Comprehend Languages is a 1st-level Bard spell and can be cast as a ritual. The Bard has no excuse XD
The bard had to learn to read at bard college though no? This is just a deception to get friendly with the barbarian
Bards have limited known spells. It’s not optimal for them to take comprehend languages, that’s nerd shit
*scoffs in College of Eloquence*
Literacy rates in medieval times were not what they are today, but they’re still routinely underestimated. Most places, including peasant villages, would have had some people around who could read.
Then again, it also depends heavily in what part of the middle ages you are talking about. Early, high and late middle ages were almost different worlds in many regards.
It’s really easy for people to fail to really grasp that the middle ages still account for about half of the common era. They began in the 5th century and ended in the 15th. It was so long and so much happened. At the beginning Europeans were abandoning Roman structures and by the end they’d built things that even the greatest Roman engineers would be amazed by and wars included guns.
It’s almost as if that term was made up to put a name on something that wasn’t Roman times or now
(Mind you, now being 16th century Italy)
now being 16th century Italy
I think that’s incorrect, actually. By my calculations, we’re at LEAST a dozen years farther along than that!
And some of us might not even be in Italy.
In Norway we lost our written Norse language since everyone who could read died caring for the sick during the black plague. That’s part of the reason for why written Norwegian and Danish are so similar today.
That is not even remotely true. In fact that is wrong on so many levels I don’t even know where to start.
If you go this way, since quests are part of the economy in these medieval fantasy societies, a person that can read would be next to the board to read the quests to the adventurers. One reason to learn to read is to stop paying the quest reader.
In the first Kingdom Come Deliverance you need to learn to read
A bard who can’t read!? What!? Isn’t that one of the professions you go to school for!?
He majored in interpretive dance.
Interpretive this!
sick lute-shedding solo
If your lute is shedding, you need better lacquer on it.
In the lord of the rings mmo back in the day you could play an instrument and actually play notes and program songs to play them in game but most people would just post up at the inn, like dozens of people, and just play the most discordant faceroll shit imaginable to the point where you had to disable it in the settings.
Kinda broke the immersion a little bit, unless roving squads of bards performing the medieval equivalent of a yoko ono song in everybody’s face was a commonplace occurrence in those days.
If you go to Bree these days you’ll find highly coordinated bands performing actual music. It’s really impressive.
Me: I can’t wait to-
Some dude: Hey our lord is mad at the lord from the other hill, so grab a pitchfork and join our army…or else.Bard would likely have some literacy.
More likely would have been taught orally. A traveling minstrel type bard is unlikely to have written music. Learn the song from your master/other performers then adapt as you wish.
We actually have quite a few troubadour “songbooks” from the late middle ages, indicating that it was a useful resource for minstrels of the time.
If we’re getting into the Renaissance period, a professional musician would almost certainly be able to read; we have printed music manuals from the period for all kinds of instruments; for example, Arbeau’s Orchésographie is a primer on courtly dance music that we still read today.
I would doubt most bards could afford books until after the printing press (~1440). During the middle ages (500-1500) is after the fall of the western roman empire (470) where papyrus stopped coming in for about 600-700 years (1100s) before cheap paper from Spain. I think court musicians were a bit different in “class” someone traveling is unlikely to be bringing a lot of written stuff with them all the time unless they were a weirdo. Once cheap paper and moreso the printing press to allow cheap copying spread then so did literacy. So its hard to definitely say whether the average bard would be literate. I think at the start of the middle ages, no, but by the end of the middle ages, yes.
There are a couple parts of the court music book Orchésographie that I think would be particularly interesting for a bard character.
Court musicians in the late 16th century frequently traveled to where the work was: either following a particular patron or looking to perform where they could. Most of the dances in the book are bransles, a folk dance popular with the “common people,” and formalized when brought to court. As a D&D bard, this would be a cool way to explain why your music is beloved by all, and why they could move in all social circles.
There’s also a part at the beginning that explains how to play the drum and fife for a marching army: how to improvise a melody or change up the drum pattern while keeping the march going. It seems to imply that the court musicians the book was written for were potentially marching with armies, likely playing music in the camps or stops at night.
