Horny Bard

Lover first, performer second, and fighter distant third.

Elan: Haley, why are you mad at me?
Haley: Oh I don't know, because you were all over this evil sorceress tramp?!
Elan: But it's my solemn duty to seduce female bad guys! It's like in the bard's charter or something.

— The Order of the Stick, "The Jello Pit Wasn't Available"

Ah... what's a motley band of fantasy adventurers without their Wandering Minstrel? They are there to sing tales of their exploits, be The Face of any social encounter, and... basically bang anything they encounter.

While classically speaking The Bard is a minstrel or poet that kept records and praise of their patron, this trope is when said bard is also a shameless sex machine who takes advantage of the idea that Girls Like Musicians. These are the bards who are willing to seduce the dragon, hit on every barmaid in the tavern, and woo anybody with a song and a one-night stand. Depending on how the rest of the party operates they can be the Plucky Comic Relief they need to boost morale or the horndog that gets them into trouble due to their libido. If this bard is especially shameless, expect them to have a Bawdy Song ready for any occasion.

It is a common Tabletop RPG stereotype that players of a Bard (or a similarly-themed character) are adventuring just to hit the tavern and seduce whatever attractive members of their preferred gender happen to be there. Their high charisma and usual role as The Face are easily applied to seduction, and their nomadic adventuring means they disappear before trouble catches them, leaving behind broken hearts and a lecherous reputation (and perhaps several children). Depending on how charming their dulcet tones are, they'll either be The Pornomancer or the Casanova Wannabe. This is typically a male trope, but in recent years gender on both ends has been an open door, with female bards crossing over with Heroic Seductress or The Vamp depending on their alignment. More often than not they're way more of The Dandy compared to the rest of the party, so expect them to be a Non-Action Guy when a fight breaks out and for their more combat-capable friends to be protecting them.

A Sub-Trope of The Bard and a Sister Trope to The Casanova and Really Gets Around. Compare Spies Are Lecherous for another profession with a similar horny reputation. See Quirky Bard for their emphasis on buff/debuff magic or party versatility. Possibly the fantasy equivalent of Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll.

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Examples:

Films — Animated

• Ronal the Barbarian: Alibert is a metalhead bard that is only interested in using music to hook up with women.

Films — Live-Action

• The Gamers: Dorkness Rising: Parodied in the Deep-Immersion Gaming with Flynn the Bard, thanks to The Loonie playing him and his sky-high Seduction skill. He has a quickie with the Vain Sorceress in the middle of an audience with the king, then follows it up with a celibate nun right in front of her High Priest.
  Flynn: Hey baby, wanna... tune my mandolin?
  Daphne: Please understand, the horny bard does not represent us.

Literature

• A Song of Ice and Fire:
  • A dark version of this trope occurs with Marillion, a traveling singer who at one point became a favorite of Lady Lysa Arryn. He uses his position to force female servants to have sex with him by threatening to have them fired if they don't. He also attempts to rape Sansa at one point. After his death, Myranda Royce admits to having slept with him.
  • Daeron, one of the new recruits to the Night's Watch, was a Wandering Minstrel before joining the watch. This career ended when he was accused of raping a nobleman's daughter, though he claimed the encounter was consensual. Later, he abandons the watch and settles down in Braavos. There, he spends much of his money on prostitutes.
• Dandelion/Jaskier from The Witcher has been a Horny Bard ever since the first story he appeared in, where he started travelling with Geralt in the first place because he had to run away from some furious brothers.

Live-Action TV

• The Witcher (2019): Jaskier the bard travels constantly and tries his luck with women wherever he goes. Since he gravitates towards wives, noblewomen, and other risky paramours, this sometimes causes trouble when he revisits a place, which Geralt more often than not has to bail him out of.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons: Third-party supplements focusing on mature-themed games, such as the 3.5 Edition Book of Erotic Fantasy, The Book of Passion for Pathfinder, and Rolling for Seduction for 5th Edition tend to have Bard specialties wholly dedicated to playing a Horny Bard. Some will go so far as to make Bards little more than erotic entertainers (i.e. strippers). More rounded approaches will see such a Bard equally useful whether clothes are coming off or not.

