Dungeons & Delvers: Red Book Bard

The usual way of handling the bard’s magic in Dungeons & Dragons is to give it leveled spell slots, like all the other spellcasters. D&D’s pseudo-Vancian system already doesn’t make any sense no matter which way you approach it, but it struck me as especially odd that a bard can just run out of of magic.

The initial Dungeons & Delvers bard, which debuted in one of the issues of Appendix D, and was updated and expanded on in the Appendix D compilation, had effectively infinite magic: your only concerns were time and circumstance.

For example, Lulluby requires 10 rounds of playing, after which a single creature that can hear you must make a saving throw or fall asleep. Takes awhile, but the talent specifies that once you start playing the creature won’t attack the bard, but will become hostile and automatically shake the magic off if your allies pop in or draw their weapons.

So, not useful at all during combat, but outside great for taking out lone creatures or even just causing distractions. In combat things have been trickier. See, Thunderwave is intended to be a bard’s basic magical area-effect attack. It requires two Standard Actions to complete, and deals 2d8+Charisma thunder damage to a 15-foot cone.

Compare this to a bard just melee-slashing for something like 2d6+2 to a single target, and it sounds like a good bargain. The problem is that things can change drastically once you start using it: creatures flee, spread out, move next to allies (meaning you'll hit them, too), or even die before you let loose. They could also take you out of commission, first.

Melissa has been playing a bard in our Tuesday game, and she's got it up to 6th-level, and so far it's been pretty situational. Mostly she uses it when something seems hard to hit, it's vulnerable to thunder damage (pretty rare), and/or there's a bunch of enemies bunched together. Pretty underwhelming for something she blew a talent on, especially when you look at other classes doing neat shit every round.

We want bards to be competent at melee and magic, with the option to generalize or specialize as they level up. At lower levels this probably isn’t that big of a deal, where everyone doesn’t have as many talents, resources, and passive bonuses, but as we expand the class to 20-levels for the upcoming Red Book it became clear bards needed some sort of boost.

The first change we considered was having bards use Swift Actions instead of Standard Actions. This way you could still attack or shoot arrows, and then when your song was finished if it didn’t work out like you wanted (or have any effect at all), it wasn’t as big a deal as if you’d wasted entire turns. But then Melissa came up with the idea to give the bard a kind of spell point currency that she called Rhythm.

Her rationalization was that when you're singing and/or playing an instrument (she was in band in high school), that your voice and fingers can get sore, and your arms tired, so it would make sense for a bard pouring her heart and soul into a performance, channeling song into spell, to get tired and sore much more quickly (similar to how wizards and sorcerers get exhausted using their magic too much).

Not only does it make sense in-game (as in, the bard can explain to the rest of the party why she can’t do certain magical things right away), but it also solves several issues:

The first is that it allows the bard to do stuff in combat without imposing a fairly clunky limitation: you can now use Thunderwave right away, instead of having to wait two or more rounds, hoping that by the time you’re ready there’s still a point. But you also don’t have bards just constantly spamming magic.

The second is that it allows easier scaling for bard talents: before something like Thunderwave gradually improved automatically (originally I wanted you to spend more turns to up the damage), now you can spend 1 Rhythm to use Thunderwave and deal 1d6+Charisma damage, and you can also spend more Rhythm to up the damage and/or range (as with other classes the total dice can’t exceed your bard level).

Finally, it allows for more fantastic spells to be used in combat. I read some stuff about songs transforming people, which makes me think of polymorph, but could you imagine making it a resource-and-danger free polymorph talent for a bard and trying to figure out how many rounds it would take to pull it off? Would it even be worth it? With Rhythm you can just give it a cost of like 10 points and call it good.

Right now Rhythm is a per-encounter resource, like the monk’s ki: you short rest, giving your fingers and voice time to recover, you get it all back. In addition many bard talents have a longer casting time. It’s basically the same as the wizard’s ritual casting time: if you take longer to use the talent, there’s no cost besides the time (so you can save your Rhythm). The idea is that doing it this way, you’re taking your time, not pushing yourself as hard, so less strain on your body.

Tricky thing will be to more or less balance bard talents with clerics, wizard, and other classes that take much longer to replenish their magic. Here’s how we’re changing Thunderwave, plus a new talent we’re adding to their repertoire:

THUNDERWAVE [SONG]
Rhythm: 1
Everything within 10 feet of you or a 15-foot cone (you choose each time when you use this talent) suffers 1d6+Charisma thunder damage (half on a successful Fortitude save). (Might knock this down to 1d4+Charisma since you get Rhythm back every short rest.)
+1 Rhythym: The damage is increased by 1d6. You can continue to spend additional Rhythm to increase the damage, but the total dice cannot exceed your bard level.
+1 Rhythym: The range is increased to either 20 feet around you or a 30-foot cone.

UPLIFTING CRESCENDO [SONG]
Concentration
Etude: 5 minutes for levitation; 10 minutes for flight (This is the no Rhythm casting time.)
As long as you can sing or play an instrument, you can use Charisma instead of Strength or Dexterity on any check made to jump or reduce damage from a fall.
Levitation: One creature or object within 60 feet floats for one minute per bard level. It can weigh up to 100 pounds per bard level. Each round you continue playing, it can move up or down at a rate of 20 feet.
Flight: For 1 round per bard level or until you stop singing or playing, a number of creatures up to your bard level gain a fly Speed of 60 feet. They must remain within 60 feet of you, otherwise they fall. If you're using your instrument, you and creatures affected by this talent add your Magic Bonus to their AC and Reflex saving throws as long as they are flying.
Rhythm (1): You activate the levitation ability of this talent, but it only lasts for 1 round per bard level.
Rhythm (3): You activate the flight ability of this talent. You can spend an additional 3 Rhythm to affect another creature, but can only affect a number of creatures equal to your bard level.

We'll be putting a the first 5 levels of this variant bard in the next issue of Appendix D, in addition to prehistoric stuff and a new class.

Announcements

You can now get a physical copy of Dungeons & Delvers: Black Book in whatever format you want! We've also released the first big supplement for it, Appendix D, so pick that up if you want more of everything.

If you want more adventures, we just released Escape From the Flesh Catacombs: a bunch of 0-level characters need to escape from the catacomb-lair of a gorgon that was slain, causing everything she's petrified to revert to flesh and rise as undead.

Our latest Dungeon World class, The Apothecary, is now available.

Dwarven Vault is our sixth 10+ Treasures volume. If you're interested in thirty dwarven magic items (including an eye that lets you shoot lasers) and nearly a dozen new bits of dungeon gear, check it out!

By fan demand, we've mashed all of our 10+ Treasure volumes into one big magic item book, making it cheaper and more convenient to buy in print (which you can now do).