D&D 3E/3.5 Bards! (*not* a D&D 3.5 thread)

[Christian]

OK, the sorcerers thread was useful-but wasn't my biggest class question from BOEM2. That was tweaked from the PHB sorcerer, and it wasn't hard to see how the gains and losses balanced ...

I'm really interested in Monte's bard, though. Their casting and abilities have been so heavily reworked from the standard bard that there's no easy comparison. So-anyone played with one? I'd really like to hear the opinions of people with some real-game experience. How well did the fit in? Were they balanced, overbalanced, under balanced? Did their spells/powers seem as superfluous as the normal bard's sometimes do?

Opinions based on reading the book are of little interest to me-I can do that myself.

(Edited title to appeal to people who are sick of threads based on idle speculation about D&D 3.5. That is, people like me! )

 

[Merlion]

Well, I have only read the book but I cant not chime in on anything relating to bards
I was going to try Monte's bard. the main reason I didnt is because they no longer get bardic music or spells...they get the spellsongs as a fusion of both. but theres only 3 degrees of them..so you end up losing quite a bit.
In campaigns I've played bards in we've ruled that bards get 6 skill points base instead of four(looks like this is going to be in 3.5) and that they do not suffer spell failure for armor because all there "spells" are in fact primarily verbal songs.
I think the 3.5 revisions are going to iron out the last few little wrinkles in the bard...which is one of my all time favorite classes.

 

[Malin Genie]

<snip> we've ruled that bards get 6 skill points base instead of four(looks like this is going to be in 3.5) and that they do not suffer spell failure for armor because all there "spells" are in fact primarily verbal songs.
I think the 3.5 revisions are going to iron out the last few little wrinkles in the bard...which is one of my all time favorite classes.

Where is this from - I've been looking at the 3.5 info and hadn't seen any mention of it ?!

 

[Merlion]

The specfics are from campaigns I've been in. The WoTC talk is in the 3.5 news section of this site.

 

[Christian]

Argh! I just changed the topic to say, 'not a D&D 3.5 thread,' and it's turned into a D&D 3.5 discussion! I surrender! The D&D 3.5 monster is unstoppable! It'll swallow up any discussion about anything else! We're dooooooooooomed!

Um ... I'm sorry, what was I saying? Oh yeah, anybody else have a comment on Monte's bard from BOEM2?

 

[Christian]

Anybody? Please??

 

[Crothian]

I perfer monte's bard. It has a more musical feel to it as well as magical versitility. I don't think they really loose much in the magical department but gain a lot. Just that spell notes are move actions really frees up their standard actions to do something else useful.