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I suspect that this is probably an attempt to retroactively staple lore onto a decision that D&D made for purely context-free mechanical reasons, but it's a thing that's always stuck me as curious.

Why are bards the only class that's able to draw arcane healing magic from the Weave? If it's possible for the Weave to fuel this sort of magic, how have wizards (the realm's masters of manipulating the Weave) let themselves fail to take advantage of this immensely practical and valuable ability? Could they study it and duplicate it if they tried?

a relic of them originally being druids, I believe.

I was just thinking about this recently.

Empirically, all spells and magical abilities can be described in terms of Weave. Even Divine spells can be scribed and then read by people able to make sense of such things.

The easiest explanation out there for me is that in the Bardic tradition, healing is something that is figured out from the Weave just from the odds and ends they pick up about all magic. Of course a wizard or sorcerer could figure out how to cast these spells, it's just generally not something done. Take for example bard-specific spells like Dirge and Wounding whispers. Those are things an arcanist could figure out without even studying another paradigm(like divine casting), but it's generally not done.

To be honest, it is most likely one of the feeble attempts at balancing D&D from back in the day. The major reason to even play a caster other than wizard/sorcerer is because they couldn't access one fundamental sort of magic: healing. Thus, the party dynamic was always fighter/tank, rogue, mage, healer. To be honest, a mage could always fill the rogue's place with his dungeoneering spells, so that becomes tank, mage, healer. A mage could always make a tank certain situations with just their summon, thus mage and healer becomes the needed party. If you let mages have healing in PnP, you might have well just called the game "Wizards kicking ass."

Edit: Yes, also the druid thing. They likely just kept the same spell list and called it a day.

Yeah, it was just kept from the 2nd edition D&D, I think, where they made the silly connection between Druids and Bards. Something they've not commented on ever since. Probably because they realized how dumb that idea was.

In their defense, bards and druids were very interrelated in Celtic mythology. They both were involved with the religious and cultural traditions of their day, hence why druid was also considered a specialty priest in D&D.

Wikipedia wrote:

To become a bard, a human or half-elf had to begin with very high ability scores: Strength 15+, Wisdom 15+, Dexterity 15+ and Charisma 15+, Intelligence 12+ and Constitution 10+. These daunting requirements made bards one of the rarest character classes. Bards began the game as fighters, and after achieving 5th level (but before reaching 8th level), they had to dual-class as a thief, and after reaching 5th level as a thief (but before reaching 9th level), they had to dual-class again to druid. Once becoming a druid, the character then progressed as a bard.

Na. Druids and Bards have very little in common in their original forms, from what little we know of the Druids especially.

What the real reason behind them making the classes interrelated is probably the fact that in neo-druidism, the Bard name is a priestly title. Druids and Bards are the two main priest orders in neo-druidry.

Dark Immolation wrote:

If you let mages have healing in PnP, you might have well just called the game "Wizards kicking ass."

Vaarsuvius: And what would the problem with that be?

Bards were originally an optional class, probably first introduced in Dragon magazine though I don't recall for certain. They made it into the appendix of the first ed. Players Handbook:

"As this class subsumes the functions of two other classes, fighters and thieves, and tops them off with magical abilities, it is often not allowed by Dungeon Masters.

A bard must be human or half-elven.

[...] sometime between 5th and 9th level of ability, bards must leave off thieving and begin clerical studies as druids; but at this time they are actually bards and under druidical tutelage. They must always remain neutral, but can be chaotic, evil, good or lawful neutral if they wish.

The bard gains druidic powers as a druid of the same level, with the exception of druidic spells as explained below.

The bard selects which spells he or she wishes to have for that day (praying to see if his god will grant them) and casts them exactly as a druid of that level..." (AD&D PHB, p.117-8).

