word and knowledge could be cool. But it has to be really roleplayed maybe moreso than some classes.

I don't like bards with evocations generally.

So oddly I say their mechanics are fine but hey are not for me good out of the box. I think you need a good character idea to keep them from being a weird magic user.

A valor bard who chants and hammers drums into battle improving morale or fearing enemies? I am down with it.

True knowledge keepers, true namers and heralds? Played right I am down.

Some guy that is basically a mage with a lute? I dunno. Not for me. For that reason, not a fan of lord bards generally without a very good background and roleplaying hook...

I don't care how powerful they are.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I highly recommend the "Bard" fantasy novels by Keith Taylor.

I was wondering if anyone else had read those.
(I'd recommend reading the first 3 and leaving it at that. Unless you end the third novel hating some of the characters, then, by all means...)

 

[Salthorae]

I was wondering if anyone else had read those.
(I'd recommend reading the first 3 and leaving it at that. Unless you end the third novel hating some of the characters, then, by all means...)

Don't forget the game Bard's Tale and the books that went with it! Notably Castle of Deception!

The Bard's Tale Book Series: Amazon.com

And Danilo Thann from the FR novels. All great representations of Bards in fiction with magics.

Though I do agree that the best Bards aren't tossing around Evocations... who am I to say they didn't find a scroll of fireball and then spent years of their game life breaking the code on it until they could cast it themselves?

It's very much in the flavor of bards and in line with the 2e AD&D bards who gained Wizard spells at level 2 and had a full caster level, and gained 3rd level spells at 7th level (and gained levels faster than a wizard because of XP tables, so a 7th level bard's fireball was MORE powerful than a 6th level Wizard's because they both had 40,000 xp!)

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[GMMichael]

For me, a bard focused on charms and the ability to influence through song, spoken word and knowledge could be cool. But it has to be really roleplayed maybe moreso than some classes.

I don't like bards with evocations generally. . .

Some guy that is basically a mage with a lute? I dunno. Not for me. For that reason, not a fan of lord bards generally without a very good background and roleplaying hook...

I don't know much about 5e bards, but this is the impression that I was getting. Saving the bard is one thing, making him another class (mage with lute) is something else. So now I'm wondering about my last bard...

The last bard I played ended up being almost a Witcher-type character: a gruff swordfighter and magic-user, who used music and tidings as payment for his lodging as he wandered.

...was this guy a bard, or a gish who told stories and had a lute?

By profession, he was an adventuring bard, using music and knowledge not only to entertain for money but to deceive and/or confuse opponents.

By class, although it was a classless system, he had skills for knowledge and performance, but his attributes were fairly balanced, so he was bard-ish, but not full bard.

By gear, he was a brigand: longsword and light armor, with a lute, of course.

By appearance, he was the Witcher, so - pretty far removed from the regalia of a jester (typical bard dress?).

I'm not sure that I'd call him a fighter with a lute, because he didn't use heavy armor and most of his combat skill was just with the longsword. Not a mage+lute either, because didn't know more than two spells. It feels wrong to call someone who looks like Geralt a bard though...

 

[Phion]

...was this guy a bard, or a gish who told stories and had a lute?

By profession, he was an adventuring bard, using music and knowledge not only to entertain for money but to deceive and/or confuse opponents.

By class, although it was a classless system, he had skills for knowledge and performance, but his attributes were fairly balanced, so he was bard-ish, but not full bard.

By gear, he was a brigand: longsword and light armor, with a lute, of course.

By appearance, he was the Witcher, so - pretty far removed from the regalia of a jester (typical bard dress?).

I'm not sure that I'd call him a fighter with a lute, because he didn't use heavy armor and most of his combat skill was just with the longsword. Not a mage+lute either, because didn't know more than two spells. It feels wrong to call someone who looks like Geralt a bard though...

Sounds like you made a well rounded person. He sounds like the kind of guy who is pragmatic and would argue he is a fighter, a bard or maybe a wizard in whatever the situation called for.

 

[aramis erak]

Where can you find a Cleric in a novel that's not based on D&D?

Quite a few in various pre-D&D novellas and novels within the pulp genre. Usually as bad guys, but not always.

Several Norse sagas mention Goði - the norse priests. Given that they are mythologized history... That's bit fantasy right there.

And, at least to some, various editions of the religious genre Lives of the Saints count as fantasy, and quite a few are miracle working priests.


Some consider the bible itself fiction...in which case all the prophets, acts of the apostles, and Kings and Chronicles.

Any miracle working clergyman published before 1973 counts.

I highly recommend the "Bard" fantasy novels by Keith Taylor.

Irrelevant to the discussion, as it postdates the bard class in AD&D, let alone OE D&D. If there are similarities to the vancian magic bard, we cannot rule the influence of D&D out.

 

[TarionzCousin]

Irrelevant to the discussion, as it postdates the bard class in AD&D, let alone OE D&D. If there are similarities to the vancian magic bard, we cannot rule the influence of D&D out.

There were bards in the world before D&D.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Irrelevant to the discussion, as it postdates the bard class in AD&D, let alone OE D&D. If there are similarities to the vancian magic bard, we cannot rule the influence of D&D out.

No memorization or prepping in Keith Taylor's Bard - but, yeah, unless he's on record as having been influenced by D&D, or as knowing nothing about it at the time, you can't say for sure. And, of course, there were converging influences at the time, so even if he wasn't influenced by D&D, he might've been influenced by other sources that also influenced D&D.
The interesting bit I remember about how magic worked in Bard was an antagonism between magic and Christianity - if you were baptized, you couldn't see many of the magical creatures or effects, or saw them differently. Very un-D&D, which both avoided mentioning Christianity at all, while also borrowing heavily from it's tradition of miracle-working (thaumaturgy) for it's Cleric spells, and even the oddball blunt-weapons restriction.

There were bards in the world before D&D.

Like the Druid, it's one of the D&D classes that that goes back to Celtic myth/legend for it's inspiration.