The big ones are mage hand, light and dancing lights, Unseen Servant, Thunderwave and shatter, DISPEL MAGIC, and SENDING.... My opinion a few of these are pretty Iconic bard spells.
They aren't losing all of those spells. Three of them are having their spell school changes: dancing lights (illusion), and thunderwave and shatter (transmutation). The big kicker is Magical Secrets is now limited to specific spell schools. You cannot mix and match from different schools, so both your 11th-level spells must be from the same list; though they can be from any school. And the 15th-level spells both must be from the same list and from a different list than at 11th-level.
But, yeah...no more heat metal or counterspell for bards. No more Countercharm, either. At least, for now. This is just an early playtest.
The big ones are mage hand, light and dancing lights, Unseen Servant, Thunderwave and shatter, DISPEL MAGIC, and SENDING.... My opinion a few of these are pretty Iconic bard spells.
They aren't losing all of those spells. Three of them are having their spell school changes: dancing lights (illusion), and thunderwave and shatter (transmutation). The big kicker is Magical Secrets is now limited to specific spell schools. You cannot mix and match from different schools, so both your 11th-level spells must be from the same list; though they can be from any school. And the 15th-level spells both must be from the same list and from a different list than at 11th-level.
But, yeah...no more heat metal or counterspell for bards. No more Countercharm, either. At least, for now. This is just an early playtest.
Oh cool I did not notice that. Bard technically never had counter spell. It was a common choice from magical secrets, especially among lore bards, but I think I get what you mean, can't pick one arcane and one primal. that said you can change after a long rest which is significant because that is a lot of spells you have access to. still no dispel magic hurts a lot as does no mage hand and no unseen servant. but now we gotta go through and figure out which spells are on the list that weren't before.
Baridc inspiration change is a bit controversial to me. The first part, helping with d20 tests on a reaction, is fine. However, the healing component is kind of broken. Using healing as a reaction means that as soon as someone falls to 0 HP, you can immediately make them get up again, and given the small amount of healing and the way it is used, I suspect this might become its primary use - an emergency anti-knockout.
Using bardic inspiration PB times per long rest, I think, is a bad call. BI always stood out as a feature that starts with long rest recharge and then gets upgraded to a short rest recharge. The deficit will be exacerbated by small amount of uses until level 7.
I'd suggest that healing with inspiration required a bonus action, not a reaction, and BI started with recharging on a short rest. At level 7, you'd get the ability to keep the die on a 1, and an additional use of BI - ending fear or charm on an ally, or granting all allies within 30 ft. +BI die to save against fear or charm. Countercharm was a thing, you know, and it had its uses. Psychological warfare isn't all offense.
Baridc inspiration change is a bit controversial to me. The first part, helping with d20 tests on a reaction, is fine. However, the healing component is kind of broken. Using healing as a reaction means that as soon as someone falls to 0 HP, you can immediately make them get up again, and given the small amount of healing and the way it is used, I suspect this might become its primary use - an emergency anti-knockout.
Using bardic inspiration PB times per long rest, I think, is a bad call. BI always stood out as a feature that starts with long rest recharge and then gets upgraded to a short rest recharge. The deficit will be exacerbated by small amount of uses until level 7.
I'd suggest that healing with inspiration required a bonus action, not a reaction, and BI started with recharging on a short rest. At level 7, you'd get the ability to keep the die on a 1, and an additional use of BI - ending fear or charm on an ally, or granting all allies within 30 ft. +BI die to save against fear or charm. Countercharm was a thing, you know, and it had its uses. Psychological warfare isn't all offense.
The reason I LIKE the healing from inspiration is exactly BECAUSE it can prevent someone from going down. To me its the "Get up rocky" or the moment when the big bad and the hero clash and they both injure the other and are about to go down, but an encouraging word or a shout or that final moment of inspiration hits the hero and he stays on his feat. This is you giving that guy that inspiration to stay on his feat, which is super thematic. I 100% agree about allowing the reaction to give BI die to the whole party to save against charm and fear effects. You can already give inspiration to 1 person to save against it, but by having a later feature that gives it to the whole party but only specifically for charm and fear effects would be huge and very thematic as well.
The number of uses doesn't bother me because of how much more reliable the bardic inspiration will be. You aren't going to be wasting the die on a roll that was going to succeed anyway. Now it will only ever give you a chance to turn a failure into a success.
Baridc inspiration change is a bit controversial to me. The first part, helping with d20 tests on a reaction, is fine. However, the healing component is kind of broken. Using healing as a reaction means that as soon as someone falls to 0 HP, you can immediately make them get up again, and given the small amount of healing and the way it is used, I suspect this might become its primary use - an emergency anti-knockout.
Using bardic inspiration PB times per long rest, I think, is a bad call. BI always stood out as a feature that starts with long rest recharge and then gets upgraded to a short rest recharge. The deficit will be exacerbated by small amount of uses until level 7.
