Lawful Bards

[Knight Of Pentacles]

Because nothing about being a bard relies on a character being non-lawful.

[OpenDoors]

I agree. I wanted to make my bard LG and come to find out I can't? Bards serve many purposes in groups and their vagabond and chaotic nature is but a facet of deep backgrounds to justify the bard class. A Skald was loyal to his Thane, a minstrel loyal to his hero. It just makes sense to me.

[One_With_Nature]

Paladin/Bard too OP

[Knight Of Pentacles]

Paladins have restricted multiclassing.  There's no god or order that allows bard/paladins.

[The Old Hack]

I agree. I wanted to make my bard LG and come to find out I can't? Bards serve many purposes in groups and their vagabond and chaotic nature is but a facet of deep backgrounds to justify the bard class. A Skald was loyal to his Thane, a minstrel loyal to his hero. It just makes sense to me.

While I realise that introducing actual history into this may be questionable, I still feel compelled to say that according to my Irish wife, bards used to be actual keepers of the laws! They would memorise the darn things and serve as interpreters of them and even as judges at times. (I will spare you the rest of the rant she subjected me to when I informed her that bards weren't allowed to be lawful in D&D. I will merely mention that it was at a high volume and prominently featured phrases such as 'idiotic game designers' and 'do the bloody research, dim bulbs.')

If the sole objection is that Paladin/Bard is too OP, possibly allow lawful bards as long as they make an app in which they state they will never try to become either paladins, monks or blackguards. (Mind you, I love the idea of a Monk/Bard dealing it out while singing "Everybody was Kung Fu Fighting.")

[el groso]

Art is chaotic.

[The Old Hack]

Art is chaotic.

Errr. This is headed into very philosophical territory but allow me to politely disagree. Creativity may be (and often is) very chaotic. Art, on the other hand, has a great many rules and guidelines -- and often you need to be very familiar with them before you are able to break them with good result.

[el groso]

Errr. This is headed into very philosophical territory but allow me to politely disagree. Creativity may be (and often is) very chaotic. Art, on the other hand, has a great many rules and guidelines -- and often you need to be very familiar with them before you are able to break them with good result.

Sure. Well, I can see this going both ways and still making sense. As for the bard restrictions, I guess if there are no reasons for having them, just remove them, yeah.

[Yamo B. There]

I say this as one of those rare birds who actually really likes the D&D alignment system and FR's objective morality: Law and Chaos restrictions on classes have never made a whole lot of sense, and no alignment restriction makes much of it when there is no arbiter of a class' power that can grant or deny it. Clerics must stay within a step of their deities, because the grace of their divine patron is what grants them their class abilities; a Wizard can be of any alignment, because they are self-made casters who study books and scrolls (the vast majority of which are incapable of wiping themselves clean if "they" dislike the alignment of their reader).

The source of a Bard's power is ill-defined, but I've yet to see it laid at the feat of some (unseen) entity who will take the goodies back if used in a way that displeases it. In some cases it's rumored to be a result of draconic blood as with Sorcrerers, but dragon types run the gamut of alignments and Sorcerers have no such restriction. Bards who become Lawful even retain all of their abilities (at least in standard 3E). So where does this come from? What is it about "magical singing" that is anathema to an orderly life?

Much will be said about how the Lawful lifestyle does not mesh with the stereotypical Bard, as though they must all be smarmy, lute-playing rakes who go around charming innkeepers' daughters out of their virtue. Yet FR is full of organized schools for the Bardic arts, and one presumes the teachers there don't look favorably on Chaotic students who shirk their studies to be "stereotypical". There are groups by and for Bards on the local and grand scale with rules and codes and a very regimented structure. Bards practice their songs and rehearse their plays; it's not all freeform jazz-funk and improv comedy. They find wealthy patrons and try to stay in their good graces, or navigate the perils of high society and backroom politicking, both things which require the ability to defer to rules and other social expectations. Even Bards that don't do any of those things overwhelmingly make their living within civilization in a tolerated or even embraced role, unlike the Rogue whose talents are far more often used illegally (and yet Rogues have no Non-Lawful restriction); any justification which flies for a Lawful Rogue should go double for a Bard.

So is it just because they have magic? Are they the unwitting pseudo-Clerics of a hidden Power who hates Law? I think it's far more likely a hold-over from previous editions of D&D, where Bards were quite different mechanically and even more restricted. 3.5E has several means of bypassing the Bard's Non-Lawful restriction (the least of which being switching alignment at level up), from feats in splatbooks to multiclassing features in other classes.

I don't know if EFU has a mechanical balance rationale for restricting Bards so. While doing nothing is certainly the easiest option, it seems to me that outlawing problematic multiclassing is easier than monitoring full Bards to ensure their RP and characterization is sufficiently Non-Lawful (if this is even something anyone cares about).

[Ebok]

If it is a divine source, it would with all probability have been Milil who as it happens was eaten by Dendar.