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Message: <blockquote data-quote="WheresMyD20" data-source="post: 6926890" data-attributes="member: 60772">Disagree strongly.  Seeing the class operate in live play alongside other classes is a much better gauge of its effectiveness than raw theorizing.We played weekly for over a decade.  The game was nowhere near "long over" at max level.  The bard was being played weekly at max level for years.  At any rate, the bard was lackluster long before reaching max level.  It certainly never seemed overpowered.Or, like I recommended, you could play a druid, who at 250k xp is 11th level, has access to 6th level spells, and is only 50k away from getting 7th level spells.  You sacrifice some combat ability and hit points, but you already have 6th level spells and are on the verge of 7th level spells, neither of which a bard will ever get.Another, even better, option is to play a fighter/druid dual-class.  Get 7th level as a fighter for 70k xp and switch to druid, which leaves 180k xp for your new druid class.  That makes you a 10th level druid, good enough for 5th level spells and you're only 20k xp away from 11th level and 6th level spells (again, which a bard never gets).  You lose out on thief skills (big deal), but you have just as good fighting ability as the bard example and you get much better spellcasting (5/4/3/3/2 as opposed to 3/3/3/1) as well as a higher ceiling for everything except for hit points, which as a fighter/druid are quite good already.Also, if you go the fighter/druid dual-class route, unlike a bard, you are not forced to stop at 7th level fighter.  You could go higher before making the switch.  It might not be optimal, but you have more options and more control.You could also go the fighter/cleric dual-class route.  You'd have the same fighting ability, access to much better armor, turn undead, and cleric spellcasting.  You'd be a 8th level cleric, good enough for 3/3/3/2 spellcasting.  Cleric spells are much better than druid spells, especially at high levels.  You lose out on a nice shapeshifting ability, but not much else of value.  You'd advance almost as fast as a bard (225k vs. 200k per level), but have far superior spellcasting while maintaining fighting ability parity.  You lose out a bit on hit points, but fighter/clerics (especially dual-class ones) are no slouches when it comes to hit points, and you have access to the best armor to help offset the difference anyway.The myth of bards being overpowered probably comes from their dual-class nature.  Dual-classing in general is quite powerful.  It's one of the few advantages of being human (the other big one being unlimited level advancement).</blockquote>

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