The Gaming Den

So it turns out we don't have a strong preference for the Bard in the core compilation doc (or a few other classes that we'll be doing in a bit). So we're taking a poll, since the finished work is supposed to be at least palatable to people who would actually play Tome games.

So if you have a preference for a Bard to fill in for the SRD one (or would rather we not fuck with the SRD one), vote for it and explain why. Or just complain about the options - I have no illusions about where this is being posted. Anyway, we'll drop the most preferred one in with the rest of the base classes and likely put the rest in a community classplosion compendium (subject to permission of course).

Tark the topic title says Ranger but the poll says Bard

Fucking cold meds.

I mean, no it doesn't. That's what editing is for.

Don't use my Bard, it's stupid.

I think ThunderGodCid's one is pretty good (possibly tuning it back down to classic bardcasting?), and it's basically a more polished version of Frank's one.

Might as well mark these as [TRD] or [TomeRD].

@Koumei : I know a few people who appreciate that bard.

My vote: finish Frank's bard without the jokes - honestly, you might be able to even get Cid to do it, his ranger's fairly nice. I've also said in the past that some of Orion's ideas were good, and should end up as performance tricks for Frank's.

I'm proud of the underlying concept of my bard, but it's not even remotely finished. Just on a textual level it's all fucked up. If there were substantial acclaim for the direction I was going I could try to cook up a revised/complete version. Even work to a list of design goals from the project organizers. But I suspect it will be better and easier to just go with something else.

Personally, I think the easiest, least controversial fix would be to staple the Sorcerer spell progression from the SRD onto the SRD Bard. Then either use an original Sorcerer class, or bump the actual Sorcerer's spell progression up one level, and give them d8 hit dice, 4 skill points, and martial weapons.

Orion wrote:I'm proud of the underlying concept of my bard, but it's not even remotely finished. Just on a textual level it's all fucked up. If there were substantial acclaim for the direction I was going I could try to cook up a revised/complete version. Even work to a list of design goals from the project organizers. But I suspect it will be better and easier to just go with something else.

Thoughts about going through it for parts, as I said?

I gave up on that bard because I didn't think it was terribly workable. I would suggest going with a different Bard version altogether. Possibly more based on the Jester.

-Username17

OK, I'll bite: I see no unworkability other than it being "too broad" (according to you, I guess). Is it really that you want no class less specific than the jester to exist, or I missed something else? (As for "bards that only sing outside of fighting", that's called having ritual rules, which probably would be good, but seems kinda off-topic to me.)

It requires a really large amount of music tricks just to happen, and the number has to get even larger if you don't want to lock a character into a trick progression for the rest of his life just because he decided to get a tuba early in his career.

Basically you're writing a parallel magic system that is based on what amounts to feat chains that branch like prestige classes. It's too cumbersome to be workable. Not really my finest moment. I can totally see why I thought that would be a good idea, but I do not any more.

It would be better to have the bard stand on its own and have a minimally workable combat shtick and spell list and then have some music stuff on the side. Like how the Jester can fight with sneak attack and some silly weapons while sporting enough spells to contribute when that isn't paying the bills. And then he has enough of a comedy routine on the side to "feel like a Jester".

-Username17

I forgot about the requirement of specific styles. I agree it's a problem, and still would take everything else (including a list of over 20 tricks, should it be made) over each possible subdivision of bardry becoming a class - in part because I don't want to wait for them all to be made, in part because I guess I would like to have ... any (generation) choices at all to make, unlike with the jester (despite it being one of the best Tome classes, yes).

Your choice with the Bard is to either make it into a type of character that already exists and works, which will be easy but unimpressive, or try to invent a new kind of character, which will be controversial and hard. Full spellcasters already unambiguously work. The bard's skill and music shit is mostly unimportant in a Tome context, so the easiest way to get a working Bard is to just staple the SRD Sorcerer's spellcasting onto the SRD Bard. That's honestly what I would recommend as a minimally-disruptive option for a game that probably isn't going to see any more substantial innovation.

Gishes also work. And there are plenty of fighting-mages in fiction who sing and hit people with swords, but I don't really think that's what "Bard" means to people in a D&D context. And we already have Duskblades and Eldritch Knights and Bladesingers, so it's not clear to me that we gain anything by pushing the Bard into that mold. That said, there is not to my knowledge currently a Tome-Original arcane gish base class, so including one could be construed as a service. Characters based on buffing "work" in the sense that there are already viable characters in 3.5 who mostly sit around giving everyone else on the team bigger numbers. You could make the Bard into a Marshal-like healer/buffer, or a Cleric knockoff. But Marshal already exists, and so do various Whit Mage and Curator characters, so if you want to spend all chanting mystically to protect your team, you can already do that.

My opinion is that buffing is the only element to a D&D Bard that sets him apart from a Beguiler, an Eldritch Knight, or an Assassin. So if I were going to try to do something new and different with a Bard, I would focus on making a buffer. Unfortunately, buffers have a bunch of well-known problems.

Basically the challenge with a buff character is to make their round to round decisions matter. You don't want their whole contribution to take place before the fight, you want them to pick and choose which buffs to apply, and you want there to be some suspense at the table while other players wait to see what they will do. Finally, as a flavor concern, I think it's kind of lame to have your character treated as a cheerleader by the characters in the fiction, even if that's their role in the mechanics. So, I decided to combine the Bard in with the "inspirational hero" archetypes like Aragorn. There are a lot of fantasy heroes who hit the battlefield with sword and shield at the front of their armies, but their contribution isn't personally killing enemies by the thousands so much as bolstering their side's organization and morale.

So if someone wanted to try to finish that project, you'd want to look at the inspire projects. The idea is that even if the character's main contribution to the group DPS is by buffing, he should be incentivized to actually do things and interact with the world -- fight, climb, chase, trip, whatever--rather than to just sit there singing. What he chooses to do has to influence the buff he hands out, so that switching from sword to bow or whatever matters even if his personal DPS doesn't.

A bard seems to be more about flavor than mechanics. Mechanically I can see them using music to do what clerics, duskblades, and sorcerers do.

Is there a fighter/mage class that's "tome approved" though?