D&D General This Makes No Sense: Re-Examining the 1e Bard

[Umbran]

Then why doesn’t it say that?

Because Gygax, et al. weren't particularly good technical writers.

Remember, the need to say thing in particular ways so they'd be understood is something that game writers learned over time. How to write a game did not leap into being fully formed from Gygax's left elbow, or something.

 

[Voadam]

Has anyone ever made an attempt to re-write the 1E Bard to make sense? Not the alternate classes, but a real attempt at making the "proto-prestige" class work?

To make it work you need to make a number of judgment calls on the ambiguities.

Is it a single class so you start off as a human or half elf first stage bard which is like a fighter but with bard prerequisites and weapon and armor and alignment limitations and you must switch to second stage thief between certain levels and then to third stage full bard?

Is it actual dual classing which means human with, in addition to bard prereqs, higher stats for switching from fighter to thief to bard and the bard restrictions only kick in when you switch to bard and you can change your mind at any point on going through to bard? Half elf just means you can still continue as a bard if you get reincarnated from human to half-elf once you have reached bard.

 

[RhaezDaevan]

To make it work you need to make a number of judgment calls on the ambiguities.

Is it a single class so you start off as a human or half elf first stage bard which is like a fighter but with bard prerequisites and weapon and armor and alignment limitations and you must switch to second stage thief between certain levels and then to third stage full bard?

Is it actual dual classing which means human with, in addition to bard prereqs, higher stats for switching from fighter to thief to bard and the bard restrictions only kick in when you switch to bard and you can change your mind at any point on going through to bard? Half elf just means you can still continue as a bard if you get reincarnated from human to half-elf once you have reached bard.

Sorry if I wasn't clear. Yes, I meant someone would make those decisions.

If multiple people had done that and come up with different results that could be compared, even better.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Sorry if I wasn't clear. Yes, I meant someone would make those decisions.

The whole point of 1st edition is the players make the decisions. If you want someone else to do it you are playing it wrong.

 

[RhaezDaevan]

The whole point of 1st edition is the players make the decisions. If you want someone else to do it you are playing it wrong.

It may not be your intent but you're coming off rude with talk like this.

There are multiple 1E retro-clones out there. The authors often interpreting the rules differently. I find it interesting to compare them. I'm not even asking for house-rules to use, just attempts at more clear Bard rules I can read and enjoy.

 

[Umbran]

The whole point of 1st edition is the players make the decisions. If you want someone else to do it you are playing it wrong.

By that logic, we should never have bought rulebooks, because using rules at all is letting others make decisions for us.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Sorry if I wasn't clear. Yes, I meant someone would make those decisions.

If multiple people had done that and come up with different results that could be compared, even better.

As I already suggested, if you want to play a Bard in 1e (WHY? FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS GOOD, WHY?), I recommend playing one of the excellent single-class options I mentioned earlier.

To me, the issue with the 1e Appendix Bard is how half-.... quarter-baked it is. Not only are the rules non-sensical (as in, they literally don't make sense and require multiple houserules), but the class itself doesn't make sense compared to the other classes. The closest comparator is the 1e Monk, and even that class looks correctly balanced and well-thought out compared to the 1e Appendix Bard.

Essentially, you have a multitude of problems.

First, you don't actually become your class until "name level" play. Essentially, you become a Bard when all of your companions are 9th level or beyond (depending on how you do levelling). And that's weird. But it gets worse!

Because the Bard's class doesn't recognize this... look at the XP levels- you're essentially a level 1 PC. While everyone else needs multiple hundreds of thousands of XP to advance a single level, you need .... only 150,001 to get to 11th level!

THAT IS CRAZY. But do you know what's crazier- compare that to the Druid.

Imagine you are "maxing" your fighter level (7) and thief level (8). You need 70,001 xp for fighter and ... 70,001 xp for thief, for a total of 140,002 xp for max F/T (and you want to max fighter levels, since that will always be your attack ability). With me?

To make Druid 14, you need 1,500,001 xp, along with having won in combat against Druids at levels 12, 13, and 14.

To make Bard 18, you need 1,400,001 xp. Are you following me? So, you can hit (depending on how you level) F7/T8/B18 before the Druid gets to level 14. And without engaging in any combats.

That means that not only do you have the fighter and thief abilities, but you also have all the abilities of a 14th level druid, except you can't cast as many spells. At that point, you're stuck at 4/4/4/3/3, while a 13th level Druid is 6/5/5/5/4/3/2

Essentially, you will always have all the abilities of the Druid, sooner (once you shift), never having to deal with the Druid sacrifices (weapons, armor, combat against other druids, etc.), with all sorts of other cool abilities, and only sacrificing 6th and 7th level spells.

IMO, the class simply doesn't work as written. It doesn't mean that you can't have fun with it in a certain type of campaign, but it's not ... the design problems are just so deep that even if square the circle of all the other rules, it's just a bad design.

 

[RhaezDaevan]

As I already suggested, if you want to play a Bard in 1e (WHY? FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS GOOD, WHY?), I recommend playing one of the excellent single-class options I mentioned earlier.

