You are welcome to disagree with me on the power of the bard.
Thank you for your permission.
I feel that a full-caster with a very diverse spell list, excellent support abilities outside of those spells, decent weapon proficiency, and a very strong skill monkey vibe is a little over the top, and feel they would be more in line as a half-caster. It also to my mind strengthens the class's narrative by not basically making them wizard+ for magical versatility.
See, it is difficult to even disagree with you, because this is all so vague. What is a "very diverse spell list"? Most Bards I see take the same few spells, with minor variations, so their list doesn't seem very diverse to me. How is simple weapons plus finesse swords and the longsword "decent" weapon proficiency? They lack access to the best melee weapons, but even wizards can get a d8 melee weapon and a d8 ranged weapon, is it just the Rapier that makes it decent? Why is their limitation to light armor (less than the druid and cleric) not a mark against them for melee?
And I disagree that it strengthens their narrative to be even better at fighting in melee, but worse at spells. But that is likely because I disagree with you about what their narrative even is.
Clerics have a more restricted spell list than bards, which helps, although their list is also getting crowded IMO.
Clerics need twice the spells on their list that they currently have. Every cleric ends up with the same limited list, because they have so few spell options per spell level, and most of them are situational. I'm not saying they lack power, I'm saying they lack options, getting the fewest options out of every full caster in the game.
Also, since my plan takes nothing away from the wizard, please explain to me how what I'm suggesting would kill them. The only thing I can think of it is an assumption on your part that sorcerers are so much more popular than wizards that the latter would wither in the swing halo of the former.
Not because they are so popular, but because the wizard flavor is so weak. There are only two things that the wizard has going for them in terms of flavor. 1) They study magic, 2) They have a spellbook.
Well, if you give them innate magic, then they no longer need to study magic. They can be born naturally talented, meaning the single thing defining the wizard is their spellbook... a thing that already gets practically written out of a large percentage of wizard characters. You would be left with nothing that actually makes a wizard different from anything else, and the wizard would be reduced to nothing. The class name would be gone, the story of studying magic without an innate talent would be gone, and the spellbook would be a vestigial organ most tables forget about.