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{{trope}}
[[File:Spoony_Bard.jpg|link=Final Fantasy IV
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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
If you have any experience with your typical fantasy RPG whatsoever, you know [[An Adventurer Is You|the basic roles by heart]]. RPG games are made so that characters are specialized, but rather than [[Crippling Overspecialization|crippling characters for their specialization]], they are actually [[Min-Maxing|more powerful the more they specialize]] thanks to the fact that party members can rely on their [[Nakama|comrades-in-arms]] whenever [[Plot Tailored to
But then, while the [["Stop Having Fun!" Guys|dedicated RPG gamers]] will always [[Just Here for Godzilla|beeline for the characters with the best damage-dealing potential or who do the best in their party role]], if only because they are so [[The Coconut Effect|ingrained into the minds of RPG players that they would reject anything else]], many game makers also want to cater to players who want to see something a little different, and which makes the game something more than just a matter of the same [[Fantasy Character Classes|four basic characters]]. Even when there are other classes, they really only fill the same roles that those major four pillars of RPG-dom dictate, but with an added gimmick.
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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
* 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|Useless Useful Spells]]. 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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On the other hand not everyone plays just for the thrill of the kill and some gamers want to avoid [[Complacent Gaming Syndrome]], so the ability to play with a "fun" mechanic or to try something new is sometimes worth the loss of effectiveness.
The term "Spoony Bard" itself, incidentally, comes from [[
Keep in mind that simply having a "Bard" class is not sufficient - they have to be ''spoony'' bards - that is, if bards are powerful and useful, and virtually all parties will want one, then they aren't really a spoony bard. If a bard is a generalist with magic, but is actually powerful at spellcasting, they may instead be [[The Red Mage]]. Also, the class doesn't have to have anything to do with music or bards to be a spoony bard, they simply have to try to perform the same function that most spoony bards do, which is messing with status effects in a game where [[Useless Useful Spell|status effects are useless]] or giving ability point bonuses or penalties that are too minor to make up for not simply making another fighter.
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See also [[What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?]] and [[Master of None]]. Contrast [[Game Breaker]], [[Lethal Joke Character]], and the occasional [[Heart Is an Awesome Power]].
Not to be confused with [[The Spoony Experiment
If you're looking for actual bards, see [[Wandering Minstrel]] and [[The Bard]]. If you're looking for '''the''' Bard, see [[William Shakespeare]].
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* Varies in the RPG ''[[Dungeons and Dragons|Dungeons & Dragons]]'', depending on edition and campaign. There are a lot of "trap" classes in almost all editions. This is where [[Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards]] came from after all.
** First edition bards were an odd class that required several levels in 3 different classes before you could begin taking levels in bard, and even then the abilities were of questionable use at best.
** Interestingly enough, the second edition bard was just the [[Jack of All Stats]]. However, at a certain range of experience (party average around 3 to 12) this trope was [[Inverted Trope|inverted]], making bards curiously but non-obviously overpowered during this common range of play. Due to their being on the Thief experience table, they gained levels much faster than their wizard buddies, which allowed them to outperform wizards in their area of expertise for a good portion of the game due to their nukes being stronger--not to mention the Thief skills, the weapon proficiencies, the improved [[THAC 0]] table, and bardic music. Unfortunately, [[Zig
** [http://www.d20srd.org/srd/classes/bard.htm Third edition bards] are typically a 5th wheel in parties with their jack abilites not really doing well enough to sub for a proper member. Thankfully as a core class they get ''tons'' of splat support that makes them quite effective ... if they specialize.
*** Third edition also had the beguiler class, which was very solidly this trope. It was essentially a bard with fewer skill points, lower attack bonuses, and ''only'' illusion and enchantment spells (as opposed to the bard's ''mostly'' illusion and enchantment selection). In comparison, the bard suddenly became a very viable option. They are more or less Final Fantasy IV's Edward as a class given that the only things they are good at is messing with enemies without directly hurting them, and hiding (either through invisibility, disguises or what-have-you).
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*** In 4th Edition, the ''Cleric'' class [[Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards|of all people]] very easily led to this trope--especially before the lion's share of the [[Splatbooks]] came out. The class was (and is) the most eclectic in the game, with a lot of powers bordering on useless and/or counterproductive to the role. Fortunately, due to the lowered ability density of 4th Edition they still retain(ed) their [[Game Breaker]] status (as least [[Obvious Rule Patch|before the errata onslaught anyway]]) to a player who knows what they're doing. To one that doesn't, they're this trope.
* And then there was [http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/classes/bard.html#bard Pathfinder. The Bard] now supplies large bonuses to his party without it taking up his actions and has class features which grant him "virtual" skills by allowing Perform to double up for two more skills. In addition, the Bard is able to use all Knowledges without training, and half his level is added as a bonus. You have a class which buffs his whole team, is a skill monkey, and without spending a single skill point is likely to know more about everything than the rest of the party combined, plus serves as a natural face for the group. Sure, the Bard is still not a powerhouse in combat, but in any but the most hack-n-slash campaigns, it's a solid, non-spoony choice.
* The [[Returners Final Fantasy Roleplaying Game]] practically inverts this trope, especially in relation to the [[Trope Namer]]. They can endlessly throw around group affecting buffs and debuffs for free while still doing decent magical damage and they can use Hide to avoid predictable attacks making them very valuable against both tough mobs and bosses. Their main weakness, just to further separate them from [[Final Fantasy IV
* [[Warhammer 40000]] has the iconic Tactical Squad, which can be given a Missile Launcher (with two types of ammo, one for anti-tank and one for anti-horde), a flame thrower for close ranged combat, the sergeant being tooled up for actual close combat, and can be split into two squads so that the close combat half can move and cap objectives while the heavy weapon guy can sit back and shoot. They can also take a Razorback Transport, which can bring the Close combat half up to the enemy while providing another heavy weapon, which is mobile. To top it off, they're pretty cheap for what you pay for. This all ''looks'' good on paper, as they can theoretically take on any threat they see, it's actually horrifying bad, as they cannot put enough shots/attacks to ''kill'' whatever threat they see. Especially glaring is the Missile launcher, whose anti-horde firing mode in theory can hit multiple targets, but because of coherency rules, it'll likely hit no more than 2, and that's if it's ''lucky'' (and on top of that, there's roughly a 75% chance of the target in question surviving anyways). The only reason they are still widely used is because the only alternative to fill the standard marine's troop choice is the badly-priced Scouts, which are roughly the same cost as marines, but lack their stats and survivability in lieu of other rules. In armies that gives the player another choice for troops, Tactical Marines are almost universally passed up in favor of those.
* ''[[Magic:
== Video Games ==
* In the [[Dungeons and Dragons|Dungeons & Dragons]] based game [[
** The sequel, Baldur's Gate II, introduced class kits that would allow bards to beef up aspects of the class. Picking a Blade, one of the DPS oriented kits, and combining it with some defensive mage spells potentially made characters which could outpace other fighters in terms of armor and damage output.
* The [[Trope Namer]] is Prince Edward Chris von Muir from ''[[
* As Game Informer so aptly summarized, "His special command is Hide, which allows him to run away and leave a twelve year old girl to take his lumps for him. Classy, Edward."
** The DS version buffed him considerably, and his Bardsong became far more useful. You can pick the song you want, and one Edward learns actually heals your party while he isn't interrupted. And then you can give Bardsong to someone that isn't Edward...
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*** And the strategy of multiple mages in formation works relatively well with Illusionists who have the High Magic second ability for the Magic Frenzy attack and the Dual Wield support ability-- a strategy that allows a character two make one magic attack and two physical attacks against every enemy on the screen but consumes MP at a prodigious rate.
** The game also uses the Spoony Bard thing as an insult; in one of the Bonga Bugle missions, one of the enemy units calls [[Leeroy Jenkins|the Head Editor]] a "spoony seeq".
* In ''[[
** Unless you get the right gear to reduce the mana upkeep to zero, then you can kick some serious ass. ESPECIALLY if you fire off the Avatars and get a decent subjob attached. Your DPS can go through the roof.
* ''[[
** Scholars also double the effectiveness of any items that they use. This includes the items that give you a free cast of high-level offensive magic like Blizzaga. Pair them up with a Thief (to ensure a steady supply of items) and you've got a small nuke with no reliance on MP.
** A number of the more useless jobs in ''III'' had their Spoony Bard status almost completely reversed in the DS remake, turning into [[Lethal Joke Character|Lethal Joke Characters]] if you get enough job levels in them. Particular notes are the aforementioned Scholar (on top of the weapon effectiveness boost gets a lot of charges for low-levelled spells, and when dual-wielding the higher-leveled [[Throw the Book At Them|books]] can output insane damage given they're a support class) and the Geomancer (stick with the class for long enough and you'll start cursing when you get the rare high-damage single-target Shadowflare, because you hit the damage cap anyway).
* In the first ''~Baldur's Gate~'', the bard class was pretty much tragically underpowered compared to the others -- there was no good reason to choose a bard over a rogue. Things got better with the sequel and with [[Icewind Dale]].
** Bards are actually one of the easier classes to solo the first game with, thanks to the ability to use wands and backstab while invisible.
* Any of the Bards of the ''[[Romancing
* ''[[Final Fantasy X 2]]'' has the Songstress dressphere (class), which, despite being plot-important, is almost completely useless. There ''are'' some redeeming features to the Songstress, such as the MP Mambo (which causes all spells to have 0 MP cost) and Magical Masque (which causes all magical attacks to your party to be 0). Though, both dances can only be gotten late in the game, and neither one can come even close to touching the [[Game Breaker|Cat Nip.]]
* Ironically, Bards in ''[[
** Actually, Oracles can be rather nifty if you're willing to use 'em a bit. Two of their later support abilities are Double AP and Double EXP, both of which are obviously useful. Use Double AP to help mastering jobs lime Mime, Red Mage, Ranger, Gladiator, etc., and then use Double EXP to accelerate your level-grinding.
** With the above skills, one could combine the Double AP skill with the Bard's Requiem for extremely fast and easy job grinding. There is a zone featuring nothing but undead [[Eldritch Abominations]] that drop a good count of AP per battle. Requiem is a bard song that damages all undead for no MP cost, and does more damage the higher a character's magic stat is. So equipping a single bard with mage gear produced a fighter that could easily dish out 7000 damage to every enemy onscreen with a single attack that cost no MP. By running around to enter battles and simply holding the 'A' button (provided the Bard acted first and the player had the 'Memory' option selected for remembering the cursor's position in the battle menu), a player could max out every single job in the game within two hours. Even if a single Bard couldn't defeat all the enemies in one hit (perhaps they lacked any magical stat training or were low level), it wasn't hard to simply have a second Bard follow up with another Requiem. The other two characters didn't have to do a thing. Once those two characters were maxed out, they could switch places with the Bards (turning into Bards themselves) and let the remaining two characters get their skills! Unfortunately, these enemy groups, while entirely useful for AP grinding, did not give out much in EXP. So you'd have characters that had almost every skill in the game, but were still reasonably leveled. Just make sure you don't fall asleep from holding down one button, because one type of these undead horrors just LOVES to hit your party with Doom. Which one of the monsters was it? Oh, the ones that look like a grotesque skeleton sans legs, hanging from the ceiling on some undefined cord that might have been its spleen.
* Averted in the remake of ''[[
* The Bard/Clown/Minstrel (for Males) and Dancer/Gypsy/Wanderer (for Females) Classes from ''[[Ragnarok Online]]''. While they come from the Archer Class tree and can use bows and all their Archer Skills, they're more often equipped with a Musical Instrument or Whip (depending on the character's gender) in order to allow them to preform songs or dances to buff allies or debuff enemies. They also work best when paired with the opposite gender equivalent as this allows them to preform Duets with improved abilities. Their songs/dances are near useless without a party to protect them as well.
** Not so, as their buffs are still in effect 20 seconds after canceling the skill / dying, provided that their party / guildmates are within the field.
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** Ditto in the original game, before breeding was introduced, had horrible stats, five shots of any skill your opponent used, and let your opponent go first by definition.
* Averted in ''[[Puzzle Quest]]'' where the Bard's Inspire spell allows them to gain a boost to ALL stats, stacks with itself and lasts all fight. This is not considered a spell effect for the purpose of cleansing and cannot be removed once used, giving the Bard the potential for all their stats to reach over a hundred, even at level one!
* Averted in [[MARDEK|Mardek: Chapter 3]] whose 'Siren' Elwyen has to be one of the least spoony bards of all time. She has powerful party buffs that stack with all other buff abilities (and are better than most of them), a decent group heal, the strongest anti-undead spell in the game, and a couple weird abilities that no other character can duplicate. Her songs also cost no MP, and the offensive ones never miss...which is very useful against fairy-type enemies, who with high magic resistance and insane physical evasion are usually considered the [[Demonic Spiders
* Averted in ''[[Dragon Age Origins]]'' where Leliana is a highly competent addition to the party, bringing deadly rogue skills to the table. If you follow her dialogue trees, you learn that the bards of Orlais are in fact spies and assassins, masters of intrigue and deception.
** The Bard specialization, which Leliana starts with and any Rogue can take after you get her approval high enough, offers several buff and debuff skills to the normally DPS class. It also helps that multiple bard songs of the same type stack, and that their effectiveness is based on the cunning stat, which with the right talent is also largely responsible for damage potential. In short, bards are effective because they don't need to sacrifice their damage potential to be good bards--their buffs actually complement their damage output rather then trading in for it.
** 'Enemy' bards manage to be incredibly dangerous. High-leveled ones can set up Captivating Song, stunlocking anyone within a fair-sized radius of themselves. They're immobilized while doing this, but so is everyone else. It's telling that bard is among the rarest enemy classes.
** Also averted in ''[[Dragon Age II]]'', as all of Varric's music-themed skills (he hums to his weapon) are either permanent upgrades or direct damage dealers.
* Brutally averted in the ''[[
* These types of characters have appeared in various ''[[
** ''[[
** ''[[
** Gadabouts made a return in ''[[
** In addition to Gadabouts and Dancers, ''[[
** Averted in ''[[
* The MMO ''[[Eden Eternal]]'' has an interesting take on Bards. They are a support class with powerful but short lived multi-target buffs and heals, as well as an [[Ao E]] damage-over-time debuff. Bards hunt by using their speed buff on themselves, splashing a group of enemies with the [[Do T]] and running until everything drops. Thematically this fits the stereotype of Bards as untalented hacks that no one wants to hear and who have to flee when their impromptu audience starts throwing produce but ''functionally'' the trope is fully averted, at least for most of the game.
* Averted in [[Heroes of Might and Magic]] 4, more notably, the Gathering Storm expansion pack. The bard has maximum positive morale and top speed, that allows her to act before everyone else in battle, and possesses the mass fervor spell that provides maximum positive morale to every allied hero and creature. This becomes vital towards the end of the game when all the player has at their disposal are five heroes, each of a different alignment, meaning that they have maximum negative morale by default - a critical disadvantage.
* Averted in ''[[
* The Bard follower Sven in ''[[The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim]]'' isn't very useful, mostly being good for being a meat shield. However, it's actually [[Justified Trope|justifiable]] - he's a Bard. He makes his money by standing in an inn and entertaining people, what combat proficiency does he have?
** The Bard's College is also rather spoony compared to the other factions you can join, like the Companions, the College of Winterhold, or the Thieves Guild. They only have one trainer (for Speech) and three quests other than the initial quest to join up. In exchange, however, each quest gives you a substantial increase in skill points, so it's not entirely pointless to join up.
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* The Bard-like class in ''[[Guild Wars]]'' is actually ''far'' from Spoony. They may not play music so much, but they shout and support allies (or debuff enemies) while putting pressure on enemies with their ranged weaponry. They have about as much armour as a ''warrior'' (And by default use shields) so they can certainly take several hits.
** They tend to be...different when it comes to [[PvP]] though. People often ignore paragons and save them for last in Random Arenas, but in different [[PvP]] modes (such as alliance battles) Paragons are much better.
* ''[[Inazuma Eleven]]'' gives us Handa Shinichi, a [[Jack of All Stats
* ''[[Fire Emblem]]'' has Dancers, Bards and, in the Gamecube and Wii games the Heron Tribe, whose main purpose is to refresh units that have already taken their turns and have no offensive capabilities. However, the SNES and DS games subvert this ''hard''; Dancers can use Swords in both of these subseries, and Bards are capable of using magic in the SNES games and are often among the best in their game, at the cost of being unable to refresh others (they don't even exist in the DS games).
== Web Comics ==
* Gildward, the bard from the webcomic ''[[
* Elan from ''[[The Order of the Stick
** Notable in that his [[Took a Level In Badass|leveling up]] hasn't drowned out the endearing aspects of his character: optimism, ''extraordinary'' loyalty to his friends, and a certain bumbling charm that makes him what he is. [[Character Development|Elan's progression]] from a simple Spoony Bard to Dashing Swordsman isn't just about getting more/useful class powers, but him developing the chops to be a genuine [[Big Damn Hero]]. As part of this growth he also is slowly shown to be [[How Do I Shoot Web|learning how to properly use his regular bardic spells]].
* Julie, the protagonist of ''[[Our Little Adventure]]''. She's [[The Archer|good with a bow]] and she's the only group member with any sort of healing powers but seldom ever kicks ass and takes names. Julie's [[Reluctant Warrior|dislike of fighting]] might play into it, but she's got no problem with [[Magic Music|boosting her groupmates' killing skills]] using [[Big Lipped Alligator Moment|silly musical numbers.]]
* Gamzee of ''[[
** Turns out that all Sburb bards are a subversion of this. The Bard class is described as one that allows others to destroy their Aspect or one who invites destruction through their Aspect, as if by the will of the Aspect. (e.g. {{spoiler|Rage}}) Seems unintuitive from the name, but useful.
** However, this makes the Bard class a [[Wild Card]] who often single-handedly causes improbable victory or spectacular downfall (or both), so it's played straight in that the person who tells us all of this is of the opinion that the kids are probably better off without a Bard.
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