Bards just don't convince me!

[James Heard]

This is probably the primary reason noone mentioned it - if you're in a group who all think that bards suck, what do you think the chances of the DM giving them anything useful via bardic knowledge is?

At which point you start Bardic Knowledge rolling for just about everything until the GM gets the idea that he better start telling you something important and distracting or else you're going to ask on the history of livestock and the family trees of the local peasants ad infinitum. Everytime I ever played a bard I was the primary lead-in to every single adventure that didn't start off with someone's family members being brutally assaulted by monsters.

And BTW Legildur, I mentioned Bardic Knowledge in post 18 I was always just more impressed in the bard's awesome multiclassing, which was even more awesome in 3.0.

 

[Kelleris]

Worth noting is that the listed duration for bardic music is only after you stop using it - there's no upper limit on how long you can maintain the effect. Bards should virtually always be going into battle with inspire courage on themselves at least, even if it means whispering the song (or whatever) under your breath.

Since inspire courage scales to +4/+4, that means that a 20th level Bard starts out only a point behind the Fighter in attack bonus, and with the morale-based equivalent of Weapon Specialization and Greater Weapon Specialization.

And nobody's mentioned the craziness that is heroism as a 2nd-level spell yet. You get it before the Wizard! At mid to high levels you might as well just add +2 to the progression of all the Bard's attacks, saves, and skills.

Which, incidentally, is another point. Bards are great survivors. With 2 base good saves, their morale bonuses, sneakiness, interaction skills, and self-healing, I find that my Bards are close to the last PC to get themselves whacked.

 

[Twowolves]

Try Spell Focus:Enchantment, Greater Spell Focus:Enchantment, maxed out Chr, and all the Charm descriptor spells he can get his hands on, and you have a pretty good CharmMaster. Not to mention all the social skills like Bluff, Intimidate, Gather Info and Diplomacy, and maxed ranks in Use Magic Device. The bard may not be great in combat, but charming one of the big bad bruisers (complete with crappy will saves) to fight FOR you instead of against you will swing a nasty combat over to a cake walk.

Twowolves Howling

 

[FreeTheSlaves]

Ime, at least half of a typical session is outside of combat. If you want to shine in this period, the Bard is the best choice.

 

[Corinth]

Also, you don't have to sing. My Bard is an orator. Only those familiar with magic will be able to easily discern his insightful, polemical commentary/direction for any use of bardic music.

 

[monboesen]

Here you go. An adventuring human bard a t level 6 and 10. In my games this guy would do fine and be a cherished party member.


Male human Bard6; HD 6d6+12; hp 36; Init +2; Spd 30 ft.; AC 18 (+2 Dex, +5 Armor, +1 Deflection); Longsword +9 (1d8+5 19-20*2) or +7 shortbow (1d6+2 20*3); SV Fort +5, Ref +8, Will +5; Str 16, Dex 14, Con 14, Int 12, Wis 8, Cha 15.

Skills and feats: Balance +4, Bluff +8, Climb +10, Concentration +11, Diplomacy +10, Hide +7, Jump +7, Listen +8, Move Silently +7, Perform(oratory) +11, Swim +3, Tumble +6.

Feats: Power attack, Cleave, Weapon focus (longsword), Combat expertise

Bardic music 6/day, bardic knowledge +8, countersong, fascinate, inspire courage +1, inspire competence, suggestion.

Possessions: Long sword +1, Masterwork composite short bow, Chain shirt +1, Cloak of resistance +1, Gauntlets of ogre power +2, Ring of protection +1.

Spells Per Day: 3/4/3.
DC: 12+spell level

Spells known: 0/Detect magic, Ghost sound, Light, Message, Read magic, Resistance, 1/Charm person, Cure light wounds, Expeditious retreat, Hideous laughter, 2/Alter self, Glitterdust, Mirror image


Male human Bard10; HD 10d6+30; hp 68; Init +2; Spd 30 ft.; AC 21 (+2 Dex, +7 Armor, +2 Deflection); Longsword +13/+8 (1d8+7+1d6 fire 19-20*2) or +10/+5 shortbow (1d6+2 20*3); SV Fort +7, Ref +11, Will +8; Str 18, Dex 14, Con 16, Int 12, Wis 8, Cha 18.

Skills and feats: Balance +5, Bluff +10, Climb +10, Concentration +15, Diplomacy +12, Hide +10, Jump +8, Listen +11, Move Silently +10, Perform(oratory) +17, Swim +4, Tumble +9, Use magic device +17.

