In all of humanity, is there any greater role to play than being a preserver of knowledge? And when I say knowledge, I don’t just mean scientific or historic knowledge, but also our stories, our art, our creativity. Preserving those things for as long as possible in direct defiance of the notion that we are unimportant in the full scope of the universe.
It’s for that reason I say the bard class deserves more respect than it gets in some circles of the fandom. Sure, make your jokes, but bards and a thousand other traveling minstrels, storytellers, poets, and the like a hundred different names and cultures preserved knowledge before the invention of writing, and continued to do so even after the creation of the printing press. The bards you play in games are the embodiment of that tradition, and they even create stories of their own, and your own. And hey, if some of them are a more lurid nature, so be it. Such tales are equally valuable.
I say all this because today’s archetype is the filidh, which were the Irish equivalent of a bard, being elite scholars and poet that went about memorizing and performing the oral traditions of Ireland before Christianity came, and it was they who worked with the Christian monks to convert most of those stories into writing, though the monks rewrote them to make mortal kings out of old gods and other such alterations, as they tend to do. (Curiously though, the spelling “filidh” is actually Scottish Gaelic, whereas in old Irish it would be “fili”)
However, the filidh of Pathfinder focus on another aspect of the tradition, that is not well-known. You see, the words from which Filidh are derived seem to be ones related to sight. So it is believed that filidh were associated with trances and seeing the future.
The result is a variety of bard that uses their connections to other living beings to help guide them to their futures and possibly change their fates. In addition, with the filidh’s real-life connections to the druids of Ireland, they also gain a few elements of the druidic ways as well.
Indeed, these bards do not wear metal armor or heavier gear, but can use armor modified by the magic of the ironwood spell in the same way a druid can. What’s more, their magic is more akin to the divine than the arcane, removing the risk of arcane spell failure, but requiring them to have a holy symbol or an instrument on hand to focus their magic.
With uncanny secrets, these bards can expend spellcasting magic to regain energy for their performances, which they often need as many of the effects they would use them for are quite time-consuming.
Filidh’s get many new performances, starting with one that gives enhanced cognition to allies, allowing them to see danger coming and potentially avoid it.
With ten minutes of performing (though only requiring a fraction of energy), they can also create a powerful divination effect that allows listeners to potentially gain answers about upcoming events, seeing them as flashes of insight and visions.
Another such performance lets listeners hear the voices of plants and animals, conversing with them.
A particularly powerful performance lets them bind the life forces of allies so that one can absorb some of the harm their allies receive. What’s more, the filidh can switch which allies are benefiting from the bond whenever they like as long as they maintain the performance, letting others share the load when some become too drained to continue providing useful aid.
The most powerful among them are able to bless allies with a song that offers true foresight, making them impossible to ambush in addition to enhancing their awareness of incoming harm and how to avoid it.
This archetype is a combination of a more defensive bard, mixed with a bit of druidic flavor, which can be quite useful if you’d rather keep your allies safe than bolster their attack power. Also, while it may not come up in most games, the ability to use bardic performance to cast foresight can actually be very powerful as long as your GM is liberal with how they interpret that spell’s “insight into how best to protect yourself.” (Depending on the GM, it might be a very good ability or actively worse than the first performance the archetype grants). Another strength of the archetype is the ability to convert spells into more rounds of bardic performance. Now, obviously you should probably invest in Extra Performance at least once, but being able to perform longer when spells might not help can be useful not just on the battlefield, but can actually be used in non-combat encounters to ensure that allies can actually hold converstations with animals and plants you allow them to talk to with your performance.
Though it’s not really mentioned, I imagine that these bards in particular are concerned with both the future and the past. Not only do they seek to preserve the tales that came before, but also provide a touch of destiny and precognition to help others make tales of their own that inspire wonder in generations to come. In this way, you could say that filidhs are guardians of the legacy of whole civilizations.
To those who are sensitive to it, there is a place in the Misty Moors where fate has become snarled. Seeking to undo this cause, a filidh hires the party to accompany her there. What they find there is a cult dedicated to a dark god of pain and control, led by a limbless horror they call the Joyful Thing.
To the samsarans, the past and the future are ever-present things, their past lives lingering in their minds and hearts while the question of what they will become lingers in their minds. It’s no surprise then that the tradition of the filidh would come to them, and they can teach it to those that are interested.
Though he does not know yet why, Likas the filidh feels called, seeking out the heroes to accompany them on their latest quest. Perhaps his powers will be of aid, or perhaps he merely must be there to record the events that will transpire.
