Yeah, people typically lean into knowledge or social skills over more thiefy stuff, and there's a whole two subclasses that make waving a weapon around even halfway viable for them (and they don't get the two blade cantrips). They're basically a full caster/skill monkey hybrid that's trading off the ability to shuffle their ready spell repertoire around for their skills and pulling elements from the Wizard, Cleric, and Druid lists. It's possible earlier editions did a bit more with weapons, especially back before cantrips were a standard feature for full casters, but in 5e that rapier is more a fashion accessory than a part of their actual combat repertoire.
Yeah, people typically lean into knowledge or social skills over more thiefy stuff, and there's a whole two subclasses that make waving a weapon around even halfway viable for them (and they don't get the two blade cantrips). They're basically a full caster/skill monkey hybrid that's trading off the ability to shuffle their ready spell repertoire around for their skills and pulling elements from the Wizard, Cleric, and Druid lists. It's possible earlier editions did a bit more with weapons, especially back before cantrips were a standard feature for full casters, but in 5e that rapier is more a fashion accessory than a part of their actual combat repertoire.
Bards in D&D have always tended to resemble rogues more than they do historical bards. Even the way they have been depicted in the books over the years. They look like rogues. With the addition of a musical instrument the only real distinguishing feature in just about any portrayal of them.
The majority of bards I've encountered at the table have been fops and seducers. Swashbuckler types. Rogues. Literal rogues. With little to nothing in common with historical bards.
Bards would be more bardic if they had no access to spells but were more martially capable and if the only real feature that makes them even bardic—bardic inspiration—was developed so that it grew in power beyond just increasing the die to be used by a single target. The one thing that makes them unique doesn't even really progress. No bard at even the highest of levels can "inspire" more than one ally at a time? That's just silly. They could at least allow bards to grant something like "Mighty Deeds Of Arms" from DCC to fighters within earshot.
Hot take: D&D 5e sucks at Ye Olde Classicke Highe Fantasie and Sword & Sorcery.
All the steampunk, magicpunk, Eberronish 'wide magic' games? All the "we wanna do Cyberpunk 2077 but magic instead of tech" games that the D&D Snobs all sneer and turn their noses up at while playing their seventeenth beat-for-beat reenactment of the Journey of the Ringbearers? 5e is better suited to those games, with its huge array of magical swag and nearly every class and subclass having some sort of access to magic in some way. Magic suffuses the rules from top to bottom in a way that makes magic-scarce settings/games difficult to execute, especially since the game handles mundane solutions to problems pretty poorly by the standards of other games. When was the last time you had a wander through the Adventuring Equipment section of the handbook and tried to figure out what gear would be best to bring with you? Yeah, I thought so.
4th Edition was the best built version of D&D constructed and released. It turned the correct amount of sacred cows into gloriously delicious steak and breathed fresh air into what was becoming a rather stuffy tomb. While 5th Edition has become something of a run-away success overall, it could have been even better if it had not half-resurrected some turd mechanical design from the digested beef that came before and instead doubled down on good lessons like Healing Surges as a flat pool that healing mechanics can tap into and monsters/spells can target in lieu of normal damage, or making spell levels match character levels 1-1. A 7th-level Wizard casting 7th-level magic because they're 7th level makes so much more sense!
Combo hot take: commercial success of an RPG is only very loosely related to game quality. When any design element of 5e is called into question, many hardcore fans immediately fall back on "then why is 5e so popular?". This is not a serious argument, and serves only to derail more interesting conversations about game design.
Yeah like calling the red or blue or purple skinned, horned, and barbed tailed folk tieflings. It was the mid/late 90s and the panic was reduced to a murmur by then.
Planescape came out in 1994. That is the same year in which the West Memphis Three were wrongly convicted in a trial that arguably remains America's most egregious example of Satanic panic hysteria. And that hysteria wouldn't wane for a good while yet. I know. Because I grew up in a small town in which anyone who played the game or listened to heavy metal or had even a passing interest in ceremonial magic was suspected of devil-worship. That sentiment stretched well into the 1990s.
My apologies, where I live things were not nearly so strained.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
Planescape came out in 1994. That is the same year in which the West Memphis Three were wrongly convicted in a trial that arguably remains America's most egregious example of Satanic panic hysteria. And that hysteria wouldn't wane for a good while yet. I know. Because I grew up in a small town in which anyone who played the game or listened to heavy metal or had even a passing interest in ceremonial magic was suspected of devil-worship. That sentiment stretched well into the 1990s.
My apologies, where I live things were not nearly so strained.
It seems like the length of the satanic panic varied a lot by region. I grew up in the 90s, and I distinctly remember listening to a certain radio drama series which depicted D&D (via the expy "Castles & Cauldrons") as not just a gateway to witchcraft, but literally witchcraft in and of itself. The kids do an actual, literal blood sacrifice in that episode. This was on a popular terrestrial radio station, and I grew up in a city with hundreds of thousands of residents. I think I first heard it around 1997 or so.