Feats: Power attack, Cleave, Weapon focus (longsword), Combat expertise, Dodge

Bardic music 10/day, bardic knowledge +8, countersong, fascinate, inspire courage +2, inspire competence, suggestion, Inspire greatness

Possessions: Long sword +1 of fire, Masterwork composite short bow, Mithral breastplate +2, Cloak of resistance +2, Gauntlets of ogre power +4, Ring of protection +2, Headband of charisma +2, Amulet of health +2

Spells Per Day: 3/4/4/3/1.
DC: 14+spell level

Spells known: 0/Detect magic, Ghost sound, Light, Message, Read magic, Resistance, 1/Charm person, Expeditious retreat, Hideous laughter, Silent image, 2/Alter self, Cure moderate wounds, Glitterdust, Mirror image, 3/Dispel magic, Displacement, Haste, Slow, 4/Dimension door, Shadow conjuration

Inspiring courage and greatness
Hp 85; Longsword +17/+12 (1d8+9+1d6 fire 19-20*2); SV Fort +8

 

[Bad Paper]

Also, you don't have to sing. My Bard is an orator. Only those familiar with magic will be able to easily discern his insightful, polemical commentary/direction for any use of bardic music.

aye. My bard is all Perform(comedy). He tells jokes in combat!

If you still hate singing, there's always Perform(whistling). My bard didn't choose that because he's headed down the Dragon-Disciple road, and a whistling dragon stretched it a bit too much for me. Do dragons have lips?!

 

[gabrion]

AHHHHH! No one talks about the bard! They will woop yo' @ss!

[/rage]

Sorry, but I really felt like I have to post here. Too many people don't like bard. Bard are great. A lot of their strength have been listed (most imporantly their diplomacy, bardic knowledge, and aid in combat...in that order), but I will try to give you a few others.

1) PrCs (and a class)-Sublime Chord (CA), Fochlucan Lyrist (CAdv), Evangelist (CD?), Marshal (Miniatures Handbook), Warrior Skald (Races of Faerun), and Stormsinger (FB) are my favorites.

Sublime Chord is great if you aren't really into the preforming, but you want to have more casting ability. You can't still do a lot of stuff a bard could normally, but you also get 9th level spell progression. A bard with 9th level Arcane Spells? 'Nuf said.

Fochlucan Lyrist is hard to get into (you need to be able to speak Druidic and have evasion), but it can pay off. It continues singing and spellcasting for arcane and divine spells. Pretty cool, but I don't really like it.

Evangelist is great for the diplo-bard. If you are saying bards are weak though, you must be basing your opinion on combat, which means you won't see the full merits of this class. Still, you can stop a fight with a performance and make everyone listen calmly to what you have to say, so it's fun to play if you like that kind of thing.

Any bard worth his weight should have a level of Marshal (this is a class btw, not a PrC) with the minor aura motivate charisma. You get to add your CHA to skill checks twice, which is super for a bard.

Warrior Skald might be what you want him to play. It really enhances his ability to boost the combat effectiveness of the entire party. I mean look at this PrC. It is really good for a bard who wants to bolster his friends' ability to fight well.

Stormsinger is my favorite, so I left it for last. You sound like you want a bard who can dish out some damage, so here's your fix. Take even three levels of this PrC (which you can do by 8th level), and you have the ability to spend one use of bardic music to do damage equal to your perform check. This should be comprable to a wizard's fireball at that level. This PrC rocks.

2) Items-Bow of Songs (CAdv), Choker of Eloquence (CAdv), Gauntlet of Heartfelt Blows (Dragon 314).

Bow of songs let you add CHA to attack and damage. Ya...

Choker of Eloquence ups your perform sing check by 10. Remember the Stormsinger?

Gauntlet of Heartfelt Blows is a great item if you want your bard to be in melee combat, which I don't really recomend, but is doable. This item adds damage equal to your CHA mod to any melee attack.

3) Feats-Extra Music, Extended Music (or whatever it's called), Snowflake Wardance (FB).

Extra Music is good cause a lot of your abilities should be based on singing.

Extended Music (I just know that isn't the name of the feat, but I don't have my books right now so I can't look it up) is good cause you can stop singing and the bonuses will last longer.

Snowflake Wardance lets you add your CHA mod to melee attacks. Ya, with this and the gauntlets that's CHA to attacks and damage. Crazy good...

