[3.5] Spell-Less Bard Variant

[Thurbane]

AFAIK, there is no official Bard ACF/variant that trades away all of their casting.

Not sure if this belongs here or in homebrew, but what would be a fair trade-off? (I have a nagging feeling I posted something like this before, but my search came up empty).

I'm thinking 8 skill points/level; all skills as class skills; and maybe throwing the non-sneak attack class features of Rogue as well - Trapfinding, Evasion, Trap Sense, Uncanny Dodge, Improved Uncanny Dodge & Special Abilities (the non sneak-attack ones).

This would be on top of all the normal Bard non-spell class abilities.

Is it enough? Would this Bard variant be viable as a PC?

Maybe scrap the Rogue abilities, and give the Bard accelerated Bardic Music progression and bigger bonus numbers for the music effects?

Or maybe give the Exemplar PrC abilities, spaced out over 20 levels?

All thoughts and input welcome.

Cheers - T

[pabelfly]

I'd suggest trading Bardic spellcasting for either Fighter feats, like feat Rogue, or bard-related feats like spell-less Ranger and Paladin. They're both weaker than Bardic spells but you could make a viable martial build.

[Doctor Despair]

Going for bonus feats are a good idea; maybe inventing a new tag for any feat that references bardic music would be useful for making a fixed list.

Alternatively (or additionally), I'd probably consider an increase in effective bard level for determining bardic music known / effectiveness / uses. Maybe treat them as a bard three levels higher and as if they had three more ranks in perform.

[Anthrowhale]

I'd suggest trading Bardic spellcasting for either Fighter feats, like feat Rogue, or bard-related feats like spell-less Ranger and Paladin. They're both weaker than Bardic spells but you could make a viable martial build.

This seems simple and effective. Snowflake Wardance typically makes a Bard competitive with a fighter and many bardic musics can be maintained with a full attack.

[Biggus]

Personally I'd want the bardic music to improve, as that's their unique ability; I don't think making them into a variant Rogue would be very interesting. Possibly improved music plus some bonus feats; or maybe combine Bard with Seeker of the Song into one core class. A lot of the Seeker's abilities aren't very good by the time you get them, but at lower levels they'd be pretty decent (energy resistance 15, 6d6 fire damage, heals HPs=Perform check, damage reduction 2/-).

[Morphic tide]

I personally would look at relentlessly cannibalizing the various added usages for Bardic Music to make a decent sized option list, expanding it to directly replace spells to a tolerable degree, for all Illusion and Divination are a pain to justify direct equivalency to. Using it for minions is pretty straightforward given the Epic use of Perform is just straight-up AoE Diplomacy and it only takes a DC 30 check to start getting extraplanar attention. Dawncaller, Dirgesinger, Evangelist, Seeker of the Song, and War Chanter all give nothing for spellcasting, and tend to be bad enough due to this that stepping on their toes shouldn't be a big issue. Especially if they scale the pre-existing abilities, ultimately acting as list-altering PRCs.

[Doctor Despair]

I personally would look at relentlessly cannibalizing the various added usages for Bardic Music to make a decent sized option list, expanding it to directly replace spells to a tolerable degree, for all Illusion and Divination are a pain to justify direct equivalency to. Using it for minions is pretty straightforward given the Epic use of Perform is just straight-up AoE Diplomacy and it only takes a DC 30 check to start getting extraplanar attention. Dawncaller, Dirgesinger, Evangelist, Seeker of the Song, and War Chanter all give nothing for spellcasting, and tend to be bad enough due to this that stepping on their toes shouldn't be a big issue. Especially if they scale the pre-existing abilities, ultimately acting as list-altering PRCs.

If we're talking equivalencies to spellcasting, there's not much you can do with bardic music to even come close. You could give Music of the Gods as a bonus feat at level 17 and it still wouldn't equate to the sheer utility of wish. You could give Hymn of Songdeath (from Seeker of the Song) as a constant AoE at 14 and it wouldn't square up to the utility of lesser wish. If your goal to to match the power of full casting, you're doomed to failure without serious homebrew.