I just looked this up as I write this: apparently that program is still in syndication, and the "Castles & Cauldrons" episode airs every few years. Last airdate was July 21st, 2022. For some people it looks like the panic is still going on.
Honestly, I've never actually seen someone play a bard like that no matter how much they're talked about being nothing but dabblers.
Throughout your entire gaming life you have never seen someone play a bard as they were originally conceived? As belonging to a generalist class that combines the abilities of others?
In 1st Edition the character had to obtain levels in fighter then thief then druid before even becoming a bard.
The 2nd Edition PHB even explicitly defines the bard as a 'jack-of-all-trade' class. Borrowing skills from thieves and spells from wizards and having access to proficiency in any weapon.
That conception of the class has only continued.
The only thing about bards that has ever really made them anything but combinations of classes are class features like Bardic Inspiration. And for the sake of balance in a class that is granted access to spell progression the feature goes nowhere.
Nope, never seen anyone try to play a bard as a warrior-mage-thief combo. Seen a lot of people play them as a buff/support specialist in 3E. Saw one person in 5E try to play one like a fighter with the Entertainer background. But mostly I see them played as a social expert with spellcasting ability.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Hot take: People spend way too much time looking at raw DPR and thus sleep on the true powerhouse sub-specs in this game.
For my money, playing a pacifist kobold mastermind was easily on the short list of most ridiculously OP things I've ever done; Lucky Ted m'seeks would just spam help actions endlessly every turn to two people all the damn time unless there was something he very specifically needed to do himself. The party's barbarian was so enamored with this that he actively sought his advice out as RP and happily carried him like he was Yoda everywhere.
A close second was my Yaun-ti spy eloquence bard. Izel was just such a god damn monster outside of combat with her abiltiy to talk it drove my GM half insane; at level 5 the lowest she could roll on a persuasion/deception check was a 20 and it only got more brutally one sided from there. And when combat rolled around a combination of Bane and insidious words meant that enemies had -1d4 and a bardic inspiration die penalizing their saving throws so classes that could force those became god damn monsters.
Time-based recovery mechanics (such as spell slots) are terrible, impossible to balance between characters with different allocations, and just encourage the five minute workday. Abilities should be one of at will, fast recharge, or recovery based on a non-time-based effect, such as experience gain or money.
Time-based recovery mechanics (such as spell slots) are terrible, impossible to balance between characters with different allocations, and just encourage the five minute workday. Abilities should be one of at will, fast recharge, or recovery based on a non-time-based effect, such as experience gain or money.
The cure is worse than the disease here, I think. Two of your options would preclude any powerful spells and the third would force a particular framework for adventures.
It's possible that the spell system could be improved, but I don't think those are the answers.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Time-based recovery mechanics (such as spell slots) are terrible, impossible to balance between characters with different allocations, and just encourage the five minute workday. Abilities should be one of at will, fast recharge, or recovery based on a non-time-based effect, such as experience gain or money.
Honestly, I don't think this is all that radical. Plenty of successful systems already use a combination of at-will, 1/scene, and materials-gated (which is functionally the same as experience or money recharge) abilities. Unfortunately this type of ability balancing may feel too much like 4e for the designers to try any time soon.
Forgotten realms is the best of the established D&D settings due to the combination of Lore that players/GMs have to draw upon to create characters and being Cosmopolitan enough that just about any character concept or class can fit in reasonably well.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Honestly, I've never actually seen someone play a bard like that no matter how much they're talked about being nothing but dabblers.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Yeah, people typically lean into knowledge or social skills over more thiefy stuff, and there's a whole two subclasses that make waving a weapon around even halfway viable for them (and they don't get the two blade cantrips). They're basically a full caster/skill monkey hybrid that's trading off the ability to shuffle their ready spell repertoire around for their skills and pulling elements from the Wizard, Cleric, and Druid lists. It's possible earlier editions did a bit more with weapons, especially back before cantrips were a standard feature for full casters, but in 5e that rapier is more a fashion accessory than a part of their actual combat repertoire.
AD&D and 3e bards weren't full casters (they were basically 2/3 casters) but that didn't make them particularly effective with weapons.
i say bring back the 2/3rds caster type
Bards in D&D have always tended to resemble rogues more than they do historical bards. Even the way they have been depicted in the books over the years. They look like rogues. With the addition of a musical instrument the only real distinguishing feature in just about any portrayal of them.
The majority of bards I've encountered at the table have been fops and seducers. Swashbuckler types. Rogues. Literal rogues. With little to nothing in common with historical bards.
Bards would be more bardic if they had no access to spells but were more martially capable and if the only real feature that makes them even bardic—bardic inspiration—was developed so that it grew in power beyond just increasing the die to be used by a single target. The one thing that makes them unique doesn't even really progress. No bard at even the highest of levels can "inspire" more than one ally at a time? That's just silly. They could at least allow bards to grant something like "Mighty Deeds Of Arms" from DCC to fighters within earshot.
Hot take: D&D 5e sucks at Ye Olde Classicke Highe Fantasie and Sword & Sorcery.
