The Bard Debate: clues & limelight

[subplotkudzu]

I've just finished reading all of the Order of the Stick archives (insomnia, your friend and mine) and found them rife with the 'Bards are Useless' meme. This ended up kicking another couple thoughts into my head.


The primary one is that one of the Bard's big abilities - bardic lore - can be easily overlooked. If the GM needs you to make a Bardic Lore roll to find the dungeon for this week, you will. If he needs you to make it to be able to figure out the big puzzle on level 4 to get further, you will. Plus, the time honored dictate to GMs that you don't leave any critical clue or plot point accessible via a single die roll (or a single PC) means that there will almost always be another way to access the information from Bardic Lore. The Bard's special ability is the power to act as the GM mouthpiece for information that would otherwise come some other way, because if it doesn't turn up, there's no game. And no player respects that, because even if their players should be impressed, the player knows the Bard PC is just a walking clue dispenser.

The secondary one is that the bardic ability to give other people a +2 on skill rolls is on a certain level stealing the limelight: any player who needs to take 20 and get the +2 bard kicker on a task will suspect that the GM boosted the difficulty just to give the bard something to do. Rather than being an aid, the Bard is either a tool ("Hey, bard-boy, come make me Masterwork!") or someone horning into his scene.

Just some thoughts, but I suspect these, plus the lack of ability to swing around a big pe... sword has something to do with the class being reviled.

Comments

[mneme]

anu3bis is pretty much correct -- Elan is more or less useless, not because he's a bard, but because he's Elan (he was the first character the Giant dreamed up).

The Order of the Stick have a lot of good examples of Elan -misusing- his good abilities, or using them despite himself -- like when he inspired competence on a Bluff check, or attempted to use his only Silent Image idea to distract a chimera. Or attempting to improve his Move Silently check. But it's not the abilities that are at fault there -- just Elan.

[brianrogers.livejournal.com]

As per usual, mention one throw away example and it twists the whole argument. I know that Elan has been made extra special useless for humor value. I also am not the person who needs to be convinced of a Bard's usefulness (see the initial Bard debate post, to which I am too lazy to link). But OOTS is hardly the first place I've come across this idea - it apparently runs rampant on the RPG Town Hall, and I've seen/heard it from other gamers and at cons. OOTS just reinforces it.

As I see it, there are 5 ways in which Bards can be derided:

1) They are generalists in a world of specialists, and therefore don't do anything as well as their allies.

2) they lack any way to do big boom damage.

Both of which were discussed below, with Netcurmudgeon ably setting those aside by properly labeling Bards as 'Force Multipliers', which clearly marks out their area of effectiveness.

3) Their main ability are silly and easy to make fun of.

OK, this is a given - the +2 to someone else's skill by singing is just a silly idea.

4) Their one area of specialization is negated by any Narrative tendency on the part of the GM - if the players really need to know something they'll learn it Bard or no Bard, so they actually have the special 'GM Mouthpiece' Power

5) Their ability to improve other people is actually a form of limelight theft - not only can the Bard not succeed in X, but when you try to do X, Mr. Bard is right there horning into the limelight and insisting that he too is part of your big moment. If this happens often, specialists will go nuts. There's a reason why Cyberpunk game a penalty on actions if the rest of the party was hovering over your shoulder.

OOTS only makes use of the first 3 for humor, but the last 2 are the ones that strike me as serious player interaction problems. How do you keep the Bard out of other people's limelight when their power is to, well, horn in on them? how do you keep their information gathering abilities useful without a failed roll leading to no adventure or a Total Party Kill because no on could figure out thy needed cold iron and not silver for their weapons?

These are problems I'd like to solve outside of Bards, as similar problems exist in Supers for pre/postcogs, magicians, etc.

[mneme]

I focused on the OOTS coment because it was easy, but...

1. The power of a generalist increases as party size grows smaller. Like CoDzilla, a bard is one of the few classes capable of effectively soloing -- but unlike the CoD, she has skills, in addition to armor, a good attack bonus/weapon choice, healing spells, and other bonuses. And in small groups, the bard can serve in nearly any niche (aside from "mass damage"). Of course, in addition to this, the bard -does- have a speciaty -- it's just "people person", not combat, so it gets ignored. Plus the force multiplier thing (though that's easily matched by buff spells from other spellcasting classes at moderate levels)

2. save or be screwed spells (which they specialize in) are actually more effective than boom spells most of the time.

3. Hell yeah. Though their ability to inspire courage is more in theme, and quite powerful.

4. This assumes the GM has plans of what the group will do, rather than a set-piece situation. If the GM sticks to deciding on events and things of interest, the bardic knowledge abilities can allow the PCs to choose between a greater number of possibilities (not to mention find out more about their equipment). "If you had a Bard, you'd have found out how to activate your weapons/enter the mines of More Wire without a side quest."

5. This one's interesting. Of course, other characters can do this -- aid role possibilites abound in D&D, including cross-skill. To a large extent, this may be a player problem.