Nervously eyeing my stack of character sheets, I’d estimate a solid 30% of them are bards. I love the versatility, the strength of the mechanics (bards > rogues in my book only because I almost exclusively play spellcasters), the style & verve, and there’s just something about the lore that really resonates with me. Song & story are two of my great loves (next to science & silliness), and most of my bards reflect that! There’s some nostalgia there for me too—my first ever PC was a bard who was fired from the university quit teaching to travel the realm looking for an epic story to tell. (Cleric might be a close second—again, you really can’t beat that kind of versatility.)
Gnomes! (Half-elves are close.) The thing that first appealed to me is the role of names in traditional gnomish culture—that delight in collecting as many as possible, trading them around like hats! I also really like playing more whimsical characters, and some of the mechanical perks & quirks lend themselves well to that sort of tomfoolery. And who doesn’t have a blast rocking around in a 3-foot-tall body with 10 feet of attitude?
