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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MerricB" data-source="post: 3915558" data-attributes="member: 3586">Indeed. Your enjoyment of the Bard class comes from aspects outside the mechanics. (So does mine - my three favourite classes to play are Wizard, Bard and Cleric, in that order).The point is that people play D&D in ways from the extremely mechanics-heavy to the extremely mechanics-light, and you can indeed have different aspects of that within the same game.A well-designed game will allow play in all styles to work well. Now, mechanics-light play is pretty much outside the purview of the rules, so we can ignore it. How well does D&D work as mechanics-heavy?Pretty well, actually. However, it runs into its biggest problems with the bard, monk and cleric. The monk because it does almost everything worse than other classes, and the bard and cleric because the things that they're best at, don't actually have them making meaningful choices.The best two actions of a mid-level bard are to cast haste and perform his bard-song. They are no-brainer actions. That's two rounds gone of every combat - and many 3e combats don't get beyond the 4th round! So, you might as well not have the bard player there for most of a combat.The 3e cleric has a real problem where the amount of damage PCs takes from monsters is too high - without a cleric casting heal spells, they're going to go down. So, he gives up the useful actions he can perform to do a "nothing" action, which then gives the barbarian the bragging rights of saying "I killed the demon!"Are there groups for whom these problems don't apply? Certainly! However, it is something that has been observed by Wizards over many groups playing the game. It's not something I'm just making up.So, Wizards are going to fix it.Now, I really regret the bard not appearing in the PHB, and I really hope it'll be in PHB2, for it has long be one of my favourite classes. But that's from a role-playing point of view, not from a games mechanics viewpoint.Cheers!</blockquote>

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