Command Performance
Heck yeah, bards! I’ve always dug the musical dudes as a conceit. They’re all like, “Magic is its own kind of music, strange and wild. Wizards and their dusty tomes are deaf to it. Clerics can only beg some higher power for aid. But a musician can tune the cosmos like a mandolin, and play the hearts of men like a tambour. Listen well now, for you’ll not hear the like of me again.” Of course, it never goes like that in game. Bards have an image problem, and your badass character concept never survives contact with a sniggering table full of gamers.
More than anything, I think people undervalue bards for the same reason they revile the utility cleric. Alpha striking for ridiculous damage or casting some big, flashy spell can seem a lot more appealing than buffs. But at the end of the day I think that keeping the party alive or laying down that big fat haste + inspire courage is a pretty cool move. You’ve just got to make sure and do like the man said and keep yourself semi-competent with a weapon.
Or you can just be an archaeologist. It’s hard to argue with that imagery.
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If you tried to make my bard Lini sing about you, she’d stab you with her rapier. And since she’s only 3 foot 3, you won’t like just where she’s stabbing.
“Fine. Interpretive dance it is!”
–Fighter, probably
stab stab stab
Mental image: https://media.giphy.com/media/BVqTyss6XU72U/giphy.gif
You see what I mean? The indignity! 😛
She casts Glitterdust in your face then Chord of Shards followed by more stabbing.
I played a gnome archaeologist in Serpent’s Skull… but he was Old, and not inclined to bull bullwhip tricks.
I feel like “I’m an archaeologist” is such a different trope than “I’m a bard,” you know? I mean, I bet you played him as “aged professor” more than “travelling musician.” Did the rest of the party treat him like “the bard,” or did he manage to break out of that trope?
I think he actually had… whatever the feature was that let him primarily help by identifying monsters? And his bard powers were all framed as oratory, i.e. lectures. 😀 So yeah, trope broken.
Do people do musical bards in Pathfinder? It feels like Orate and Comedy are just better than other performances unless you have a racial intimidate bonus or really want something outside the core face skills.
The tradeoff is the +2 to Performance from a masterwork instrument. Of course, that can be inconvenient to carry around in battle. Which is what my buddy runs her gnome prankster bard with a harmonica:
https://ae01.alicdn.com/kf/HTB1VNGHeqSWBuNjSsrbq6y0mVXax.jpg