I want to make a smart and charismatic Bard bounty hunter. I have mostly figured out the build but suggestions are welcome. I mostly want ideas for the backstory and personality but, as other people have said when I was researching this, I don't want to be that guy. I don't want to be stereotypical for the most part and the alignment is good. Any suggestions are appreciated, thank you and have a nice day. Also this the first time I've posted here so sorry if I did so in the wrong section.
What sort of things do you see the bard doing? how do they hunt the bounties, do they play a tune and force them to dance back to jail, or do they just rely on their generally-good-at-everything nature to get them through each thing, plus a lot of prior plannign so that in the midst of the fight, the bounty steps on the floorboard you loosened earlier, falls through the wall you rotted with acid yesterday, into a sack you hung up and onto your waiting horse even as you leap from the window shouting "Hi-Ho Silver!"?
Just some details of roughly what you want them to be like, plus what build you're using, will help a lot!
Suggested build Half-Elf / Bard (Eloquence) / Bounty Hunter. A bard bounty hunter that rely on magic, wits and diplomacy to hunt down fugitives and bring them back to face justice with intimidation or persuasion, convincing them to turn themselves in, using promises of bail bonding them while in its in the custody, and to represent them for any case or appeal in court of justice thereafter etc
Basically a mix of a marshal, bounty hunter and lawyer that use its tongue muscles to advance the cause of justice, while making money by using their precarious positions as leverage or negociaiton to its own advantage.
Such character could have a network of contacts both with city officials, magistrates, rulers, guards as well as the criminal underworld, trading infos, favors and whatnot to learn anything that get him or her clsoer to it's bounty, until captured and enthralled by a silvery tongue convincing them that cooperating his in their best interests, especially if it can bargain a reduced sentence for them, or even remission.
Where in the end in screw them in the critical moment they need help the most, only to raising up the price even more for last resort favor on promise to try and talk to people for revision etc...
ThorukDuckSlayer sorry for not being more specific. I want them to be like really charismatic and going after high society bounties. For example they go to a noble ball and get there target. I want to focus on the good at everything thing not the music so much.
ah ok, so your character infiltrates high society events with a goal to bringing in the illicit traders and hidden vampires & slave owners and whatnot, rather than hunting down Butch McStabson the unwashed assassin of the highway & engaging in high speed horse-chases.
You will want a background which grants the use of a disguise kit. As far as a story is concerned, your motives could be based on a long-standing belief that those with money should not be exempt from the law. You are an expert in infiltrating their events, forging documents and invitations as an when. Maybe you have a criminal family after you for locking up their leader.
The thing with a backstory, to me, is that A: it doesn't make you the chosen one or the main character, and B: it gives you motives for being in the adventure. So at that point, you need to discuss with your DM to find out the plothooks needed for the adventure (a bounty-hunter is unlikely to be delving in a dungeon, but one who has been promised their freedom from the crime family chasing them if they bringf them an artefact from the dungeon might!)
It's a cool sounding character, and certainly one which has legs to stand on for many adventures!
ThorukDuckSlayer this backstory is a great idea. I was just thinking of using the Urban Bounty Hunter background, while it doesn’t have a disguise kit it’s feature lets me have an informant in every city. I don’t know the campaign because the DM doesn’t want me to look it up but I can think of a reason when I find out I guess. Thank you for helping me, I appreciate it.
ThorukDuckSlayer this backstory is a great idea. I was just thinking of using the Urban Bounty Hunter background, while it doesn’t have a disguise kit it’s feature lets me have an informant in every city. I don’t know the campaign because the DM doesn’t want me to look it up but I can think of a reason when I find out I guess. Thank you for helping me, I appreciate it.
It's usually ok for most DMs if you directly ask them for info such as "why would a character go on a campaign", making your backstory is best when it's collaborative between you and the rest of the party/DM. You don't want to say "I am an deposed orc chief from a huge mountain where they ride dragons" and then find out the world has no dragons and orcs are not welcome in the city where you're playing! Things like running from a crime family will be great to get the DM involved in so that it can come up in future games (this came up in a game I'm playing, my character has scammed many people and ended up convincing the guards to throw two assassins off the boat because they were trying to kill him!)