Of course, this is bardic spellcasting, not wizard spellcasting; while Sublime Chord exists, normal bard only gets 6ths. Giving everything normal bard gets plus all those sundry things might ultimately add up to something worth spellcasting. I worry that such a huge repertoire of music could feel unwieldy to manage though; while a druid technically has a much larger list of spells at his proverbial fingertips, he doesn't have them all ready at will at the same time every day to fumble through.

[Biggus]

If we're talking equivalencies to spellcasting, there's not much you can do with bardic music to even come close.

This is true, but the OP didn't say "what can I replace spellcasting with that would be equally good?" but what would "be viable as a PC?". Standard Bard is a high tier 3 class (according to this (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?600635-Why-each-class-is-in-its-tier-2019-update!)) so it could drop some power and/or versatility and still be playable. In my experience it's not until you get to low tier 4 that you're really struggling to contribute.

[redking]

The Dragonlance Master base class can serve as a spell-less bard.

[Morphic tide]

If your goal to to match the power of full casting, you're doomed to failure without serious homebrew.

No idea how the wires in your head crossed to assume it'd be trying to match Wizards instead of trying to match the normal Bard. Because the normal Bard has spells, it should be pretty darned clear by context of where this is posted that "expanding it to directly replace spells to a tolerable degree" is referring to the spells the class has to begin with.

Also, Spellsong is a thing, lore version scales with participants and overlaps with the Lyric Spell feat. There is a lot of Enchantment and attitude adjustment going on here, with a fairly straightforward justification for Calling effects. Between those three, it's just a matter of being very shameless about scaling rates to have adequate blank checks for splatbook rummaging to do the rest.

[Paragon]

Another way to look at it is to reverse engineer the Trickster ACF from the Spellthief : get a bunch of skills as class skills, more skill points and better sneak attack basically.

But if you lose ALL your spellcasting (which the Spellthief doesn't) you can obviously pump it up a notch.

[Fizban]

If you remove the spells, what is left that is "Bard"? Just Bardic Music and Lore, and plenty of people like giving Lore to Clerics basically for free. Quicker question is what other class should trade what for bardic music and lore.

The War of the Burning Sky campaign adds a set of feats that are just bardic music in feat form (as well as a base class that gets them all, plus bonuses and Marshal abilities). But anyone can take the feats, and any class with knowledge could call themselves a "Bard" in the sense of knowing music and stories and being inspirational.

Otherwise as has been said, if Bardic "Music" is supposed to be a whole big supernatural ability that's worth an entire base class by itself, then you have to build it out into one. At which point you quickly enter competition with spellcasting, and either end up seriously underwhelming (even with every effect ever printed for bardic music PrCs you still have barely anything, capable of holding only two at once and any instant effects dictated by what you're holding up), or make an entirely new parallel totally-not-spellcasting system which could have been done faster as spells but isn't because reasons.


My own idea (that I've not done more than define), since Bardic Music doesn't make any sense as music thanks to the reality of 6 second combat rounds and spells already exist, is to lean on spellcasting and spellcasting restrictions instead. As a Bard begins casting their spells in each combat, they choose what Genre of music they're making, which is itself a spell list, and they can only cast spells from that list for the rest of the encounter (and possibly any duration spells they have automatically end if they change genres in a later combat). Higher level bards learn more genres and eventually gain a key change ability that lets them switch genres and of course the ability to fuse two or maybe more together into "new" genres. They get a large number of spontaneous spells known, but can't access all of them every fight.

The project then of course is actually writing those spell lists, so that they're useful but also form thematic groups that you can associate with musical genres. Which requires both a serious knowledge of 3.x spells and at least a decent background or research on musical history. A whole bunch of effort to jam musical flavor into the spellcasting mechanics, but it would be a sight better than the current "you sing a 6 second riff that either gives a bonus on attacks that is either small or huge or probably copies some spell."

