the bard spell list is really weird and has some neat spells that you might not expect a bard to have, but there are also like a lot of spells that fit thematically for the bard that arent on the list for some reason, and so i made this post to complain about them, this is by no means an complete list so feel free to add your own complaints too and some of them did end up getting fixed by the classvariants ua but i will still complain becuase they should have been there from the start:
mass healing word: for whatever reason, bards get mass cure wounds but not mass healing word despite being kind of all about the spoken word
divine word: the first sentence of this spell reads "you utter an divine word, imbued with the power that shaped the world at the dawn of creation", and riddle me this, how do bards think their spells work? well to quote the players handbook "Bards say that the multiverse was spoken into existence, that the words of the gods gave it shape, and that echoes of these primordial Words of Creation still resound throughout the cosmos. The music of bards is an attempt to snatch and harness those echoes, subtly woven into their spells and powers." it almost feels like this spell was designed for the bard and not the cleric, and that power word heal (who for some reason is an bard-exclusive spell) was made for the cleric and not the bard
haste: an fantastic little buff available to many other arcane spell casters that could be useful for more combat focused bards as a nice little boost that could also easily be reflavoured as a little pep-talk / music number to motivate your companion
magic circle: they already have the another 3rd level spell were you pour valuable powder on the ground with glyph of warding, and they also got planar binding, an spell that is complimented very nicely by magic circle, maybe does not fit quite as nicely as the other ones
Not really, it makes no sense for an bard, the sound based class, to have to spend one of their precious few magical secrets choices to gain acess to mass healing word, or to gain acess to the manifestation of what gives the class its power, especially when many players never get to play a bard long enough to get magical secrets at 10th level, maybe a Bit more resonable for divine word since it seems like an spell few would know of and you get your next Magic secret one level after your first 7th level spell slot, but still it seems like something the bard should have acess to by default, not really something they must pay to earn
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i am soup, with too many ideas (all of them very spicy) who has made sufficient homebrew material and character to last an thousand human lifetimes
Not really, it makes no sense for an bard, the sound based class, to have to spend one of their precious few magical secrets choices to gain acess to mass healing word, or to gain acess to the manifestation of what gives the class its power, especially when many players never get to play a bard long enough to get magical secrets at 10th level, maybe a Bit more resonable for divine word since it seems like an spell few would know of and you get your next Magic secret one level after your first 7th level spell slot, but still it seems like something the bard should have acess to by default, not really something they must pay to earn
Except that it does, since Bards aren't traditionally as focused on healing as Clerics and just because something is soundbased (which is pretty much most of the spells) doesn't mean it is automatically in the domain of bards. Bards use arcane magic and not divine magic so it's not a given that bards should have divine word just because the word "word" is in the name of the spell. Which is kind of a weird stance anyways. Fighters don't get spells that have the word "weapon" in them, despite them being, supposedly, the best weapon users. You wouldn't expect your cleric to get Bigby's Magic Hand just because you name him Bigby, would you? Despite it being in the name and all?
Lore bards, which are very popular, don't have to wait until level 10 to get magical secrets. And if the bards don't get to level 10 the clerics will neither, so it's not that's really not an argument.
At least bards should get some chances to earn expertise with Mercantile proficiency. Ohh wait, this proficiency it's not yet implemented ?? What da...........
Mass Healing Word is a really obvious oversight for Bards. Bards get Healing Word, Cure Wounds, and Mass Cure Wounds. But they don't get Mass Healing Word.
The good news is that the UA released a couple of months ago addresses this. Jeremy Crawford said that the expansions to the spell lists was stuff that was either an oversight in leaving off in the first place or was something they just felt made sense. Hopefully these will all make it to an official release some day. The only thing that I still think is a really obvious exclusion is Counterspell. But it's clear at this point that it's not an oversight and they want a Bard to have to use a magical secrets slot to get it. But I think it's such an obvious spell for a Bard (especially a Lore Bard, with things like Cutting Words) that it should be included by default.
The expanded spell list for bards is as follows:
1st Level Cause fear (Xanathar’s Guide) Color spray Command
2nd Level Aid Enlarge/reduce Mind spike (Xanathar’s Guide) Mirror image
3rd Level Mass healing word Slow Tiny servant (Xanathar’s Guide)
4th Level Phantasmal killer
5th Level Contact other plane(ritual) Rary’s telepathic bond (ritual)
it's not a given that bards should have divine word just because the word "word" is in the name of the spell.
