The Complete Bard's Handbook

Player's Handbook Rules Supplements #PHBR7

by Blake Mobley

Thief, musician, clown, actor, acrobat—just a partial list of the many twists on the bard class to be found in this book! Seventeen bard kits, multitudes of abilities and powers, new magical items, new proficiencies, rules for gaining patrons and followers, over 199 bardic instruments, and much more await you within. The Complete Bard's Handbook gives you everything you need to create a bard the world will never forget!

Genres: Role Playing Games, Gaming, Fantasy, Dungeons and Dragons, Games, Reference

127 pages, Paperback

First published April 14, 1992

Reviews

[S.W. Wilcox · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love AD&D and Bards too, but I didn't find this handbook very helpful. I have a BARD list at Listopia https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1... if someone wants to add/vote this onto it. (I DO have the "Player's Handbook" ed. 1 & 2 there already, because all characters are available in those books to compare, roll-up and sometimes arm with cool spells.)

[Benjamin]

How? Part of my Players Handbook Rules Supplement re-read. This covers Bard's, Rangers, Paladins, and Druids books.

What? These are already slightly weird classes, slightly mixed. (In fact, in 1st and 2nd edition AD&D, they might be here specifically to deal with the fact that humans don't get to multiclass the way the elves, dwarves, etc. do.) Like: Ranger is a fighter, but with some thief and even some priest abilities, whereas the Bard is a thief with wizard abilities, and the Paladin is a fighter with priest abilities. (Druid? Kind of a fighter-cleric, but really just such a specific type of cleric.)

But these classes are also other things: Ranger is clearly an Aragorn-type, meant for being in the wild, where the Bard is a showman, and the Paladin is a holier-than-thou pain in the ass, and the Druid, well, that owes a lot to some New Age-era ideas about Celtic nature worship.

So what's in these books? Pretty much what's in the other books... but less so. So we might get some special rules or more information, like

Bard: Want a chapter on musical instruments and how much you make from busking? Here it is!
Ranger: Want some new rules about animal companions? You've got it!
Paladin: Want some stuff about chivalry, like jousting and courtly love? No, because it was already in the Castle book? Well, too bad, here it is again!
Druids: Want information about sacred groves/standing stones and druid orders? Please, help yourself.

There's also all the kits you could want (and druid also gets the idea of different climes/biomes, so it's not all "caring for the forest"), but here's really where the books -- so exciting to me as a child -- start to break down. Like: the Bard is a showman, and here they want him to be more than a musician, so you get tumbler/acrobats and heralds and jesters. But what about people who are showy and good with weapons? So here you get the Blade, a Bard who happens to be better at fighting. But wait, didn't we get a thief who was good at fighting in the thief book? And didn't we get a fighter who was more of a showman in the fighter book?

I _really_ like the idea of different types of any class and how they mechanically matter, but all this is really pushing against the class-based RPG at the heart of D&D. (They've toyed with build-your-own class systems, but they keep coming back to this.)

There's the other things we expect in these books, like roleplaying tips, and a closer examination of what some of their abilities mean, and equipment (and new spells). What many of them have dropped is the idea of a single-class campaign (though again, Druid has that) probably because an all-paladin or all-bard game sounds annoying.

Interestingly, each of these books also ends with an appendix with the 1st edition rules for this character type.

Yeah, so? So you've probably already gathered my main idea of this series: they have many interesting ideas, but the one that sticks is kits, which is arguably the worst articulation of that idea. In 5e, I think they do a little better with the idea of a background (where you can put your noble, savage, peasant, academician description) and the different subclasses you can matriculate into.

But in 2e, after these books, kits were everywhere and they really didn't make things better.

Oh, but special shoutout for maybe my favorite bit of special rules: bards can only be human, but song/performance is pretty universal, so they introduce some new "demi-bard" classes for demihumans, which I appreciate -- and which maybe points out how nonsensical some racial restrictions were in 2e

Which really gets to one big problem with 2e at this time, which is that a lot of it is too tied to 1e material. I mean, I know 4e gets a lot of guff for breaking so many traditions, but maybe when you make a new edition, you should feel a little freer to look at those traditions and decide if you want them.

[Mike (the Paladin) · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Bard is one of the most interesting characters in the D&D game. In the first edition of the game the bard was very hard to build (you started with a thief or fighter and built several levels then moved to the other. After this you became a Druid character building you spell casting ability. With the abilities of fighter, thief and spells of a druid they could be (if they survived early development) very nasty. The second edition toned down the character a bit and made him a sort of spell casting thief character. This detracted from the Skald type character, but you could (can if you still play 2nd edition) build one. Or you can try other types of Bard, actors, swashbucklers etc... that's what this book is to help with.

[Priscilla · Rating 3 out of 5]

Como a maioria dos manuais, ele é bem organizado. Infelizmente, não há ilustrações o que é uma falha para qualquer gamer que tenha comprado... afinal de contas, imagens tem que ser belas, abundantes e uma ajuda para quem está lendo esse manual justamente porque não sabe como jogar com o personagem.

Bardos não são propriamente populares em comparação com personagens como guerreiros e magos, assim, é sempre uma boa ideia fornecer o máximo de informação. Esse livro é um manual especializado, mas não é desculpa para não colocar conteúdo básico dizendo que o mesmo já foi feito em outro livro.

Há vários kits descritos e muitos deles tem exemplos de comportamento ou de aventuras para facilitar o entendimento do jogador, ainda mais, há tabelas que servem para orientar a criação e o desenvolvimento do personagem.

Relativamente útil, não propriamente essencial, mesmo para quem quer se tornar um craque com bardos.

[Kristen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think I would rate this 3.5 stars. Some of it will be useful in the development of my Bard but I think a lot is unnecessary for my use. Perhaps for someone running or involved in a 2e AD&D game it would be of more use.

[Juho Pohjalainen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bards get my favourite kits in the entire game, and the rules for reputation, fame and infamy, and patrons are also welcome and do a great deal to enhance the performance, so to speak.

I've always liked to run an all-bard campaign, or play in one. One day.

[Peter Hofstra · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is 3rd edition, so many rules changes have taken place, but is still excellent source material for the heart and soul of creating a bard character.

[Edward Hansen]

I recently read this book again for the guest time since the late 1990s. I was playing a bard at the time and read this so many times. It was a fun bit of nostalgia to read this again. D&D 5e is much different that AD&D, so the specific rules don’t translate, but the concepts are fun. Looking forward as a DM to have more options for bats in future campaigns.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the best rule books that TSR put out.
Condensing a great deal of information into a usable format for DM's to have more detailed bards or musical details in a game.

[Abraham Ray · Rating 5 out of 5]

grea dnd book about bards!

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you are playing a AD&D 2nd Edition Bard you need to check out this book. I highly recommend it.

[Liza · Rating 5 out of 5]

Enjoyed this supplement. Helped move me into 2nd ed.