[Troacctid]

Spells are such a major part of the class that it feels strange to ask for such a thing. There are multiple "spell-less bard" prestige classes that you could take to achieve this effect, if it's what you want—most notably warrior skald from Races of Faerun, which gives you full bardic music and does not require any levels of bard beforehand, but there's also war chanter, dawncaller, seeker of the song, exemplar, and dirgesinger, off the top of my head.

You could also just be a rogue. Take Silver Tongue, Fey Presence, and Combat Panache, and you should be able to do a pretty good spell-less bard impression.

[Morphic tide]

Otherwise as has been said, if Bardic "Music" is supposed to be a whole big supernatural ability that's worth an entire base class by itself, then you have to build it out into one. At which point you quickly enter competition with spellcasting, and either end up seriously underwhelming (even with every effect ever printed for bardic music PrCs you still have barely anything, capable of holding only two at once and any instant effects dictated by what you're holding up), or make an entirely new parallel totally-not-spellcasting system which could have been done faster as spells but isn't because reasons.

One Song that gives CR-based scaling access to Summon Monster lists already covers a pretty big chunk of Bard casting. One for healing with non-garbage scaling covers another important chunk. Bolting bonus feats list to Inspire Competence and Inspire Heroism can actually do a lot of stuff worth comparing to spellcasting. If you're looking to do it, it isn't that many new effects, because there's very natural ways to scale utilities over time when you aren't stuck with the redundancy-infested scheme of Vaincain spellcasting.

As for a new system, who says you can't make one that uses spells? Just because WotC never made an explicit alternate spell mechanic base class doesn't mean the rules have a structural problem with the concept. And if you are using spells, you're already answering the usage rate's equivalent for slot level, leaving just some edge-cases with slot reuse or loss and preparation loopholes that can fit in a paragraph or two of sidebar.

[Thunder999]

How about giving them Martial Initiating, White Raven would fit.

[Eurus]

I think that it's the existence of the non-spellcasting bard PrCs that makes a spell-less bard ACF so tempting. I've played a Dirgesinger before, and I also wished I had some way to trade away my spellcasting. Having the spellcasting of a bard five levels behind wasn't useless, there are some low level utilities on the bard list that you can get some mileage out of, but it felt like such a minor part of the character at that point that I didn't really care about it. War Chanter, Seeker of the Song... there's a lot of ways to play a bard that basically light your spellcasting on fire anyway after a certain point, why not get an actual benefit for it?

[Mordante]

Spells are such a major part of the class that it feels strange to ask for such a thing. There are multiple "spell-less bard" prestige classes that you could take to achieve this effect, if it's what you want—most notably warrior skald from Races of Faerun, which gives you full bardic music and does not require any levels of bard beforehand, but there's also war chanter, dawncaller, seeker of the song, exemplar, and dirgesinger, off the top of my head.

You could also just be a rogue. Take Silver Tongue, Fey Presence, and Combat Panache, and you should be able to do a pretty good spell-less bard impression.

To me Spells are a minor part of being a Bard, they are a nice bonus.

[Soranar]

Bard spells are pretty good.

So you'd need to get something worth while as a trade off, just being a rogue + wouldn't do it IMO.

But increasing your musical abilities would.

ACF ... Dedicated Performer

You've traded all your abilities to cast spells in order to focus on your musical talent.

-You can add your levels of Dedicated performer bard to all your perform checks
-All of your musical abilities are twice as powerful as a normal bard's (for example inspire courage starts at +2, lasts 10 rounds after he's done performing, etc )

[RandomPeasant]

How about giving them Martial Initiating, White Raven would fit.

Literally just play a Bardblade. You get your Bardic Music, you barely get any spellcasting, and you get a character that is reasonably competent. You don't need an ACF so you get zero levels of casting instead of four levels of casting if you want to play a non-caster Bard.