That is not why i think bards should get divine word, i think bards should get this spell becuase it seems to derive its power from the song of creation / is part of the song of creation (Or at least that is implied by the description), the same thing that all bard spells are derived from. Read the description of the spell, then read the fluff at the start of the bard class, the spell is the pinnacle of bardic Magic and what all bards strive to achive, it has just as much if not more to do with the bard than it does with the cleric, if not much more to do with the bard, it makes some sense that it would be harder for an bard to get it than a cleric who could just be given the spell from their god instead of having to do research to acquire it, but like any old cleric, even clerics worshipping gods of destruction who never made anything and who was born long after the birth of the universe can aquire this spell no problem
And it would still make more sense for bards to have mass healing word instead of mass cure wounds as mass healing word is a much weaker spell but also one that allows them to heal while performing other tasks, healing is not their Main purpose after all
Biotic hamster not to be hostile i have made it clear in the post that i'd already seen the UA article, also counterspell does not at all fit the bard list, as it is normally reserved for the classes with a more acedemic approach to Magic, that being warlocks and wizards, as well as sorcerer becuase they are Magic, it is a spell reserved for the wand weilding, robe wearing, archetypical mage, shure bards have some Magic that is disruptive in nature, and they have some basic abillity to untangle Magic with dispel Magic and remove curse, but its not something every bard should have by default.
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i am soup, with too many ideas (all of them very spicy) who has made sufficient homebrew material and character to last an thousand human lifetimes
That is not why i think bards should get divine word, i think bards should get this spell becuase it seems to derive its power from the song of creation / is part of the song of creation (Or at least that is implied by the description), the same thing that all bard spells are derived from.
Bards think this of all magic (if you choose at adher to that one particular piece of fluff), not just the spells on their spell list.
And it would still make more sense for bards to have mass healing word instead of mass cure wounds as mass healing word is a much weaker spell but also one that allies them to heal while performing other tasks, healing is not their Main purpose after all
Healing can very well be the main purpose of a particular bard. The whole point of bards is that they can be pretty much whatever they want. :)
Biotic hamster not to be hostile i have made it clear in the post that i'd already seen the UA article, also counterspell does not at all fit the bard list, as it is normally reserved for the classes with a more acedemic approach to Magic, that being warlocks and wizards, as well as sorcerer becuase they are Magic, it is a spell reserved for the wand weilding, robe wearing, archetypical mage, shure bards have some Magic that is disruptive in nature, and they have some basic abillity to untangle Magic with dispel Magic and remove curse, but its not something every bard should have by default.
I also wasn't trying to be hostile by sharing the UA expanded spell list, just adding to the conversation :)
On the topic of Counterspell, I just disagree. I think of a Bard's role as being one of disrupting the battlefield by buffing allies and debuffing enemies. Counterspell really feels like a Bard spell in that regard. But clearly WotC doesn't agree with me or they would have included it, lol.
Biotic hamster not to be hostile i have made it clear in the post that i'd already seen the UA article, also counterspell does not at all fit the bard list, as it is normally reserved for the classes with a more acedemic approach to Magic, that being warlocks and wizards, as well as sorcerer becuase they are Magic, it is a spell reserved for the wand weilding, robe wearing, archetypical mage, shure bards have some Magic that is disruptive in nature, and they have some basic abillity to untangle Magic with dispel Magic and remove curse, but its not something every bard should have by default.
I also wasn't trying to be hostile by sharing the UA expanded spell list, just adding to the conversation :)
On the topic of Counterspell, I just disagree. I think of a Bard's role as being one of disrupting the battlefield by buffing allies and debuffing enemies. Counterspell really feels like a Bard spell in that regard. But clearly WotC doesn't agree with me or they would have included it, lol.
I was not trying to say you were hostile, i was trying to clarify that i made no atempt to sound mean and that my words carried no ill will becuase when i read what i had written i kind of sounded like an arsehole
That is not why i think bards should get divine word, i think bards should get this spell becuase it seems to derive its power from the song of creation / is part of the song of creation (Or at least that is implied by the description), the same thing that all bard spells are derived from.
Bards think this of all magic (if you choose at adher to that one particular piece of fluff), not just the spells on their spell list.
"...and that echoes of these primordial Words of Creation still resound throughout the Cosmos. The music of bards is an attempt to snatch and harness those echoes, subtly woven into their spells and powers"
nothing here says nor implies that bards think all Magic is somehow derived from these ancient primordial echoes, so ether a) you misremembered this thing, b) you have some other source, in that case please show it to me or c) i somehow misunderstood your point.