I'm at least passingly familiar with earlier versions of the bard class (I started playing D&D the year 2nd edition was released). But, what I was hoping to discuss was less to do with the historical game mechanics of the question, and more along the lines of whether there's been any attempt to retroactively concoct a chunk of lore to justify the mechanics. Even if OOC it's only ever just been hand-waved away as an artifact carried over from an inferior ruleset, the IC world of arcanists still needs to find a way to resolve the fact that bards are apparently capable of a certain type of Weave-manipulation that wizards are not.

Like, would it be plausible IC for people to believe that bardic healing magic is somehow divine rather than arcane? That would probably have farther-reaching implications than would be desirable, but it it would at least be some sort of explanation.

afaik, nothing established there lorewise. I've always treated it IC to being like the temp HP given by bard song

Song and singing can be a good way to heal. Even modern medicine suggest this!

Jack of all trades, master of none (except performing).

Crazy cat ladies believe that cat purring hits the right frequency to stimulate bone growth and in Oryx and Crake things purr to heal other things... http://www.luisprada.com/Protected/the_cats_purr_for_healing.htm

As far as I have understood it, bard-only spells comes from the bards unique ability to pick up odd ends of knowledge and piece them togheter to something useful in a way that nobody else really thinks off. I see bards like those people who could answer a question like "how many uses could you think of for a paperclip" with: "Does it have to be a normal paperclip, or could it, say, be 200 feet tall and made out of rubber?"

As Dark Immolation said, all magic comes from the Weave and there's really no essentialistic difference. What magics one has access to doesn't depend so much on the arcane/divine distinction but rather the tradition of magic one is schooled in. There's nothing impossible about arcane healing, but for whatever reason it isn't done much.

I would treat it as part of their traditional training in folklore, folk magics, etc. Bards have a unique tradition and they get extensive training in it. It's not surprising they have some forgotten tricks of their own.

QPR wrote:

As far as I have understood it, bard-only spells comes from the bards unique ability to pick up odd ends of knowledge and piece them togheter to something useful in a way that nobody else really thinks off.

IronAngel wrote:

I would treat it as part of their traditional training in folklore, folk magics, etc. Bards have a unique tradition and they get extensive training in it. It's not surprising they have some forgotten tricks of their own.

In this case, perhaps it's a matter of 'thinking outside the box' of 'traditional' sorcerous/wizardly magic. One could suggest that wizards are hidebound by formula and that their way of developing new spells simply doesn't encompass the mechanics of healing magic, in the same way that different theories of physics are used for different purposes - they're all aspects of some underlying unified theory but the state of knowledge hasn't advanced sufficiently to reconcile them.

This falls a little short, though, if you consider sorcerous magic as being a spontaneous expression of will - why couldn't you will someone to be healed?

Bobo_Underhill wrote:

afaik, nothing established there lorewise. I've always treated it IC to being like the temp HP given by bard song

In the end, perhaps you have to conclude that bards use a completely different method of manipulating the weave (e.g. cantomancy) that can't be cross-taught to someone without a bardic background and which limits how they can express that skill. Sorcerors and wizards are similar enough in their understanding of the weave that they can use the same spells, whereas bards are not, so there is much less overlap. From a strictly mechanical point of view I think you may need to assume the latter in order to prevent people from requesting abilities that are normally outside their class - would DMs allow an epic bard to request, say, meteor swarm as a custom spell?

We've allowed bards to use their bard song class ability to request spells not on their spell list by sacrificing a song usage. Andrew has a paladin spell, for example, that he casts via his bard song.

within reason, I'd be okay with a custom spell that basically replicates a spell not normally available to them.

Purely an OOC balance game design detail. To try to give it an actual IC explanation is going to create a million problems just to solve one.

However, I will say that I spent some time researching this question because I had it myself a long time ago. I found an answer, and it is an amusing one, but while it is not at all counter-intuitive, it requires a certain knowledge and understanding of magic that not even the gods themselves would really have. Yes, it's that far out there.

Yossarin wrote:

I found an answer, and it is an amusing one, but while it is not at all counter-intuitive, it requires a certain knowledge and understanding of magic that not even the gods themselves would really have. Yes, it's that far out there.