Video Games

• Baldur's Gate:
  • Baldur's Gate: Eldoth the bard is a Neutral Evilinvoked variant — a flamboyant misogynist who uses his artistic talents to seduce women for their money and treats them terribly. He tries to flirt with several female party members, to their general disgust.
  • Siege of Dragonspear: Voghiln the Vast is a Skald, a Viking-esque Warrior Poet who loves wine (well, beer), women, and song. He's a romance option for a female player character and hooks up with Safana, potentially causing a Love Triangle.
  • In Baldur's Gate III, custom character Tav can potentially be this with Bards being a playable class in a game with a plethora of Optional Sexual Encounters.
• The Bard of The Bard's Tale is a lecherous musician/adventurer that embarks on a "quest for coin and cleavage" to rescue the Damsel in Distress/Big Bad Princess Caleigh solely out of lust. He can join her even after she reveals her true Big Red Devil form, getting the Bad Ending as a result, simply because she offers him all the sex he can handle.
• Being A ΔΙΚ: In "True Colors", when the MC, Maya, Josy, and Jill are invited by Magnar and Sally to play Dungeons and Gremlins, Magnar casts him as a bard for the party, mostly because of his guitar playing. True to form, he spends most of the game seducing every character, NPCs included (and these characters show up as other characters from the game).
• Dragon Age: Origins: Downplayed with Leliana. "Bard" is a specific career path in Orlais, basically equal parts minstrel, geisha, and spy. It's implied that in Leliana's past, she was a more straight example of this, but by the time you meet her, she's a lay sister of the Chantry and quite religious and chaste. Depending on your interactions with her, she may loosen up back into something of a Horny Bard (even participating in an up-to-four-way with your Warden, Zevran, Isabella, and herself) or remain more cloistered.
• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim:
  • The Spear Counterpart of "The Lusty Argonian Maid", a character in an in-universe sex comedy play originally written in The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, is "The Sultry Argonian Bard".
  • A travelling bard NPC won't train you in Speech because of trouble he caused with a man and woman.
  • The in-game book, "A Gentlemen's Guide to Whiterun" does provide a summary of notable sites in Whiterun, but frequently goes off on tangents about the charms of various women to be found at each. Needless to say, it's written by Whiterun's resident bard, Mikael. One of Whiterun's shopkeepers, Carlotta Valentia, will even pay you a small sum if you can get Mikael to stop making advances on her (requiring you to either intimidate him or fight him in a brawl).
• In Final Fantasy XIV, Thancred maintains a cover as a silver-tongued bard while acting on behalf of the Scions of the Seventh Dawn. He's prone to inviting women to his bedchambers during his activities and one Echo flashback sees him with a woman on each arm. But as the Scions become more public figures, Thancred abandons this persona and largely drops his womanizing ways in the process.
• Neverwinter Nights 2: Subverted in Storm of Zehir. The bard cohort Finch is introduced having been falsely accused of theft by a Neverwinter noble who thought Finch was hitting on his wife. The Player Party is able to recruit him after talking to said wife, who corrects her husband that they're just platonic friends and gets him to withdraw the complaint.
• Pathfinder: Kingmaker: Downplayed with party bard Linzi. She never directly propositions anyone in the game nor is she a romance option for the Player Character, but seemingly only because she's too shy to try to act on her feelings: her monologues as the game's narrator and various other dialogues frequently bring up Valerie's divinely-gifted beauty and she sometimes flirts with Octavia in campfire banter (who invites her to join a threesome at one point, but Linzi is too flustered to accept). She also gets deeply flustered around her idol Annamede Belaverah to a degree that far exceeds merely being star-struck.
• The Witcher: The Wandering Minstrel Dandelion uses his fame and popularity to meet women in all walks of life, with extensive success. One sidequest has you search for him by interviewing the multi-page list of his recent lovers in various towns. In another, he has a chance to go to bed with a succubus.

