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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mr. Kaze" data-source="post: 1820275" data-attributes="member: 8848">So I'm 3 years into bards (mostly DMing but now also building) and here's what I've seen: - A bard is generally a bit worse than an appropriately built rogue in social situations (as rogues have more skills to spend). - A bard is much less likely to survive three fireballs than a rogue (as rogues have evasion to protect their little d6 HD). - A point-buy built bard is going to have to sacrifice something more critical to their survival than a point-buy rogue, cleric, fighter, barbarian, or wizard.  They're like paladins and monks that way. - But for all of that, a bard is difficult to multiclass with -- especially at low levels -- because their uses of bardic music, their spellcasting, and their BAB are all going to crimp the usefulness of that 1st level of bard.  Or, put another way, you multiclass to bard to get high ref and will saves and to be able to claim that you can cast arcane spells.Possible solutions?  With a goal to "Avoid needing to Multiclass..." - A high-ref character needs something to help protect their sad little HD a bit better -- Evasion at level 5, Uncanny Dodge at level 10, Improved Evasion at level 15 and Improved Uncanny Dodge at level 20.  I expect that adding those would make playing a bard straight through not nearly such a bad deal. - For being such a social character, the bard is sadly outshone by the rogue's plethora of skills (many of which overlap), especially after spending skills on Perform for bardic music and adventurous skills like Jump and Tumble.  Kick their skill points up by 2 to make them more competitive with the rogue -- and able to really build on their languages and knowledge abilities.Still won't be a fighter, but there's no longer any significant advantage to multiclassing a bard over to rogue (which utterly cripples the low-level character in combat).  Bard is still a support character that shines in town, but doesn't get readily snuffed out in the the dungeon.For a fighting bard, try this on for size: - A fighting spellcaster needs solid armor.  Convert bards to Divine spellcasting (they've got Cure Light Wounds...) so that they won't take arcane spell failure penalties if they pick up heavier armor proficiencies.  - A fighter needs more HP.  Upgrade them to d8, similar to the Cleric or Druid.Now we've got a class with 2 high saves, d8 HD, and a 3/4s BAB which sounds just like a cleric.  Add in a plethora of Bardic Music options that grow as time goes on (instead of more spells and domains) and enough skills to actually learn a goodly variety of stuff (instead of Turn/Rebuke Undead), and we've got a competitor.  If the bard wants heavier armor or standard martial weapons, there are full BAB classes like Fighter and Barbarian that will readily augment that aspect of the character.  Now just name them David, give them a background as a shepherd and let them be king of Israel at level 20.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> That's my $.25::Kaze</blockquote>

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