In fact, seeing as how all their spells are just concealed fragments of these words, shurely an master bard should be able to snatch up an entire word and speak it bluntly, should he not? Does that not make a thousand percent more sense than being able to cast an Wall made of magical lazers with prismatic wall, as can they do without resorting to magical secrets with class variants?
And it would still make more sense for bards to have mass healing word instead of mass cure wounds as mass healing word is a much weaker spell but also one that allies them to heal while performing other tasks, healing is not their Main purpose after all
Healing can very well be the main purpose of a particular bard. The whole point of bards is that they can be pretty much whatever they want. :)
...you just Said bards are not traditionally focused on healing (something i and many others agree on) and that is why they do not get every healing spell, so then why not give them a spell that reflects this while also making more sense from an aestetic point of view, and then letting those who need it use magical secrets to gain the more potent spells like mass cure wounds, the infamous and now nerfed healing spirit, aura of vitality, prayer of healing etc
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i am soup, with too many ideas (all of them very spicy) who has made sufficient homebrew material and character to last an thousand human lifetimes
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the bard spell list is really weird and has some neat spells that you might not expect a bard to have, but there are also like a lot of spells that fit thematically for the bard that arent on the list for some reason, and so i made this post to complain about them, this is by no means an complete list so feel free to add your own complaints too and some of them did end up getting fixed by the classvariants ua but i will still complain becuase they should have been there from the start:
mass healing word: for whatever reason, bards get mass cure wounds but not mass healing word despite being kind of all about the spoken word
divine word: the first sentence of this spell reads "you utter an divine word, imbued with the power that shaped the world at the dawn of creation", and riddle me this, how do bards think their spells work? well to quote the players handbook "Bards say that the multiverse was spoken into existence, that the words of the gods gave it shape, and that echoes of these primordial Words of Creation still resound throughout the cosmos. The music of bards is an attempt to snatch and harness those echoes, subtly woven into their spells and powers." it almost feels like this spell was designed for the bard and not the cleric, and that power word heal (who for some reason is an bard-exclusive spell) was made for the cleric and not the bard
haste: an fantastic little buff available to many other arcane spell casters that could be useful for more combat focused bards as a nice little boost that could also easily be reflavoured as a little pep-talk / music number to motivate your companion
magic circle: they already have the another 3rd level spell were you pour valuable powder on the ground with glyph of warding, and they also got planar binding, an spell that is complimented very nicely by magic circle, maybe does not fit quite as nicely as the other ones
i am soup, with too many ideas (all of them very spicy) who has made sufficient homebrew material and character to last an thousand human lifetimes
Well, the solution is obvious: Magical. Secrets.
Not really, it makes no sense for an bard, the sound based class, to have to spend one of their precious few magical secrets choices to gain acess to mass healing word, or to gain acess to the manifestation of what gives the class its power, especially when many players never get to play a bard long enough to get magical secrets at 10th level, maybe a Bit more resonable for divine word since it seems like an spell few would know of and you get your next Magic secret one level after your first 7th level spell slot, but still it seems like something the bard should have acess to by default, not really something they must pay to earn
i am soup, with too many ideas (all of them very spicy) who has made sufficient homebrew material and character to last an thousand human lifetimes
Except that it does, since Bards aren't traditionally as focused on healing as Clerics and just because something is soundbased (which is pretty much most of the spells) doesn't mean it is automatically in the domain of bards. Bards use arcane magic and not divine magic so it's not a given that bards should have divine word just because the word "word" is in the name of the spell. Which is kind of a weird stance anyways. Fighters don't get spells that have the word "weapon" in them, despite them being, supposedly, the best weapon users. You wouldn't expect your cleric to get Bigby's Magic Hand just because you name him Bigby, would you? Despite it being in the name and all?
Lore bards, which are very popular, don't have to wait until level 10 to get magical secrets. And if the bards don't get to level 10 the clerics will neither, so it's not that's really not an argument.
At least bards should get some chances to earn expertise with Mercantile proficiency. Ohh wait, this proficiency it's not yet implemented ?? What da...........
My Ready-to-rock&roll chars:
Dertinus Tristany // Amilcar Barca // Vicenç Sacrarius // Oriol Deulofeu // Grovtuk
Mass Healing Word is a really obvious oversight for Bards. Bards get Healing Word, Cure Wounds, and Mass Cure Wounds. But they don't get Mass Healing Word.
