The Druid Class, Part Five
In last week’s article, we saw the likely zenith of the Druid class’s power, relative to the other classes in the game. Of course, we have two more editions to get through, so if I’m wrong, I willow someone an apology. ...
The Druid Class, Part Four
As with… most of the history of D&D, really, the 3.0 Druid is in some regards a huge break from the baby-steps of evolution that took place in the class from OD&D through 2e. The shift is thematic as well ...
The Druid Class, Part Three
Last time, I picked apart the 1e Druid class and its Unearthed Arcana update. Now I’m moving on to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Second Edition – the earliest edition I’ve personally run or played. Superficially, the 2e Druid is so ...
The Druid Class, Part Two
In my previous post on druids, we looked at how OD&D established a baseline for the class. Today, we’ll see that 1e doesn’t stray far from that, until we get into Unearthed Arcana’s revision of the class. The 1e version ...
The Druid Class, Part One
Now that I’ve said all I can think to say on the Bard class, let’s break down the Druid – a class most often defined in its contrast to the Cleric. Like the Bard, the Druid’s history goes back to ...
The Bard Class, Part Five
The Bard Class, Part Five At last, we come to Act V in the drama of the Bard. The narrative arc to date has been… more of a picaresque than anything, with movements in many conflicting directions, often contradicting earlier ...
The Bard Class, Part Four
Welcome back to my ongoing eccentricity obsession series about the Bard class. This time, I’ll be talking about Fourth Edition. I suspect that some percentage of my readers, devilishly attractive lot that they are, despise all things related to Fourth ...
The Bard Class, Part Three
Welcome back to the third post in this series on Bards. I promise that someday I will say everything I need to say about Bards and we can move on to some other class with a bizarre history across the ...
The Bard Class, Part Two
This time out, I’ll be writing about the Bard of AD&D, Second Edition. The bard of OD&D started as a magical and thiefly dabbler, loremaster, and diplomat, and grew into a quite potent magic-user. The 1e bard is an end goal ...
The Bard Class, Part One
For my introductory post here at Tribality, I’d like to talk about the history of the bard class, from its origins in The Strategic Review (Vol 2, Number 1), down to its 5th Edition incarnation. Buckle in, folks, it’s going ...