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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lord Pendragon" data-source="post: 1028887" data-attributes="member: 707">This is actually why I'm thinking it may be balanced.  The d6 hit die prevents the bard from being too strong a melee combatant, but it would allow him to be a decent archer, and a good lightly-armored, swashbuckler character.Consider that the half-casters, paladin and ranger, each only get 4 levels of spells to the bard's six, but also get a d10 HD (two steps up) along with generally more potent bennies than the bard.  The bard does come up ahead in skill points, though.Consider that of other classes with 3/4 progression, two of them (druid and cleric) get lots of bennies and nine levels of spells, compared to the bard's six.  The last class, the rogue, gets a ton of bennies, more skill points, and sneak attack, though he lacks spellcasting.My thinking is that, say in 4e, there are two ways to really balance out the bard.  One is to give the bard nine levels of spells.  At first, it seems overpowering, but I don't believe it would be.  Consider, again, the cleric and druid.  How would a bard with nine spell levels outclass them?  Is bardic music more potent than an animal growthed animal companion?  Than domain abilities and turning attempts?  Not really, though it would put the bard in contention.Or, one can leave the bard's spells alone and give him a full BAB.  This makes his melee potential better than a druid or cleric's (slightly--they'll still have a bigger hit die), but, due to his still weak d6 hit die, weaker than the paladin or ranger (who only get four levels of spells.)Since giving the bard full BAB is easier than reworking the bard's list to go up to ninth level (which would probably involve creating a couple dozen new spells,) I figured I'd sound out other people's thoughts with that.(Jonathan, if you read this, I am NOT going to try and convince you to give my new bard a full BAB <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />  I'll play a 3.5 bard.  But researching and discussing the bard has piqued my interest in this kind of speculation.)</blockquote>

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