Wild Empathy or Bardic Knowledge?

[Driddle]

Which is more useful?

 

[el-remmen]

Bardic Knowledge, no doubt.

You can use it to know a little about anything - and we all know, "Knowledge is Power"

While Wild Empathy works with a certain subset of creatures you are less and less likely to meet as you rise in level.

 

[Crothian]

Ya, Bardic Knowledge is just something that can in theory be applied to almost anything. But both are abilities I've seen a DM make worthless because they are not prepared for them.

 

[Fishbone]

Bardic Knowledge, by quite a large margin. With an average level and average roll you can know a lot of relevant information about just about anything. Wild Empathy is kay for relating to wild animals and your animal companions but that is about it.

 

[Driddle]

Follow-up question (highlighted here to improve odds of new readers actually noticing):

How useful is the information that's usually provided by bardic lore checks?

 

[heirodule]

The problem with wild empathy is that sigificant encounters with animals generally last a much shorter time than 1 minutes (the time it takes to calm the animal down).

Usually if party sees a hostile animal, they just kill it, or its already attacking.

If it isn't hostile, you don't need wild empathy (much).

It would work in the following situations:

1. stalked by a predator
2. a 'roleplay encounter' with an animal where it isn't hostile initially, but you need something from it, near it and it will become hostile if you go for it.
3. when the animal is WAY above the party's EL and the best course is to avoid attacking

The GM has to prepare specific animal encounters than make wild empathy 'work'.

Along with animals in the MM, we need a Disposition Chart and an animal goal chart. Roll some more dice and the DM can improvise

 

[Crothian]

How useful is the information that's usually provided by bardic lore checks?

Depends on the DM. If the roll is good enough, the info from me when I DM can be quite good. But I like placing that type of info into my game. Some DMs just don't like that so it becomes much less useful.

 

[Vraister]

My first two characters ever where a Bard and a Druid and I have to say Bardic Knowledge is way more useful. Wild Empathy can be neat but its seldom really useful while Bardic Knowledge can make a big difference.

Vraister

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Bardic Knowledge. Not even close.

One of the handiest class features in almost any type of campaign vs. a limited use class feature that only works against a specific type of creature that isn't a primary threat?

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Follow-up question (highlighted here to improve odds of new readers actually noticing):

How useful is the information that's usually provided by bardic lore checks?

IMC, extremely useful.

As a PC I've seen it range from moderately useful to being the primary means by which the GM got information to the party.

It does depend somewhat on who's running the game, though not nearly as much as wild empathy.