Originally written and posted on Medium.com August 10th, 2018
So you’ve chosen a race; awesome. That decides the core of who your character is. But now it’s time to choose what they do.
While your race gives you your core abilities, traits, and other things relating to what you are physically, your class is the real meat of who and what you are — it decides what weapons you wield, what armour you wear, your skills, specialities, and more.
Are you a raging warrior, who attacks recklessly and without thought? Perhaps a scholar, gaining power and magic from your libraries of books? Maybe you just wanna avoid all responsibilities and go live in the woods? Cool, but you can do that in the game too.
You would though, wouldn’t you. Oh yes.
It’s in the name, people.
Fighting, but without the discipline. Fuelled by rage itself. Beefy and strong, smash things in the face, ask the questions later.
High risk/reward class — you do lots of damage, but you wear little armour and are constantly screaming at things. Can go into a rage during combat, which causes you to do more damage and are more resistant to damage too.
Thematically, basically your standard, uncivilised “wild person”.
Bards have long been considered a “joke”, or at least “not be taken seriously”. Can someone explain to me what’s not serious about making people explode with a mandolin solo?
Charismatic, persuasive, manipulative, inspiring. Bards wield songs, music and poetry like others wield swords. Good support class, jack of all trades. Can fight a bit, heal a bit, do some spells, sneak around, but isn’t as good at any one of those single things as a Fighter, Wizard or Rogue.
But what they can do is manipulate the battlefield via their magical art.
They have access to spells that can distract their foes, hypnotise their targets, bolster their allies or just play a flute solo so amazing your friend’s next attack makes her enemy melt.
Look, what I’m saying is, can you imagine a whole party made out of just bards? You’d be a fucking band!
