Best Version of DnD?

[etherial]

  

[Sophie was taken]

2 hours ago, etherial said:

  

Would that make Blanche the bard?

[Doug Sundseth]

8 hours ago, Sophie was taken said:

Would that make Blanche the bard?

 

The bard is never a part of the ideal adventuring party ... except as a cohort, of course.

 

[Unruly]

2 hours ago, Doug Sundseth said:

 

The bard is never a part of the ideal adventuring party ... except as a cohort, of course.

 

 

In Pathfinder, bards are actually pretty awesome. They're one of the better support classes, in my opinion. I'd much rather have a properly played bard than a rogue in most cases. If you're limited to 4 players, give me a party of a Bard, a Wizard, a Cleric, and a Paladin in Pathfinder and you've got a bit of a supergroup going in my opinion. Wizard plays for battlefield control and all those sneaky wizard tricks. Bard handles the skill work and sneaky/scouting type situations while handing out that sweet, sweet inspiration in combat(they can also be decent in a fight). Cleric takes care of buffs and any downtime healing as well as delivering a few choice beatings. Paladin can also do some buffing and downtime heals, but they're gonna pack a wallop in combat and can help the bard with face work a lot of the time.

 

Of course, my view on Pathfinder is out of date since I haven't kept up on changes to it over the last 3 years or so. The last book I bought for it was Pathfinder Unchained or the Advanced Class Guide, whichever came last, which I don't think I ever even read. And even when I was playing my groups always tended towards the more "vanilla" end of the spectrum, sticking more with the familiar than anything else.

 

*Yea, I know, bards in D&D are an old joke.

[TheAuldGrump]

14 hours ago, Unruly said:

 

In Pathfinder, bards are actually pretty awesome. They're one of the better support classes, in my opinion. I'd much rather have a properly played bard than a rogue in most cases. If you're limited to 4 players, give me a party of a Bard, a Wizard, a Cleric, and a Paladin in Pathfinder and you've got a bit of a supergroup going in my opinion. Wizard plays for battlefield control and all those sneaky wizard tricks. Bard handles the skill work and sneaky/scouting type situations while handing out that sweet, sweet inspiration in combat(they can also be decent in a fight). Cleric takes care of buffs and any downtime healing as well as delivering a few choice beatings. Paladin can also do some buffing and downtime heals, but they're gonna pack a wallop in combat and can help the bard with face work a lot of the time.

 

Of course, my view on Pathfinder is out of date since I haven't kept up on changes to it over the last 3 years or so. The last book I bought for it was Pathfinder Unchained or the Advanced Class Guide, whichever came last, which I don't think I ever even read. And even when I was playing my groups always tended towards the more "vanilla" end of the spectrum, sticking more with the familiar than anything else.

 

*Yea, I know, bards in D&D are an old joke.

Bards are, in my estimation, the very best fifth party member, and have been since 3.5.

 

The bigger the party, the more people their bonus applies to - in a six member group they can make a huge difference.

 

Having a bard means that when (not if) the cleric gets taken out, there is somebody that can bring him back to his feet.

 

Having a bard means that any obscure clues the GM put in can be referenced by a Bardic Knowledge check.

 

And, best of all, having a bard means that the party's deeds of derring do will be remembered in every alehouse the party visits!

 

 

The Auld Grump

[Doug Sundseth]

5 minutes ago, TheAuldGrump said:

Bards are, in my estimation, the very best fifth party member, and have been since 3.5.

 

The bigger the party, the more people their bonus applies to - in a six member group they can make a huge difference.

 

Having a bard means that when (not if) the cleric gets taken out, there is somebody that can bring him back to his feet.

 

Having a bard means that any obscure clues the GM put in can be referenced by a Bardic Knowledge check.

 

And, best of all, having a bard means that the party's deeds of derring do will be remembered in every alehouse the party visits!

 

The Auld Grump

 

First three: Wizard, Cleric, some sort of front-line fighter (who might also be a Fighter). If you don't have those, you need to really work to fill the gaps.

 

Fourth character: shooter, second cleric, sorcerer, or second wizard.

 

Fifth character: one of the above that wasn't taken as a fourth character.

 

Sixth character could be a bard or rogue.

