Never heard of bards being described as feminine or useless.

Hard to qualify for in AD&D? Yes. Allmost pointless in 5e? Yes.

Bards seemed to hit their stride in 2e. They filled a support niche and could fight some as well. Somewhere between a druid and a thief.

No idea what they were like in 3 or 4e.

Quote from: Omega;1079869Never heard of bards being described as feminine or useless.

Hard to qualify for in AD&D? Yes. Allmost pointless in 5e? Yes.

Bards seemed to hit their stride in 2e. They filled a support niche and could fight some as well. Somewhere between a druid and a thief.

No idea what they were like in 3 or 4e.

Greetings!

Hello Omega! Why do you think Bards are almost pointless in 5E? What about them do you find to be so pathetic?

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: Snowman0147;1079720No I am too much of a land whale to be feminine.

Never seen Tess Holiday?

Quote from: SHARK;1079713What do you think? Thematically, do you think Bards are good and worthwhile? Mechanically, in D&D5E, is there something flawed about Bards that makes them a sub-par adventuring companion?

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

I really don't like how they are handled in 5e. 5e has a serious problem with redundancy with classes and the Bard is a prime example. The fact they're full casters is my biggest gripe. They're almost Sorcerers with support themed casting, almost Rogues with their expertise, almost Clerics with their access to healing. Bardic inspiration is a fun mechanic that I would keep but tone down in how much it increases.

Were I to have had a hand, I would have made Bard a subclass of Rogue that gains abilities surrounding the theme. Maybe make the subclass give some magic like the Arcane Trickster does, give it charisma casting, and feed more into the performer jack of all trades vibe.

To me, the most frustrating thing about Bards as a GM is them using Vicious Mockery from 60 ft as their primary means of attack. It ruins the vibe.

What other fantasy RPGs have bards? How do they deal with them?

BTW, the best bards I've ever played were the old Bard's Tales video games, as it was all about magic through music.

Quote from: SHARK;1079862I can certainly see room for a foppish, feminine Bard

Foppish and feminine are quite different. Johnny Depp's Captain Jack Sparrow is a fop, but not feminine. Dude doesn't ever bathe, yet gets nookie.

Quote from: AaronThePedantic;1079908To me, the most frustrating thing about Bards as a GM is them using Vicious Mockery from 60 ft as their primary means of attack. It ruins the vibe.

Welcome AaronthePedantic to the Mos Eisley of the internet!  Enjoy the forum and keep your blaster handy.

Vicious Mockery shouldn't work beyond 30 feet. If you are going to melt someone down with insults, its gotta be in your face.

Quote from: Jason Coplen;1079907Never seen Tess Holiday?

Do I want to?  Though with my statement I was referring to myself.

Honestly Aaron they should had gone four to six classes and just done the archtype route.  Paladin (lawful good knight who has the Mandate of Heaven and brings forth civilization) should be a divine version of the Eldritch Knight.

Being a charming Face character who spends lots of time with women and gets lots of female nookie was traditionally seen as un-masculine. Rock Star, Jack Sparrow types were seen as womanly. Real Men preferred the company of Men, except when making babies.

Quote from: SHARK;1079899Hello Omega! Why do you think Bards are almost pointless in 5E? What about them do you find to be so pathetic?

Pathetic? No. Nearly pointless. Yes. In 5e about every class has at least one magic path. The class feels redundant with how prevalent magic is in 5e. They can still do thieving stuff. But even that anyone can pick up. They still have the support ability. But so do more classes now. Especially the Fighter. It aso feels like they are too spell reliant now. I much preferred the playtest's cut-off of only up to level 5 spells.

Mind you. The class works fine and if you lack a thief or support caster in the party they fill those spaces well enough.

They also synergize well with other classes via bardic inspiration. Which they should have named something else.

Quote from: Omega;1079934Pathetic? No. Nearly pointless. Yes. In 5e about every class has at least one magic path. The class feels redundant with how prevalent magic is in 5e. They can still do thieving stuff. But even that anyone can pick up. They still have the support ability. But so do more classes now. Especially the Fighter. It aso feels like they are too spell reliant now. I much preferred the playtest's cut-off of only up to level 5 spells.

Mind you. The class works fine and if you lack a thief or support caster in the party they fill those spaces well enough.

They also synergize well with other classes via bardic inspiration. Which they should have named something else.

The 5e Bard is a very powerful primary caster who gets a lot of other stuff too. Depending on the game they can feel OP compared to most other casters.

Quote from: Omega;1079934Pathetic? No. Nearly pointless. Yes. In 5e about every class has at least one magic path. The class feels redundant with how prevalent magic is in 5e. They can still do thieving stuff. But even that anyone can pick up. They still have the support ability. But so do more classes now. Especially the Fighter. It aso feels like they are too spell reliant now. I much preferred the playtest's cut-off of only up to level 5 spells.

