Why the bad charisma, and why no bards?

My personal thought and since I do not make a group consensus is that there should be bards among dark elves. I do, however, understand various reasons why not and I respect those who present the reasons as well as the reasons themselves...they are, however, wrong...that is my story and I am sticking to it.

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Mm.....

While many people choose to roleplay dark-elves as suave and gracious in their evil, the lore represents them as being impulsive, impatient, and uncivilized (their "civilization" as it is being highly unstable and prone to chaos, war and collapse.) Ultimately, it's a lore call - we can't really control how people roleplay.. in the same vain, if everyone decided to start roleplaying their fire giants as erudite, their intelligence would remain low, because the idea is to be consistent with our lore for these game mechanics decisions.

While one might argue that just being intimidating and threatening is part of charisma, for most of our purposes dark-elves are decidedly *un*charismatic. They are not going to have the same kind of guile and charm when negotating with conjured beings (they'd be more likely to simply piss them off), and I doubt they'd have the patience for the finer nuances of haggling (either buy it for the price or kill that mofo and take it.)

And personally, I'm not sure I buy the "initimating and threatening is part of charisma". By that logic, fire giants should be charismatic too.

As for bards, it was discussed, especially with the thought of leaning them towards being tragedians. But ultimately, even for evil bards, music is a pursuit of the heart, and dark-elves don't really have much heart. There has also been tinges of regret for ever allowing bards to be evil in the first place, and thus there has been reticence about extending their evil role beyond what it already is.

>But ultimately, even
>for evil bards, music is a pursuit of the heart, and
>dark-elves don't really have much heart.

How does that go?

People think that I must be a very strange person. This is not correct. I have the heart of a small boy. It is in a glass jar on my desk.

>There has also been
>tinges of regret for ever allowing bards to be evil in the
>first place, and thus there has been reticence about extending
>their evil role beyond what it already is.

I hereby blame the first evil bard for all evil-bardic fallout.

I don't understand...

I played Amberlea, the first evil bard. (Created neutral with a turned-evil intention through roleplay)

BUT, the decision to open up the class to evils in general was entirely out of my hands. If he blames me, it is only because my unspeakably fabulous roleplaying abilities made the imms at the time temorarily starry-eyed, forgetting that the majority of the players' ability to roleplay such nuance pales in comparisson to my majesty.

.

Splntrd