4) The last reason everyone should be a bard is because CHA is the best ability in the game. It can be added to pretty much anything if you want to powergame. AC, saves, AC, saves, dmg, attacks, AC, saves, and anything else that matters can all be modified by CHA.

That's what I've thought of for now and I'm sure I've missed a few things, but the ideas should help. Sorry I mentioned a few things that have already been said, but I though they were useful and deserved another voice.

I also wanted to point out that you really should think about the game you are in. I used to think bards were useless, till I played with a group of guys in college who made D+D more than an exercise in destruction and rage. Roleplaying is what I discovered that day (tear from the memory)...and from that point forward, the Bard has been one of my favorite classes.

Now I've found that the Bard can also be built to kick some major behind, but the best bards will still be good diplomats and fun characters who add to the game with their with their flavor and humor. If the player in question can't RP well, then don't let him play a bard, but don't stop him because the class is too weak.

 

[blargney the second]

I haven't seen anybody mention countersong yet. Not if, but *when* your party fighter gets charmed, you will be very very very happy to have a countersinger around. Look into the magical string instruments in Complete Adventurer for bumping up your Perform checks and Suggestion DCs.

Incidentally, I remember reading that bards make the best counterspellers in the game. A caster level is a caster level, regardless of the highest level of spell they can cast.
-blarg

 

[two]

[I'm not a probability wiz, so excuse any stupid mistakes...I hope my point is still valid, in general]

Speaking of a relatively "core" bard, using the old Song & Silence splatbook, you can get +2 to hit/+2 damage starting at level1 using a Bone Horn (from S&S) which augments your inspire courage but reduces the save bonuses to nil.

+2/+2 to all attacks at level 1 is how good? It's real good.

In any given battle, the +2 to hit will probably make a miss and hit at LEASE once, and of course everyone is doing +2 more per hit.

That really, really, really adds up.

Let's see though.

Let's say you have a Bard in a party of 5 PC's.

They are in the woods, see some orcs, and the orcs start to charge in. Whatever.

The bard blows the bone horn, everyone is inspired, maybe some ranged attacks go off. Let's assume the orcs close in one round without taking ranged attack damage due to cover or whatever.

PC's are:
1) Fighter
2) Cleric
3) Wiz
4) Rogue
5) Bard

There are for example 5 orcs. Pretty scary battle.

It's hard to judge exactly how long the battle with take, let's say 5 rounds.

Each round, every PC (except the wiz) has a 2/20 or 1/10 chance of hitting instead of missing due to the +2 to hit bonus.

That means each PC has a 1/2 chance (roughly) of hitting instead of missing over the 5 rounds, and 4*1/2 = 2 hits were hits instead of misses.

Thus the bard is responsible for 2 hits instead of 2 misses, doing 6 (base, on average let's say) + 2 (extra bard damage) = 16 points of damage.

The PC's also attacked 4*5 other times (20). 2 of these have been dealt with, leaving 18.

Of the 18, how many hit? Hard to say, but let's assume 50% did (Orc AC vs. bonus to hit at level 1). A roll of 10 should hit. So that's 9 hits, and all 9 hits got an extra 2 points of damage from the bard, making 18 points of damage.

So far the bard has done roughly 34 points of damage.

How many times did the bard do damage by his own strikes?

Let's assume an archer bard without rapid shot (yet). So just 5 arrows loosed, let's say 2 hit. Let's say 6 base damage per arrow +2 damage = 8 * 2 = 16 points done directly. Pretty conservative damage done.

The total damage done by the bard is 50.

That is, on average, 50 points of damage in a 1st level party in a 5 round combat that would NOT have happened if the bard had been, for example, a ranger.

Now, in any given combat, the number varies; it might be 20 one combat, or 70 the next (the bard bonus allowed a pick critical to confirm, for example).

Point being, a lot of the extra damage is sneaky; the bard doesn't deal it himself, but it is dealt.

A party that isn't paying attention might think the bard isn't doing much. (how wrong they are!)

I played a bard PC a long while, and used to keep track of "hits that would have been misses without the inspire courage". Some combats it was none. Often it was 3 or 4.

Now that there are spells and other ways to increase the inspire courage bonuses, I'd get them as high as possible as early as you can. And rock-n-roll.

Note: some bard spells are quite potent. glitterdust, mirror image, alter self, and naturally dispel magic (just as good as the wizzie). Plus your bard's cure light wounds WILL save somebody's life at some point. 100% guaranteed.