Not only that, but Nale’s build actually ends up leaving him inferior to Elan in all three of combat, skills, and spellcasting. But then, Nale couldn’t be a bard, since he’s lawful, and bards can’t be lawful.
And it is totally in keeping with Nales love of pointlessly complicated plans.
And now some of this makes sense.
OK.
Really must review the 3.5 rules.
:smack:
For what it’s worth, I also thought it was a swipe at the old-timey triple-classed bard from AD&D.
The other joke is that Nale apparently did it because his dad told him that bards are underpowered – except, as Nale learned years later, Tarquin actually meant that bards should be ruling the world, since expert storytellers could easily follow the sly conqueror’s example by masterfully playing around with narrative tropes.
OK, so that was supposed to be a facepalm moment for Nale, when Tarquin casually explained what he meant by “bards are underpowered” and it sounded more like “Bards are awesome and just don’t use their power properly”?
I am a musician in real life. Bards were my favorite class in the halcyon days back in the 20th century. This twisted trope is very amusing to me.
Maybe. But I wouldn’t read too much into Nale’s line. Keep in mind it was just strip #50. Burlew was just beginning to develop the idea of having an overall story arc so he may not have worked out details like Tarquin yet.
True, so I guess my question, as someone who has never actually played a live game of D&D, would be: are bards “underpowered”? Or, do some people think they are? And if so, in what sense?
Difficult to quantify, since a bard’s power level depends a lot on the rest of the party. On the one hand, they have a lot of abilities for buffing up others, and so can be very valuable in a large party. On the other hand, they’re relatively versatile, and so can be valuable in a small party. But in the classic four-man group of fighter, rogue, wizard, cleric, replacing any one of those with a bard is probably going to make the party less powerful.
In D&D 3.5E, I wouldn’t say bards are underpowered as such, but they suffer from a lack of focus. Bards are a jack of all trades class, they can cover other classes jobs in a pinch, but don’t do any of them particularly well.
The basic assumption for a D&D party is four characters, a fighter, a cleric, a mage, and a rogue, and each of them have a job to do, and are very good at those jobs. A Bard on the other hand is a back up class, they have a little bit of arcane magic, a little bit of the rogues skill focus, they can fight a bit but not as well as three of the four main classes, and they have a small amount of a clerics healing and buff abilities.
In a group where there are one of each of the four main classes the bard will be outshone at everything, and hence would be seen as underpowered. Although depending upon the exact makeup of the group, the bard would likely come into their own in social and NPC interaction areas, but to gamers who would worry about classes being underpowered, that is the least important part of the game. :rolleyes:
I pulled out my old 1st ed. Player’s Handbook. Bards get the lofty position of “Appendix II”.
– Start as fighters until 5th level. Before 8th level they…
– Switch into being thieves. Stay a thief until at least 5th level. Don’t gain additional hp unless your thief level exceeds your old fighter level. Before level 9…
– Switch into being druids. Except they’re not druids, they’re bards. They always melee at whatever their fighter level was before switching and can use thief skills to match their old thief level. They can eventually cast druidic spells up to 5th level. Bards can only wear leather armor or magical chain mail.
So you wind up with a spell-capped druid who has the combat ability of a level 5-8 fighter and thief abilities of a level 5-9 rogue.
Their special bard skills are:
– Tell a rousing tale for two rounds. After the second round the party gets a 10% morale bonus and +1 to hit for one turn.
– Bard can negate malignant “song” effects such as harpy screeches.
– Chance to charm enemies into sitting still and listening; can try to implant a suggestion.
– Chance to use “legend lore” to tell what magical properties an item has.
So back in the beginning at least, they were a bit complicated and a slow road to not very much real pay-off. I can’t speak for later incarnations. I never saw anyone actually try to go through the whole rigamarole to level up a bard from level 1. Only time I ever saw anyone play one was when we started with higher level characters for a one-off adventure.
Are you sure about that? Surely after their Bard level exceeds their Fighter level they can use the Bard THAC0? But I recall that Bards had a huge longer-term advantage in Hit Points.
I’m at work but it said that bards fight at whatever their Fighter level is (or “was” since it stops progressing).
Bard was my favorite class in 2nd Edition. They got a smattering of thief abilities, spells like a wizard (though with slower progression), and could choose their weapons like a fighter. I want to say that they also had a huge selection of skill proficiencies to choose from, though I don’t have the book handy.
Bards got less good in 3rd edition mainly for the reasons GreedySmurf outlined above.
I’m of the opinion that bards became completely awesome again in 4E, but I’m also of the opinion that 4E was a pretty great system. So, you know. YMMV.
I played one a couple of times in the 80s. Because of the geometric nature of the XP tables, it was best to be patient and work up to 7th level fighter. You will then hit 8th level thief rather earlier than the straight fighter hits 8th. You will then be racing him to 9th and you will have 7d10 + 9d6 hp and sixteen goes at your CON bonus, with more to come. The spells aren’t awesome but hey.
What you were hoping for, of course, was an Instrument of the Bards of usable level to give those spells a little lift.
I don’t know whether this works for all of your posts, but that one is three times better when read in the voice of Johnny Bravo.
It’s also helpful to add a “Hoo! Hah! Awww, mama.” to the end of each sentence.
You missed some subtle advantages to the 1E bard:
-Regular class hit dice get capped at “name level” for most classes, but bards not only get hit points from their fighter hit dice, they potentially get a whole whack of bard hit dice too. High level bards have potentially the highest hit points in the entire game.
-The way XP works in 1E AD&D is very odd sometimes. For instance, 250,001 XP is enough to be an 11th level druid or a 5th level fighter/6th level thief/12th level bard. So the fastest way to get 12th level druid spellcasting is to start off as a fighter!
EDIT: Malacandra noted those points, but they bore repeating.
A 12th level druid gets five 1st, five 2nd, four 3rd, four 4th, three 5th, two 6th & one 7th level spells. Bards cap out at 5th level spells. A level 12 bard gets three spells each of levels 1-4.
They also cap out in power as a 12th level druid so a lvl 15 bard still casts spells with effects as though he were a level 12 druid.
Here is a PDF of the old 1st ed. rules I found. It also mentions the fighter skill thing: “A bard always engages in combat at the level he or she attained as a fighter.”
Edit: Oops, I looked at the lvl 12 druid table instead of the level 11. Still, point remains that a lvl 11 druid is a more capable caster than a level 12 bard.