Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Aldarc" data-source="post: 8308019" data-attributes="member: 5142">[USER=18]@Ruin Explorer[/USER], I was not singling-out the bard. The bard was just what was being discussed at the time. The other classes were not subject to my whimsical musings, because they weren't pertinent. I have played my share of bards in 3e, PF1, 4e, and 5e, including a kobold bard. I do happen to like bards. I have also played a lot of psionics, clerics, and druids, and I would undoubtedly have my own set of controversial half-serious brainstorming takes about those classes too. I honestly wasn't expecting that I was going to get accused in my casual musings of deleting the bard and just making a "mind wizard." If anything, the opposite. I was half-expecting that people would accuse me of deleting the Wizard Enchanter and Illusionist and giving their stuff to the Bard. Again, I will fully admit that my take regarding the Bard has been shaped a lot by the Mesmer in <a href="https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Mesmer" target="_blank">Guild Wars 1 </a>and <a href="https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mesmer" target="_blank">Guild Wars 2</a>, which covers a lot of similar conceptual space as an illusionist/enchanter/fast-caster/duelist/chanter. It's also a fun class that I enjoy playing. I understand that D&D is committed to its legacy archetypes, but I also have been influenced in my thinking by both Monte Cook's Arcana Evolved and class-based fantasy design in computer games (e.g., WoW, GW, Diablo, etc.). In Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed/Evolved, he took a step back with classes and asked himself more about the sort of playstyles that people liked playing and he designed his classes around that: e.g., skill monkey (Akashic), heavily-armored warrior (Warmain), swashbuckler/skirmisher (Unfettered), gish (Mage Blade), beast-master (Totem Warrior), master of magic (Magister), the healer (Greenbond), etc. And when people say that there is conceptual overlap between the Enchanter, the Illusionist, the Bard, the Psion, the Aberrant Sorcerer, etc., I wonder if there could be a mind mage to capture that in one class. After all, Starfinder basically took the Shaman, the Psion, the Cleric, the Druid, etc. and put them under the single intuition-guided Mystic class. I thought that was pretty darn neat. I don't think that we would be better off without the bard or with a mind mage. Because when I do think of the sort of casters are commonly found in computer games, I do think that there is generally a standard caster (e.g., mage, wizard, sorcerer, black mage, etc.), the "dark" caster (e.g., necromancer, warlock, etc.), the support caster (e.g., priest, cleric, white mage, monk, etc.), the summoner (e.g., summoner, warlock, necromancer, witch doctor, etc.), and/or the mind caster (e.g., mesmer, WoW priest, cipher, etc.) or various combinations thereof. I do wonder if the cleric is trying to be too much, and I do wonder if the Paladin and War Priest aspect of the Cleric would be better as a single class separate from a lightly-armored support caster (e.g., Priest). I do wonder if there are other ways than the classes we have to express the archetypes that we find ourselves drawn to play. It's not because I feel or think that I know what's best about the bard or that I hate bards or anything like that. It's simply me imagining "what if..."</blockquote>

Verification