Topic: Channeling bards?

[Jengada]

Has anyone ever tried this? It came up as I'm fleshing out racial cultures that don't have mentalists. Specifically, dwarves and half-orcs. To me, it makes sense that any culture has musicians, and there's possible bleed-through to spell-linked music. Since neither of these two has Essence or Mentalism under normal rules (and racial stat bonuses discourage that, as well), they would default to channeling.

For the half-orcs, I'm envisioning "battle bards." Metaphsycially, the onset of battle creates a local manifestation of a sort of "war spirit" they can draw power from. Their abilities outside of battle would be very limited.

Any thoughts or experiences?

[intothatdarkness]

My Orcs had Shamen from one of the companions (don't remember which one), and for dwarves I just changed the origin of Bard spells to channeling. That way I didn't have to redo spells.

[Skaran]

Gregorian Chants?

[jdale]

The paladin Inspiring Ways list (not sure if this is the same in RM2/RMC) seems like it would be a good fit for a battle bard. Just add a performance requirement.

In general, I would be inclined to make or adapt a healing list for a channeling bard, soothing pain and purifying away disease etc.

[Jengada]

The paladin Inspiring Ways list (not sure if this is the same in RM2/RMC) seems like it would be a good fit for a battle bard. Just add a performance requirement.

In general, I would be inclined to make or adapt a healing list for a channeling bard, soothing pain and purifying away disease etc.

Inspirations (it's RCII) is interesting - half of it is exactly what I was considering, but the other half seems more like they were trying to fill the spell slots. They're Charm, Familiar, etc. type spells. I do think I'll require the bards to chant or something like it for all spells they cast.
I ended up with two home-brew lists. One I call "Hero's Ways" and it allows the bard to inspire one target, through song, to improvements to OB or AT. At higher levels the bard gets "medley" spells that allow combining two lower level spell songs. The second list is "Combat Lore," which allows the bard to gather knowledge of the battle situation. At low levels it provides knowledge of where there are fights nearby, which combatants have powerful gear, and then moves into information on the nature of the combatants and "Insight" spells like the seer spells, but instantaneous and only looking a round or two ahead.

First play-test of a low-level orcish channeling bard is today...

[Tywyll]

Seems like a reasonable idea to me. I still have the original Ad&d druid bard as my default mental image of a bard, so that seems perfectly fitting to me.

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