D&D General Steampunkette's Bard Redesign

[Corinnguard]

As is usual for you, @Steampunkette, that looks really great, and manages to be both mechanically interesting and significantly more evocative of the concept than what we've got. Nice job!

The mechanically interesting part of a homebrewer's work is when they do something the original designers of a given class have overlooked or didn't consider when designing the class. There is also the moment when a homebrewer has outdone the original designers. @Steampunkette when she came up with this version of the Bard class. Laser Llama and his take on the Ranger class.

 

[GuyBoy]

Huh... yeah? That reminds me of Monte Cook's old Bard Revamp in the 3e era. It was in "Book of Eldritch Might 2: Songs and Souls of Power".

Instead of having strict spells of different levels, you had notes, chords, and melodies. Notes could be cast as a move action, chords were standard actions, and melodies were full round action.

It also had a shifting use structure for their 'slots'. You could break down a chord into 5 notes, or a melody into 3 chords or 15 notes. Also worked in the inverse at the same rates.

The intention was to use multiple notes, or a chord and a note, in the same turn to be able to create songs of greater power than the individual note or chord. It also explicitly allowed multiple bards to contribute to the same song if they knew it, adding notes or chords to the overall melody.

It's just the name "Chords" that makes me think of it, but Monte Cook has always been a kind of inspirational "Take Risks" type of designer!

What's my deadline for bardsongs, there, Guy? Gotta have 'em ready for you!

Hi Rachel,
As per Rob’s answer, about 4-6 weeks, I guess. I love your design for this class.

 

[THEMNGMNT]

My biggest (?) critique of 5E is 1) full casters have too many spells and 2) too much overlap in their spell lists. Another way of phrasing this is that spellcasting takes up so much of their power budget that they all feel the same. So I really like the idea of 3/4 casters. Which is more-or-less what a warlock is when you add it all up.

For this bard in particular, I'd probably make a few changes.

First, I'd turn vicious mockery into a class feature. Basically, bardic inspiration is the boon, and vicious mockery is the bane. But they're basically two sides of the same coin.

Second, I'd turn the songs into spells. Which is basically what they are. I'd just make them exclusive to the bard. Of course, implied in this redesign is a total overhaul of the bard spell list.

Good stuff.

 

[TheSword]

I guess my question would be. If we are getting extra attack on the main class (which I’m fine with) what will the subclasses that used to grant that, get?

 

[humble minion]

I do like the concept of removing the emphasis on full spellcasting. Long overdue and gives a lot more design space to play with now that we're not having to balance against other full spellcasters.

For a REALLY comprehensive bard fix though - how about trying to make Performance skill checks matter in combat, for the class whose combat abilities we are increasingly centring around the performances?