Crawl! New Class Challenge: BARD!

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Pick your favorite version of the DCC RPG Bard!

Poll ended at Fri Nov 16, 2012 9:40 am

Bard by bizarrojoe http://www.goodman-games.com/forums/vie ... 498#p89498
2
25%
Bard by beermotor http://www.goodman-games.com/forums/vie ... 017#p90017
2
25%
Bard by Troll_Mage https://docs.google.com/document/d/12Jt ... OLVhE/edit#
4
50%
 
Total votes: 8

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beermotor
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Re: Crawl! New Class Challenge: BARD!

Post by beermotor »

Uh, of course it's a subpar Thief... cause it's a BARD! :-)

But I think Bards ought to have a couple of Thief skills, since they seem to fit the archetype. Remember that not all DCs are super hard. For example, picking the pocket of a very drunk bar patron is probably only DC 5. So a +1 is entirely helpful. Can a Thief do it better? Absolutely. But a Thief doesn't have the Bard's other skills... and gets slightly less hit points on average.

I think the double healing rate when resting for the party is pretty nice. It could likely skew people to flee quicker and rest and regroup more often, rather than keep slogging it out in a dungeon.

Most of my modules seem to only take about 1 day of game time, but they are also pretty brutal. Having some nice passive healing might make running / camping more feasible.
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reverenddak
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Re: Crawl! New Class Challenge: BARD!

Post by reverenddak »

Ok, time for an update. I've been watching these forums, and I've been hesitant to reply so to not influence or sway any designs.

I think it's perfectly fine, for now, to throw out your concepts and get some input on your ideas & designs. But get ready to finalize and complete the class for submission. It's OK to link to the finished class, but make sure it's viewable to the general public. I recommend using Google Docs, because you can draft the text, make tables and lists. Format is not "as" important at this time, but any tables and charts need to be complete. Also avoid any "references" to other classes. They should be complete classes. For example, "Weapon proficiency as Thief" doesn't fly, list them out. References to Mighty Deeds and Spells are fine

It's also worth noting that although some classes may not be specifically "Appendix N", the influence is there. And while DCC RPG heavily emphasises Appendix N, the way we play is heavily inspired by Old-school D&D. Quite frankly, simply and obviously, people want to play these classes. So that's the focus. All four classes are "Classic" D&D classes, and all four classes were voted for because people feel they're "missing" from DCC RPG. So there is nothing wrong with these classes having D&D flavor vs mythology or even Appendix N. That's part of the challenge. Create the class you want to see that will fill the desire of the missing class. People want to play these classes in DCC RPG, so it's probably in your best interest to make them familiar. But at the same time, the opportunity to innovate and create something new and interesting should not be ignored or dismissed.

On that note, let's give it another week! I'd like to see more concepts for each class. But start finalizing and tightening up your classes!
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Troll_Mage
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Re: Crawl! New Class Challenge: BARD!

Post by Troll_Mage »

Bard

Well my bard submission is now available for review. I really dislike bard's that overlap with rogues, skill monkeys, or healing buff, so I focused my design primarily as them being "performers" and their impact abilities as "performances" and relevant abilities that I could pull from that based on past tales and myths.

I am sure that there are additional "performance" types that I omitted and/or perhaps some consolidation could be made, Though I discussed this with an old childhood friend who is a voice actor, and they are different specialist with years of practice in their profession. He is good with different voices and emotional tone, but he is no charmer and at over 250lb, he is rather limited in acrobatic movies.

Yet there is plenty of "room" to expand on performances, room for the bard-player and judge to add and improvise for unique circumstances. Lastly I am still not sure I should not just remove magic and spell-casting, I think the performances are probably enough.
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reverenddak
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Re: Crawl! New Class Challenge: BARD!

Post by reverenddak »

Let's add your BY LINE to the titles or as a sub-title, it'll help separate the different submissions. Campaign references will just confuse things. e.g:

Bard by Reverend Dak
Bard: A new class by Reverend Dak

If you use a different class name, then do something like this:

Performer! A bard by Reverend Dak
Reverend Dakota Jesus Ultimak, S.S.M.o.t.S.M.S., D.M.

(Dungeon) Master In Chief of Crawl! fanzine. - http://www.crawlfanzine.com/

"[...] there is no doubt that Dungeons and Dragons and its imitators are right out of the pit of hell." - William Schnoebelen, Straight talk on Dungeons & Dragons
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reverenddak
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Re: Crawl! New Class Challenge: BARD!

Post by reverenddak »

Please check the links and make sure they're up to date and correct. Poll will go up tonight or tomorrow.

Bard by bizarrojoe http://www.goodman-games.com/forums/vie ... 498#p89498
Bard by beermotor http://www.goodman-games.com/forums/vie ... 017#p90017
Bard by Troll_Mage https://docs.google.com/document/d/12Jt ... LVhE/edit#
Reverend Dakota Jesus Ultimak, S.S.M.o.t.S.M.S., D.M.

(Dungeon) Master In Chief of Crawl! fanzine. - http://www.crawlfanzine.com/

"[...] there is no doubt that Dungeons and Dragons and its imitators are right out of the pit of hell." - William Schnoebelen, Straight talk on Dungeons & Dragons
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Re: Crawl! New Class Challenge: BARD!

Post by ragboy »

Vote! I voted for beermotors because it was the simplest... :)
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DoubleKing
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Re: Crawl! New Class Challenge: BARD!

Post by DoubleKing »

I've been playing a Troll_Mage build Bard for about 6 months now to great success. It and the DCC campaign I'm in have rated as some of the best campaign gaming I've ever done. DCC lends itself to the openness of the Bard character.

We are using a few modifications to the offered class which my group enjoys:

*Bards are social and as such gain a new language every level.
*My take on a Bard is that they are social hackers. Magic via Bards means that they are weaker than any pure caster but they should also have some advantages. In our campaign, my Bard has limited spells but we're working to allow the Bard to swap those out at some point with some difficulty. More importantly, rather than the awkward list of spells for Bards, I've gone the other way: Bards roll across all spells randomly for their spell; and because it's more fun, all spells have mercurial effects. The random and absurd results open up the conversation for good rp and because the volume of spells is still greatly diminished the results are kept in check by amount of spells and the total randomness of it.

(In play this has resulted in my Character rolling a Bless spell with the Mercurial Effect of having a d100% chance of summoning something from the void to kill me. We fit this into the campaign through the happenstance of finding a Kobold bible. As the character is hijacking "clerical" power, the Judge reserves the rights to lean on this as a source of conflict further down the road.)

**Still not sure if the social mechanics are too strong as written in the T_M Bard but I've certainly enjoyed playing it. My response has been to pull back from them and not let it dominate play rather than adjusting anything.

Anyway, DCC + Bard is a TON of fun. I am not a "Bard player" and am having a blast.
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