I guess if you're going for high society, informants may be less useful - they aren't hiding, they just think they're above the law!
ThorukDuckSlayer sorry for not being more specific. I want them to be like really charismatic and going after high society bounties. For example they go to a nobles ball and get there target. I want to focus on the good at everything thing not the music so much.
Ooh, interesting. You're going after White Collar criminals. There's a few different ways you could go with that.
You could go with the Noble Background and make a Gentleman Detective, one who uses their connections to take down fellow nobles who are corrupt. Kind of like Sherlock Holmes if he acted a bit more like his brother Mycroft. He would be refined and supremely educated, effortlessly deducing crimes through all his knowledge.
Or you could go with the the Charlatan Background and be a Neil Caffrey from White Collar, able to blend in like a chameleon to high society and lie his way into any secret fraternity and winnow out their secrets. This personality will be super sociable and smooth like silk.
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Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
What would you suggest for a background? I was thinking because it works well mechanically but not thematically.
Courtier. Your feature: court functionary means you intuit power structures, tensions, dynamics, basically you understand how things get done in circles of power. This is a power that can be used for good or ill. If you want to really dive into it, find a good translation of Castiglione's Book of the Courtier. Think of it as the humane counterpoint to Machiavelli. If The Prince was about wielding real power, The Book of the Courtier basically invents the art of soft power, they just give it the cooler name Sprezzatura. You know how to get things done as if it was done with ease. D&D with all its swashbucklers and intrigue aspirationalists out there could use more Sprezzatura.
Anyway that court functionary feature will not get you "informants" per se, but you'll be able to read the room and workings of any court or (with DM granting) power structure and know who to talk to, and equally important how to approach and talk to them.
For subclass I'd go with Whisper Bard. As I said in another thread recently, it's got a skillset to fall back on if nice words aren't getting you where you need to go ... and while Mantle of Whispers and Shadow Lore are "dark" powers, I can see a "good guy" making use of them against the big bads and evils of the game world.
I'd actually say quite a few Shakespearean characters with significant agency that doesn't have the title King are likely whisper bards with courtier backgrounds, Horatio and Iago as two wildly different variations. Polonious, with a lot of meh to bad rolls. One could say Hamlet too (technically noble birth but political reality sort of puts him more in the courtier department, but a courtier with a lot of contemptuous pushback against the system).
MidnightPlat said what I was going to suggest, only with more sprezzatura! A Whisper Bard Courtier could be disillusioned with the System, or a fixer for other nobles to start, or both. It’s a natural fit for your idea.
What I will add is that Whisper Bard gives you three features that potentially work as non-combat ways to bring in bounties. Words of Terror frightens your quarry for an hour at 3rd level. Mantle of Whispers gives you super disguise at 6th level. At 14th level, you can use Shadow Lore to charm your target for 8 hours - they’ll turn themselves in!
Mantle of Whispers is a great feature for infiltration ... though it does put the bounty hunter's ethic into a "by any means necessary" mode given the whole death requirement. I usually sum up this type in my games by bringing up that quip between Chirrut and Baze about Andor in Rogue One, "Does he have the face of a killer?" "He's got the face of a friend." It gets into that Bond of the Daniel Craig variety, charming maybe even capable of vulnerability but can a flip a switch become capable of doing some very ice cold things. Not sure if we're drifting away from the Gentleman Bounty Hunter (sort of like Schultz as played by Chirstopher Waltz in Django Unchained)
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I want to make a smart and charismatic Bard bounty hunter. I have mostly figured out the build but suggestions are welcome. I mostly want ideas for the backstory and personality but, as other people have said when I was researching this, I don't want to be that guy. I don't want to be stereotypical for the most part and the alignment is good. Any suggestions are appreciated, thank you and have a nice day. Also this the first time I've posted here so sorry if I did so in the wrong section.
I feel like we need some more info for this!
