In my 12 years of DMing, I've never had a decent bard player. They're always either full edge or lolsorandumb, and I'm fuckin tired of this shit.
Give me some hope Veeky Forums, if you got any good bard characters or bard-related stories, post them. Restore my faith in humanity
Mine was in a fairly weeb party so I straight up made a clown who would randomly drop the happy act and get very snarky, sarcastic and rude. He was also a giant so after insulting someone, he would walk right up to them, stare them down, honk his horn and the punch them.
He would sing and dance if you don't then you are no friend of his. He befriend the overlord.
>They're always either full edge or lolsorandumb
Which is more likely: that you're correct about all the allegedly lolsorandumb bards, or you just have a shitty sense of humor?
Sadly, I'm certain the issue doesn't lie with my sense of humor. Unless I'm missing something, a loli-bard (who's actually a thousand years old) that only communicates via giggles, an oh-so-beautiful-and-seductitve bard-sassin that always recites an emo poem before killing someone and, the gem, an insane feminazi that belittles cis scumlords in a fantasy setting at every performance (not as a joke, the player was deadly serious), are not exactly what I'd call good characters
Well, a bard is character-wise one of the harder ones to get right, because the standards are higher, in my opinion. In media, most bards are absolutely glorious, where as cardboard versions of other character types are pretty dime a dozen. Bards are also a meme.
Bards are also kind of an unpopular class, all in all, so good examples are harder to come by, too.
Whenever I play a bard I just go for a magical rogue type character more often than not.
The secret is to not specialize, and by extension, to not really have a strongly defined personality.
In one PF campaign, Jarrick was a bard who traveled with a group of adventurers. They were trying to find out what happened to a lost band of soldiers. The rest of the group were highly specialized bricks and blasters. Jarrick used his talents to get NPCs to point their way. In combat, Jarrick didn't bother with magic or bardsong at all. He just guarded the squishier party members and fought defensively, occasionally using his shortbow to interrupt enemy casters. There were a few magical traps set up, but Jarrick's Detect Magic cantrip combined with a few Knowledge: Arcana checks got them past without alerting the enemy, and put them in mind that they would be facing necromantic magic. He ended up getting more than his share of nifty oddball magic items that the rest of the party disdained in favor of their specialties, and eventually they gave him a few of their castoff weapons and scrolls. He distracted the necromancer simply by being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and blocked his retreat by being in the right place at the right time, hugging him tenderly while his party blasted the two of them into chunder. See that story had everything and I just made it up don't play a bard if you've ever liked Slipknot Korn or Ed Sheeran
Used to be a part of a college A-Capella group, where a group of us ran a 100% bard party. Combat was 20% rolling dice and 80% raucous singing. Probably the most fun I've had in a game in over a decade.
Nice.
What about a workaday mercenary, who just happens to understand the theorics of musical arcanum, and uses them as her specialty just as a modern-day grenadier or designated marksman would?
Pic related.
My bard is a failed artist, who's mediocre at every art he has tried so far, mundane of magic. He can sing, dance, play music, paint, sketch, carve wood, stone and bone, but none very well. He has become cartographer of an airship crew (the party) to make money, in the hopes of finding new art forms on the way.
Awesome as fuck, would play.
I played a bard a long time ago in Pathfinder, who was actually useful. He was a face character, with max ranks in social skills Every time the group needed something talky done, the sent him to the front and had him swindle, con, lie, and cheat his way into and back out of trouble. Think Nubby from All Guardsmen Party, except with hygiene and intelligence. In combat, he spent most of his time staying out of trouble, and using a well-placed illusion or charm to turn the tide of a fight.
One time, the battle went poorly, and he got dropped in to -hp before he could act. A mini-boss got a crit, and then rolled really high damage. The battle shifted, and his bleeding body wound up behind enemy lines. The cleric channeled positive energy into an aoe heal (The single best ability that Clerics got in PF), causing my bard to be up and about behind enemy lines. He immediately cast Charm Person on the boss, who failed his save, and spent every turn for the rest of the fight talking him down, effectively pulling the most dangerous combatant out of the battle.
I never really got 100% behind the idea of a combat musician. Always seemed kind of out-of-place and hard to take seriously, to be honest.
Ironically, I think the classical image of the bard is much more interesting than the DnD adaptation: a respected keeper of lore and culture, who has mind-boggling amounts of knowledge memorized with the assistance of mnemonic devices. I'd probably want to play up that aspect of the bard if I were to play one.
>An aged, dignified, warm but vaguely melancholy warrior-skald, keeper of the old ways, who preserves the collected works, hopes, and fears of entire cultures - some dead and dying - in memory.
