Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback I am disappointed with the current take on Bards as musicians only.

Just a short feedback post (by my standards at least), to say that I'm disappointed by the fact that Larian chose to interpret the Bards as musicians only.


Bards are not just musicians

If I was to try to describe the DnD Bards in as few words and as much generality as possible, I would say they are story-tellers, artists and performers (also spell-casters and jack-of-all-trades, of course).

Music is always mentioned in the suggestions for how to play a Bard, but I'd say the connection to The Word is more important than a possible connection to The Notes. They are voice-users, and they can also be musicians (including singers).

Bards can be historians, chroniclers, gossipers, spies, political advisors, etc. The College Lore is there to emphasise this. I don't think most people would immediately associate Volo, the famous author of many traveller's guides, with being a musician.

Bards can be ambassadors, diplomats, tribunes, popular agitator, etc. Public speaker of any kind. The College of Eloquence (from TCoE) emphasises this.

Bards can be skalds who tell the deeds of past heroes, around a fire camp or in the middle of the battlefield. The College of Valor (Skalds in the older editions) is there for those. They may bang their axe against their shields while galvanising their troops, but they don't have to play drums.

Bards can be "blade dancers". The College of Swords (from XGtE) is there for those bards. In older editions, this was the Blade kit. BG2's Haer'Dalis was an actor (and perhaps amateur playwright, can't remember). I'm not fully up-to-date on Critical Role, but I don't think Robbie's Dorian Storm is much of a musician. Like Cyrano de Bergerac, these two are smooth talking swashbucklers.

Bards can also be Jesters (again, a kit from the older games).

Sure, a lot of people play their Bards as musicians. But there is a massive roleplay space for non-musician Bards.



Suggestions

Well, first off, I intended this post to be feedback, more than suggestions.

I'm disappointed that the new Class, one that is overall very open in terms of roleplay, came with a new mechanics that really only works if you intend to play this Class in the narrower way Larian envisions that Class.


I don't think that adding a new mechanics or feature for non-musician Bards is a good idea. (See above side note.)

But I can think of two things, that should be easy and cheap to implement.

• In the Character Creation, add a 6th starting instrument option called "None : I use my voice". This way we won't feel as if being an instrument-wielder is forced upon us (I know, you could always discard the instrument as soon as the game start, but that's not a great, user-friendly way to create a character).
  
  
• In the Perform action, add a "Song" (mechanically considered as such) called Story Telling. It would require no instrument and would do about the same thing (draw attention from non-companion NPCs, receive donations, etc).

Well, since Volo is actually a Wizard, that would be a good thing, yes?

Songs and storytelling are great ideas!

Songs are easy to integrate to the current performance system.

For storytelling, I’d love to see the equivalent to group jams where nearby bards could join in on the story by reciting lines.

I think the main issue is words. They require writers, editors, a bunch of voice actors, translators for localization, a bunch more voice actors.

Stories have to have them; songs don’t absolutely do, but their absence might feel wierd. I really hope your suggestions make it into the game, but I can see why they might not.

This is what I was thinking.

Maybe they could do it like the old Charlie Brown teacher, lol. "Wah wah woh wah wah."

That would be funny for exactly twelves seconds.

Thinking back on it, though, singers often sing in languages that aren’t their own. You’d need lyrics for three songs, a bunch of translators, then a handful of singers. It could be done, couldn’t it?

I was only talking about Songs in the mechanical and naming sense. The Perform action leads to a secondary-choice window where you can select which Song you want to Perform. I was just saying that I would like the addition of Perform>Story Telling.

I'm not much into musical Bards, so I'm very indifferent to the addition of any actual singing (with instruments or voice-only) to the list of Songs of the Perform action.



Firstly, it doesn't have to cost all that much in terms of writing.

The story or stories of the Perform>Story Telling don't have to be told in full, if at all. The Bard can spend the beginning of the Performance with some "Oy oy. Come round good folks. Come hear of a grandiose tale", or something like that. This can be followed with a story full of wow's and woa's from the crowd. That's good filler already. And if the stories are actually told (with the player able to hear them), there don't have to be many of them. One or two, or a handful, at most.

At most, a writer would have to write a couple of short stories, ok. It can have a comedic ending. I could google "tavern jokes" and I'm sure I'd find ideas.

It can be inspired by the totally-not-massive lore of the Forgotten Realms. It could tell of Gorion's Ward and the Bhaalspawns. Whatever. If I can find ideas in two minutes while writing a forum post, a Larian writer can sit down one hour and find ideas too.

Oh, one more. If Larian writers were very much able to write stories in the books we can find in the game, I don't think it would require them a week of hard thinking to realise those same stories can also be told by a Bard. Recycling assets = win !


Secondly, it doesn't have to cost all that much in terms of voice acting.

