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Message: <blockquote data-quote="TwinBahamut" data-source="post: 4225345" data-attributes="member: 32536">Well, keep in mind that all of your experience with bards is just that: your experience. It is not universal.In my relatively short time playing D&D, I have seen two Bards, both in the (approximately) the same campaign. The first was a truly dedicated Bard who took the Seeker of the Song PrC (the PrC that should be partially the basis for the 4E Bard, really), and occasioanlly was used as a vessel for Deus ex Machina in the campaign (she tended to attract supernatural evens while playing songs in front of royalty, a major symptom of the DM writing characters and plots based on songs he liked). The other Bard pretty much took the Bard class as a way of getting the "Loremaster" stuff he needed to do what he actually wanted: be a Master Inquisitive. There was also a character who was a (in)famous pop idol in an Alternity campaign, but that is getting off topic...The main point is that, for the most part, the two players I have seen actually play Bards did so for completely opposing reasons, and got two very different things out of the game. The former character wanted to be a Musician-type Bard, and thus ended up emphasizing that role and getting a lot out of it because of a PrC that stripped away the unnecessary elements (the Jack-of-all-Trades and Loremaster stuff). The other player took Bard because he didn't have any other way of fulfilling Loremaster requirements in order to unlock some PrCs, and two things resulted: he was useless in battle and he treated what few real combat abilities he had from his Bard levels, mostly the Inspire Courage ability, as if they were a joke (because they were out of character and ineffective).The problem with fusing together ideas like "Loremaster" and "Musician" together into a single class is that it forces people who only want one side of the class into using the other aspect. The second Bard I mentioned would have been a lot better off with a Master Inquisitive base class or some kind of base "Scholar" or "Diplomat" class, so he never had to bother with music or magic. The first Bard never even cared about anything but magical music and occasionally swordfighting, so the other aspects of the class were pointless.Anyways, to get back to your examples... I think most cases of people "getting creative" with the bard to "explain away" aspects of it results from people trying to turn the Bard into something that it is not. People wanted the charismatic, diplomatic ability of the Bard, but didn't want to be a musician. This really is more of a symptom of 3E lacking a proper class to fill that niche, rather than a problem with the Bard class itself. With the addition of the Warlord and possibly other kinds of Leader classes in 4E, this is no longer the case, so Bards are free to be musicians without problem.Finally, keep in mind that people may not want to have played the Bard in 3E simply because it was a poorly built class that was both boring to play and ineffective. I wouldn't blame anyone for not wanting to play such a class. That will not necessarily be true in 4E, so direct comparison is not valid quite yet.Well, if you want a Jack-of-all-trades who doesn't necessarily sing, I don't see why you need to call it the Bard... I guess I just don't think the "it has always been so in D&D" argument is a good one. Historical precedent has some value, but a history of bad implementations is not something that should be continued for its own sake.Alright, I suppose I didn't mention this before, so I will be upfront with you now. I don't like the idea of "Bardic Colleges" in the least. I don't like any implementation of a class that forces a particular "origin story" upon a PC or creates a necessary connection to any particular type of organization. In other words, any mechanic or flavor that restricts the ability of a player to say "I learned how from a wandering master" or "I picked it up by watching this traveler and copying him" is flawed, in my opinion.Besides, as I said before, I really don't think "loremaster" is a valid basis for a class. I never liked the idea of "Bardic Knowledge", and your idea in which it somehow surpasses any other form of knowledge and is given a role in combat that other kinds of knowledge don't have is severely problematic. If such a class ability existed, it would pretty much make every "Knowledge" type skill meaningless and worthless. Why should a Bard be able to know things that a Wizard who specializes in the Arcana and History skills can't know? Why should a Bard be able to use this knowledge in ways that the Wizard can't? Why should Bards even have knowledge acquired from supernatural sources?I'm sorry, but I really don't think your idea works.</blockquote>

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