Following up on last week's Barbarian build guide, we're back to look at how to use SWADE to recreate 5E's favorite seducer: the Bard.
What are our goals for this build? We need to recreate the feeling of being a spell-slinging singer and a strumming strumpet, plus:
Glamor!
Music!
Magic!
Inspiration!
Mockery!
Doing all the things!
This won’t be as detailed a build as Barbarian, because we’re really just here to get a few key features. Bards are highly customizable and not locked into any one playstyle. So, after we have the essentials, you can make your singer and spellslinger seduce dragons however you want.
Character Creation
For attributes, if you want to keep true to the Jack of All Trades spirit of the D&D Bard, you can go all d6s. I recommend dumping Strength and Agility to raise Intelligence and Spirit - this will give you earlier access to a couple of Edges. You do you, though.
Starting Edges
Assuming you’re a Human and have taken all allowable Hindrances, you should be able to take three Edges at character creation. If you’re not Human or want to mix things up, feel free to swap out the order. Savage Worlds and most DMs are pretty permissive about taking Background Edges after character generation, particularly if you bat your pretty eyes at them and ask nicely. Bite your lower lip, raise an eyebrow, and offer them certain “favors” - like bringing snacks!
The only two Edges you sort of have to take are Arcane Background: Miracles and Troubadour from the Fantasy Companion. If you don’t have the Fantasy Companion or don’t want to use something that hasn’t yet been updated to SWADE, you can just use Miracles or Magic or even Weird Science and reskin your Powers. In the days before SWADE, I once played a Mad Scientist in Deadlands: Noir who cast Blast using an Electric Banjo, so there’s plenty of room for creativity (shout out to Jim Ryan for running that one shot and making that character). Again, I’m trying to stay as close to rules as written as possible, but your mileage may vary.
AB: Miracles is a prerequisite for Troubadour, below. Feel free to change this up using the suggestions above if you want.
The Troubadour Edge gives you access to the AB: Miracles Powers list, but now your casting uses the Perform Skill instead of Faith and you’re not tied to a specific code or deity. You do suffer backlash in the form of Strain if you roll a 1 on your Perform die. Again, this can be swapped out for other Arcane Backgrounds with some reskinning and use of Trappings, but that’s up to you and your DM.
Attractive is traditional - you can’t make Half-Elves if your eyebrow game isn’t on point - but is not required or can be pushed back to later if your GM is cool with it.
Skills
You’re going to become a “skill monkey” eventually via an Edge, so for now just focus on boosting a few key skills: Perform (and/or whatever you use for your chosen Arcane Background), Persuasion, and Taunt. For other skills, take anything you intend to improve over a d4.
Other Features
Now let’s discuss what we’ll be doing to imitate other class features of the 5E Bard. You’re a performer and a seducer with a honeyed tongue, so take some combination of Charismatic, Attractive, Very Attractive, Work the Room, and Work the Crowd to increase your odds of killing them softly with your song (or seducing the village girls).
To imitate Bardic Inspiration, take Common Bond. This will let you hand out Bennies to your allies for rerolls. You may want to take Luck and Great Luck or play a Half-folk to get more bennies. Bolster will let you help your allies by Taunting. Elan is arguably the best Edge in the game and there’s literally no character who can’t benefit from improving re-rolls. Reliable is helpful for pitching in on your allies’ rolls. You can also, if your Bard is one of the more responsible members of the Party (stranger things have happened), take Command and other Leadership Edges like Fervor, Hold the Line, Natural Leader, and Tactician.
Once you have a Smarts of d10, take Jack of All Trades. This allows your character to pick up new Skills outside of Advances. In pretty short order, you can end up with a d4 or d6 in pretty much all Skills. This imitates the Bard’s Jack of All Trades class feature.
You can use the Boost/Lower Trait Power to sort of imitate the Expertise class feature. Not a perfect 1:1, but it will do. Failing that, when you reach Legendary you can start picking up Edges like Professional, Expert, and Master.
Raise your Taunt skill and take Edges like Humiliate, Provoke, and Retort to put your enemies at a disadvantage with your razor wit. With the exception of dealing no damage, this covers the Bard’s signature Vicious Mockery cantrip.
For bardic Archetypes, it’s mostly going to come down to packages of Edges, Skills, and Powers. For example, an ersatz Valor or Swords Bard will take more Combat Edges and Skills, whereas a Glamor Bard will focus more on social Edges and enchantment Powers.
Powers
Speaking of, what Powers should you take? What are the “bardiest” abilities in SWADE?
Bards traditionally are the face of the party, so Powers that let you charm, misdirect, or deceive NPCs are your bread and butter. Confusion, Disguise, Detect/Conceal Arcana, Divination, Empathy, Farsight, Fear, Illusion, Invisibility, Mind Link, Mind Reading, Mind Wipe, Puppet, Slumber, Sound/Silence, and Speak Language will all allow you to get the best of social situations or turn the tables in a combat encounter.
The Relief Power can sub in for the Bard’s Song of Rest ability. Boost/Lower Trait, Deflection, Drain Power Points, Protection, Shape Change, Sloth/Speed, Stun, and Warrior’s Gift are all fine Buff or Debuff spells, allowing you to come in clutch in a fight without dealing direct damage.
Other than that, take whatever Powers tickle your fancy. Take Burst with Sound trappings to turn your trombone into an instrument of destruction. Heck, take Smite and use your guitar as a literal axe, like Pete Townsend on a bender. The sky is the limit.
Strengths and Weaknesses
Because this is a fairly vague guide and the Bard is, by its nature, flexible and open ended, it's hard to say what the limits are of this archetype. You're obviously going to be very strong in social situations and able to contribute as a support caster during battle, at the expense of being a primary combatant yourself. I think the better way to talk about it is to go over what translates well from D&D and what doesn't. First off, this build really captures the jack of all trades and skill monkey aspects of the Bard. Bennies are a more flexible tool than Bardic Inspiration. Bennies being used as a way to reward roleplaying and the fact that you can bank them mean that they're more available than Inspiration and allow you to top off your pool of Bardic Inspiration just by being a good roleplayer - which most people drawn to the Bard at least aspire to be. The real difference is in what's going to be a recurring theme in this series - power level. Savage Worlds is a somewhat lower fantasy, more grounded system than D&D, so even a Legendary character isn't going to have the world shaking powers of a well crafted Level 20 PC. But as long as you have a good GM who puts you up against appropriate challenges, you're going to feel just as epic as you rock your way around the world like the superstar you are.
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