I am a big fan of Bards, I have an old Bard character on extended retirement that I am thinking of pulling out to play. It is the character I have invested the most time in, not only playing, but developing a deep back story.

I will provide this as my personal thoughts.

People like some degree of RP, but not in a vacuum. People will play a challenging Guild type (Necromancers) or some odd combinations (Gnome Barbarian) because they still, at the end of the day, can enjoy a payoff. I don't think everything is measured in terms of PvP or being a meta-gamer. But you can't expect someone to measure their satisfaction with a character only based on RP ... "Did I tell a good story today while pretending to be a guy who is actually a girl who ran away from Princess school."

I think Bards offer a lot of RP flexibility and options, but it is often in a vacuum. Necromancers have a deep, deep lore revolving around The Great Work. Other mages have deep systems involving interactions with higher powers and other planes. Bards touch on some of this, but in a halfway sort of way. By being a Guild that can do a lot of things, it often doesn't do enough in one single area to win people over.

This is something I know the powers that be have observed and want to fix. When you are doing a little bit of everything, you're going to have nothing that defines you. So a lot of folks will wander to the other Guilds. Yeah we do fighting, but if you really want to fight you go to X. Yeah we have magic, but if you really want a mage you go to Y.

On a related note, I think Bards mildly suffer from the expectation that they are true Jack of all Trades rogues when in reality they are Lore-primary combat mages who are teritiary in Survival. Yes, so, so close to being Jack of all Trades, but I think the Survival tertiary is just enough of a hit that they are a little less desirable than they could be. OTOH I don't know if a Lore-primary, Magic and Survival secondary, but still combat oriented, could have worked in DR. I guess this is just more commenting on expectations vs. reality. I absolutely know that there are Bards who go down the stealthy route, but I think it's second fiddle to other options.

I'd personally love to end any and all referencces to Bards being "Jack of all Trades." It's a horrible trope that doesn't fit with the balance of the game.

I often wonder that if Bards WERE as good as stealth as Thieves and Rangers, but were weaker in combat, but still had combat as an option, if they would be more or less popular. But meh, hypotheticals. Better to embrace what the Guild IS than talk about what it COULD BE (But Won't!).

I think Bards suffer another minor hit to their popularity from being oriented a little bit to group buffs when some people would prefer the flexibility to being solo. Again, it's just a slight tip of the scale, but one that may diminish the popularity overall. But this seems to be something that is just baked into the cake of Bardic characters across platforms and games. I understand the trope.

Bardic combat, solo style, is set up to be a war of attrition, of slowly wearing out your opponent and their will to keep fighting. It's small tactical (Tactics) advantages that slowly build up over time. A Lore-primary combat mage that wears down the opposition, toys with their emotions and charms them may not be the "Bardic" character that someone from outside DR expects. As a related hypothetical thought to my thought above, I wonder if maybe Bards wouldn't be MORE popular with less a combat emphasis, so they could attract more people who just want to RP without a combat emphasis. Who knows?

To continue the theme of death by a thousand cuts, Bards probably suffer some marginal impact from being the Performance Guild without an actual Performance system. Just a casual observation.

I don't think the meta-gamer is the challenge. I think people want a mix of RP and in-game success (PvP or just personal goals). I think the problem for Bards is they have a poor matchup between the RP and in-game systems. It would be nice if someone RPing a starving artist could at times be an artist within an in-game performance system. It would be nice if someone RPing being a washed up, burnt out Bard haunted by his past (Macfrae!) had more in-game of dark secrets of the Bard Guild.

Oh what am I saying, let me just go back to my beer and sit in the corner of the tavern.

I love playing my bard, and I usually stick to survival primary guilds. I wish I had the money to reactivate her.

Now, one of the...less...parts of the guild are the other players. Despite Bards being one of the more RP rich groups 90% seem to be generic orphan ladies man drunk. And the rest want to be 'real' bards with their poetry and plays and reciting constantly (which is fine, but much like in Highschool there is only so much bad poetry I want to read).

FWIW part of it I think based on feedback from people trying the guild out is that the Bard guild takes a lot longer to ramp up and really come into their own than many other guilds. Beyond that I think a lot of people still might not realize how potent the Bard toolbox is, and they do also suffer from not having a well-defined guild skill.

The perk of the roleplay aspects people mention is that it is largely self-driven. Past a certain point, GMs can't wave a wand and make your class or setting be the thing you want it to be in the eyes of people, you actually have to put some feet in the ground and project the story you want to tell in a way that makes other players want to buy into it and tell it with you.

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Thayet
@thayelf // http://thayette.tumblr.com

"But you must know that if corruption is powerful enough, it's not corruption at all — it's law. Unspoken, unwritten, but law." — Robert Jackson Bennett, City of Stairs

<<What is the perk of the Bard toolbox? My Bard has been in retirement for a while and I just always enjoyed him for his own sake, I never thought much about what may or may not have been working better than other Guilds.

Anti-TM and good debuffs would be my guess. I'm not a PvPer, though, so take that with a grain of salt.

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I agree that the answer is basically versatility. We have:

- An amazing crafting buff (+Lore prime).
- An anti-stealth cyclic (no hiding or locating).
- A suite of great area debilitation.
- Anti-TM.
- The only non-Empath heal-others spell (HODI).
- An AOE TM spell that rivals Fire Rain.
- SEVERAL good get-out-of-dodge cards, including a scream that pops you out of a stun.
- Some very neat RP tools (e.g. AOT, Voice Throw, Playact, Whistles).

Plus enough cyclics that they can be used to train any magic while you're sitting around doing other things.

>>RAGE and Resonance help, but don't make up for a lack of ranks.

I'm surprised that Rage, Resonance, and Drum don't add up to a pretty good deal to you. Plus a TM/Disc buff in Will.


- Navesi

So for what it's worth, it sounds like Bards are matching up with the goals set for what vision is guiding development right now:

https://elanthipedia.play.net/mediawiki/index.php/Post:Bards_3.141592653589793238462643383279_-_5/16/2011_-_19:10:24

"Finally we did some thematic groundwork for what Bard abilities and magic actually do and the conclusion was that while a Bard can do direct damage attacks, it's not really what they're good at. They rather weaken, discourage, disable and so forth -- much more subtle effects -- and finish the job with other tools."

"Clearly this is not to say you aren't going to get direct damage attacks, there are TM spells on your spell list, and screams are being expanded, but it's a weak point in the guild. This ties in with the, accurate, statement someone made the other day about Bards being more suited towards working with the elements of aether, air, and water as opposed to fire, earth, and electricity."

So Bards have a niche for them, it's working for people who like that niche, but that niche is just not going to be that large.

I'd suspect that as Crafting gets fleshed out Bards could benefit as a Lore-primary Guild. I also think a fully functional Performance system would marginally help.