Bards just don't convince me!

[Diirk]

Being an archer gives him a lot of damage while staying at range. Point Blank, Precise Shot, and Rapid Shot are 3 excellent combat feats. he's sneaky, perceptive, and not as useless in melee as he thinks. (he still acts like he has 40hps) His AC is fairly good due to the mithral chain and a mithral buckler (10% total arcane spell failure) when he does get swept into combat.

Huh? Bards don't get ASF for casting in light armour. (In 3.5 anyway, they did in 3.0 I think)

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

Huh? Bards don't get ASF for casting in light armour. (In 3.5 anyway, they did in 3.0 I think)

Mithral chain, not mithral chain shirt.

EDIT: I take it back. Mithral chain would have ASF of 20%. I've no idea how he got to 10%.

 

[kigmatzomat]

It was a chain shirt. I perused the bard's character sheet on my Y! group while posting and either misread or mistyped.

And we are in a 3.0 game. No way I was gonna migrate all the spellcasters to 3.5 and deal with the constantly looking up the rules to make sure nothing had changed.

 

[Ogrork the Mighty]

Ultimately, the bard is a roleplaying class. But "roleplaying" isn't in the rules -- anybody can do it with any character (even with a charisma of 6 -- gasp!). So I can pretty much guarantee that, given the SRD, that 5th party member is going to be better off with a more mechanical class and roleplaying it for the effect that they want.

I pretty much agree with you, thus the need for a type of campaign (and DM!) in which such a class can excel. If your campaign is all hack n' slash, you're better off going with some other class. As a DM, I'd give the advantage to a bard over pretty much any other class when it comes to socializing it up in town and gathering all sorts of juicy tidbits of info. But if your DM views any class with the right skills being capable of doing that, then maybe bard isn't a good idea.

My 2 cents.

 

[Diirk]

Ultimately, the bard is a roleplaying class. But "roleplaying" isn't in the rules -- anybody can do it with any character (even with a charisma of 6 -- gasp!). So I can pretty much guarantee that, given the SRD, that 5th party member is going to be better off with a more mechanical class and roleplaying it for the effect that they want.

I wouldn't say its a roleplaying class more than any of the others really. True it has inherent strengths in social skills, but even without those it can more than hold its own in combat and adventuring situations. I think the main reason why its so unpopular is because its a support type character, whereas most people want to be the one in the spotlight. That and they didn't overpower the class just so that people would play it, a la clerics.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

I wouldn't say its a roleplaying class more than any of the others really. True it has inherent strengths in social skills, but even without those it can more than hold its own in combat and adventuring situations. I think the main reason why its so unpopular is because its a support type character, whereas most people want to be the one in the spotlight. That and they didn't overpower the class just so that people would play it, a la clerics.

I think you are right here. If it were actually significantly better than it is now, it would really step on the toes of any Rogue who is not hyperoptimized for combat. "Give up Sneak Attack for a mountain of spells and good Will saves. Sign me up!"

 

[Andor]

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.

I give up. What's FB?

 

[gabrion]

Frostburn

 

[Victim]

Frostburn.

It's quite surprising how powerful bardic music is. At 8th level, Inspire Courage is a modest +2 morale to attack, damage, and some other crap. Let's assume a vanilla level 8 fighter who doesn't use any active feats has a +1 flaming greatsword, greater focus and (normal) specialization, and a 22 STR and that his foes have AC 25. If the bard's only contribution is to sing his +2 song in fights, then he increases the fighter's damage by about 30%. If the group has a 2 weapon guy (2 +1 flame short swords, 18 STR, greater focus and ITWF), then damage increases by about 51% - and only partially because the twf guy has lower damage. So a bard buffing up 2 fighter types is almost doing as much damage as a 3rd fighter.

And a bard can do a whole lot more than that. In addition to having whole bunch of social skills, bards also pack stuff like Haste, Displacement, GMW, etc. With the right spells and feats, they can add +2 to their Inspire song which allows the bard to add almost +63% to Greatsword guy's damage in the example above. With moderate Bab, tons of buffs, and decent weapons, a bard can pull off a credible imitation of the Combat Cleric.

 

[Pielorinho]

You can use a bard as a Jack-of-all-Trades with lots of skills. Which requires a high Int. And rogues get more skills anyway.

True: they'll be second-best to rogues in this department.

You can use a bard as a spontaneous spellcaster of enchanting variety. Which requires a high Cha. And sorcerors get more spells per day and better selection anyway.

Not quite true. Sorcerers get enchantment spells about a level after bards get them, in general. While they can cast more, the bard's superior skill ranks will make certain actions within the enchantment spells much easier (as stated before, bluff is great for making a Suggestion seem reasonable; Disguise can help with a charm monster or suggestion). And Bards get several enchantmenty-type powers as bardic music, which is highly flexible. I still maintain that a bard makes a better enchanter than a sorcerer, even if we discount the general benefits of better saves (I think) and better HP and better armor.

You can use bardic knoweldge to delve into the deepest and most complex riddles. Which requires a high Int and lots of levels of Bard. And that's what a town sage is for anyway.

Doesn't really require lots of level of bard; it's always useful. Relying on the town sage requires being near a town and requires wasting time while the sage looks it up; this is akin to saying that casting Raise Dead is what the town cleric is for, or that creating magic items is what the town wizard is for, and discounting these abilities thereby.

You can use a bard to heal folks or be diplomatic. But any cleric or druid or paladin (and even some rangers) can do that.

Very few clerics, druids, or rangers will be as diplomatic as a bard, and paladins who are as good as bards are at diplomacy do so at the cost of having any other skill. Even then, bards are likely to get +6 synergy bonuses to diplomacy by third or fourth level; they'll probably outpace all other classes at diplomacy (since the second-best competition, the rogue, probably doesn't have cha as a primary stat).

You can use a bard as an archer. Which requires a high Dex. But you don't get the free Ranger feats or the bonus Fighter feats and you're not proficient with a longbow.

True: bards are second-class archers.

You can use a bard for a Dragon Disciple. Assuming you're interested in starting your career as a melee fighter. Which is probably a waste for Dex that you need for your AC at lower levels.

I can't comment on this.

You can Inspire Courage or whatever going into combat. If you've got a standard action to use instead of dishing out damage of your own. I'd rather have a sorceror casting haste that first round, quite frankly... (And if you're singing before combat, then every enemy should be ambushing your noisy heiny.)

I agree that constant singing is probably unwise in most cases. But a bard can sing the first round and cast haste the second round; a sorcerer can't cast haste the first round and sing the second round. And at eighth level, inspire courage far outpowers haste in many circumstances (i.e, any circumstance in which full attacks are difficult).

You can discover that the bard is so laughably outclassed at any given task that half of the thread defending the bard is using non-SRD material. (If you can use it, then maybe it's worth thinking about -- I wouldn't bank on it, though.)

For myself, I've used only SRD material in the defense.

Ultimately, the bard is a roleplaying class. But "roleplaying" isn't in the rules -- anybody can do it with any character (even with a charisma of 6 -- gasp!). So I can pretty much guarantee that, given the SRD, that 5th party member is going to be better off with a more mechanical class and roleplaying it for the effect that they want.

Again, I disagree: I think bards do a set of complementary tasks (namely, convincing people to do what you want them to do) better than anyone else, and are quite good at a range of other tasks (especially buffing and researching). I'm playing the second bard I've played, and find that clever exploitation of these abilities makes the class quite powerful indeed.

Daniel