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Actually paladin /warlock Is a disgusting dps machine.

It’s pretty great. I really like having Wyll in heavy armor smiting his way through enemies. And with EB he is great at range, too.

Bards beeing sexual is a tabletop trope. Where bards always try to out persuade, flatter, coerce or outfuck them out of any trouble they find themselves in.

Bards are in a sense performers. But dance or sing isent ALWAYS involved. They can rouse morale with their actions and words of encouragement. Their gift of the gab can have many forms. Musical instruments arent always needed.

Also if you have a spell with only a verbal component, you dont need the musical instrument to cast your spell at all. Some spells like burning hands also have a somatic component. But it specificly mentions you joining your thumbs with outstetched fingers. You cant do that if you also have to hold a musical instrument, lol. Hellishbrebuke you could also cast without a musical instrument.

Bards without musical instruments CAN work. Theyre just very counter to the normal bard appearance.

Breaking the oath is no big thing, game's wise. One or two sub-class abilities get blocked, that's all. Playing a "fallen" Paladin i.e. ignoring the Scottish dude LARPing as Goblin Slayer is not like having one arm tied behind your back.

The idea that performers and swashbuckling nobles are in some way massively distinct had me up in stiches. Both are extrovertic attention hogs, so what's the difference?

I come at it from a historical perspective. Being an entertainer was considered one of the lowest professions, right above criminal.

That doesn’t mean it can’t happen. Emperor Nero was a poet and musician (though this massively contributed to his unpopularity).

But aside from that, I don’t see it in Wyll’s nature. For example, during the party he self-isolates and wants to be alone. He is actually quite brooding. He doesn’t seem like a performer.

Oh ?

So thats why nobles and knights became troubadours ? Because they didnt liked their high station in society and wanted to try out the opposite ?

I also wasnt aware about, say, Shakespeare's low station among his contemporaries until this moment.

Or Dante Aligheri, I can almost sense he must have been hardly above a criminal for his contemporaries, for sure !

What time and place exactly are you talking about where bards supposedly had a low social status ?

Premodern Europe.

While there absolutely were a few troubadours from the upper ranks of nobility, they, like the aforementioned Nero, had the political clout to get away with a bit of scandal and do what they wanted. The overwhelming majority of known troubadours were poor, landless knights, with few prospects. Musical talent allowed them to attach themselves to a court and find a patron.

In Roman to medieval Europe, to be an itinerant actor and traveling performer was considered a sinful and lowly profession.

Skaspeare is early modern, and maybe had a lot to do with raising the profile of performers a bit, but even still, being an entertainer didn’t become a semi-respectable profession until relatively recently in our history.

Dante was an author, poet and philosopher. I’m not sure if he was an entertainer or not, but if he was, exceptions don’t disprove rules.

Also, I don’t mind have a discussion and even being proved wrong, but if you aren’t capable of having that discussion without sarcasm and condescension I won’t consider you worth my time and will just block you.

There are differences. The common folk performer - yeah they weren't high regarded. They mostly played the hurdy hurdy ( my favourite instrument btw), backpipes and such and were mostly for entertaining the common folk. And they probably made the biggest group of performers in medieval times.
The troubadours often were highly regarded and had free food and sleeping commodities, while writing an epic play for a lord. They were also more writers who read their plays to the nobleborn.
Then there were the knights and highborn ladies, who are supposed to learn an instrument and dancing. They mostly played stringed instruments like lutes.

Shakespeare is often referred to as simply the bard, so I would see him as one. Even in DnD a bard can be a writer, historian etc.

And yes, Dante Alighieri was of high birth from an influential Florentine family. And I would consider him a bard too.

What I want to say is, that I totally can see Wyll as a Dante Alighieri kind of bard - he even could give very detailed descriptions of hell. A highborn writing about what he encountered ( the Divine Comedy has a lot of stuff about people, Dante knew and things he encountered).

A sword bard/ bladelock would fit him very well.

Hmmm, yeah. Good convincing argument there. He is broody for a bard, but maybe he can be FR’s Kurt Cobain. XD