>Some of this, he knows, will die with him, but committing them all to paper would be a slow process, and he's not long for the world. Better to travel the world and tell the tales that need to be told, as is the bard's lot in life.
>When he recites, or sings, it tends to be a quiet thing. Thin, hollowed voice, slow and dignified couplets, a thousand-yard stare. But the words have a power to them nonetheless, that beats against the ear and impresses into the mind.
>Some cultures' magics are too old and protean to sit comfortably in a page, as do the neat and domesticated things of wizards. But in his travels, he has learned to evoke them by capitalizing on his mnemonics, with only minimal notes in his spellbook. They have helped him to survive to an old age in his travels.
I once ran a bard with Perform (Weapon Drill) that couldn't carry a tune in a bucket, inspiring allies with dazzling swordsmanship. The game sadly didn't last very long, but he ended up handling all the guild paperwork, arranging for favors, and generally just being an upstanding gentleman.
I'm GMing since 2005.
I never had a bard PC in my games AT ALL. And to drive the point further - there is barely any combat in my games and there can be entire campaigns free of encounters, aside some nasty confrontations when players seriously and honestly fuck up, so it's not like there are no bards because they don't fit or they wouldn't survive.
Kind of feel bad because of it.
Also, stealing cheesy geisha-bard for an NPC.
>I never really got 100% behind the idea of a combat bookworm. Always seemed kind of out-of-place and hard to take seriously, to be honest.
Honestly don't; a lot of players just don't get bard or are too insecure to take the idea of a character who isn't a single minded hyperfocused character seriously, especially one who is actually cultured and there's always been this discomfort since long ago.
Years ago, back when Ruby Quest was still ongoing, Veeky Forums also ran a Bard Quest. I don't think it was ever finished but it got several threads along at least, and the heroine looked cute.
I played with a lady who ran a really great guru styled bard. All of her "songs" were badass proverbes from monk So-and-so or Master Dude-guy. It worked really well and added an interesting dynamic where we had to throw out all the tavern related bard tropes. Instead of convincing people to sleep with her she was convincing people to pursue inner peace. it was pretty fun.
I'm playing a bard right now. I think I'm doing pretty well. I just try to be myself, and have adapted my own personal background to a more setting appropriate format. Playing at my local game store, people seem to like me and like my character.
In combat, I don't try to directly deal damage, but try to aid other people and gain tactical and environmental advantages. So, this might be setting up flanking, using the aid another action, drop a grease, pull out acid flasks and alchemist fire for swarms, etc. I actually try to sing in session and come up with songs that are appropriate for what is happening. Sometimes they land and sometimes they don't. My knowledge and social skills have been a boon to the party to advancing the quest or facilitating survival and combat. I play a hard support and let other people do the dirty work while I try to contribute the best that I can to let the strengths of the other players shine.
That, and I don't want to fucking pay the feat taxes to actually start doing damage in combat in pathfinder. Fuck.
Take leadership and roll a fighter cohort. Buff the fuck out of your fighter
I been thinking about making an infographics that lists fictional characters as examples of different classes.
Kubo is a great example of a bard but I have no idea about other bards or good examples for other classes.
I played a Bard who acted like WWE promoter / commentator. She'd cut promos for her allies, disparage the enemies mid-battle, and call out the names of her allies' signature attacks to give them attack and damage bonuses. Now this SOUNDS ridiculous but she was also a Truenamer, meaning that by defining her allies as being powerful contenders and by describing how her enemies were quaking in their boots it actually became reality, albeit temporarily. Her descriptions of what her allies were doing or were going to do was actually refining and empowering her truenaming powers and projecting them via bardic magic.
When it comes to charisma-based casting and word magic, the more confident and specific you are the more powerful your effects become. Therefore it makes perfect sense to be a melodramatic hype man for your team, that gives them the best buffs.
I Played a Valor Bard who essentially WAS the pro wrestler. He was a gladiator in the big city, and despite his low station he was being groomed for stardom. Small name, big ego.
Once the campaign started proper, he had to face facts and accept that his life's work is in performance and entertainment, not stardom. To that end he operated as a backline tank and support machine, and chickened out if forced into actual combat (despite boasting an impressive array of weaponry).
Well there's always the Bards-are-sluts trope.
Recently ran a bard during a high-level evil campaign for shits and giggles.
Ridiculously high perform but was cursed to only play one song: Wonderwall by Oasis.
Spent way to much time in that campaign setting up a fried chicken business that made reduced overhead by selling undead chicken meat.
Bards are shit. Next question.
