How bad does the bard suck?

[Firebeetle]

I just like to bring up this point from time to time, about how much my favorite class, the bard, sucks in 3e. Please feel free to give your response to this topic below. To answer a few questions/accusations preemptively-

1. I do not hate bards, I love them. That is why I cry because they suck.
2. I do play them right, in fact, I amaze people all the time with how effective I can make a bard in both terms of game mechanics and roleplay.
3. I do not believe bards shine only in roleplay heavy/investigative scenarios. I have proven time and again that if you want to make a Bluff, Gather Information, Diplomacy king you are better off with other classes. BARDS RECEIVE NO BUFFS TO THESE SKILLS OR ABILITIES! Bards should shine in all scenarios and campaigns just like any other class.

Let the hatemongering begin!

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

I just like to bring up this point from time to time, about how much my favorite class, the bard, sucks in 3e. Please feel free to give your response to this topic below. To answer a few questions/accusations preemptively-

1. I do not hate bards, I love them. That is why I cry because they suck.
2. I do play them right, in fact, I amaze people all the time with how effective I can make a bard in both terms of game mechanics and roleplay.

I hope RP isn't just identical to "has high Cha" or "has high social skills".

Also, one person's way of "playing a bard right" might not be someone else's way.

3. I do not believe bards shine only in roleplay heavy/investigative scenarios. I have proven time and again that if you want to make a Bluff, Gather Information, Diplomacy king you are better off with other classes. BARDS RECEIVE NO BUFFS TO THESE SKILLS OR ABILITIES! Bards should shine in all scenarios and campaigns just like any othe class.

When it comes to #3 ... heck no! WotC needs to fix Diplomacy and Intimidate so they make some semblance of sense before they start handing out buffs. Right now Diplomacy is flatly overpowered and Intimidate just doesn't make any sense at all.

Bluff makes sense as written, but when a bard casts spells that grant +10 (or is it more?) to Bluff, it gets overpowered, too. Bluff is mildly broken, in that your opponent has to have Sense Motive to have a chance of not being fooled, but Sense Motive is not a class skill for most classes. Even highly intelligent wizards usually fall for a bard's bluff, and that seems kind of wrong to me.

Let the hatemongering begin!

Ummm... no. I think that might even be against the CoC.

Bards don't offend me, anyway. (One bard player did, but that was another story )

Bards are weak, IMO, because they can only cast 7th-level spells and have a limited variety. They do have some unique spells available to them - there's that wonderful 5th-level spell that can force opponents to fight each other, 50% of the time, after multiple opponents have failed their Will save ... well, it seemed like a great spell on paper.

Bards don't even fight as well as a rogue and don't have the same wide variety of skills or skill points, either (although they have close to that). A bard can buff himself, sure, but right, you can buff the fighter types instead. If bards could buff themselves the way the much more powerful cleric class could, maybe they wouldn't seem like wimps in combat.

The bard's unique class feature, the song, just doesn't do enough. If bards got much better songs, they'd rock, both in-combat and out.

 

[EyeontheMountain]

Wow, what a negative post. Couldn't the OP have treid to be more neutral? To get a balanced response. I guess not, so Iw ill pass on this poll

 

[Crothian]

2. I do play them right, in fact, I amaze people all the time with how effective I can make a bard in both terms of game mechanics and roleplay.
!

If you play them right and they are effective, how do they still suck? You can't have it both ways.

Bards are a fine class.

 

[Thetford]

Bards work well, however they do take more effort than most classes

 

[Vigilance]

This notion that bards suck because they don't compare to a couple of broken as heck classes (Druid, I'm looking at you) always made me shake my head.

They made them MUCH better in 3.5 and people still whine about them.

They're not the best at anything. Get over it. They're highly useful and complimentary in almost any situation.

 

[Felix]

No buffs to Bluff, eh?

 

[brehobit]

A core bard is pretty weak. An Eberron bard using Complete Arcane or Spell Compendium is very powerful indeed. In our experience _too_ powerful. Not quite Bo9S too powerful, but close. +3 attack and damage to the whole party at level 3 is HUGE, even just once a day.

Mark

 

[Klaus]

How bad? Well, not at all, actually!

A bard can wear mithral breastplate, wield a sword and cast rage, heroism and Inspire, turning into a veritable warrior. If he chooses to don, say, a mithral chain shirt (0 check penalty), he has access to skills and spells to sneak about as well as a rogue (albeit he won't be able to disarm traps, but that's what temporary hit points are for). He can cast cure spells, so he's just a Spontaneous Healer away from healing spontaneously.

IME, the bard can be geared toward being REALLY good at one aspect of the game, while remaining reasonably competent at several others.

 

[Aeric]

I tend to think of bards as worthless, but that's because the only person I've ever seen play a bard in 3E is someone who is very non proactive in games. If the party wasn't so in need of a cleric, I would roll a bard for my next character just to see how they work.