Well, don't hold out on me!

IronAngel wrote:

As Dark Immolation said, all magic comes from the Weave and there's really no essentialistic difference..

Divine magic is not weave magic, it comes directly from the Gods themselves. When Mystra winked out, and the weave was unreachable to arcanists, priests of other Gods had no trouble casting. That is why it's called Divine magic.

Kudark wrote:

IronAngel wrote:

As Dark Immolation said, all magic comes from the Weave and there's really no essentialistic difference..

Divine magic is not weave magic, it comes directly from the Gods themselves. When Mystra winked out, and the weave was unreachable to arcanists, priests of other Gods had no trouble casting. That is why it's called Divine magic.

Not true, no. It's simply called divine magic because the gods give it to you (pretty much plucking the right spell from the Weave and sending it into your head like an e-mail, I guess), not because it's somehow exempt from the rules that govern all magic.

You cannot cast divine magic without the Weave any more than you can cast arcane magic. Wild Magic Zones and Dead Magic Zones affect priests just as they affect wizards - they even affect spell-like abilities and supernatural abilities. As the FRCS says, "[t]he Weave is the fabric of esoteric rules and forumulas that comprises the Art (arcane spellcasting) and the Power (divine spellcasting)."

The gods themselves cannot cast magic without Mystra's permission, and she is physically able (if not allowed) to bar a god and his followers from access to magic, divine or arcane.

If you're referring to Mystra winking out at the 4e transition, no lore travesty surprises me there. If the Weave were to unravel, nobody could cast any magic until perhaps the energies of wild magic that now flowed freely settled a bit and people learned to harness them.

Bini wrote:

Crazy cat ladies believe that cat purring hits the right frequency to stimulate bone growth and in Oryx and Crake things purr to heal other things...

Dear Malandria, are you reading this?

This forum isn't a place for spam, or idle chit chat folks!

I never unstood why Amia treats wizards and sorcerers seperate from Bards.
Bards don't have their own magic-it is arcane. They use the same attribute as Sorcerers that being charisma. Charisma amoung other things is force of personality and persuasiveness.
Sorcerers manipulate magic energy with imagination and talent rather than studious discipline. The nwnwiki states "Bards cast arcane spells without advance preparation much like the sorcerer."
To me that means Bards and Sorcerers have more in common with their spellcasting. What seperates the two is when the sorcerer focuses on that pursuit of bending the weave to their will and the bard "being a jack of all trades" diversifies his pursuit.
Why does the bard focus on other things? Because a bard earns great acclaim amoung his fellows for being able to tell his tales from experience. What greater experience is there than walking in the shoes of another for a time.
Wizards and Sorcerers affect the world around them through their mastery of magic
Bards influence others around them to accomplish the same thing.
That's the only difference I see

Divine magic does indeed come from the Weave.

On Amia, we treat Wizards, Sorcerers and Bards all separate from each other in certain respects, yet alike in many ways. It's all arcane, but the way they access spells differ from each other quite a bit.

A Wizard learns and studies his craft and goes about it probably a bit like a scientist/mathematician. The Sorcerer feels the magic. The magic is already in the sorcerers blood, it's just a matter of harnessing it and controlling it. For the Bard, it's a cross between the two in a lot of ways. The Bard learns and studies like a Wizard, but he also learns to feel his magic like a Sorcerer would. He's a musician, story teller and/or poet. Those are things you have to be emotionally vulnerable for to be good at.

Hm. So would you extrapolate from that, Gunz, that the reason bards can do this awesome thing that the other two arcane classes can't, is that it requires both a level of intellectual insight that's not typically developed by a sorcerer, and also a level of emotional involvement that's not often found in a wizard?

That would make some sort of sense. Though, more so if there were still an INT requirement for bards, as in previous editions.

I wouldn't say it's an individual thing. It's a difference between traditions. I think this is an aspect way too underplayed when it comes to bards and other classes, too. We don't play in a setting where information is freely available through online courses and search engines. We play in a setting where knowledge is transmitted through oral tradition and rare hand-copied tomes. What you learn isn't determined so much by what you could theoretically learn, but rather what you happen to be taught.

