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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Epametheus" data-source="post: 1453713" data-attributes="member: 719">I tried playing a bard once, when 3E just came out.  Took her up to 18th level, though I multi-classed a bit as experimentation.  I can safely say that I'll never do it again.1) Multiclassing into another spell casting class is a bad idea.2) Taking a prestige class that doesn't continue your casting progression is a worse idea.3) Never, ever try to play a diplomat-type character if you yourself are naturally bad at diplomacy.4) Charisma really is the most irrelevant stat in the entire game.  No matter how high the number is, a character is only as charismatic as the player (and vice versa -- a character will effectively be every bit as charismatic as the player, no matter how low the actual score is).5) Having a 18th level character that would be hard-pressed to hold her own in battle against a 9th level character is rather embarrassing; you'll also be nothing but a hindrance to the party in battle, unless the DM is nice and ignores you.  At high levels, bards cannot protect themselves.6) This applies to all classes, but never give a character a constitution less than 10.  My Bard had a Con of 9, and that -1 per HD pretty much crippled her (she broke 20 HP around 8th level or so).  Clerics and archers can get away with having a con penalty, but they're it.7) The +1 Song isn't too bad; you're perfectly capable of fighting after you've spent a round getting it started.8) The more warriors, the more the +1 Song is worth.  Eventually, the fighters in our party were one melee fighter crit monster, 1 dragon knight, his juvenile silver dragon cohort, a fighter/rogue/lasher, an arcane archer, a paladin (my bard's cohort), the paladin's horse, and whatever the heck the real spellcasters (a cleric and a wizard) bothered to summon.  With all of those people, the +1 Song was adding up to another 20-30 damage a round or so (which, sadly, was easily more damage than she could've dealt directly).  With the thing actually scaling now, if my character had stayed a straight bard, it could easily have meant another 80 to 100 damage per round at those levels.  That's actually rather respectable.9) Bard's a weird class -- since it's so incredibly weak, it's tempting to multiclass.  But if you don't go whole-hog with Bard, than your bard levels are just a waste that would've been better spent on rogue or sorcerer levels.10) Bard's are pretty much straight-jacketed into a support role.  Since rogues can easily outskill them and wizards & clerics can easily out-support them AND go offensive at the same time, bards are just fifth wheels.11) The bard I played when 3E came out was a only serious bard my group's ever even tried.  All bards since then have either been short-lived joke characters, or rogue/sorcerers.12) The only really neat ability that my bard had was a really high UMD check (over +30).  Unfortunately, trying to make proper use that skill is incredibly expensive (though the party wizard refusing to make scrolls for me certainly didn't help).In theory, bards can be handy.  In practice, they're damn near useless.  Maybe a rebalancing that made them into real spellcasters with the full 9 levels would be interesting, though.</blockquote>

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