What sort of things do you see the bard doing? how do they hunt the bounties, do they play a tune and force them to dance back to jail, or do they just rely on their generally-good-at-everything nature to get them through each thing, plus a lot of prior plannign so that in the midst of the fight, the bounty steps on the floorboard you loosened earlier, falls through the wall you rotted with acid yesterday, into a sack you hung up and onto your waiting horse even as you leap from the window shouting "Hi-Ho Silver!"?
Just some details of roughly what you want them to be like, plus what build you're using, will help a lot!
Make your Artificer work with any other class with 174 Multiclassing Feats for your Artificer Multiclass Character!
DM's Guild Releases on This Thread - latest release; the Harvest Sprite, a playable Jack-o-Lantern Race!
Or check them all out on DMs Guild!
DrivethruRPG Releases on This Thread - latest release: The College of Fisticuffs Bard!
I also dabble in art on here (my art thread)
Suggested build Half-Elf / Bard (Eloquence) / Bounty Hunter. A bard bounty hunter that rely on magic, wits and diplomacy to hunt down fugitives and bring them back to face justice with intimidation or persuasion, convincing them to turn themselves in, using promises of bail bonding them while in its in the custody, and to represent them for any case or appeal in court of justice thereafter etc
Basically a mix of a marshal, bounty hunter and lawyer that use its tongue muscles to advance the cause of justice, while making money by using their precarious positions as leverage or negociaiton to its own advantage.
Such character could have a network of contacts both with city officials, magistrates, rulers, guards as well as the criminal underworld, trading infos, favors and whatnot to learn anything that get him or her clsoer to it's bounty, until captured and enthralled by a silvery tongue convincing them that cooperating his in their best interests, especially if it can bargain a reduced sentence for them, or even remission.
Where in the end in screw them in the critical moment they need help the most, only to raising up the price even more for last resort favor on promise to try and talk to people for revision etc...
ThorukDuckSlayer sorry for not being more specific. I want them to be like really charismatic and going after high society bounties. For example they go to a noble ball and get there target. I want to focus on the good at everything thing not the music so much.
Plaguescarred this is sort of thing I was thinking of. Thank you this is good.
ah ok, so your character infiltrates high society events with a goal to bringing in the illicit traders and hidden vampires & slave owners and whatnot, rather than hunting down Butch McStabson the unwashed assassin of the highway & engaging in high speed horse-chases.
You will want a background which grants the use of a disguise kit. As far as a story is concerned, your motives could be based on a long-standing belief that those with money should not be exempt from the law. You are an expert in infiltrating their events, forging documents and invitations as an when. Maybe you have a criminal family after you for locking up their leader.
The thing with a backstory, to me, is that A: it doesn't make you the chosen one or the main character, and B: it gives you motives for being in the adventure. So at that point, you need to discuss with your DM to find out the plothooks needed for the adventure (a bounty-hunter is unlikely to be delving in a dungeon, but one who has been promised their freedom from the crime family chasing them if they bringf them an artefact from the dungeon might!)
It's a cool sounding character, and certainly one which has legs to stand on for many adventures!
Make your Artificer work with any other class with 174 Multiclassing Feats for your Artificer Multiclass Character!
DM's Guild Releases on This Thread - latest release; the Harvest Sprite, a playable Jack-o-Lantern Race!
Or check them all out on DMs Guild!
DrivethruRPG Releases on This Thread - latest release: The College of Fisticuffs Bard!
I also dabble in art on here (my art thread)
ThorukDuckSlayer this backstory is a great idea. I was just thinking of using the Urban Bounty Hunter background, while it doesn’t have a disguise kit it’s feature lets me have an informant in every city. I don’t know the campaign because the DM doesn’t want me to look it up but I can think of a reason when I find out I guess. Thank you for helping me, I appreciate it.
