Originally Posted by MelivySilverRoot
Originally Posted by GM4Him
I thought we could now have people play instruments who were not proficient but they'd sound horrible. My characters do nothing but pull the instruments out and put them away.
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And why only 1 proficiency for Bards? Why not 3, like the 5e rules allow? I'd like to create a bard who can play a variety of instruments.

I'm not sure I understand. In BG3, you either can play instruments or not at all. If you can play one instrument, you can play every instruments.
Characters who can play instruments are :
- Bards
- The ones that have passed the skill checks with Alfira
- the ones that have picked the "Performer" feat (unless they removed it?)

The others get the "bad performance" animation/sound.

I, admittedly, have stopped playing Patch 9...has some of that been changed?

Originally Posted by GM4Him
Various backgrounds should come with the proficiency, like Entertainer and Outlander.

That, I agree! Wholheartedly!

Maybe I misunderstood the PFH. I thought they were saying that if you weren't proficient you could still play but would sound horrible.

Either way, what I'm getting at mostly is that in D&D 5e, bards are proficient in more than 1 instrument. They are proficient in 3. Entertainers (Background) are proficient in 1 instrument of your choice, and so is the Outlander (Background). However, in BG3, they made it so that only the Bard gets to be able to play an instrument in the beginning of the game. No one else can. You have to pick 1 instrument, and that's it. This kinda stinks. I mean, if that's what they're going to do, that's fine, I guess. However, I think it's kinda dumb and it makes no sense as to why they don't just allow more people to be proficient with instruments. Regardless of who can play, only Bards can use instruments as magic focuses, so simply allowing someone to play an instrument wouldn't create a huge issue from a technical perspective - at least so I would think.

And I really think it's dumb to gain proficiency because you help Alfira write a song. Years of practice to gain a proficiency cannot be gained in a single session of helping a bard write a song. That's silly to me. Same with gaining the proficiency at Level 4 - which, by the way, why? Why would I waste an ASI/Feat on being able to play an instrument when it has no gameplay value whatsoever?

Last edited by GM4Him; 22/12/22 07:08 PM.