Bards?

[Sunwitch]

It does need some playtesting, as well as more performance tricks to be really playable. Not counting virgileso's tricks you don't even have enough for a single 20th level character, and there really should be at least twice as many as that to make each bard seem unique. A player in my campaign brought up wanting to play a Bard and I directed him here, but it really doesn't look like it's playable yet. The performance tricks really look like the main problem right now, as there just aren't enough of them. I'm also pretty skeptical of the bonus feat design, but this class was made years ago and needs to get up to date in that way. It really would be nice to have a real Tome bard, even if it means a complete redesign altogether.

[Windjammer]

Thanks for the necroing. I hadn't know about Frank's bard. This is straight going to the options allowed at my table. I did a reformating for my players, which anyone who's interested can download here.

[Username17]

I look back on this as a pretty archetypical late-period 3.5 class. Very much like a Shadowcaster or a Warblade. As such, I think it is basically too complicated for what it does, and needs simplification.

While the image of a Tuba blowing bard blowing things up with his tuba magic is indeed awesome, it's just not practical to write 20 levels of a class that could do that or sing and dance while swinging a sword and leading an army into a Erfworld style dance fight. The Performance Tricks required to do those two characters don't really have much overlap, and that means that you're going to need to write upwards of 70 tricks to get a good spread. Essentially taking up a third of a book just to lay out all the different kinds of music masters that one could have. And that was tried with stuff like th True Namer, and it's not really worth the return on the effort involved - unfortunately.

For Kitchensink Fantasy Role Play (KFRP), the bard would be given a stark set of opening builds with just a few sets of subsequent divergent choices. Not because choicplosion isn't fun, but because it's just impractical to write and test. So you'd have a Warchanter Bard, a Beguiler Bard, and a Spellsong Bard. That's plenty and more than plenty honestly. Classes that try to do everything end up doing nothing - because among other things, they just don't get finished.

-Username17

[Rejakor]

I dunno, I kind of like this idea. I've always been dubious about the create-a-class method, it often ends up feeling impersonal or with a few good options being the only ones ever picked. But I like this idea. The Bard has always needed something like this, just so you could model all the varied and crazy types of bard.

Also, you missed the Sneaky Bard. Although that might be covered by Jester.

As for Tuba Guy, you could do it with Destructive Cacophony,
Brass Crescendo

You blow up a whole area for one quarter your bard level d6 damage which deals triple damage to unattended objects.

Lead Tuba

Utilizing the power of suction, you attempt to disarm up to one quarter your bard level targets. In addition, anyone attempting to strike you with a non-natural melee weapon also has to save against being disarmed after the strike is resolved.

Brown Note

You totally nauseate everyone in an area with your sound. It also causes them to crap their pants.

Marching Band

You blow up a bunch of little spheres for half your bard level in d6 damage that deals triple damage to unattended objects and forces them to make a save vs disintegration. As long as the spheres overlap with at least two other spheres they can be placed anywhere.

Covering Fire

Anytime an enemy strikes an ally of yours, you let them know that that kind of shenanigans is just not on! You can make a ranged touch attack that deals 2d6 sonic damage as a free action every time an enemy makes an attack roll against one of your allies.

Jig

Every square you move through while playing explodes on your next turn, hurling debris in a 10' radius explosion of bludgeoning damage.

Blat

While using this song as a standard action you can initiate a ranged bullrush attempt that uses your ranks in the perform skill instead of your strength modifier to bullrush the target. This bullrush does not provoke attacks of opportunity.

Whirling Song

With your instrument you create a whirling column of air that surrounds you, and makes one bullrush attempt (with a bonus on the check equal to your ranks in the perform skill) for each 5' enemies attempt to move into the whirlwind. Projectiles smaller than a boulder are automatically deflected.


Although I think tiering the songs might be an idea. They don't use actions (other than swift) so they still get used in the 'above level 10' land, but at that level they don't really do anything pointful.

[TavishArtair]

Characters should totally have ability paths that take them down different variations on their class, because otherwise no one will really want to play the same class twice if they get a good campaign with the first one going, or at least no one who likes variety. However, in spite of this fact, it's not necessary for a class to have totally different ability trees. A beguiler who has illusion and enchantment effects, both being in the general area of "mind bending," will come out feeling very different if they specialize in illusions or specialize in charms.

That said, there seriously is no real call to have the "Bard" class itself cover more than the "fights/sneaks decently and sings buffs" type. If you have blasto-song powers on as well, they likely have no synergy with the buffing effects the basic Bard has. Same with beguilement, not that they can't get a few tricks, but it can't be the primary emphasis. You could potentially have some kind of "spellsinger" get both fascinating and destructive songs, but I'd do so only if I felt that both effects were sufficiently limited as to fit on the same character.

[Sunwitch]

I'm going to have to admit I'm still well upon the options bandwagon. Not to the ToB extent where there are seriously only two worthwhile options per level and the rest is just taking up space, but a lot of tuba bards just are not going to be interested in letting off Brown Notes all the time.

I think it should be stuck together something like the Soldier. I'm not sure how that would interact with the whole performance theme, but it's better than being limited to a predictable chain of new abilities after making one decision.

[Sunwitch]

I'm going to have to admit I'm still well upon the options bandwagon. Not to the ToB extent where there are seriously only two worthwhile options per level and the rest is just taking up space, but a lot of tuba bards just are not going to be interested in letting off Brown Notes all the time.

I think it should be stuck together something like the Soldier. I'm not sure how that would interact with the whole performance theme, but it's better than being limited to a predictable chain of new abilities after making one decision.

