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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Retreater" data-source="post: 3256062" data-attributes="member: 42040">Mithril chainmail is around 4,150 gp and mithril full plate is 10,500 gp. That's a lot of change to drop for your armor. We have a house rule (and I've seen it in several groups I've played in) that you can't own a single item worth more than 1/2 of your character's total wealth. That would mean that for a bard to afford mithril full plate he would have to be up in the mid levels. Even if you don't use this rule, your bard is going to be very limited by spending all of his starting wealth on a suit of armor. Okay. I thought we were discussing the Rules as Written, which don't include all of the strange new abilities from the Complete books. Since I have none of the class books, I can't comment on the changes made to the bard.Yeah, maybe. Except things like attack rolls, damage rolls, spells, saves, hit points. All of these are things that aren't really dependant on DM fiat. I'd rather not trust the DM and trust in the abilities of my character. Easy access to artifacts? This doesn't sound like the type of game I play. I've been playing D&D through several editions over the past 15 years and have never encountered a single artifact, even a minor one. It requires singing to keep the song going, meaning you can't do anything else with a somatic component or command word. So that limits you to fighting. If you take a hit, you have to roll a Concentration check to keep it alive. And big deal about that +1 to damage. It hardly justifies the bard class. I'd rather be a rogue and flanking about every round dealing +1d6 at first level, usable unlimited times per day. Which can be cast by any other arcanist in the game. There's nothing unique to the bard. Except maybe Summon Instrument. Oh, and if you're holding an instrument, good luck using a weapon for attack.Except that the fighter can weapon focus, improved weapon focus, etc. And the bard doesn't have the strength score of the fighter, because he's been beefing up his useless Charisma score.As far as using Diplomacy to end a charging warband of orcs, does anyone use this skill correctly? It takes a full minute to use Diplomacy - by which time the combat is over - with your bard trampled to death by orc boots. There's a -10 penalty to use it as a full round action. So it's a DC 35 Diplomacy check to make the orcs even indifferent. So that means that this would be achievable by a 10th level bard with max ranks in Diplomacy, the negotiator feat and skill focus (diplomacy) feat, only 50% of the time. I'd take my chances with a wizard dropping a fireball on the orcs any day.Sorry, I'm just not buying it. Retreater</blockquote>

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