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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3265488" data-attributes="member: 4937">I'm well aware of that.  First edition was even more limited in its class flexibility than 3rd.  But you're dodging my point.  The Kalevala characters are exceptionally broad generalists.  In fact, they are a good deal broader even than you are claiming as I would argue that they demonstrate some pretty flashy attack spells too (like Imprison, for example, I consider that pretty flashy).  All of this that you are complaining about was an attempt to give the Bardic character the generality you are complaining is lacking in any single class.  In fact, I'm increasingly convinced that if you played a bard as if his spells had a divine origin - which is purely a matter of flavor - and did just a little multi-classing (maybe) that you could capture the whole 'Finnish' hero thing with no real problem.While I'm on the subject, the divine/arcane spell division is entirely Judeo-Christian in origin.  I can't think of any other tradition which draws such a sharp divide between theurgy and goetia, between the miraculous and the eldritch.  It's only a matter of Western culture that we percieve divine magic and arcane magic as being two distinctly different things.  For all practical purposes, its just a freakin' label.  There is no reason why your bard can't get his spells in part from a divine source and the mechanics work out entirely the same. No undead that are mentioned.  You've no real need to worry about whether if undead had showed up, how the finnish heroes would have dealt with them.  And if you think a Paladin needs to be a Holy Knight roaming around in high Medieval armor, then I suggest you're even more stuck in extraneous culture and flavor than the 1st edition writers were.At what cost though.  There is a price to be paid for having any given shopping list summable in a single class.Raw power is not the only issue here.  The problem is the breadth of the class means that there is a good chance that its not balanced versus most other classes of a given level.  It's not at all clear to me that you can make the drawbacks match the abundant advantages of a mix and match fighter/cleric/bard/ranger.   I'm inclined to think that you should just be playing a bard.  The class was invented after all to capture the flavor of the characters you are inspired by.Play a bard.  Or maybe a Ranger. Or maybe take my first level in bard, my second in cleric, and then build up from there to something between a Bard 15/Cleric 5 and a Bard 19/Cleric 1.Then I'd play it with the flavor of the Kalevala and constrain my own spell choices to those which conveyed the flavor I was looking for.Somewhat.  I'd argue that the D&D druid has morphed away from its roots even more than the Bard has, but that's another conversation.I've alot of problems with the Ranger.  Again, its another archetype that's taken on a life of its own that has almost nothing to do with its roots (trying to play Aragorn, whose class is probably much better captured by Paladin than any editions 'ranger').As for cleric's not having access to Abjuration spells, I'm not sure what you are smoking.  As for the complaints that you need shield, protection from arrows, explosive runes, dimensional anchor and so forth on your spell list to capture the flavor of a finnish shaman, I'm totally unsympathetic to that.  You keep saying this that or the other doesn't fit the archetype, but basically that's just your opinion.  As best as I can tell, the 'real' Vainnamoinen was a straight up Shaman, and GR's Shaman would do nicely.   But so would a Bard.  Or a Cleric.  Or a Ranger.  Or some combination.  The flavor of the abilities is what you make of them.</blockquote>

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