I'd suggest that healing with inspiration required a bonus action, not a reaction, and BI started with recharging on a short rest. At level 7, you'd get the ability to keep the die on a 1, and an additional use of BI - ending fear or charm on an ally, or granting all allies within 30 ft. +BI die to save against fear or charm. Countercharm was a thing, you know, and it had its uses. Psychological warfare isn't all offense.
I like all that except I think they should just get rid of the healing bardic inspiration. You have spells, feel free to use them.
The reason I LIKE the healing from inspiration is exactly BECAUSE it can prevent someone from going down. To me its the "Get up rocky" or the moment when the big bad and the hero clash and they both injure the other and are about to go down, but an encouraging word or a shout or that final moment of inspiration hits the hero and he stays on his feat. This is you giving that guy that inspiration to stay on his feat, which is super thematic. I 100% agree about allowing the reaction to give BI die to the whole party to save against charm and fear effects. You can already give inspiration to 1 person to save against it, but by having a later feature that gives it to the whole party but only specifically for charm and fear effects would be huge and very thematic as well.
The number of uses doesn't bother me because of how much more reliable the bardic inspiration will be. You aren't going to be wasting the die on a roll that was going to succeed anyway. Now it will only ever give you a chance to turn a failure into a success.
I like the way you look at using BI for healing, I'm not oposed to this mechanic in itself, it's just the psychology that I worry about - people will be tempted to save their BI for emergency anti-KO and thus ignore other uses.
Upon reflection, I've come to realize that the big thing about the bard that I don't like isn't that they're weaker or anything.
Its that they don't feel like bards anymore. The enduring class fantasy, the most iconic archetype of the bard, is the musician that inspires his party through his songs. I feel that I can't do that anymore with the bard. Between the fewer buffing spells like Heroism and Faerie Fire, the changes in BI and the lack of access to magic secrets or subclass spells to patch whatever's missing until level 11(the point by which most games end or have already ended)....
I feel closer to a psion, or illusion-school wizard right now than a bard. An arcane trickster with full casting instead of sneak attack and cunning action.
Suggestions I'm going to make on the survey - just need access to subclass spell list. Maybe open up Arcane spells of restricted schools to all spells of restricted schools.
One advantage to changing BI from CHA to Prof Bonus? Sword and Valor bards no longer need to worry about buffing Charisma as high as it can go for the extra BI uses. This opens up possibilities in the creation of new subclasses. However you slice it, though, the tiny amounts of BI uses are painful. Giving a ton at low levels is bad, because they're as powerful as a level 1 Healing Word now, or a bit more so. But having your subclass revolve around something so infrequently used is also painful.
Survey suggestion - sacrifice spell slots to get more BI uses? This solves the low level spell issue while giving more uses at higher levels and avoiding the short rest problem in dungeons. Ideally you want both, but there's got to be balance somewhere.
I don't think the school restrictions should apply to cantrips. Fixing this would let Bards take Light and Mage Hand if desired, which should be Bardic options.
But the real problem is losing access to a lot of leveled spells. To highlight a few from that list, which I would want on most Bard concepts I might try to play:
1st: Faerie Fire
2nd: Enhance Ability
3rd: Dispel Magic
4th: Dimension Door
5th: Teleportation Circle
6th: Teleport
This is a loss of at least one key utility or mobility spell per level, not including a number of utility and communication spells - Speak with Animals and Speak with Dead for example.
I'm not convinced the additional spells make up for it. Yay for Fly and Haste, but with the demands on concentration, Dispel Magic might be more useful. Also, with the by-level spell prep, 3rd level prep slots are going to be a real limiting factor.
Would much rather they added a 4th power source for bards and warlocks.
I agree that Bards should not be arcanists, but dosagree that a 4th power source is necessary. Rather I prefer bards to source their power from Primal and/or Divine Magic rather than from the Power Arcane. The words of creation schtick they seem to be running with as the starting point for careers in Barding seems to mesh better with that, and classically, read as pre-WotC, Bards had their start in similar traditions to Druidism rather than in traditions of magecraft.
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Would much rather they added a 4th power source for bards and warlocks.
While I would not mind a fourth list I don't really see much thematic similarities between the bard and warlock for spellcasting. Warlocks really are arcanists imo.
Well, in all honesty, the 4th list really should be Psionics IMHO.
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The big ones are mage hand, light and dancing lights, Unseen Servant, Thunderwave and shatter, DISPEL MAGIC, and SENDING.... My opinion a few of these are pretty Iconic bard spells.
They aren't losing all of those spells. Three of them are having their spell school changes: dancing lights (illusion), and thunderwave and shatter (transmutation). The big kicker is Magical Secrets is now limited to specific spell schools. You cannot mix and match from different schools, so both your 11th-level spells must be from the same list; though they can be from any school. And the 15th-level spells both must be from the same list and from a different list than at 11th-level.
