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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kilroy" data-source="post: 2328393" data-attributes="member: 5299">Bards have a couple neat powers (Bardic Knowledge is neat, but Loremasters are more powerful generaly)The trouble is, D&D is really designed for a team of specialists, and bards are generalists.  Even if they're good enough most of the time, that's not good enough, as to survive, a group needs to be good enough all of the time.  A bard can't even be pretty good at everything, with the way character growth works mechanically, they tend to be either second fiddle at a couple jobs and horrid at the rest, or merely bad at everything.  Most of the examples given have talked about how a great player can make the character overpowered.  The reality is that a great character can make just about any other class even more overpowered, if that's what you're going for.Really, they're there as a roleplaying class.  What they provide to a group is comic relief, and for me, that's an important part of the game.  I've played a full bard once (not to high levels) in a game where we each had to play our anti-characters, the characters we'd be least likely to play in a long term game.  I based him on Ben Stein, and my bardic spells were based on confusion and boredom.  A math question would Daze a target, starting a longwinded explanation of the rock strata in the Sunless Citadel would put things to Sleep.  He wasn't powerful, but he was kinda fun.I do think there's a lot of roleplaying potential in taking a couple levels of bard, even if it's not powergamey.  Imagine the high level wizard who wants to join a band to pick up girls, or the thuggish barbarian who decides to become a gangster rapper. ;-)</blockquote>

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