Bardic Knowledge

[Ashiel_Dragmire]

Where is it? If I remember correctly (which I may not, as I've never played a PnP Bard), that was one of the best Bard abilities. You could figure out almost anything with Bardic Knowledge. Of course, you couldn't implement it the same way in a combat based game such as DDO, but couldn't Bardic Knowledge feasibly be a Human Versatility-esque ability, or perhaps you could use it to "discover" enemy weak points (thereby boosting DCs or Critcal Hits or something). Or when you go dungeoneering, it could be used to reveal chests or parts of the map or something like that.

Anyway, just some food for thought.

[Talon_Sky]

Very good ideas, although it's doubtful Turbine would implement them.

I loved in the PnP games where I played a Bard, when my character could know things off the top of his head that the wizard with 20 Int didn't know ;p

[Ashiel_Dragmire]

'tis a shame...

[Anderei]

I personally wish for a function that would tell you the average price of an item it was sold in the AH (I believe that even random combos occur more than once). I know that "assess" is yet another skill, but it could work nice to go together with a bardic trait.

[Artos_Fabril]

From the D20 SRD: (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/classes/bard.htm)

Bardic Knowledge
A bard may make a special bardic knowledge check with a bonus equal to his bard level + his Intelligence modifier to see whether he knows some relevant information about local notable people, legendary items, or noteworthy places. (If the bard has 5 or more ranks in Knowledge (history), he gains a +2 bonus on this check.)

A successful bardic knowledge check will not reveal the powers of a magic item but may give a hint as to its general function. A bard may not take 10 or take 20 on this check; this sort of knowledge is essentially random.

DC Type of Knowledge
10 Common, known by at least a substantial minority of the local population.
20 Uncommon but available, known by only a few people legends.
25 Obscure, known by few, hard to come by.
30 Extremely obscure, known by very few, possibly forgotten by most who once knew it, possibly known only by those who don’t understand the significance of the knowledge.

So completely useless as is in DDO. Maybe an +1 skills enhancement or free feat like rogue's skill mastery, but really there's nothign that bardic knowledge would tell you that you couldn't look up in the wiki or the compendium.

[Valindria]

They could just make it so whenever you needed INT (like a INT Rune for example), bards use their CHA modifier instead (if higher than INT).

[Darkrok]

They could just make it so whenever you needed INT (like a INT Rune for example), bards use their CHA modifier instead (if higher than INT).

I really like that one.

Another idea would be to implement it as a bonus to UMD. How big of a bonus and when that bonus should happen is up to debate but it could be adjusted in any way they wanted.