I had a fighter that I played like a bard (I wanted to play a bard, but the DM nerfed spellcasters into oblivion). He would have a story to tell for every situation the party was in. When the druid fed my fighter a goodberry he found in his shoe, my fighter spoke of a man he had once met that made a miserable part of his life bearable with his few dozen recipes for toejam and sweaty socks. When the party was fighting a swarm of pages torn from books animated to give us paper cuts, he mid-combat recounted the story an officer he once served under who was entranced by a scholar in they village they occupied. The officer invited the scholar to his quarters to share a "love of literature", only to be found the next day tied to his bed, flayed alive, his books thrown from his shelves, pages torn out, new books transcribed from the old ones in their place, made of his flesh. With the officer out of commission, my fighter was able to raid his collection. "He was a hard-assed bastard. But to his credit, he had a good taste in books, which is why you don't judge a book by its cover." I always told these stories during combat, and every time the DM would cut me off every six seconds and make me wait until my next turn to continue. It was really tedious because combats lasted almost as long as 10 rounds in that game.
Read, my nigga.
My brother told me in his game he plays a bard as a wandering folk singer with a magic tambourine. So basically him IRL.
Apparently his group really likes it.
Where did your brother find a magic tambourine?
It's just a regular tambourine. But he makes it magic because the kid basically has 20 Charisma.
>ad&d game
>dude gets the levels to go bard
>totally chill low key didn't even tell the party IC he'd taken up bardy ways
>we find it odd that when he starts whistling or singing under his breath in combat we all feel pumped
i'm currently playing a drow bard in a pathfinder campaign who's basically living on a prayer and working out an immediate solution with whatever's at hand, and has, thus far...
>calmed a village down from lynching the party summoner via pointing at the undead crisis
>was both bridesmaid and best man AND musician at a wedding
>stole the bride's wedding gift dog via superior handle animal
>played his flute so damn loud he could be heard across a port town in order to get the party back together, and mimed an apology to the slightly grumpy town guard. miming was so good the town guard teared up a little bit over how sincere the apology seemed
>lead the party to ambush the BBEG squad more than 15 sessions early......while underwater......and managed to aid in getting rid of the de-facto leader of the BBEG squad
>negotiated a ship for the party, and did a perform check to pretend like he knows how to sail.....rolled so well he kinda became the captain
>got hit with negative levels, decided that the quickest way to be back at full strength would be to go to the party vampire barbarian and join the undead ranks......only to become beefier than anyone else in the party
>wrote a guide to common 101 for some gnome-like creatures that could only speak gnomish and elvish
honestly i was going to play him as a very plain stereotypical bard but with almost every session he got a little more ridiculous and,more recently, #notallundead.
pic related, it's his beautiful face currently
Playing a Bard who doesn't even music- he's a chronicler who has attached himself to the party leader (pic related) and is building a cult of personality around said leader (controlled by himself of course)
Reminds me of Jarlaxle, the raw charisma and goofy love of life while somehow seeming to have a better idea of what's going on than everyone around him
It's hard not to feel bad when you never had a bard or even bard-like character in your games, while in the same time making them extremely bard-friendly for past few years.
It feels even worse, because before I've became a GM for life, I met 1 (verbally: one) guy playing with bard PC. And he was a metalhead bringing guitar for games.
>We can dance if we want too.
>We can leave your friends behind.
>Because your friends don't dance.
>And if they don't dance, well they're no friends of mine.
>I said we can go where we want too.
>A place where they will never find.
>And we can act like we come from out of this world.
>Leave the real one far behind.
>And we can dance.
Played an Orc Rapper.
Notor-Wanted Git O.R.K
I run my Bards like military drummers.
en.wikipedia.org
(DnD3.5)I played a bard called Tulip, was weak af but very good at charms and enchantment spells.
once my team had a very difficult quest with cultists-undead-dragonkin-something, in conclusion my bard was ultrauseless and powerless.
i cheated one of my buddies that i casted a geas spell on him with the order to protect me, using an old piece of paper and a little charming spell. Whats more, dude believed me.
Love it. 30/10 would use her distracting the referee to hit my opponent with a chair
Except killer wizards and scholars have always had a place in adventuring folklore. And while there were also musical people, when fights broke out, they used their weapons like regular people.
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when I played as a DM had a good bard
user, I must admit, I want to fuck your bard.
I'm the only person I've ever MET that plays bards as the traveling historians and storytellers that they were. And it sucks that so few DMs understand just how important bards were to society, and how hospitality laws applied to them.
Even if you're not playing a 'spoony' bard, the DM always TREATS you like you are.
To expand on that, do you have any more drawings of him, he's cute as fuck.
user, I must admit I want to be your bard.
user, I must admit I want to kill your bard.
