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Message: <blockquote data-quote="RuminDange" data-source="post: 1820167" data-attributes="member: 5412">As far as changing the Bard IMC after seeing several high level NPC bards (15+) that were traveling with the party being pretty much useless in and out of combat; I had many discussions with my players about it. I finally changed to Bard to boost them in ways that seemed right by my campaign. No one took them seriously as a threat and I didn't what the bard overshadowing the players in RP situations so I didn’t boost or use their diplomacy skills.  Besides I have a player playing a druid that could convince a dragon to give up its horde and its life to her due to her high diplomacy skill and she prefers non-combat solutions. Plus the big reason NO player really wanted to play them because they were useless their eyes.  First off I moved them back to between the Wizard and Sorcerer in regards to spell casting.  They maintain song books (i.e. spell books), and each day they can spend an hour like any other spell caster to prepare their spells known list.  From there they act as per normal.  If they lose their book they are stuck with the last spell known list they prepared.  It is not required to change their spells known.  This way a Bard can prepare spells ahead of time if they know they are going to doing a performance or talking to nobles etc, or prepare their more combat oriented spells if they are down in a dungeon.  This keeps them from being useless in one way or the other.Second change is I gave them Evasion at 2nd and Improved Evasion at 10th.Third change I did was to give a few bonus feats spread out starting at 6th level and every 6th levels thereafter. Fourth change was to give them Skill Mastery at 14th.The last and one of the most major changes I did was giving them ability to weave their spells and bardic music together to get greater effects.  This ability allows them to use extra bardic music uses and more spell levels on the fly to most their spells effects.  It is by the far the most complicated ability I gave them and can be very powerful when used by a high level bard to boost the effect of a spell in several ways.  The effects can be added the same effects of a metamagic feat and/or boosting the DC by a set about, increasing the range, duration, damage/effect, targets and area by a certain percentage.  The changes all though can be seen as powerful and some might think too powerful, I only have one player playing a Bard currently, and it is only a secondly class at the moment (12th level overall: Rgr7/Bard2/Sor1/Bloodline2)  Two other players have played bards since, but both characters ended up getting killed.  One was a Half-Dragon that thought he could take on 2 Trolls by himself in melee combat after he ran away from the party on his own and they knew the trolls were out there. (He was like 5th level). The other was a Ranger/Bard/Wildsinger (30+ level made up to join an on-going side-trek of high level characters) that decided he could stand against 4 Stone giants Barbarian/Rangers in melee combat by himself while the rest of the group was fighting giants on another cliff side and used his movement to get within range for him to strike a full attack the next round but giving all four giants their full attacks that round. So far in play the changes haven’t been over-powerful, but they can really make people take notice of a Bard and explain how some of them survive on their own traveling around in a very dangerous very magical world.RD</blockquote>

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