But, yeah...no more heat metal or counterspell for bards. No more Countercharm, either. At least, for now. This is just an early playtest.
I think it's silly of them to just move spells around from list to list without regard to what the spell is really for. Dancing lights for example is not an illusion given that when you send them down the hallway, a monster can't roll to disbelieve them, succeed, and have the lights vanish from their sight. You are producing a real and persistant light source. This says to me either conjuration or evocation.
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I think they had a cool idea to categorize spells into the 3 power source lists, and then got to the bard class and realized they sort of have a weird spell list that doesn't easily match their new categories.
Pretty disappointed that you can't play a bard with a unique spell list now until you hit level 11. I'd love to get access to other spells sometime before every campaign I've ever played comes to an end.
Ok the more I test and the more I work with this spell list the WORSE it becomes. The attempt with these things were to future proof where if they wanted to introduce a new spell they could just add it to one of these 3 lists and a spell school and BOOM all the classes that they wanted to have access to it now have it, but with the Bard this is NOT going to be the case. Say they think of a new healing spell they want to give to the bard. If they do it will be on the arcane spell list and I can already guarantee you the wizard will have no spell school restrictions for that list. So this means they can't give a new healing spell or anything to the Bard without risking the wizard get ahold of it.
So there are a few ways to make this actually work. Way number 1, a 4th list. I like the idea of "artistry" which would be Bard and Artificer, even though the artificer is not in the PHB. The second option is a minor decoupling of the Bard from Arcane.
Bard would get access to ALL illusion and Enchantment spells, they are a bard after-all, But then they would get Transmutation and Divination from the Arcane list and Abjuration and Necromancy from the Primal List. This would provide all the healing spells reviving spells and even Freedom of movement and Dispel magic without giving Bard counter spell natively. You could maybe even do conjuration from the divine list. Yes this sounds more complicated and it probably is, but it also does a far better job of future proofing and keeping the bard identity than the current list.
Edit: seriously just the abjuration and necromancy from primal list to bards solve a LOT of problems both in the now and the future.
You still get sending (divination) Thunderwave and shatter (transmutation now), dancing lights (illusion)
Not that the others aren't felt
Paladin - warforged - orange
They aren't losing all of those spells. Three of them are having their spell school changes: dancing lights (illusion), and thunderwave and shatter (transmutation). The big kicker is Magical Secrets is now limited to specific spell schools. You cannot mix and match from different schools, so both your 11th-level spells must be from the same list; though they can be from any school. And the 15th-level spells both must be from the same list and from a different list than at 11th-level.
But, yeah...no more heat metal or counterspell for bards. No more Countercharm, either. At least, for now. This is just an early playtest.
Oh cool I did not notice that. Bard technically never had counter spell. It was a common choice from magical secrets, especially among lore bards, but I think I get what you mean, can't pick one arcane and one primal. that said you can change after a long rest which is significant because that is a lot of spells you have access to.
still no dispel magic hurts a lot as does no mage hand and no unseen servant. but now we gotta go through and figure out which spells are on the list that weren't before.
Baridc inspiration change is a bit controversial to me. The first part, helping with d20 tests on a reaction, is fine. However, the healing component is kind of broken. Using healing as a reaction means that as soon as someone falls to 0 HP, you can immediately make them get up again, and given the small amount of healing and the way it is used, I suspect this might become its primary use - an emergency anti-knockout.
Using bardic inspiration PB times per long rest, I think, is a bad call. BI always stood out as a feature that starts with long rest recharge and then gets upgraded to a short rest recharge. The deficit will be exacerbated by small amount of uses until level 7.
I'd suggest that healing with inspiration required a bonus action, not a reaction, and BI started with recharging on a short rest. At level 7, you'd get the ability to keep the die on a 1, and an additional use of BI - ending fear or charm on an ally, or granting all allies within 30 ft. +BI die to save against fear or charm. Countercharm was a thing, you know, and it had its uses. Psychological warfare isn't all offense.
The reason I LIKE the healing from inspiration is exactly BECAUSE it can prevent someone from going down. To me its the "Get up rocky" or the moment when the big bad and the hero clash and they both injure the other and are about to go down, but an encouraging word or a shout or that final moment of inspiration hits the hero and he stays on his feat. This is you giving that guy that inspiration to stay on his feat, which is super thematic. I 100% agree about allowing the reaction to give BI die to the whole party to save against charm and fear effects. You can already give inspiration to 1 person to save against it, but by having a later feature that gives it to the whole party but only specifically for charm and fear effects would be huge and very thematic as well.
The number of uses doesn't bother me because of how much more reliable the bardic inspiration will be. You aren't going to be wasting the die on a roll that was going to succeed anyway. Now it will only ever give you a chance to turn a failure into a success.