The good news is that the UA released a couple of months ago addresses this. Jeremy Crawford said that the expansions to the spell lists was stuff that was either an oversight in leaving off in the first place or was something they just felt made sense. Hopefully these will all make it to an official release some day. The only thing that I still think is a really obvious exclusion is Counterspell. But it's clear at this point that it's not an oversight and they want a Bard to have to use a magical secrets slot to get it. But I think it's such an obvious spell for a Bard (especially a Lore Bard, with things like Cutting Words) that it should be included by default.
The expanded spell list for bards is as follows:
1st Level
Cause fear (Xanathar’s Guide)
Color spray
Command
2nd Level
Aid
Enlarge/reduce
Mind spike (Xanathar’s Guide)
Mirror image
3rd Level
Mass healing word
Slow
Tiny servant (Xanathar’s Guide)
4th Level
Phantasmal killer
5th Level Contact other plane(ritual)
Rary’s telepathic bond (ritual)
6th Level Heroes’ feast
Mental prison (Xanathar’s Guide)
Scatter (Xanathar’s Guide)
Tenser’s transformation (Xanathar’s Guide)
7th Level Power word pain (Xanathar’s Guide)
Prismatic spray
8th Level
Antipathy/sympathy
Maze
9th Level
Prismatic wall
That is not why i think bards should get divine word, i think bards should get this spell becuase it seems to derive its power from the song of creation / is part of the song of creation (Or at least that is implied by the description), the same thing that all bard spells are derived from. Read the description of the spell, then read the fluff at the start of the bard class, the spell is the pinnacle of bardic Magic and what all bards strive to achive, it has just as much if not more to do with the bard than it does with the cleric, if not much more to do with the bard, it makes some sense that it would be harder for an bard to get it than a cleric who could just be given the spell from their god instead of having to do research to acquire it, but like any old cleric, even clerics worshipping gods of destruction who never made anything and who was born long after the birth of the universe can aquire this spell no problem
And it would still make more sense for bards to have mass healing word instead of mass cure wounds as mass healing word is a much weaker spell but also one that allows them to heal while performing other tasks, healing is not their Main purpose after all
i am soup, with too many ideas (all of them very spicy) who has made sufficient homebrew material and character to last an thousand human lifetimes
Biotic hamster not to be hostile i have made it clear in the post that i'd already seen the UA article, also counterspell does not at all fit the bard list, as it is normally reserved for the classes with a more acedemic approach to Magic, that being warlocks and wizards, as well as sorcerer becuase they are Magic, it is a spell reserved for the wand weilding, robe wearing, archetypical mage, shure bards have some Magic that is disruptive in nature, and they have some basic abillity to untangle Magic with dispel Magic and remove curse, but its not something every bard should have by default.
i am soup, with too many ideas (all of them very spicy) who has made sufficient homebrew material and character to last an thousand human lifetimes
Bards think this of all magic (if you choose at adher to that one particular piece of fluff), not just the spells on their spell list.
Healing can very well be the main purpose of a particular bard. The whole point of bards is that they can be pretty much whatever they want. :)
I also wasn't trying to be hostile by sharing the UA expanded spell list, just adding to the conversation :)
On the topic of Counterspell, I just disagree. I think of a Bard's role as being one of disrupting the battlefield by buffing allies and debuffing enemies. Counterspell really feels like a Bard spell in that regard. But clearly WotC doesn't agree with me or they would have included it, lol.
I was not trying to say you were hostile, i was trying to clarify that i made no atempt to sound mean and that my words carried no ill will becuase when i read what i had written i kind of sounded like an arsehole
"...and that echoes of these primordial Words of Creation still resound throughout the Cosmos. The music of bards is an attempt to snatch and harness those echoes, subtly woven into their spells and powers"
nothing here says nor implies that bards think all Magic is somehow derived from these ancient primordial echoes, so ether a) you misremembered this thing, b) you have some other source, in that case please show it to me or c) i somehow misunderstood your point.
In fact, seeing as how all their spells are just concealed fragments of these words, shurely an master bard should be able to snatch up an entire word and speak it bluntly, should he not? Does that not make a thousand percent more sense than being able to cast an Wall made of magical lazers with prismatic wall, as can they do without resorting to magical secrets with class variants?
...you just Said bards are not traditionally focused on healing (something i and many others agree on) and that is why they do not get every healing spell, so then why not give them a spell that reflects this while also making more sense from an aestetic point of view, and then letting those who need it use magical secrets to gain the more potent spells like mass cure wounds, the infamous and now nerfed healing spirit, aura of vitality, prayer of healing etc
i am soup, with too many ideas (all of them very spicy) who has made sufficient homebrew material and character to last an thousand human lifetimes