The main thing bards do for me is replace the cleric. That in and of itself makes them the most useful class in the game as I absolutely loathe the D&D cleric with its, until 4E, monopoly on healing while pushing paganism as a replacement for the monotheism that was the foundation of Western Civilization in the Medieval period it wants to emulate and generally being something that literally does not exist outside of D&D inspired fiction.

The cleric was crapped out to deal with a munchkin vampire PC in game and so ended up as an unholy potpourri of thematic elements based more on Van Helsing than a medieval priest, yet was pressed into service in all later D&D editions as the default priestly figure in their settings.

Frankly, the college of lore bard is thematically a better Medieval priest type figure (skilled/educated, doesn't wear heavy armor or use military weapons, can inspire their allies and casts subtle spells) than the D&D cleric will ever be while the Colleges of Valor and Swords are about the only way you can get a vaguely 4E warlord-shaped object in 5e (no, the Battlemaster fighter doesn't work because the most fundamental element of the 4E warlord was "completely replaces the the cleric... it's telling that in all my years playing and running 4E, even at Encounters events, I've never seen ANYONE play a cleric; plenty of warlords, some bards/skalds and even an artificer and shaman once, but never a cleric).

Frankly, I'd sooner dump the cleric (maybe keep their spell lists for spell secrets/college of lore) from the system before I'd drop the bard from 5e. I'm never going back to a system where the cleric holds a monopoly on healing; that crap can die in a dumpster fire.

For that matter, dump divine magic entirely, turn the paladin into a flavor of Eldritch Knight and make the druid someone who taps into magic through nature instead of a nature god and maybe you could finally do something interesting with religion in D&D for once... like build them based on Faith alone instead of having overt divine intervention removing all doubt. Spellcasting priests would be scholars who studied magic and cast it just like anyone else would (many Catholic religious throughout the Medieval and Renaissance periods studied the 'natural magics' of the day; the precursors of what today is chemistry, physics, medicine and astronomy) and neither side in a holy war could provide any real proof their God was on their side (other than the usual "we won so it's God's will" that is still used to this day in the real world).

TL;DR the Bard lets me kill the cleric; ergo it is the best class in the game.

Not sure about 3 and 4 e. But the Druid used to have a spread of healing spells too? Not as many as the cleric. But they made for a good healer when needed.

I hear the 2e Complete Handbook of Bards is a thing of beauty...

Also, the Birthright Bard Guilder kit was nice... a bard who could wear up to breastplate IIRC. Nice for merchants who take no shit while traveling.

I have the Complete Bards book, though it is in storage now. Was pretty good. 2e also introduced the Liche Bard, a good aligned undead. Or at least non-evil aligned.

Speaking of the Complete series. I had the Humanoids and Psionics ones and both were fairly good as well.

Well, in the scheme of having so many classes, I like the Bard just fine.  If anything in that pattern, I'd keep the bard while dumping the sorcerer and warlock.  Then make the latter two paths off of the bard (if we must).  Though if you wanted to name the primary thing "sorcerer" and have bardic stuff as a path from it, I wouldn't mind that either.  It's not as if "Magical musical character" needs a class and 5+ paths to express it.

Though if we are going that route, I'd make a Scout/Ranger primary with no spells (with spell-casting paths, as Eldritch Knight is to Fighter).  Then dump most of the Cleric and some of the Paladin stuff (particularly Lay on Hands) into a base Priest class, with some armored paths as options.  Though the path named "Paladin" gets reserved for a primary Fighter that paths into a bit of healing.  And now that we've slayed that many sacred cows, the Wizard/Bard/Sorcerer stuff gets lumped into a "Loremaster" primary, with paths focusing more on specific magic, generalized hyper magic (wizard) or skills.  If someone wants to keep "Wizard" as the main class, I'd not quibble.

With the 5E structure, you could even do a credible job of simplicity with most of the options still preserved going with Warrior, Wizard, Priest, and Scout, and then notable paths to give the most common options available.  Heck, conceptually, just do Warrior (paths: More Warrior, dabble Wizard, dabble Priest, dabble Scout), and then the same parallel combos for Wizard, Priest, and Scout.  Add a few redundant combos with different slants for flavor. Maybe 20 in all.  Call it done.  About the only thing left out would be the Monk.  Call the Warrior(priest) a "Monk" and flavor appropriately.  If you don't squint at it too hard, it would be close enough.  And if all of that isn't enough, do a 5th primary of Expert, and that leaves room to push into the 25-35 path range.  Plenty of room for source books to sell later.  It also pushes back a little on the overwhelming focus of casters in the various combinations.

Ha, but having gone that far, I'd also tweak the ability scores, and somewhere in there it stopped being D&D.