I like all that except I think they should just get rid of the healing bardic inspiration. You have spells, feel free to use them.
Paladin - warforged - orange
I like the way you look at using BI for healing, I'm not oposed to this mechanic in itself, it's just the psychology that I worry about - people will be tempted to save their BI for emergency anti-KO and thus ignore other uses.
Upon reflection, I've come to realize that the big thing about the bard that I don't like isn't that they're weaker or anything.
Its that they don't feel like bards anymore. The enduring class fantasy, the most iconic archetype of the bard, is the musician that inspires his party through his songs. I feel that I can't do that anymore with the bard. Between the fewer buffing spells like Heroism and Faerie Fire, the changes in BI and the lack of access to magic secrets or subclass spells to patch whatever's missing until level 11(the point by which most games end or have already ended)....
I feel closer to a psion, or illusion-school wizard right now than a bard. An arcane trickster with full casting instead of sneak attack and cunning action.
One advantage to changing BI from CHA to Prof Bonus? Sword and Valor bards no longer need to worry about buffing Charisma as high as it can go for the extra BI uses. This opens up possibilities in the creation of new subclasses. However you slice it, though, the tiny amounts of BI uses are painful. Giving a ton at low levels is bad, because they're as powerful as a level 1 Healing Word now, or a bit more so. But having your subclass revolve around something so infrequently used is also painful.
https://www.reddit.com/r/onednd/comments/xru2fd/heres_the_differences_in_the_bards_spell_list/
I don't think the school restrictions should apply to cantrips. Fixing this would let Bards take Light and Mage Hand if desired, which should be Bardic options.
But the real problem is losing access to a lot of leveled spells. To highlight a few from that list, which I would want on most Bard concepts I might try to play:
1st: Faerie Fire
2nd: Enhance Ability
3rd: Dispel Magic
4th: Dimension Door
5th: Teleportation Circle
6th: Teleport
This is a loss of at least one key utility or mobility spell per level, not including a number of utility and communication spells - Speak with Animals and Speak with Dead for example.
I'm not convinced the additional spells make up for it. Yay for Fly and Haste, but with the demands on concentration, Dispel Magic might be more useful. Also, with the by-level spell prep, 3rd level prep slots are going to be a real limiting factor.
I agree that Bards should not be arcanists, but dosagree that a 4th power source is necessary. Rather I prefer bards to source their power from Primal and/or Divine Magic rather than from the Power Arcane. The words of creation schtick they seem to be running with as the starting point for careers in Barding seems to mesh better with that, and classically, read as pre-WotC, Bards had their start in similar traditions to Druidism rather than in traditions of magecraft.
Thank you for your time and please have a very pleasant day.
Well, in all honesty, the 4th list really should be Psionics IMHO.
Thank you for your time and please have a very pleasant day.
I think it's silly of them to just move spells around from list to list without regard to what the spell is really for. Dancing lights for example is not an illusion given that when you send them down the hallway, a monster can't roll to disbelieve them, succeed, and have the lights vanish from their sight. You are producing a real and persistant light source. This says to me either conjuration or evocation.
Thank you for your time and please have a very pleasant day.
I think they had a cool idea to categorize spells into the 3 power source lists, and then got to the bard class and realized they sort of have a weird spell list that doesn't easily match their new categories.
Pretty disappointed that you can't play a bard with a unique spell list now until you hit level 11. I'd love to get access to other spells sometime before every campaign I've ever played comes to an end.
Ok the more I test and the more I work with this spell list the WORSE it becomes. The attempt with these things were to future proof where if they wanted to introduce a new spell they could just add it to one of these 3 lists and a spell school and BOOM all the classes that they wanted to have access to it now have it, but with the Bard this is NOT going to be the case. Say they think of a new healing spell they want to give to the bard. If they do it will be on the arcane spell list and I can already guarantee you the wizard will have no spell school restrictions for that list. So this means they can't give a new healing spell or anything to the Bard without risking the wizard get ahold of it.
So there are a few ways to make this actually work. Way number 1, a 4th list. I like the idea of "artistry" which would be Bard and Artificer, even though the artificer is not in the PHB. The second option is a minor decoupling of the Bard from Arcane.
Bard would get access to ALL illusion and Enchantment spells, they are a bard after-all, But then they would get Transmutation and Divination from the Arcane list and Abjuration and Necromancy from the Primal List. This would provide all the healing spells reviving spells and even Freedom of movement and Dispel magic without giving Bard counter spell natively. You could maybe even do conjuration from the divine list. Yes this sounds more complicated and it probably is, but it also does a far better job of future proofing and keeping the bard identity than the current list.
Edit: seriously just the abjuration and necromancy from primal list to bards solve a LOT of problems both in the now and the future.