Perform, and do we really need the bard?

[Prak]

I think the 3.x Bard comes out of medieval and celtic bardic, and norse skaldic traditions, in which their jobs were to praise their patron lords, scorn and satire those who crossed said lords, and were attributed a certain amount of magic through their words, where a well aimed satire was said to raise boils on the face of it's target. There is also a bit of magic music in danish(?) lore, and lots of other sources.

[Blicero]

You also have Tinuviel in the Silmarillion who sings a magical song that puts Sauron to sleep. Or something like that.


Also, one of the descriptions of sorcery in Prince of Nothing is "singing in the God's own voice."

I think that spellsongs have a lot of resonance and could be really cool if done well. The 3E "bard as minstrel" class is a piece of shite, though.

[Prak]

I might see what I can do to make a Magic Music class that's better and follows that resonance more, but right now, I've got to finish working on my campaign setting, at least enough to run the game.

[shadzar]

I'm just wondering where the 3ed version of the bard even came from.

I don't claim to have read every fantasy novel or watched every fantasy movie or played every fantasy video game (and in fact have not read a single thing since college English destroyed my love of reading novels), so I may be missing out on something, but all of the bard-like characters I can think of could be either rogues or some sort of specialist wizard...

it came form the need to keep the class to make some consumers happy, and the product of the editions system.

classes NEVER fit into their original forms or were intended to under WotC, since they see a class as a game construct to perform (no pun intended) within the game, not represent something you may have been inspired to want from a novel or other form of entertainment.