Wizards: Bard to no longer suck

[The Shadow]

Also, mythological bard-types are cool inspirations to use but are probably solo epic scale figures that were not part of a 'hero group' as we know them in D&D.

I dunno - Orpheus was an Argonaut.

And while I agree that 'solo epic scale figures' don't make good party members as such, that doesn't mean they can't be toned down to be.

I think the main problem is that the D&D bard tries to do too much at once. Gygax made the fatal mistake of adding thieving abilities to the Celtic archetype. (As someone pointed out in the Dragon years ago, this probably derives from a slur against the Welsh.)

What is needed IMO is for the different 'bard' archetypes to be disentangled and implemented separately. If you want a song-based sorcerer like Vainamoinen, that should be quite doable. If you want a skald, take a fighter or 'warlord' and give him Perform ranks. If you want a trickster troubadour, do the same to a rogue. If you want to mix things up a bit, multiclass. But trying to do all three at once is asking too much of a single class.

 

[wildstarsreach]

"Being a bard is pretty silly. You walk into dungeons and SING at people. Who could take that seriously?" Elan, OOTS; http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0128.html

I want them not to take me seriously. I want them to underestimate me because that will be their downfall.

 

[hong]

Crom forbid the players should have to compromise........

Cf. "making a virtue out of necessity".

 

[Snapdragyn]

What is needed IMO is for the different 'bard' archetypes to be disentangled and implemented separately. If you want a song-based sorcerer like Vainamoinen, that should be quite doable. If you want a skald, take a fighter or 'warlord' and give him Perform ranks. If you want a trickster troubadour, do the same to a rogue. If you want to mix things up a bit, multiclass.

What if we just turn this around? If you want a sorcerer w/o songs, play a bard emphasizing the spell-casting tree & don't take Perform ranks. If you want a fighter, play a bard focusing on the combat tree & don't take Perform ranks. If you want a 'warlord', play a bard, use bardic inspiration a lot, & spend your ranks on Perform (inspirational military speech). If you want a trickster troubadour, play a bard focused on 'stealth' instead of 'face' skills. If you want to mix things up a bit, congratulations! You're a bard!

See? It isn't bard that's redundant; it's all of those other cheap knock-off classes.

(More seriously, though, all of those suggestions - both yours, & my facetious ones - miss the point, because none of them will function as elegantly as the choice they're meant to replace.)

 

[Plane Sailing]

Because a bard's "role" isn't combat - it's support.

That is reverse-engineering the role from the current mechanics though... and you rightly put it in quotes because it isn't a real role, it is a filling in the gaps between other roles.

If the 4e designers are all about making sure that each class can actively fulfil certain roles without being a 'well, they can support others' class, then more power to them!

Cheers

 

[Plane Sailing]

I think Music as a power source sounds like a good bet for a later PHB.

I think that might be too narrow.

I imagine that the 'power sources' will likely enable classes in all the main roles (striker, leader, controller, defender). I'd expect a power source to be integral to several new classes (just as psionics has psychic warriors, psions and whatever else). What would several different music-powered classes look like?

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Come on people, we don't know if the words "leader", "defender", "striker" and "controller" will even see print in the rulebooks. Heck, I'm guessing not. They're just descriptive labels used for concepts that came up in the design process. This is a world away from terms of art like "feat", "skill rank", etc.

They've come out and said that they're planning to provide these labels for the various classes so that new players (and old players who are expecting the classes to perform the same way they do in 3.x) will know what the class is "supposed to do" in combat. I don't think they're supposed to be hard and fast pigeonholes, but if your character is a striker, you can generally expect to be a mobile character who works best against single opponents, especially ones that have already been damaged.

It's a bone they're throwing to help newbies figure out what they want to play, and how to play what they're playing. Or at least that's how they've been portraying it.

 

[hong]

Fair enough, I must have missed that one.

 

[Uriens]

I think Music as a power source sounds like a good bet for a later PHB.

Bards don't use just music to do their stuff! This isn't a viable way to keep them competitive with the other classes!
I really hope that the designers are going to find a different way to explain bard's power than introduce a new power source. Channeling arcane or martial powers throught oratory, music, poetry ... could be a satisfying way.

 

[Darklone]

Hmm. I don't need bards in 4E, but I'd like to see a Jack of all trades class.