 

Bards really are great to have in a party, especially a large party. But they aren't very good at most things and the few things they are good at often overlap strongly with another character. Wizards do quite well with knowledge, sorcerers are great faces, many classes have enough healing to help the cleric. And bard song, specifically Inspire Courage, is both boring to play and not especially strongly level dependent, so it's perfect for a cohort. Oh, and commemorating the party is a fine thing for a cohort, too.

 

IMO.

[TheAuldGrump]

I would place the bard higher.

 

Front line fighter type (fighter, barbarian, paladin, ranger).

Wizard type (wizard, sorcerer, alchemist,witch).

Cleric type (cleric, druid, witch - maybe)

Skill monkey type (rogue, ranger, bard, vigilante).

Bard type (bard, inquisitor)

Mobile/ranged combat type (ranger, rogue, barbarian, monk, swashbuckler, gunslinger).

 

The thing to bear in mind is that the bard can fill that redundant character slot you are fond of. Not as good as a fighter, but can fight. Not as good as a cleric, but can heal. Not as good as a wizard, but can cast and control areas. Not as good as a rogue, but can sneak and disable traps.

 

And makes the fighter a better fighter, the wizard a safer wizard, the cleric less likely to drop dead, and boosts the rogue's skills while serving as their flanking buddy.

 

If you think that Inspire courage is weak or boring... then you obviously do not use it to its fullest.

 

*EDIT* I would place a truly redundant character type as eighth or ninth... not fifth.

 

The Auld Grump

Edited October 24, 2017 by TheAuldGrump

[Unruly]

See, I find the Bard to be one of the best Face classes, and in Pathfinder at least they're often as good at being a Rogue as the Rogue is. The only thing that Rogues have going for them over Bards is disarm traps and sneak attack, but Bards can use simple spells to trigger a lot of traps from out of harm's way and sneak attack, until 5e, was so situational and easily negated that it was often useless.

 

I've also never really found it boring in Pathfinder to play a Bard in combat, because it's still a 3/4 class and it can manage Inspire Courage at the same time as doing other things such as casting spells or attacking. And if you take the feat that allows your inspire bonus to persist for 3 rounds or so after you stop using it it means that for every 1 round of use it can be 4 rounds of a bonus to the whole party. Which comes in really handy at lower levels, though it does lose effectiveness once you approach level 10 and gain enough rounds of bardic performance to usually last through even a long adventuring day.

 

But 5e Bards are kind of weird. I'm not sure how I feel about them.

Edited October 24, 2017 by Unruly

[Doug Sundseth]

Didn't say that Inspire Courage was weak; it's very useful, especially for a large group. So is Prayer.

 

The problem is that it is boring. IME, the bard is about the third-best character at nearly anything he wants to do. He's not as good a fighter as a cleric (because of armor), he's not as good at area control spells as either a real arcane caster or a cleric, he's no better at skills than a Wizard or Rogue, and only a bit better than a Ranger (though Bardic Knowledge is very useful), he's a very poor healer, because he doesn't have bursts and has to give up very limited known spells to have any healing at all.

 

What he's really good at is being the face, but that's only a mechanical advantage for what is mostly a role-playing thing. If your bard's player is bad at talking, the character isn't even going to face well.

 

All of this is significantly mitigated by taking the bard as a cohort. He can still sing almost as well as if he were two levels higher. He can do emergency healing almost as well (including being the wielder of the CLW wand). He can cast most sorts of buff spells pretty well (the two-level penalty isn't all that significant there). He still gets bardic knowledge. And nobody is stuck with just singing and doing utility stuff.

 

Now, if you have a player who is a really good face himself and really wants to play that sort of character, a bard may be perfect. The mechanical advantages will synergize with his natural talent and a good talker can have fun and help the group without being all that useful in combat. You have to have the player skill just like you can't be a decent wizard player without being the kind of person that really likes thinking ahead about what spells to memorize for the day and treating every encounter as an exercise in limited resources.

 

I don't dislike bards, but I don't much like them as PCs. They don't have enough significant choices in way too many encounters. And I've seen players too often get really frustrated with running them.

[Unruly]

I've never understood the idea that if a player isn't good at speaking, they shouldn't play the face. There's a reason why, at least from 3.x on, those face skills are just that - skills. It shouldn't really matter all that much if I, as a person, can't enunciate my point in some swarthy way that charms people over. If I have a +10 to Diplomacy and roll a 17, my character should be talking the pants off of that local sheriff even if I, the player, simply say "I want to convince the sheriff to form a posse to help catch the bad guy." I shouldn't have to demonstrate that I, as a person, am capable of talking my way into a brick wall's pants in order for my character to be able to.

