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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Arkhandus" data-source="post: 2801071" data-attributes="member: 13966">Man, that just deserves a laugh.  I'm going to sig that if you don't mind.  *Yoink!*  <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/laugh.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":lol:" title="Laughing    :lol:" data-shortname=":lol:" />My opinion on the bard issue......yes, the bard is underpowered simply because it requires the player and DM both to be good at providing the bard sufficiently numerous and useful opportunities to be as useful as any other class.  Other classes generally don't require the player and DM to both be puissant in the proper ways to make them fully useful.Bards should be useful in a melee support role, and thus warrant a either decent hit die (d8 frex) or good AC bonuses (around 1/2 or 1/3 their level or thereabouts).  They should also be reasonably capable with a variety of skills, which is adequate thus far (though they could use a few more class skills).  They should also be reasonably competent spellcasters, which seems fine as-is (though, again, they could use a few extra spells on their list).  Bards should also, of course, have some uniqueness, but their main role is supposed to be jacks-of-all-trades-and-master-of-none.  They need to be reasonably capable in each field, but not very potent in any one (aside from their particular focus on trickery and social/mental manipulation).  Bardic music, as-is, is just too limited in its uses and the significance of its benefits (inspire courage and inspire competence are awefully weak at upper levels, frex).I tend to give bards some minor boosts in my homebrew campaigns.  For instance, in Rhunaria I give them the ability to ignore a small amount of arcane spell failure from armor and shields, improving every half dozen levels or so.  In my Aurelia homebrew, I give bards a few bonus feats and several more uses for bardic music, such as upgrades at higher levels (i.e. Inspire Valor to replace Inspire Courage, Inspire Mastery to replace Inspire Competence, and stuff like Mass Suggestion).  I also have one bard variant that can expend additional uses of bardic music for the day in order to improve the potency of their bardic music.</blockquote>

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