Localisation is only for subtitles. I don't think Larian has any plan to adapt the voice acting to any language other than English. So, that's only as many voice actors as the number of voices for Custom Characters.

There is no need for translators either (I don't think the Cutting Words insults have subtitles).


Thirdly, this is Larian and BG3 we're talking about.

Larian has decided to sink a massive amount of voice acting budget into making every single companion an Origin Character (and I'm very sure that very very people will make a playthrough with each of those). They have decided that they would create whole scenes that very few people will ever see. They might be voicing the PC, meaning at least 4 more voice acting sinks (if they keep the number of Custom Character voices at 4). They have decided to come up with a freaking 97 insults for a spell that only College of Lore Bards have access to, when a dozen would have done the job. I'd be really disappointed if they now balked at asking these 4 voice actors to also tell a couple of stories.

Also, when we're in a video game world with no passing of time, no Day/Night cycle, a pocket-dimension camp, and overall where immersion isn't exactly priority number one, I don't think that Perform>Story Telling requires full dedication. As I said, 30 seconds of mostly "wow, woa" would be a good start.




Oh, indeed. I'll edit my post.

Old NWN2 had your bard hum or whistle if you didn't have an instrument equipped. The sounds were fine.

bard is a secret discover and can be an great enchanter and have anti-charm ability nature.

I think the game designer is doing well in the class bard. example-- the plot and battle with harpy

but I think singing is harder to express in the game, they use insturments to instead, the music is beautiful too.

I'm actually going to defend Larian here because Bard has a lot of unique, class-specific dialogue options that focus on non-musical options.

+1

I get it why it's easier from a game development point of view to put all Bards in the musician box. And it's really cool they made those songs.

For a non-musician style Bard, it should be possible to create a visual performer / dancer / acrobat type Bard subclass without requiring extensive writing and voice recording. A crazy acrobatic dance performance would attract attention just like the songs do.

A mysterious silent acrobat cat-burglar-spy type Bard would be a pretty cool character concept to balance out the flamboyant loud attention seeking musicians.

I'm not sure why you're claiming that bards was interpreted as musicians only. Yes, we are choosing a musical instrument during character creation, but later on our bard can refer to themselves as "a poet" and perform an imitation of another person's voice, and that's just during the very first dialogs on the beach. And if you take off the instrument your bard will whistle the tune, and Vicious mockery is shown as if the bard goes all stend-up comic.

I'd say the game suggest that the bard is a bit of everything. I suppose your suggestion would emphasize that idea. But I certainly could live as not a musician bard without them.

The bar’s been set fairly high for performance in my view. The current pieces range from good to great, imo, and the ability for other performers to join in is cool. Having a new option that’s less polished than that might feel weird.

We agree there. Having two or three stories would be enough.

Great idea! There are plenty of poems, stories and shanties about in books. A bard could even recite all of A is for Azeroth. And nearby bards could reply with “B is for Baal” or whatever.

I didn’t realize that cutscenes won’t be translated. There are still more than 4 necessary voices, though. Any companion could become a performer and have to sing/tell stories. All the same, not having to translate does facilitate things.

I agree it would be cool, but I suggest you manage your expectations in that regard, if only because everything can’t make it into 1.0.

That made me think of a street performer. Someone suggested accrobat or contortionist, which would look sweet. What about a street magician? Larian could recycle spell casting animations and have the audience clap and cheer.

Great point which I really wanted to also to touch upon...
I feel bards are Musicians SECONDARY to their main expertise which can be so many cool archetypes. Larian has made musicianship its MAIN career it feels like.
In RPG games like BG2 & comp. I like making my custom Bard into an <Elven Piper>. A dual-wielding spy/assassin who mainly uses magic for defense (no offensive magic allowed) only and He/She uses his voice or instrument to charm enemies or creatures to do its bidding or to give out information.

New pitch: the bard is a juggler. If they have a firebolt/ray of frost/dancing lights cantrip, they juggle balls of the corresponding type.

I can see me burning down the camp trying to juggle firebolts...

I'll be honest, as someone who doesn't play D&D much, bards have always been musicians to me. To the point where I found the idea of bards having lore, valor, sword, etc colleges being kind of strange and I didn't fully get it. But the ideas presented here are all super cool.

That’s, unfortunately, a price we pay for high production value - a beauty of a more vague presentation (like with limited or no VO) is that players can fill the blanks with whatever they want.

I have touched on a similar point before - like Barbarian whose special dialogue choices fit a very specific vision of a barbarian.

As I tend to model my bards after troubadours I think I should be somewhat satisfied with what Larian provided in this case - we will see, once I give it a go.

^^

Am I wrong, or does the idle animation for druids with an active flame in hand from Produce Flame involve juggling the fire? Maybe it’s just tossing it from hand to hand?

If it's only one flame, then it's just passing it back and forth. I haven't messed with Druid, I'm not a big caster type player, so I haven't actually seen it.