Saving the Bard

[GMMichael]

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.

So, not a bard. Dammit, I thought I was helping the cause! He seems like more of a Factotum (Dungeonscape - great book). Hey, look! There's a much cooler Inspiration rule in that class...

There were bards in the world before D&D.

And did these bards help during adventures? Or would they make for better NPCs?

 

[Tony Vargas]

And did these bards help during adventures? Or would they make for better NPCs?

Like the inspirations for wizard, druid, cleric, sorcerer, and warlock, they did not tend to actually go on adventures with the hero, and would have made better NPCs. Though, unlike the wizard, sorcerer, cleric (EHP, if you remember that one), or warlock, bards in the source material at least tended not to be villains.

 

[pemerton]

did these bards help during adventures? Or would they make for better NPCs?

Like the inspirations for wizard, druid, cleric, sorcerer, and warlock, they did not tend to actually go on adventures with the hero, and would have made better NPCs.

Bilbo Baggins can easily be thought of as a bard - knowledgeable, personable, negotiates truces, outwits spiders, tricksy and riddling.

And he went on an adventure.

In RPGing, it depends very heavily on the sorts of situations that the GM puts in front of the players.

 

[Tony Vargas]

.

Bilbo Baggins can easily be thought of as a bard - knowledgeable, personable, negotiates truces, outwits spiders, tricksy and riddling.

Every version of the D&D Bard was a caster.

So, no.

 

[pemerton]

. Every version of the D&D Bard was a caster.

So, no.

This thread is in General.

 

[Tony Vargas]

This thread is in General.

Reply was ultimately in response to:

There were bards in the world before D&D.

 

[pemerton]

Reply was ultimately in response to:

Yes. And the question was then asked, by the OP, whether they were NPCs or could be adventurers. And I pointd to one of those "bards in the world" - ie Bilbo Baggins - who was an adventurer. The fact that he doesn't fit a certain D&D model of bard doesn't mean that (i) he wasn't in the world before D&D, and (ii) that he wasn't suited to be an adventurer.

You said that bards in the source material tended not to be villains. As the Bilbo Baggins example shows, they also are not uniformally magicicans.

Even in the D&D context, I've seen many posts over the years suggesting that a ranger's spells can be "reflufffed" as non-magic survival knacks, and presumably the same would be true of some bard spells. This also comes up in some Bard=Warlord threads.

 

[pemerton]

double post deleted

 

[Tony Vargas]

. And I pointd to one of those "bards in the world" - ie Bilbo Baggins - who was an adventurer. The fact that he doesn't fit a certain D&D model of bard doesn't mean that (i) he wasn't in the world before D&D, and (ii) that he wasn't suited to be an adventurer.

It illustrates that he wasn't an inspiration for the D&D Bard, that and he was an inspiration for the D&D hobbit/halfling/thief.

You said that bards in the source material tended not to be villains.

was I mistaken?

Even in the D&D context, I've seen many posts over the years suggesting that a ranger's spells can be "reflufffed" as non-magic survival knacks, and presumably the same would be true of some bard spells. This also comes up in some Bard=Warlord threads.

Yeah, those suggestions run aground on the mechanics of D&D magic.

 

[pemerton]

@Tony Vargas, I don't understand what you are trying to do with your posts.

This is a thread about "saving the bard" - where what is meant is not the D&D bard, let alone the 5e D&D bard, but rather the bard archetype. It has been pointed out that the bard archetype predates D&D and is not dependent on D&D. Over the course of this thread I have pointed to various characters in well-known fictional works who exemplify the archetype, and also to some RPG examples, and talked about their suitability as PCs rather than NPCs. Some of the RPG examples have been magicians (eg the Rolemaster one I described upthread) but not all (eg the Prince Valiant one I described upthread).

Bilbo Baggins is a character who is a suitable model for a PC, who goes on an adventurer, and who exemplifies the bard archetype (tricky, lives by his wits, very personable and at times even charming, likes to tell stroies). The fact that D&D decided to create a halfling thief build instead which has none of Bilbo's trickery or charm as part of it; and the fact that D&D makes all bards magicians - is irrelevant to the point I am making.