Web Animation

• In a "Crap Guide to DnD", JoCat frequently jokes about how the Bard is automatically presumed to be the shameless flirt. Ironically, the character that he uses to represent the Bard — a tiefling named Felicia that Jo confirmed to be pansexual — is only shown ever having eyes for Sasha the Paladin.
  By playing D&D, you automatically sign an unwritten contract that forces you to write your character to fall under the purest stereotype of whatever class you pick. Everybody knows you have to follow that contract or else Matt Mercer will sneak into your house and throw foam noodles at you from the corner of your living room. All wizards are smartass eggheads, all rogues are kleptomaniacs, and bards are lust-compelled sex deviants. It's just the rules, I don't make them.

Webcomics

• Lampshaded in Dominic Deegan, before marrying Donnovan, Miranda did a divination spell to determine if he had any illegitimate children running around because he was a bard and they have a bit of a reputation.
• Homestuck: While Averted in the case of Gamzee Makara (the Bard of Rage) (though he does wear a comically large codpiece), this trope is played straight with the Bard of Hope, Cronus Ampora. Cronus's flirt with everyone around him remains unrequited, though, since he is a complete Jerkass.
• The Order of the Stick: While Elan is escaping from a bandit camp he overhears two guards mentioning that the bandit leader is a gorgeous woman, so he sneaks back in with flowers and candy. When his team comes to rescue him and find him locked in a passionate embrace with the leader, he claims that seducing female bad guys is his solemn duty as a bard.

Web Original

• The art of Fredrik K. T. Andersson has a lot of Interspecies Romance, with plenty of hybrids, half-human or otherwise, resulting. "The Bard" character of his is the most infamous, having bred with a dragon, a werewolf, a minotaur, a naga, a scorpion woman, a centaur, a rock, and possibly some more (while remaining steadfastly oblivious to his elf teammate's attraction to him). The rock case is lampshaded. Here◊ are six of his girlfriends with children (NSFW for scorpion breasts).

Web Videos

• 1 For All Has the Bard Antrius the Great (played by Antonio), who likes trying to flirt... usually unsuccessfully.
  • "Roll to Seduce" features Antrius seducing The Marquis, a (male) crime lord NPC who wants to kill the party. The DM makes him roll twice (the first time at Disadvantage for being Hostile, though Evandra and Nixie help out to cancel the Disadvantage) before getting to the actual seduction roll. Antrius succeeds with three Natural 20s in a row.^note The group seems to be playing under a popular house rule that a Natural 20 on any roll is a "critical success," which is not accurate to the rules-as-written. While Antrius' amazing success saves the party, it does have an unfortunate consequence for him, since he lacks Disease Resistance.
  • "Shopping Episode" opens with a comment that Antrius failed to seduce an Owlbear, though Nixie assures him he'll get the next one.
  • "Animal Handling" has him trying very hard to flirt with the White Knight, Evandra's opponent in the joust, and accidentally catching the interest of the (very, very old) king. He gives one last try after the joust, only for the Knight to smack him away. Then he makes a pass at Evandra, who likewise smacks him.
  • In "Mummy vs. Daddy," the party's new (hot, female) Paladin is trying to convince him not to become a vampire, the vampire is trying to convince him to do so to have eternal youth and attractiveness. The deal-breaker is that vampires can't see themselves in mirrors, and Antrius considers eternal youth pointless if he can't admire himself. While he does ultimately side with the paladin, his attempts at flirting with her drive her away from the group. Then the DM pulls up a whiteboard showing Antrius has apparently done this with a total of eight Paladins thus far. Seems he Has a Type.
• Critical Role: Scanlan Shorthalt, the gnome bard of Vox Machina. When he's not making music, he's either flirting with a random NPC or looking to bed someone at the nearest brothel. Sam Reigel has even admitted he custom-made Scanlan to be "the worst" and will always indulge in raunchy antics whenever possible.

Western Animation

• The Legend of Vox Machina: We are introduced to Scanlan Shorthalt wooing his latest sexual conquest with his lute and a song. While his antics are toned down compared to the source material, he's still a shameless flirt who will pounce on debauchery when given the chance.

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