[PF/3.5] An Actor Bard

[Volos]

I have a player who is having trouble coming up with good lines for her bard midgame. She is usually a very inspired player, but she needs a good foundation to launch from. While I could pass her notes or whisper names of plays or popular lines, it wouldn't go unnoticed by the other players. So I'm looking for things this bard might say mid-combat while she is using her perfomance or casting spells. She lives in Cheliax and is faithful to Phasmara; thus she has more of a gothic undertone to her roleplay.

[Toliudar]

Shakespeare often seems mined out and too familiar for many tastes. The other Elizabethan/Jacobean playwrights can be plenty gothic.

From The Witch of Edmonton:

She on whose tongue a whirlwind sits to blow
A man out of himself, from his soft pillow
To lean his head on rocks and fighting waves,
Is not that scold a witch? The man of law
Whose honeyed hopes the credulous client draw—
As bees by tinkling basins — to swarm to him
From his own hive to work the wax in his;
He is no witch, not he!


If thou my old dog art, go and bite such
As I shall set thee on.

From Ben Jonson's Sejanus:

His designs
Are full of grudge and danger: we must use
More than a common speed.


whereto, if Men would change
The wearied Arm, and for the weighty Shield
So long sustaind, employ the ready Sword,
We might have soon assurance of our Vows.

etc. This took four minutes of googling.

[Volos]

Yeah, but I didn't want to have her resort to quoting earth playwrites, considering that we are roleplaying on Golarion.

[Toliudar]

Unfortunately, quoting Golarion plays is significantly more difficult, because they don't exist. You don't have to attribute the theft IC.

All I'm saying is that there are centuries of people's efforts at making chunks of powerful, moving text. Why not use it?

[Ason]

I second what Toliudar said.


I'm currently playing a Pathfinder bard in the official setting, with a focus on oratory. All I did for his performances was search for classic speeches and sayings and tweak them to fit Golarion. If you find lesser-known lines from Shakespeare, other classic plays, political speeches (e.g. Churchill, Lincoln, Pericles) and novels, you can make it seem like your PC is quoting something from his own world with just a few minor tweaks to fit the new setting. Here is a quickly-done (i.e. low quality) example of such an adaptation using a more famous speech, but it should still prove my point. This would be something my orator bard (a 'priest' of Cayden Cailean) might say:

"I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me. A day may come when the kegs of men fail, when we forsake our wine and break all tankards in our taverns, but it is not this day. An hour of hangovers and shattered cups, when the age of ales comes crashing down! But it is not this day! This day we fight! By all that you hold dear in this good world, I bid you stand and fight!"

[Suteinu]

"I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me. A day may come when the kegs of men fail, when we forsake our wine and break all tankards in our taverns, but it is not this day. An hour of hangovers and shattered cups, when the age of ales comes crashing down! But it is not this day! This day we fight! By all that you hold dear in this good world, I bid you stand and fight!"

Strider? I hardly knew `er!

Certainly brush-up your Shakespeare, but don't feel it necessary to quote anyone directly. Start off with practicing puns and insults in the Elizabethan cant; this is a good exercise for getting you into the right speach patterns. Then let the play of the character just sweep you up into immortality.

Oh, and if you spout something that sounds odd or is otherwise lacking, simply follow the awkward silence with, "Well, it rhymes in Elvish...":smallwink: