No Holds Bard: Behind the Screen

DM Tip: Bards make great side antagonists in your game. If you have a serious and deadly BBEG in your game, consider adding in an antagonistic bard on the side! Why? Well, most players don’t want every conflict and struggle to be of the high-stakes, do-or-die variety. Players want to be silly and petty sometimes (adventurers, of course, being some of the pettiest people known to man). If the DM offers their players a release valve where they can be silly and petty, the players are less likely to take that shit out on the BBEG. Most players, at least.

But why a bard? For starters, they can have a bit of an ego, which your players will love to hate. Worse still, they have the charisma to get other people to like them. Your players will feel like the only people that can see how odious this guy is. How can nobody else see it? It’ll drive them mad.  Give your bard antagonist a dash of artistic insecurity, and your new villain offers a rare opportunity for you, the DM, to stoop to the players’ level of pettiness. Use your new villain to make your players’ lives difficult in a way few other classes can: bards can spread embarrassing rumours, turning NPCs and entire settlements against the PCs. Rumours could be defamatory, or perhaps just plain humiliating. When an inevitable public showdown occurs, your bard’s skill proficiencies will make it difficult for the PCs to win the public’s favour.  In return for all this, your players will have a target for all their pettiness. I can’t guarantee it’ll be funny, but it’ll definitely be cathartic. It probably will be funny as well though tbh. The first time I introduced a villainous bard in my campaign, it derailed the entire second half of a six-hour session. The bard wasn’t even evil, just annoying. The players had a blast, and they talk about “that guy” to this day. Use a bard.

With the players arriving back in Sigil, it was time to give them a chance to spend some money and catch up in the city. I gave them four weeks of downtime (with the promise of more ahead), using the Xanathar’s Guide to Everything rules, and asked them about their plans in advance. In addition to rolling for complications, I gave each player an RP encounter during their respective downtimes. 12-Bar became the victim of the above-mentioned advice: for him I’d planned a run-in with a bard (probably a secret Anarchist) that had stolen his popular song about the Old Church and claimed it for himself. M’narr would get a run-in with fellow Guvner and friend Jason Scott, who needed help recruiting a wizard to the faction. (Jason secretly fancies the wizard.) Ragados would have to contend with an especially violent senior officer. The officer is part of a group of Hardheads seeking to exterminate all Indeps, and the group is feeling around to expand its membership.

The vandal of the PC’s house was in the employ of marketer Harys Hatchis, a jovial mage with a secret vendetta against the entire Clerk’s Ward. Hatchis hopes to arouse the ire of local madman The Scratcher by daubing buildings with bright colours, which The Scratcher is known to hate.

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