I've always loved playing a bard - largely for the mixed combat/magic functionality, skill-mastery, and social dynamism. However the implementation often felt like there was a severe lack of a attention to detail paid to making the bard fun and flexible to play in combat.
Sticking a mandolin in your hands so you can't use weapons was unnecessarily restrictive. Making the bard continually sing his way through a combat to keep up his primary function was unnecessarily silly and narrow.
4th Edition options for the bard was what I'd always been waiting for - especially when they rolled out the Skald in Heroes of the Feywild. Valorous Bards, bow-bards, and Viking Bards - sign me up. Singing is also unnecessarily narrow. Oratory, dance, and poetry are art-forms you could use in 3.X - and they were generally optimal choices. They were hands-free and didn't make you look like a silly fop if you didn't want to be.
There should be latitude enough for one player to run a character who has a lyre in his hands and is casting charms, hexes, illusions, and dealing psychic damage through a whole combat - without precluding bards whose presence in combat resembles almost none of that. On the other end of the spectrum there should be a burly fellow with a longsword and shield who's blows ring out the melodies of the world that normally go unheard, or who speaks the sonorous primordial psalms from the world's forging that echo fear and flame into his attacks.
I like the idea that the bard's magic system might be built along the lines of warlock invocations. My ideal bard class structure would allow for some basic at-will and encounter-based magic with choices including a ranged musical attacks, some sort of short-range buffs for allies, or a hands-free spoken-word effect that is used in conjunction with a weapon attack.
There there would be ritual magics, designed to be cast outside of combat, that necessitate music or performance on a more appropriate scale. These could actually be called "songs," or "sagas" and not cut into anyone's combat style like other Bard designs historically have done.
Seriously, as long as the 5E bard doesn't need to dance around with a harp chanting, "Shoot shoot shoot, shoot the repulsive ogres," to do his job in combat and doesn't have to lob demeaning insults to deal damage to a Gray Ooze ("cutting words" really?") I'll probably play it.
- Marty Lund
