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Skyrim takes a very freeform approach towards player classes. It does away with Oblivion's classes and subclasses and instead gives the player the reins to dive into whatever playstyle they want.
Due to this lack of class definition, however, trying to portray a classic Dungeons and Dragons class becomes only a vague apprehension. Bards are often portrayed as utility-oriented classes that play with buffs, debuffs, and crowd-control abilities to turn the tides of battle.
From DnD Beyond:
In the worlds of D&D, words and music are not just vibrations of air, but vocalizations with power all their own. The bard is a master of song, speech, and the magic they contain.
In Skyrim, the player can only roleplay this through illusion spells like calm and fury. The following 5 mods, however, can help one play a proper bard with every bard gimmick one would expect in the world of Skyrim.
5 mods to make your Skyrim bard playthrough come together
1) Bards Reborn - Student of Song
True to its status as a center of the arts, Solitude is the only city to have a bards college. Skyrim underutilizes this asset, playing it off as little more than a repurposed hub for dungeon-crawling fetch quests.
Bards Reborn pads out this questline with an introductory quest for the guild that doubles as a roleplay reason to become a bard. Speaking of, the essential 'Become a Bard' mod has also been fully integrated into this mod. 'Bards Reborn' redesigns the bards college itself with custom models from ESO to truly give it a distinct identity.
On the flip side, the features of 'Become A Bard' gives the player some bardic abilities as one would expect of the original Dungeons of Dragons class.
2) Skyrim's Got Talent
Skyrim has numerous in-game instruments like flutes, lutes, drums, and war horns that the player can pick up, but not interact with. This mod enables the dragonborn to play the instruments just by activating them in their inventory. A number of custom music tracks, some drawn from 'BA Bard Songs,' are used to bring this process to life.
For greater immersion, mod author jayserpa has gone the extra mile to add a perceptible progression curve to the player's musical skills. In the beginning, the dragonborn's poor performances will scare visitors away, while later on, they can learn to play well enough to collect tips.
Performed in the wilderness, these sessions also grant debuffs when the player is unskilled, but eventually give significant short-lived buffs when they find their footing in the bard's journey.
The mod can be used with 'Become A Bard,' as that mod accesses its functionalities through powers added to the player's spell list.
3) Ordinator
Enairim's Ordinator is a perk overhaul that touches upon every skill to enable diverse and niche playstyles. These also include a bard build, made possible through the speech skill tree as one would expect. One side of its Speech perk tree is all about being a bard, accessed through the 'Performer' perk unlockable at skill level 20.
Like 'Skyrim's Got Talent,' Performer can get the player mercantile benefits like lower prices, but the perk 'Irresistible Dance' and its follow-up perks allow its usage in battle to segregate enemies.
4) Interesting NPCs
Interesting NPCs, as the name might suggest, focuses on adding NPCs and followers with well-developed backstories. A good choice of bards are also numbered among them to populate the inns of Skyrim, and they outshine Bethesda's bards in every aspect.
Some among them can also be recruited as bard followers, and while they do not offer the same functionalities and breadth of content as a dedicated follower like Vilja, they fit in with what is expected of Skyrim's acolytes.
For a bardic playthrough, a point of interest this mod provides is in terms of direct player interaction. If the player has finished the bard guild questline, they can actually initiate duet performances in the inns and that too with bards added by the mod.
5) Playing instruments changes weather
The aforementioned mods arguably provide a good number of features apiece. Compared to them, what this mod does is quite simple and has no immediate gameplay impacts.
As it reads on the can, this mod makes it so that certain instruments can change the weather in Skyrim. This was originally a mod made to fulfill a reddit user's request.
The drum makes it rain, the lute makes it snow, and the flute clears the weather. With mods like RAID, however, these weather changes can provide additional gameplay-changing strategic opportunities.
