# Bardic Knowledge vs. other Knowledge Skills



## candidus_cogitens (Jan 20, 2003)

What does Bardic knowledge give you exactly?  
To what degree does it overlap with other knowledge skills?  
Is there anything bardic knowledge does NOT cover?  
Would it be possible for a bard to make two checks for the same topic (one for bardic knowledge, and another for knowledge history, for example)?


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## Silver Griffon (Jan 20, 2003)

Bardic Knowledge overlaps a number of knowledge skills. Most notably, Knowledge(history) and Knowledge(local). The check is 1d20 +bard level +Int. Actual knowledge skills improve much more quickly for the average character. Because of this, I tend to be very liberal with what Bardic Knowledge applies to. I let bards substitute it for any knowledge skill when trying to find out something that would be worthy of song, poetry, or prose. The "worthy" part is the tricky bit. It requires a case-by-case ruling. It's unlikely, for example, that a song would give enough detail about rutebegas to identify one on sight. However, a song about the poisoning of a king might include poetic descriptions of the leaves of the deadly nightshade plant that was used to make the poison. In such a case, the bard might be allowed a bardic knowledge check in place of a knowledge(nature) check to ID the plant. This example is extreme, and a little wierd, but you get the idea. If you think the information is likely to be immortalized in song, then a Bardic Knowledge check might reveal it.
As far as making more than one check, I would say no. But I would allow a +2 synergy bonus on the Bardic Knowledge check if the bard had 5 or more ranks in an appropriate skill. But not the other way around, because that could give the bard an effective bonus in just about every knowledge skill.
I hope that helps.


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## candidus_cogitens (Jan 20, 2003)

Thanks for replying.

You've given a possible litmus test, by saying that it has to be something worthy of being written about.  It's still fairly vague though.  As a player, it would be nice to not have to rely too much on the DM's discretion.  The main reason that I am looking for more specificity is that I want to know how many skill points to invest in other knowledge skills.  If bardic knowledge overlaps with many other knowledge skills, then I don't want to spend points on it.  See what I mean?

I love to complain about lack of specificity in the rule books!   Indulge me, please.

This irritates me because bardic knowledge is one of the most distinctive abilities of the class, and yet it is so ill-defined.  Why couldn't they just say bardic knowledge = knowledge (history + nobility + arcana + geography) or something like that.  That way, you know where the redundancy lies!


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## Silver Griffon (Jan 20, 2003)

You probably need to get with your DM for some clear guidelines. I think the four knowledge skills you just mentioned are a great place to start. Maybe you can get him to give you a clear list like that. Or, maybe you can talk him into trading out the standard bardic knowledge ability for a set number of bonus skill points to be used only for knowledge skills. Say 4 extra points at first level, and 1 more at each additional level of bard, and each skill purchased with these points gets a competence bonus equal to your bard level.
Personally though, I think making the ability mores specific is bound to make it less useful in the long run.


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## Caliber (Jan 20, 2003)

I agree with Silver Griffon. 

Bardic Knowledge being so undefined is one of its main perks. Sure it means that you don't know when its going to take effect, but most DMs will let you get away with a lot with Bardic Knowledge. 

Worthy enough of being written about can mean pretty much anything.


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## Shallown (Jan 21, 2003)

Silver Griffon hit all the high points to this ability.

Since I have a Bard in my present game and it is very information driven He uses it alot.

I almost always allow him a roll to know something but adjust the DC based on if the fact would have been worth retelling.

I know that isn't a hard and fast rule but hopefully it helps.

I Also adjust for the race of the bard since elves may know things through song that dwarven Bards don't.

Just my ideas

LAter


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## Stalker0 (Jan 21, 2003)

When it comes to just basic knowledge, I consider the bard to be allow to use his knowledge for practically anything. When you've seen kings/queens/peasants/wizards/alchemists/and the occasional outsider you tend to learn a lot.


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## candidus_cogitens (Jan 21, 2003)

Yes, of course, I do need to talk to my DM, and he'll make the final decision in my case.  But I wanted to talk to you guys just for the sake of having a discussion about the rules themselves and how they SHOULD be interpreted, regardless of how my DM actually decides to interpret them.

If I were presently running a campaign, I would not allow a bard to use bardic knowledge on anything, because that would make it too powerful.  There should be some limits to the skill.  And I think there is good evidence in the rules themselves that there should be some limitations.  Why would the bard be given access to all knowledge skills, if those skills would be completely redundant.  (Of course, your bardic knowledge modifier is always going to be three points lower than a maxed-out knowledge skill--but that fact would still not make it worthwhile to spend a bunch of skill points on a separate knowledge skill, especially when you could just take the Obscure Lore feat to cancel out that disadvantage.)

The only reason I raised the question at all is that there is that possible redundancy.  If your bard has no inclination to take knowledge skills anyway, then the vagueness of the bardic knowledge ability would not be a problem.  