[Sunwitch]

I'm going to have to admit I'm still well upon the options bandwagon. Not to the ToB extent where there are seriously only two worthwhile options per level and the rest is just taking up space, but a lot of tuba bards just are not going to be interested in letting off Brown Notes all the time.

I think it should be stuck together something like the Soldier. I'm not sure how that would interact with the whole performance theme, but it's better than being limited to a predictable chain of new abilities after making one decision.

[CatharzGodfoot]

I think it should be stuck together something like the Soldier. I'm not sure how that would interact with the whole performance theme, but it's better than being limited to a predictable chain of new abilities after making one decision.

But the guy who plays the tuba is just not a priori balanced with the guy who sings, and having some of your class abilities require that you sing and swing a sword while others require that you play a tuba calls for a bit of 'sleight of hand' to say the least.

You'd actually be better off making two feats, so that one character can be a 'tuba druid' who bolsters her natures allies with brass music and the other character can be an 'operatic rogue' who feints with her voice as she stabs in the face.

[God_of_Awesome]

Huh, if only this were completed. One of my players wanted to be a bard. I had to refurbish the Marshal class for her.

[Rejakor]

That said, there seriously is no real call to have the "Bard" class itself cover more than the "fights/sneaks decently and sings buffs" type. If you have blasto-song powers on as well, they likely have no synergy with the buffing effects the basic Bard has. Same with beguilement, not that they can't get a few tricks, but it can't be the primary emphasis. You could potentially have some kind of "spellsinger" get both fascinating and destructive songs, but I'd do so only if I felt that both effects were sufficiently limited as to fit on the same character.

No. Overspecialization is bad. The more options you give a character class, the more characters that class can represent, and the more characters that can be represented under your rules system, the better.

Bard is a hard category because it covers everything from things that are very like rogues (skill using sneaky people) to things that are very like beguilers (spell using enchantment/illusion mofos) and even things like transmuter wizards (buffing buffers that buff) or any conceivable mix of those three things. And there's even a weird little offshoot into sonic blaster magic.

The best way to do that is not to write three cookie cutter classes for the most common type of bards. This kind of 'range of concepts' dealio is nearly perfectly suited for construct-a-class. However I don't think something like the soldier/monk where you pick two abilities from a list is the best way to do that. You could do it like that, but in this case I think a big list of 'songs' (invocations) that scale with level, possibly with lesser greater chorded etc, possibly without if you make them scale and give fewer (like 8 or so over 20 levels instead of 14 over 20) would allow people to construct the bard that best suits them, which would allow things like the operatic rogue to the warchanting dance-fighter to the saxophonist who blows up buildings with his music.

You also mention a bunch of 'each class should stay in it's niche and never leave it' and 'bards can't have nice things because that doesn't fit with my idea of the ineffectual singer bard guy in monty python' which I personally don't agree with, but that's not really the purpose of this thread.

[Username17]

No. Overspecialization is bad. The more options you give a character class, the more characters that class can represent, and the more characters that can be represented under your rules system, the better.

There are three different things in that statement that you are conflating unnecessarily:

• The more options you give a character class, the more people will want to play that character class, but the longer it will take to make a character with that character class.
• The more characters that are represented by a single character class, the less character classes you have to write, and the less information is passed to other players by saying what your character class is.
• The more characters that can be represented under your rules system, the better. So long as everything represented is still in-genre (the game does not get better by adding "spaceship pilot" to a fantasy RPG or "brutal rapist murderer" to TFOS).

Putting more options into the same class is not an unalloyed good. In the case where you have already committed to having a lot of classes and an expanding number of classes (like D&D), I don't think it's good at all.

If someone tells you that they are a Druid, or a Rogue, or a Martial, or a Fire Mage, they are passing a lot of information to the other players. And if they want to play something different from a Rogue there's a Jester, a Thief Acrobat, a Swashbuckler, an Assassin, and a Ninja that they could play instead. Given that paradigm, why should Bard be a jumble of possibility that gives no meaningful information to the other players about what you can do and how you do it?

-Username17

[Koumei]

(the game does not get better by adding "spaceship pilot" to a fantasy RPG or "brutal rapist murderer" to TFOS).

I'd argue the game can only get worse by adding "brutal rapist murderer" to anything. But what is TFOS?

[TavishArtair]

I will admit that there are some concepts that are very close to each other in concept, and thus should be combined. However, just because a concept has lots of things close to it doesn't mean it should get to do everything in a class-based game. Especially because the bard needs to specialize in something, and if it specializes in nothing it does nothing well, or if it specializes in everything it does everything good.

All classes should get powers they can select or fiddle around with, so that each character is different. However, "buildable" classes where you get to select off large powersets generally disappoint, either by making some powersets a joke, or by making all of them a joke, or by making them all too good, none of which are good solutions. Selectable powers need to be off specifics that go towards a particular concept, if you are going to bother with classes at all.

Also, Rejaktor, you're frankly a goddamn liar, by twisting my words and mischaracterizing my position and attitudes. If you want to be intellectually dishonest, you can. However, in doing so you not only forfeit any ability to make a conversation, but you make yourself look like a goddamn idiot. If you want to keep crapping out bullshit through your mouth like one of the many other Denizens afflicted by verbal diarrhea, you're going to find that all you succeed in doing is choking on it.

Anyways.


Probably Teenagers from Outer Space, Koumei. I could be wrong. It's... comedy themed, as you can guess.

[Koumei]

Oh right. Yeah, that's an awesome game.