It's usually ok for most DMs if you directly ask them for info such as "why would a character go on a campaign", making your backstory is best when it's collaborative between you and the rest of the party/DM. You don't want to say "I am an deposed orc chief from a huge mountain where they ride dragons" and then find out the world has no dragons and orcs are not welcome in the city where you're playing! Things like running from a crime family will be great to get the DM involved in so that it can come up in future games (this came up in a game I'm playing, my character has scammed many people and ended up convincing the guards to throw two assassins off the boat because they were trying to kill him!)
I guess if you're going for high society, informants may be less useful - they aren't hiding, they just think they're above the law!
Make your Artificer work with any other class with 174 Multiclassing Feats for your Artificer Multiclass Character!
DM's Guild Releases on This Thread - latest release; the Harvest Sprite, a playable Jack-o-Lantern Race!
Or check them all out on DMs Guild!
DrivethruRPG Releases on This Thread - latest release: The College of Fisticuffs Bard!
I also dabble in art on here (my art thread)
ThorukDuckSlayer thank you for all the ideas, I appreciate it.
What would you suggest for a background? I was thinking Charlatan because it works well mechanically but not thematically.
Ooh, interesting. You're going after White Collar criminals. There's a few different ways you could go with that.
You could go with the Noble Background and make a Gentleman Detective, one who uses their connections to take down fellow nobles who are corrupt. Kind of like Sherlock Holmes if he acted a bit more like his brother Mycroft. He would be refined and supremely educated, effortlessly deducing crimes through all his knowledge.
Or you could go with the the Charlatan Background and be a Neil Caffrey from White Collar, able to blend in like a chameleon to high society and lie his way into any secret fraternity and winnow out their secrets. This personality will be super sociable and smooth like silk.
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
Courtier. Your feature: court functionary means you intuit power structures, tensions, dynamics, basically you understand how things get done in circles of power. This is a power that can be used for good or ill. If you want to really dive into it, find a good translation of Castiglione's Book of the Courtier. Think of it as the humane counterpoint to Machiavelli. If The Prince was about wielding real power, The Book of the Courtier basically invents the art of soft power, they just give it the cooler name Sprezzatura. You know how to get things done as if it was done with ease. D&D with all its swashbucklers and intrigue aspirationalists out there could use more Sprezzatura.
Anyway that court functionary feature will not get you "informants" per se, but you'll be able to read the room and workings of any court or (with DM granting) power structure and know who to talk to, and equally important how to approach and talk to them.
For subclass I'd go with Whisper Bard. As I said in another thread recently, it's got a skillset to fall back on if nice words aren't getting you where you need to go ... and while Mantle of Whispers and Shadow Lore are "dark" powers, I can see a "good guy" making use of them against the big bads and evils of the game world.
I'd actually say quite a few Shakespearean characters with significant agency that doesn't have the title King are likely whisper bards with courtier backgrounds, Horatio and Iago as two wildly different variations. Polonious, with a lot of meh to bad rolls. One could say Hamlet too (technically noble birth but political reality sort of puts him more in the courtier department, but a courtier with a lot of contemptuous pushback against the system).
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
MidnightPlat said what I was going to suggest, only with more sprezzatura! A Whisper Bard Courtier could be disillusioned with the System, or a fixer for other nobles to start, or both. It’s a natural fit for your idea.
What I will add is that Whisper Bard gives you three features that potentially work as non-combat ways to bring in bounties. Words of Terror frightens your quarry for an hour at 3rd level. Mantle of Whispers gives you super disguise at 6th level. At 14th level, you can use Shadow Lore to charm your target for 8 hours - they’ll turn themselves in!
Mantle of Whispers is a great feature for infiltration ... though it does put the bounty hunter's ethic into a "by any means necessary" mode given the whole death requirement. I usually sum up this type in my games by bringing up that quip between Chirrut and Baze about Andor in Rogue One, "Does he have the face of a killer?" "He's got the face of a friend." It gets into that Bond of the Daniel Craig variety, charming maybe even capable of vulnerability but can a flip a switch become capable of doing some very ice cold things. Not sure if we're drifting away from the Gentleman Bounty Hunter (sort of like Schultz as played by Chirstopher Waltz in Django Unchained)
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Thank you everyone for all the ideas, I really appreciate it.