All the steampunk, magicpunk, Eberronish 'wide magic' games? All the "we wanna do Cyberpunk 2077 but magic instead of tech" games that the D&D Snobs all sneer and turn their noses up at while playing their seventeenth beat-for-beat reenactment of the Journey of the Ringbearers? 5e is better suited to those games, with its huge array of magical swag and nearly every class and subclass having some sort of access to magic in some way. Magic suffuses the rules from top to bottom in a way that makes magic-scarce settings/games difficult to execute, especially since the game handles mundane solutions to problems pretty poorly by the standards of other games. When was the last time you had a wander through the Adventuring Equipment section of the handbook and tried to figure out what gear would be best to bring with you? Yeah, I thought so.
Please do not contact or message me.
Another "Hot Take" because, why not....
4th Edition was the best built version of D&D constructed and released. It turned the correct amount of sacred cows into gloriously delicious steak and breathed fresh air into what was becoming a rather stuffy tomb. While 5th Edition has become something of a run-away success overall, it could have been even better if it had not half-resurrected some turd mechanical design from the digested beef that came before and instead doubled down on good lessons like Healing Surges as a flat pool that healing mechanics can tap into and monsters/spells can target in lieu of normal damage, or making spell levels match character levels 1-1. A 7th-level Wizard casting 7th-level magic because they're 7th level makes so much more sense!
Combo hot take: commercial success of an RPG is only very loosely related to game quality. When any design element of 5e is called into question, many hardcore fans immediately fall back on "then why is 5e so popular?". This is not a serious argument, and serves only to derail more interesting conversations about game design.
My apologies, where I live things were not nearly so strained.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
It seems like the length of the satanic panic varied a lot by region. I grew up in the 90s, and I distinctly remember listening to a certain radio drama series which depicted D&D (via the expy "Castles & Cauldrons") as not just a gateway to witchcraft, but literally witchcraft in and of itself. The kids do an actual, literal blood sacrifice in that episode. This was on a popular terrestrial radio station, and I grew up in a city with hundreds of thousands of residents. I think I first heard it around 1997 or so.
I just looked this up as I write this: apparently that program is still in syndication, and the "Castles & Cauldrons" episode airs every few years. Last airdate was July 21st, 2022. For some people it looks like the panic is still going on.
Or they enjoy the satire of it, whether or not it was intentional at the time of production.
Throughout your entire gaming life you have never seen someone play a bard as they were originally conceived? As belonging to a generalist class that combines the abilities of others?
In 1st Edition the character had to obtain levels in fighter then thief then druid before even becoming a bard.
The 2nd Edition PHB even explicitly defines the bard as a 'jack-of-all-trade' class. Borrowing skills from thieves and spells from wizards and having access to proficiency in any weapon.
That conception of the class has only continued.
The only thing about bards that has ever really made them anything but combinations of classes are class features like Bardic Inspiration. And for the sake of balance in a class that is granted access to spell progression the feature goes nowhere.
The class is underserved.
Nope, never seen anyone try to play a bard as a warrior-mage-thief combo. Seen a lot of people play them as a buff/support specialist in 3E. Saw one person in 5E try to play one like a fighter with the Entertainer background. But mostly I see them played as a social expert with spellcasting ability.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Hot take: People spend way too much time looking at raw DPR and thus sleep on the true powerhouse sub-specs in this game.
For my money, playing a pacifist kobold mastermind was easily on the short list of most ridiculously OP things I've ever done; Lucky Ted m'seeks would just spam help actions endlessly every turn to two people all the damn time unless there was something he very specifically needed to do himself. The party's barbarian was so enamored with this that he actively sought his advice out as RP and happily carried him like he was Yoda everywhere.
A close second was my Yaun-ti spy eloquence bard. Izel was just such a god damn monster outside of combat with her abiltiy to talk it drove my GM half insane; at level 5 the lowest she could roll on a persuasion/deception check was a 20 and it only got more brutally one sided from there. And when combat rolled around a combination of Bane and insidious words meant that enemies had -1d4 and a bardic inspiration die penalizing their saving throws so classes that could force those became god damn monsters.
Another radical hot take:
Time-based recovery mechanics (such as spell slots) are terrible, impossible to balance between characters with different allocations, and just encourage the five minute workday. Abilities should be one of at will, fast recharge, or recovery based on a non-time-based effect, such as experience gain or money.
That would be even worse.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
The cure is worse than the disease here, I think. Two of your options would preclude any powerful spells and the third would force a particular framework for adventures.
It's possible that the spell system could be improved, but I don't think those are the answers.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Honestly, I don't think this is all that radical. Plenty of successful systems already use a combination of at-will, 1/scene, and materials-gated (which is functionally the same as experience or money recharge) abilities. Unfortunately this type of ability balancing may feel too much like 4e for the designers to try any time soon.
See my hot take above. So many good lessons that solved so many problems were unfortunately left behind because of a lack of designer back-bone.
Got another one that will rankle some folks:
Forgotten realms is the best of the established D&D settings due to the combination of Lore that players/GMs have to draw upon to create characters and being Cosmopolitan enough that just about any character concept or class can fit in reasonably well.