Song of Command & instruments

[restlessgriffin]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

If all you care about is casting wizard spells, there isn't a reason. You play a bard when you care about:

• Getting a Good Price. ...
• Reaction (and Influence) rolls. ...
• Being an effective generalist. ...

Gaming Ballistics Delvers to Grow adds Expanded Bardic Talent [10 Points] p. 33, which allows you to pick on extra spell college from a limited list such as Animal, Illusions, and Healing. Good stuff. While Delvers to Grow has a Viking inspired background, much of it is fairly generic and can be used with DFRPG without using the Viking style background. I'm definitely going to use it that way.

I think I'm going to try starting off at the 125pt level (maybe 150 which isn't an official pt level).

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by restlessgriffin

Gaming Ballistics Delvers to Grow adds Expanded Bardic Talent [10 Points] p. 33, which allows you to pick on extra spell college from a limited list such as Animal, Illusions, and Healing. Good stuff. While Delvers to Grow has a Viking inspired background, much of it is fairly generic and can be used with DFRPG without using the Viking style background. I'm definitely going to use it that way.

Since the "Vikings" in my setting are rather, well, somewhere between Viking-esque and Viking-adjacent, that will serve you well. I try and ensure that one can de-Norsify much of the rules work without too much trouble...but of course I'm going to support the setting.

I think I'm going to try starting off at the 125pt level (maybe 150 which isn't an official pt level).

In a very real way it is: Krysuvik is designed around 150-point characters, and "125-points and an extra Upgrade" makes for pretty satisfying characters.

[sjmdw45]

Originally Posted by restlessgriffin

Gaming Ballistics Delvers to Grow adds Expanded Bardic Talent [10 Points] p. 33, which allows you to pick on extra spell college from a limited list such as Animal, Illusions, and Healing. Good stuff.

The Animal college is the druid's best shtick; I won't say there's no reason to play a druid if bards can cast Beast Link/Beast Seeker/Vermin Control/Beast Possession/Create Animal/etc., but druid would go from an extremely attractive class with a distinct niche to "mostly worse than bard". Druids would be better than bards at specialized tricks like dropping wooly mammoths out of the blue sky (Beast Possession into a flying shape like hummingbird, plus Create Animal-20 to cast without gestures or words, whereas bards must always sing to cast). But Bards don't take penalties for casting spells in most dungeons, unlike druids, and Bards have access to Song of Humiliation and to additional colleges which are overall better than the non-Animal druid colleges.

There's definitely an argument to be made that if you give bards a way to cast Animal spells, you should retire the druid profession and just direct players to play bards with druidic traits like Sense of Duty (Nature).

[restlessgriffin]

Originally Posted by sjmdw45

The Animal college is the druid's best shtick; I won't say there's no reason to play a druid if bards can cast Beast Link/Beast Seeker/Vermin Control/Beast Possession/Create Animal/etc., but druid would go from an extremely attractive class with a distinct niche to "mostly worse than bard". Druids would be better than bards at specialized tricks like ...

There's definitely an argument to be made that if you give bards a way to cast Animal spells, you should retire the druid profession and just direct players to day bards with druidic traits like Sense of Duty (Nature).

Well Druids are pretty weak. I'll agree on that. I need to check Gaming Ballistic books to see if there are any upgrades to Druids. I really wish they had a separate book for Druids like they have for Clerics in Hand of Asgard.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by restlessgriffin

Well Druids are pretty weak. I'll agree on that. I need to check Gaming Ballistic books to see if there are any upgrades to Druids. I really wish they had a separate book for Druids like they have for Clerics in Hand of Asgard.

No such druid book (probably will be called Trevinur: Druids of Nordlond) yet exists. I'd be interested in a credible proposal for a 16-32 page supplement (shorter is better, but I could see a few ways it might trend to the higher end of that) dealing with bringing druids into the mainstream.

I have long wanted a book on skalds, too. Fightin' skalds, lore skalds, and crafting skalds would all be excellent, though I've personally found that the tendency for gadgeteers, inventors, or Tech Ops (from my Black Ops game) to sit back and say "How can I solve the adventure without leaving my lab?" is pretty extreme, so I'd really (!!) want to see solid writing about how to make such things relevant during adventures ("in the Dungeon" being too narrow for how I run my own Nordlond games, and how nearly every person I've corresponded with about my setting runs theirs).

[sjmdw45]

Originally Posted by restlessgriffin

Well Druids are pretty weak. I'll agree on that. I need to check Gaming Ballistic books to see if there are any upgrades to Druids. I really wish they had a separate book for Druids like they have for Clerics in Hand of Asgard.

I don't think druids are weak; I just think they're primarily (60%ish) about exploiting animals, mostly via spells. It's like how wizards would be obsolete if Power Investiture 6 gave access to all wizard spells. Or how Holy Warriors are basically subsumed by Clerics--the only reason I can see to ever play a Holy Warrior by RAW is Extra Attack.

(Implication: I should probably allow Holy Warriors to take Weapon Master (one melee weapon).)