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Spoony Bard: Difference between revisions
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{{quote|''spoony \SPOO-nee\, ''adjective'':
1. Foolish; silly; excessively sentimental.
2. Foolishly or sentimentally in love.''
|'''Dictionary.com'''}}
Ah, the much-maligned bard class... For some reason, bards are very frequently unable to ever become anything useful. They are the butt of jokes, they are often [[Final Fantasy IV|beaten by old men with canes]], and sometimes their friends [[The Gamers|use a mountain of bard corpses as convenient cover]].
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It rarely works as intended. Bards usually become spoony when they run into one of two major problems:
* First, bards can often be an attempt at being a [[Jack of All Stats|jack of all trades]]. This may seem nice on paper - they can back up the powers of their specialized compatriots whenever a [[Plot Tailored to the Party|certain role is critically needed]]. If the party is undermanned, they may need someone who can fill two roles at once. Unfortunately, because [[Crippling Overspecialization]] is often not crippling in these games, [[Min-Maxing]] is implicitly encouraged. Even worse, because [[Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards]] means different classes progress at different rates and the monsters are built to be a challenge to those characters of the basic four specialized types, the bard is often [[Can't Catch Up|struck with abilities so underleveled by comparison as to make them completely useless]]. The '''Spoony Bard''' fails to become even a "jack" at all trades, only managing to become a [[Master of None]].
* Alternately, bards can be built to specialize in status effect abilities. This ''can'' often be a wonderful way to add a new role to the game, it's in [[An Adventurer Is You]] as "Buffers" and "Mezzers" for a reason. In games where enemies can have powers that disable your own characters, having a character that can disable them first, or provide your teammates immunity to their tricks is a great boon. This often falls flat, however, because the status effects in many games are actually [[Useless Useful Spell]]s. This problem is often exacerbated by having fairly short fights in many games where the standard [[Mook]] enemies you mow through are only meant to turn the game into an endurance match, anyway. A spell or song that gives a +30% attack bonus is only a useful bonus if you are actually going to attack at least four times with that status effect on - if not, congratulations, you just wasted a turn. Even if boss fights are fairly long, if the bard specializes in nothing but debuff spells, the enemy may be [[Contractual Boss Immunity|immune]], and the buff spells may simply not be useful enough to justify using a bard instead of another character.
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* Brutally averted in the ''[[Wizardry]]'' series, as bards are decent characters with good lockpicking skills, but more importantly, the ability to play a wide variety of instruments that replicate various magical spells, up to and including the most powerful damage dealing spell in the game, all for no MP and a bit of energy.
* These types of characters have appeared in various ''[[Dragon Quest]]'' games.
** ''[[Dragon Quest III]]'' featured the Gadabout/Goof-off/Jester, who is either a clown (male) or a bunnygirl (female). An NPC will outright ''tell'' you that they're useless. Their stats are below average all across the board (except luck, [[Dump Stat|which does almost nothing]], only reducing the chance of chance of being inflicted with a stat effect by a ''fraction of a percent'' in a game where the primary stats [[Cap]] at 255), and they will often waste a turn doing something silly rather than attacking. On the other hand, [[Magikarp Power|Gadabouts are the only class that could become a Sage without the use of a special item]]. The SNES and GBC remake made them a little better, giving them the Whistle ability that calls a random battle, saving some time when level grinding.
** ''[[Dragon Quest IV]]'' had Torneko. Once you got him in Chapter 5, he started goofing off just like the Gadabouts in III. He's something of a subversion, though, because while he's an underwhelming fighter, he isn't useless, and unlike the Gadabouts of III, his goofing off will almost always result in something useful. He's still more useful for what he can do outside your party rather than in, though.
** Gadabouts made a return in ''[[Dragon Quest VI]]'', and are given a few more abilities to make them more useful, but remain below average. There are also Dancers, who can use a variety of dances to do bad things to the enemy for no MP, up to and including instant death, although you don't get the good abilities until you've mastered the class. Both of these classes, however, must be mastered in order to get the much more useful Luminary class which does ''not'' follow this trope, as it gains very useful abilities, including Hustle Dance which can heal the entire party for ''no MP''!
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