Bardic Spell Prerequisites

[JackShadow]

I have not been able to find this brought up online or in the DFRPG books so now I have to ask. :)

How do you handle a Bard whose Spell has a Prerequisite outside their allowed Colleges?

The specific example my player found was Concussion. It requires Shape Air and Thunderclap. Thunderclap is fine but Shape Air is only an Air Spell with Create Air and Purify Air as Prerequisites.

DFRPG clearly expects Bards to be able to cast Concussion. It is used as an example on Magic p. 66 explaining the Bard process of casting Sound Spells only using their Instruments.

Do they have to spend the points on those Air Spells they can't use? Do they skip those prerequisites? Is there a rule listed somewhere in DFRPG I missed?

Thanks.

[ArchonShiva]

If he’s an elf and Magery 0 suffices, cool. Otherwise, he should be an elf next time. That’s RAW.

[Nosforontu]

Alternatively the bard can potentially learn magery 0 as per exotic training for about 400$ and 5 points with gm permission.

[ArchonShiva]

Originally Posted by Nosforontu

Alternatively the bard can potentially learn magery 0 as per exotic training for about 400$ and 5 points with gm permission.

Note that while it’s probably a good idea to allow it for bards (and I’d likely let a Bard get it with his 5 points from Quirks), it’s not an Advantage from Chapter 4 - Magery’s writeup is right on the wizard’s template. It’s the equivalent of letting someone Exceptional Train into Heroic Archer, not Weapon Master (which is accessible to multiple templates).

There is a *huge* power and versatility difference between a bard which can pay [5] for this whenever and one that can’t. I think the bard needs the boost, but it’s not trivial. And one might soon ask about it Magery 1, which is every bit the same level of “off-limits”.

[evileeyore]

This is solvable by adding a single word to the “Bardic ” Spells sidebar on Spells pg 7:

"Bards are limited to casting the Communication and Empathy, Knowledge, Mind Control, and Sound colleges."

So they could learn other spells (for prerequisites sake) but can only cast Comm & Emp, Know, Mind, and Sound spells.

Or just say "Yeah, we're letting you buy that spell and ignore prereqs from outside your Colleges".

Or... you just say, "Well, I guess you should've been an Elf" [/shrug].


All three are perfectly Krommulent ways of dealing with it.
(The last is the most RAW... in almost all senses of the term)

[Kromm]

In the DFRPG, the idea of learning spells you cannot cast doesn't exist . . . learning and being able to cast them are one and the same. We've left in the possibility that some bards can have spells with prerequisites most bards can't learn because some bards are elves or half-elves with Magery, and because some GM's will actually use Exceptional Training (Exploits, p. 93) and/or Supernatural Modifications (Exploits, p. 94) rather than just read the words.

[JackShadow]

So unless the Bard has some other way to justify getting those Concussion prerequisites, they can not learn it?

I'll have to read up on the Exceptional Training and see how I want to handle it.

Thanks.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by JackShadow

So unless the Bard has some other way to justify getting those Concussion prerequisites, they can not learn it?

Correct. The note about Concussion and Sound Jet on p. 66 of Spells is there because Concussion is available to some bards and is one of two Sound spells that might not obviously be "cast on the bard."

[ArchonShiva]

While it is explicitly not RAW (as Kromm confirms), letting characters learn spells they cannot cast (assuming they learned any spell prerequisites) is the safest solution in terms of balance. It’s definitely not going to break anything remotely important.

Well, it could break a character if they sink all their points into them...

(I guess you could add the caveat that simply knowing Recover Energy without being able to cast it doesn’t give any benefits, but it’s not like letting all characters try to raise an IQ/H skill to 15 to double their FP recovery is going to break much, either.)

The *best* solution is left as an exercise to individual GMs.