Kinda would like to make a comparison post for all the D&D classes made up of what people stereotype the classes to be Vs. What they are at the core and how much potential they carry.
Like dont get me wrong I love the jokes about the flamboyant, sweet-talky, high charisma bards but they dont ALL have to be that way. Charisma comes in different shades. Maybe a wrinkled old lizard-folk bard in suspenders who uses his banjo to sputter out blue-grass melodies and age-old swamp-tested cajun wisdom? Maybe a Dwarven women clad in spiky, black leather slamming out heavy metal? An Elven man with pink, gold-rimmed sunglasses in his later years keyeing out honkey-tonk hits?
It doesn't really even HAVE to be musical either. Bards us their words too. I'd think it'd be cool to see a bard whose primary performance is something like slam poetry or improv.
This goes for other classes too. People tend to shy away from Paladins and Clerics because they're afraid of having to roleplay a religous or lawful character. (It also doesn't help that clerics have been typecast as pure healers.) But a connection to a moral code isnt always obligatory with these classes. There are ways to play chaotic and morally wandering holy knights.
Not only that but maybe the playing the religon up could be an interesting character choice? What if your Character discovers the holy doctrine they had been following all along was built on a LIE? Or a Conspiracy? How would that affect their choices? We don't always have to paint religion negatively either. Maybe your Character Found god at a time of weakness and having faith actually helps them be a stronger person?
I could go on and on but basically what I wanna get across is that there's a lot of great character fun to be had if you actually look past the 'roll exactly once to seduce the monster and now you get to skip combat haha' and 'paladins are just youth-pastor-cops' stuff, and yes I know they are all in good fun.
