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View Full Version : Divine Bard, and Bardic Sage? Is there a Prepared Bard somewhere?



Kantolin
2008-10-25, 02:02 AM
I glanced at the Divine Bard and the Bardic Sage properly today, and well.

Okay, I thought that a major point of the two was that they were prepared caster, one being cleric-like and one being spellbook wizard-like, but from the looks of it I am incorrect? Am I misreading them, or is that in fact the case?

That said, is there a prepared bard out there somewhere?

Or I suppose, a prepared caster that doesn't use the majority of the Wizard, Cleric, or Druid list? I mean, Wu Jen pretty much are wizards, and... uh, those four are actually the only prepared casters I can think of.

Figured the board may be able to give me some help.

Stupendous_Man
2008-10-25, 02:04 AM
Bards can prepare spells iwth the Arcane Preparation feat.

Kantolin
2008-10-25, 02:10 AM
Well, that's kind of true, but that's not quite what I'm looking for. I want bard, the prepared caster, and not just 'take my spontaneous casting and use it for metamagic'.

DMfromTheAbyss
2008-10-25, 09:34 AM
Bards in 2nd edition
had spellbooks
Prepared spells
could use wizard spells specifically
So there you go

Although interestingly enough there were some widely dispersed homerules about bards keeping particularly messy or weird spell books, usually in the margins they'd have music notes scrawled down for their songs, or magic spells scrawled down over their music, which led to many wizards getting a penalty to learning spells off a bard, and some rather hilarious hijinks when a bard specialized in cooking got his recipes confused with his spells...

Instead of fireball... Meatball!

Jack_Simth
2008-10-25, 09:53 AM
The Chameleon (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/iw/20041210b&page=1) PrC is fairly close to what you're after.

LibraryOgre
2008-10-25, 09:54 AM
To make a prepared bard, declare that Bards have spellbooks, and prepare their spells.

zaei
2008-10-25, 09:59 AM
I glanced at the Divine Bard and the Bardic Sage properly today, and well.

Okay, I thought that a major point of the two was that they were prepared caster, one being cleric-like and one being spellbook wizard-like, but from the looks of it I am incorrect? Am I misreading them, or is that in fact the case?

That said, is there a prepared bard out there somewhere?

Or I suppose, a prepared caster that doesn't use the majority of the Wizard, Cleric, or Druid list? I mean, Wu Jen pretty much are wizards, and... uh, those four are actually the only prepared casters I can think of.

Figured the board may be able to give me some help.

It doesn't look like those two are prepared casters, they just switch around the stat bards need ot qualify to cast a certain level of spell, and give you some other minor benefits and penalties. It seems that the divine bard especially hurts because now you have to keep a high wisdom, alongside all of your other stats.

That said, I do wish there was a bard variant that used wizard casting instead of sorcerer casting. If you find one, let us know!

Sstoopidtallkid
2008-10-25, 10:05 AM
That said, I do wish there was a bard variant that used wizard casting instead of sorcerer casting. If you find one, let us know!Cut spells per day by about a third per level, give the Bard 'Sheet Music'(as a Wizard), and speed up the 'Spells per Day' table by one level.

JaxGaret
2008-10-25, 11:24 AM
Archivists are preparatory casters that can cast off of a wide variety of spell lists.

I wouldn't have a problem as a DM with allowing the "base" Archivist spell list to be something other than the Cleric list.

Andras
2008-10-25, 06:17 PM
To make a prepared bard, declare that Bards have spellbooks, and prepare their spells.

Basically. This seems like a pretty easy solution.

Chronos
2008-10-25, 11:21 PM
That said, I do wish there was a bard variant that used wizard casting instead of sorcerer casting. If you find one, let us know!Yeah, the current fluff for bard spellcasting is the Spellsinger thing, with magic being inherent to the poetry of their souls, or somesuch, but I always preferred the 2e fluff that a bard picks up bits and snippets of all sorts of things in their travels, and those bits and snippets include a few wizard spells.

zaei
2008-10-26, 12:29 AM
Yeah, the current fluff for bard spellcasting is the Spellsinger thing, with magic being inherent to the poetry of their souls, or somesuch, but I always preferred the 2e fluff that a bard picks up bits and snippets of all sorts of things in their travels, and those bits and snippets include a few wizard spells.

Completely agree.



The suggestion to just switch out the spellcasting is all well and good, but people probably wouldn't be asking on a forum unless they wanted something printed.

Kizara
2008-10-26, 07:45 AM
Cut spells per day by about a third per level, give the Bard 'Sheet Music'(as a Wizard), and speed up the 'Spells per Day' table by one level.

Have you actually looked at the bard's per-day progression? Its already basically 0 for heaven's sake.

LibraryOgre
2008-10-26, 10:09 AM
The suggestion to just switch out the spellcasting is all well and good, but people probably wouldn't be asking on a forum unless they wanted something printed.

However, since there isn't one, the suggestions for turning them into prepared casters by declaration is about as good as it gets.