I tried a 'classic' Bard once, in that Bards were the closest thing middle ages had to journalists. So while he did songs & poems would be about current events and when they met another Bard they'd compare news/notes (which is where the old legend lore skill came from).
Problem was that the DM ran a squeaky clean Forgotten Realms type setting where you had printing presses, magic telegrams & a Gandominster wizard would just show up and send you on a dungeon crawl without needing to know anything. So my Bard wasn't useless but he was pretty hard to justify.
After that I've always told people that players & DMs need to discuss what they interpret what they individually think a Bard is before playing one in a campaign.
It would probably help if there was a character you could point at & say "Bards are like [specific character] in [specific movie/book/VG]" but is there one really?
I dunno, often it seems like it'd be easier to play a fighter with a Bard attitude & spend a slot in playing an instrument, but again it depends on how the table is run.
>I roll to seduce this random wench/man/animate thing/inanimate thing who my bard will skillfully fuck
I hate Bards being associated as fantasy rockstars
hes a gorgeous bastard
I was past the phase of being attracted to drawings. Fuck you, I'm confused as fuck.
>annoying cunt gary stu
>good example of bard
Pick one
Mine was just a dude who loved stories and got a little too enthusiastic when myths and legends were brought up. Great at lore, okay at music, not really into romance (unless fictional), and a pretty sneaky bastard with a history of breaking into private libraries. Occasionally made literary references no one understood.
He was kinda doing his best to be a hero because he didn't want to be forgotten after death. His intense interest in lore also tied into the fact I kept notes on the story of the campaign.
Holy shit, you seem like you ran into some nutjob players. Storytime?
You have to tell me what's wrong with the book. I thought it was pretty good up until the romance popped up, since I am pretty tired of romance as a plot point.
I once played a Bard as a fat, tonsuered friar tuck character who was a lay-cleric of Oghma. He had a voice like an angel and sung vespers. Despite his relatively high con, he huffed and panted whenever he had to run, because he was a fatty, and most of his 'tumbling' involved rolling around.
Get shit on
i once played a human nobleman gone bard who, in his prior-to-adventuring time, really wanted his adventurer father's inheritance, but his adventurer father, naturally, wouldn't give his mountains of gold to anyone unless they were cool like him.
So my PC did what any sensible rich brat would do, and had a bunch of songs written about his deeds and books about his exploits that never happened.
When that didn't work, he said fuck it, and decided to use the books already written about him (that people actually recognize in a pulpy, larger-than-life way) as grounds for getting up to adventure with an inn party.
At first-level, he got his hand bit by a baby basilisk and had to learn to play the flute one-handed until he got high enough level to cast the Cure Disease spell.
He also realized how fucking shitty adventuring can be, when your boots are in the shit and it's really happening.
Is this a lolsorandumb/edgelord concept? I played it pretty down to the ground, considering how much my PC really didn't want to do things but felt obligated to do things so people could praise him.
Ive been invited by a friend to join a homebrew game that he plays with his online friends (4 players + dm).
The rulea are very lax and we pretty much are free to come up with our abilities (only the dm has played PnP before and the game is "simply to have fun"). I haven't any experience with PnP either and have a bit of a challenge coming up with my character and his abilities.
Anyway, what i have thus far come up with is that id like to play a bard-like character that
>is half elf/half dwarf
>parents were members of a travelling music ensemble (fluitist elf mother and roadie dwarf father)
>get raised on the road, not much musical talent but he loved music so parents taught him what they could
>something happens, he gets sent to the Frozen Wasteland (the place where the campaign takes place) to find/do something (all of our characters must have some personal quest..)
>plays a large magical blowhorn, made from the horn of some yeti or something
Id like to play more than just a combat oriented character but not just a support/buffer either and kinda feel like the bard is something id enjoy (as stated, i dont know shit about this stuff)
As for abilities; we get to have 3 active abilities, 2 passive. Also, 1 daily ability, 1 racial and 1 quirk.
Thus far ive come up with
>Hypnotone (active ability); take control over foe. The limits of it i havent come up with yet, but there should be some catch to it
Eh fuck i have no imagination. All i can come up with is stuff like "buff partymembers +1 all stats"
What useful bard-like abilities could my character have? Im feeling helpless atm
That's the campaign of my dreams!
How do we feel about a bard who grew up as a street urchin who paid for their daily bread by crooning in dive bars, and is liable to dive over the table and start a five-alarm brawl over any slight, percieved or real?
just because
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Wow, a story just like all the others on Veeky Forums
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I could never stand the bard class and how such a silly idea could last this long in fantasy ttrpgs
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