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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mr. Kaze" data-source="post: 2227928" data-attributes="member: 8848">I played a bard recently and came up with the following scenarios.  It was a 30 point buy game.  That said...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.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.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.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.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.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.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.)You can multiclass and find that either your skills are mismatched or that average BAB really sucks it up.  (Rogue/Bard would be decent except for that.)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.)The one thing you can't do with a bard is get hit by a couple of fireballs.  Even if you do survive the first couple of blasts, you'll need to be healing your other, more combat-capable party members before you get healed up.Being a bard is accepting that you're 2nd-best (or worse) at everything and probably, therefore, the least important character in any mostly balanced party.  Doesn't strike me as a particularly heroic adventuring sort of chap.  I'd recommend looking into a rogue build if the character wants skills or a mystic theurge if the character wants backup spells or a sorceror or mystic (mystic is in DragonLance) if they're going for spontaneous casting.  Alternately, a druid built for shapeshifting with Track as a 1st level feat makes a decent replacement for a ranger -- at level 5 the druid was able to track people on solid rock even after 5 days.... add a level or two of monk (BAB sucks, be warned) and things get scary.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.</blockquote>

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