Despite being revealed as the adventuring party's Bard at San Diego Comic-Con, Chris Pine's character in the new Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves trailer exhibits a surprising lack of stereotypical Bard traits. In fact, if it weren't for Michelle Rodriguez's Barbarian character mentioning that he plays the lute, one might not realize what class Pine is playing.
A common meme in the D&D community is of the "flirtatious Bard," and many choose to play Bards as charming and talented musicians who sweet talk their way into getting what they want. However, this new trailer paints Pine as more of a strategic personality, or as he describes himself, a "planner" for his party who is focused on effectively executing end-goals.
Bards are a Charisma-based class, meaning that they are personable and do well on checks like Deception, Intimidation, Performance and Persuasion. It is often the role of a Bard to gather information for the rest of an adventuring party, including persuading NPCs into helping the group or putting on a performance to create a distraction while fleeing enemies. Bards are also excellent assistance in combat. In addition to having some decently damaging spells at first level like Thunderwave or the Vicious Mockery cantrip, Bards can also give out Bardic Inspiration or use healing spells to support the party.
Being the Charisma-based, social and somewhat flirtatious class, it's surprising that Pine's character is a Bard, since he doesn't exhibit many of these attributes during the trailer. Rather than having clips of Pine smooth-talking his way into gaining useful information or out of a bad situation, he instead seems to be acting as a careful planner who orchestrates the different steps of his party’' mission. Thus far, his character seems to be turning what is normally more of a helping, assistive class into one that's meant for a natural leader.
Furthermore, Pine doesn't appear to be a musically voracious Bard, as there aren't any moments of him playing music. However, the trailer does address this expectation; in the final moments when Sophia Lillis' Druid character is asking about the nature of Pine's plans for the group, Rodriguez's Barbarian casually adds, "He also plays the lute." Pine replies, "Not relevant." The final shot of the trailer gives a brief clip of Pine holding his lute, though it cuts off before he can play any music. This nod to D&D fans acknowledges that there are expectations for the class, but perhaps there is also more to Pine's character than audiences would initially think.
Of course, no D&D class sets in stone what its characters should be like or how they should behave -- Bards are also very versatile, with a variety of Bard Colleges, spells and other features to choose from. It can also be fun for players to roleplay Bards that directly contradict expectations, like having a shy, introverted Bard who fumbles through Charisma checks. Perhaps Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is also thinking along the same lines, using the Bard class for Pine as a moldable shell for his specific character's role in the adventure.