Bards have an old, prestigeous tradition. There used to be several bardic academies scattered across Faerûn, where bards-to-be would undergo rigorous training in traditional music styles, folklore, magic, and so on. Currently I believe there's one such academy active. Even those bards who don't go there will usually have learned their trade from a mentor. A home-grown bedroom poet is not a real bard, there's a lot of classical training required to reach that point. It's not like every bard spontaneously gets the same spell list when they feel like they want to become singers. It's something transmitted through the old bardic tradition.

I don't see it much different from a Specialist Wizard: they devote their study to a certain paradigm that is incompatible with a certain spellschool. Specialists are barred from an "opposing" school not because of some metaphysical antipathy or the nature of the Weave, but because they happen to have learned a certain way of casting magic. They could have learned to use that school, just like they probably could have learned healing magic, but the tradition/paradigm they're committed doesn't help them in understanding it, therefore putting them in the same position as an uneducated commoner.

Quote:

Hm. So would you extrapolate from that, Gunz, that the reason bards can do this awesome thing that the other two arcane classes can't, is that it requires both a level of intellectual insight that's not typically developed by a sorcerer, and also a level of emotional involvement that's not often found in a wizard?

Yes and no, simultaneously and separately.

... I don't know what that means.

It means trying to pigeonhole bards into a stereotype fails because by definition they're not a stereotype.

Well that's a way better answer.

If the only legit answer is that there as many legit answers as there are bards, I guess I can live with that. I'm still kind of curious about Yoss's teased theory, though.

Quote:

it requires a certain knowledge and understanding of magic that not even the gods themselves would really have

So what?

For any given issue discussed in this forum, the large majority of characters won't be able to use it IC in any practical sense anyway. You're one of the acknowledged bardworthy DMs, and it's clear that you put a lot of thought into the answers that you find engaging. I'm curious about your thoughts. They don't have to be useful in game to be interesting and/or fun.

IronAngel wrote:

Kudark wrote:

IronAngel wrote:

As Dark Immolation said, all magic comes from the Weave and there's really no essentialistic difference..

Divine magic is not weave magic, it comes directly from the Gods themselves. When Mystra winked out, and the weave was unreachable to arcanists, priests of other Gods had no trouble casting. That is why it's called Divine magic.

Not true, no. It's simply called divine magic because the gods give it to you (pretty much plucking the right spell from the Weave and sending it into your head like an e-mail, I guess), not because it's somehow exempt from the rules that govern all magic.

You cannot cast divine magic without the Weave any more than you can cast arcane magic. Wild Magic Zones and Dead Magic Zones affect priests just as they affect wizards - they even affect spell-like abilities and supernatural abilities. As the FRCS says, "[t]he Weave is the fabric of esoteric rules and forumulas that comprises the Art (arcane spellcasting) and the Power (divine spellcasting)."

The gods themselves cannot cast magic without Mystra's permission, and she is physically able (if not allowed) to bar a god and his followers from access to magic, divine or arcane.

If you're referring to Mystra winking out at the 4e transition, no lore travesty surprises me there. If the Weave were to unravel, nobody could cast any magic until perhaps the energies of wild magic that now flowed freely settled a bit and people learned to harness them.

Hence Time of Troubles. Clerics suffered just like magi did.

Yes and no. Clerics also suffered because their gods were no longer there to grant spells. The Weave was still in place, just in disarray, and for those priests who were in the vicinity of their gods' corporeal forms I think casting spells was still possible and not overly risky. I seem to remember something like this, at least; clerics gathering around their fallen god and managing some spells. Isn't that what happened in the Avatar trilogy to Sunites or Tymorans (whichever, somehow related to the vain priest who switched allegiance)?

And the Gond...ites? In Lantan, where Gond's avatar was.

Within one mile of the god.

Arcane / Bardic Healing Magic

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