To me, the issue with the 1e Appendix Bard is how half-.... quarter-baked it is. Not only are the rules non-sensical (as in, they literally don't make sense and require multiple houserules), but the class itself doesn't make sense compared to the other classes. The closest comparator is the 1e Monk, and even that class looks correctly balanced and well-thought out compared to the 1e Appendix Bard.

Essentially, you have a multitude of problems.

First, you don't actually become your class until "name level" play. Essentially, you become a Bard when all of your companions are 9th level or beyond (depending on how you do levelling). And that's weird. But it gets worse!

Because the Bard's class doesn't recognize this... look at the XP levels- you're essentially a level 1 PC. While everyone else needs multiple hundreds of thousands of XP to advance a single level, you need .... only 150,001 to get to 11th level!

THAT IS CRAZY. But do you know what's crazier- compare that to the Druid.

Imagine you are "maxing" your fighter level (7) and thief level (8). You need 70,001 xp for fighter and ... 70,001 xp for thief, for a total of 140,002 xp for max F/T (and you want to max fighter levels, since that will always be your attack ability). With me?

To make Druid 14, you need 1,500,001 xp, along with having won in combat against Druids at levels 12, 13, and 14.

To make Bard 18, you need 1,400,001 xp. Are you following me? So, you can hit (depending on how you level) F7/T8/B18 before the Druid gets to level 14. And without engaging in any combats.

That means that not only do you have the fighter and thief abilities, but you also have all the abilities of a 14th level druid, except you can't cast as many spells. At that point, you're stuck at 4/4/4/3/3, while a 13th level Druid is 6/5/5/5/4/3/2

Essentially, you will always have all the abilities of the Druid, sooner (once you shift), never having to deal with the Druid sacrifices (weapons, armor, combat against other druids, etc.), with all sorts of other cool abilities, and only sacrificing 6th and 7th level spells.

IMO, the class simply doesn't work as written. It doesn't mean that you can't have fun with it in a certain type of campaign, but it's not ... the design problems are just so deep that even if square the circle of all the other rules, it's just a bad design.

All good points. So the answer is "no one has bothered as it's not worth doing". Great.

Do you know of anyone doing something like it, but not completely borked? A "start as one class, become another, then finally get access to a super class layered on top" type of thing that's not the bard? (Specifically pre-3E)

I could sort of see an alternate take on the paladin work that way. Start as a fighter, then change to cleric, and finally become a paladin with some cool powers (and ignoring some cleric restrictions) for jumping through all the hoops. Maybe the ranger could be made this way too, but I have no clue what the combination of classes would be.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

All good points. So the answer is "no one has bothered as it's not worth doing". Great.

Do you know of anyone doing something like it, but not completely borked? A "start as one class, become another, then finally get access to a super class layered on top" type of thing that's not the bard? (Specifically pre-3E)

I could sort of see an alternate take on the paladin work that way. Start as a fighter, then change to cleric, and finally become a paladin with some cool powers (and ignoring some cleric restrictions) for jumping through all the hoops. Maybe the ranger could be made this way too, but I have no clue what the combination of classes would be.

So ... I think that the Bard is a terrible example.

If you want better examples from the past, I would offer the following:

1e: As much as I hate Unearthed Arcana, I'd argue that the Thief-Acrobat class in UA is where you should look for guidance for the proto-prestige class in 1e.

D&D (Basic): The Companion Set introduced class specializations for fighters starting at level 9 (IIRC) based- the Knight, Paladin, and the Avenger.

 

[Willie the Duck]

Has anyone ever made an attempt to re-write the 1E Bard to make sense? Not the alternate classes, but a real attempt at making the "proto-prestige" class work?

Sorry if I wasn't clear. Yes, I meant someone would make those decisions.

If multiple people had done that and come up with different results that could be compared, even better.

There are bard classes built for OSRIC and Labyrinth Lord dotting Dragonsfoot. I won't link them because they mostly link to sites whose security I cannot vouch for. By all accounts, they seem to be the same class, just adjusted for the differences Osric and LL have from 1E.

As for making it work, the class 'works' -- so much as you can play one and they interact with the rest of the ruleset adequately. Certain variations a re-write could accomplish might make it easier (stat-wise) to qualify for it, a way to get to one as a half-elf not requiring reincarnating as one, and maybe a failsafe for not having planned your weapon proficiencies perfectly ahead of time. Otherwise, you can play one fine, it's really more a case of a bizarre-and-landmine-filled route to get there than the destination being complete nonsense.

It doesn't seem like a particularly fun experience (as Snarf points out, even accounting for their bias), but that's a different matter. And (again, part of which Snarf points out) there are plenty of 1e classes that don't seem to work well as written. Druids having to battle higher-level druids to advance; cavaliers with suicidal behavior requirements; barbarians with incredible xp requirements, behavior requirements, and challenges with enemies that require magic weapons to hit (IIRC the correction for that never quite hit RAW, although please correct me on this)-- all of these are general concepts that sound fun but with specifics that are screaming out for homebrew revision. Heck, the 1E thief class, combined with the 1e DMG guidance on making their life miserable when they try to do their role in any but the most optimal conditions, is the opposite of many peoples' idea of fun.