 

Saying that if the player isn't good at speaking then they shouldn't be playing the face is like saying that if the player can't beat me in a boxing match they shouldn't be playing a monk. Or that unless they can lift that couch over their head then their 25 strength barbarian couldn't either. The game is meant to let you do things that you can't in real life. Let the guy who couldn't talk his way out of a wet paper bag play the silver tongued bard that can charm anyone with a smile and his rapier-like wit.

[BlazingTornado]

2 hours ago, Unruly said:

But 5e Bards are kind of weird. I'm not sure how I feel about them.

I know they're full casters which they apparently never were before... is that what's weird about them?

 

I guess bards like any other class, to me, depends on the player... but I got some oddball players so my bard has none of the "social" spells like Friends or Charm Person picked out.

 

 

Meanwhile... anyone know what kind of lesser humanoids and critters and pets would dwell about a Fomorian lair? I had this idea in my campaign that involved frost giants but the more I plotted it the more it made sense with underdark-dwellers, but all these ideas for white dragon wyrmling pets, winter wolves, yetis, etc... all out the window...

[Doug Sundseth]

3 hours ago, Unruly said:

Saying that if the player isn't good at speaking then they shouldn't be playing the face ....

 

Fortunately I've never said that. I have said that I've seen people who aren't good at talking not have fun playing the face. And I would recommend against it for reasons of fun for the player (just as I'd recommend against playing a wizard if you're not interested in obsessively preparing). But if they want to, whatever.

 

The problem is that if you can't speak well as the player and your character can't fight very well, your participation is limited in combat to fiddling about the edges and in most social encounters (the thing you're good at) to a limited number of quick die rolls. And I've seen players get really frustrated by exactly that combination of limitations.

 

But I've never stopped a player from playing a Bard even if I think they won't have fun. I'll even let them switch without significant disadvantages if they decide that it isn't as much fun as it sounded like ahead of time. I have stopped players from playing paladins (and other stuff), because they can easily make everybody else's game less fun.

[Unruly]

Ah, I misunderstood what you were saying. I've run into more than a few people who penalize players for not being able to actually make an argument in full rather than relying on their dice to let their character say what needs to be said. They seem to think that if a player can't enunciate their point, then the character can't either regardless of rolls, or that at a minimum the character should be penalized for it.

[Doug Sundseth]

7 minutes ago, Unruly said:

Ah, I misunderstood what you were saying. I've run into more than a few people who penalize players for not being able to actually make an argument in full rather than relying on their dice to let their character say what needs to be said. They seem to think that if a player can't enunciate their point, then the character can't either regardless of rolls, or that at a minimum the character should be penalized for it.

 

No worries.

 

But that does raise the question of whether a character should get an advantage if the player does an awesome job of roleplaying the speech. If not, that's fair, but doesn't reward doing things that make the game fun for everyone. If so, then functionally you're penalizing the character whose player who can't do that.

 

The same thing applies to a character in combat played by a player who is significantly more (or less) tactically adept than the average. I mean, it's not like his character is necessarily more (or less) tactically adept, but most games give significant advantages to the character that is played better.

 

FWIW, I don't think there's an obviously correct answer here. That said, I give bonuses if the roleplaying is especially good and I certainly allow combat advantages if the tactics are good. For me, it's a game. And some people are better at games than others, and I'm fine with that. But I could make a cogent argument for the other view as well.

[Unruly]

I find it very different to give a bonus to someone for being able to do something well than to penalize someone for not being able to. That would be like penalizing a fighter for not playing tactically by giving them a penalty to hit and amping up the damage they take rather than just letting the rules stand as they are. But to sit there and go "You get a -5 to your diplomacy check because you just said 'I try to convince the sheriff to help us' rather than giving me an impassioned speech and a reasoned argument about why he should help" is a bunch of crap. And I've seen that happen.

 

It's right up there with how my friend disallows monks because they're "Oriental" rather than European medieval. It doesn't matter that I wasn't going to be playing a freaking Shaolin monk and wanted to play a drunken bar brawler, because the class name is monk my whole character idea was invalidated in his eyes. His response was to play a Fighter that just didn't use weapons. Yep, and deal 1d4 damage no matter what, and never have the ability to damage anything with resistance to non-magical damage, and to ignore half of my class features because they require a weapon.