You would think that the rules would have tried to avoid redundancy problems, especially since bards get access to all other knowledge skills.  Maybe that will be cleared up in the upcoming edition.  We can hope!


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## Caliber (Jan 21, 2003)

The reason a Bard would want to take some Knowledge skills is the same thing we've been saying. 

Worthy of being written about.

A Bard with 23 Ranks in Knowledge:History might be able to tell you every single detail of a Kingdom's history. 

A 20th Bard could use Bardic Knowledge to tell you every song about a Kingdom's history.

They don't exactly overlap. A lot of things could have happened (exact dates of minor kings births and deaths, economy flucuations, introduction of a new product or spell) that would defintely not be in song.

And conversely, if you DM feels like being a bastard, a lot of things could have happened in song that never happened in real life (err ... DnD life that is)

I let Bardic Knowledge work for anything, as long as I determine it is something a song might be written about. And the less likely a song is to be written about it, the harder a check it will be.


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## Victim (Jan 21, 2003)

The way I see it, Bardic Knowledge is like all the knowledge skills, but more general.  A check against the same DC would give more specific information for a normal knowledge skill than bardic knowledge, or if specific info is desired, the DC will be a bit higher.  Knowledge skills and bardic knowledge in the area would allow for synergy bonuses.

Not all bards are singers either.


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## candidus_cogitens (Jan 21, 2003)

Silver Griffon's original suggestion was that it should be something worthy of being written about in song OR poetry or prose, which I find more reasonable than just limiting it to stuff that can be found in songs only.

Check out some of the examples given in the player's handbook.  Most of that stuff is not the kind of thing that would make good song material.  Rather, it's a bunch of stray knowledge, heard through the grapevine.

Also note that those examples do not represent GENERAL information.  Far from it!  They are EXTREMELY SPECIFIC.

In fact, the more I study those examples, I am convinced that bardic knowledge is meant to apply to things that are entirely UNWORTHY of being written about.  If they were written about, then it wouldn't be as obscure and trivial as most of this stuff seems to be.

Bard's are storytellers, not scholars.  They don't READ, for information; rather, they GOSSIP!


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## Silver Griffon (Jan 22, 2003)

candidus_cogitens said:
			
		

> *In fact, the more I study those examples, I am convinced that bardic knowledge is meant to apply to things that are entirely UNWORTHY of being written about.  If they were written about, then it wouldn't be as obscure and trivial as most of this stuff seems to be.
> 
> Bard's are storytellers, not scholars.  They don't READ, for information; rather, they GOSSIP! *




I really like this take on the bard! A tavern gossip. Nice. But I still like mine, too 
Maybe I'll give bards a choice IMC. If they are a tavern gossip, they know mostly trivia. If they are a student of the classics, they have a narrower area of knowledge, but its more likely to be of particular importance (kings, great deeds, etc.).
hmmm...


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## nameless (Jan 22, 2003)

I disagree with most of the posters so far. Bardic Knowledge is _the_ major Bardic ability, along with Bardic Music. It should be relatively powerful. I treat it as if he had ranks in every available Knowledge skill equal to his level. So if there is a Knowledge roll to know any particular piece of information, a Bard can always attempt the roll. It is a quasi-mystical tradition of knowledge being passed between bards. 

Of course, the phrasing is important when revealing the information. A wizard with Knowledge (Arcana) is going to have a different perspective on the same facts as a Bard. The wizard might actually know the specifics of a spell or magic item, but the Bard may know of the creator of that spell or magic item, and then infer how they used the magic in question.


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## candidus_cogitens (Jan 23, 2003)

Silver Griffon said:
			
		

> *
> 
> I really like this take on the bard! A tavern gossip. Nice. But I still like mine, too
> Maybe I'll give bards a choice IMC. If they are a tavern gossip, they know mostly trivia. If they are a student of the classics, they have a narrower area of knowledge, but its more likely to be of particular importance (kings, great deeds, etc.).
> hmmm... *




Maybe I should have said "oral tradition" rather than "gossip," since the latter term implies that it only has to do with trivial information.  I did not mean to imply that bard's don't have a genuinely sophisticated tradition of learning.

So, I don't know if that would be a third option, or what . . . but I do agree that your way sounds good.  It seems that the rules are so vaguely defined that one could come up with several different ways of handling it.

I also think nameless' approach sounds fine--even though it is almost assuredly not what was intended by the creators of the game.  (If bardic knowledge = all knowledge skills combined, then there would be little point in giving bards access to those knowledge skills, as I discussed above.)  I agree that it should be a treated as a fairly powerful feature of the class.


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## candidus_cogitens (Feb 2, 2003)

Another way to handle it would be to create a house rule, eliminating bardic knowledge altogether, and just giving bards a +2 to all knowledge checks.


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