Striking a balance...

[Grogg of the North]

If the party is having fun playing their characters, then the problem doesn't lie with the PCs but with the GM. Does the rest of the group have the same feelings as you? Start talking to your group before the next session and make sure you're everyone is on the same page. Then at the start or end of the next session, come out to your GM and tell him/her what's up. Presumably, your GM is running the game for the enjoyment of the players so s/he should listen.

I am in a game where the party had to do just that. We are primarily melee characters yet it took the GM a while to figure that out. (No, the enlightened fist does not have fireball!) And we did have to remind him a couple times but it looks like he's finally gotten the message.

 

[Eldritch_Lord]

How about a Wizard 5/War Weaver 5 (Heroes of Battle)? You can essentially pre-buff and drop up to 4 buffs with a move action in the first round of combat on your entire party, and throughout the combat you can continue to hit your entire party with buffs (even touch-range ones). Since you're making your entire party better, rather than trying to carry them yourself, you wouldn't necessarily be a big target for your DM, and "passive" caster power (buffs and crowd control) tends to fly under the DM radar better than "active" power (blasting, summoning, etc.).

If you do go with that option, I'd also suggest picking up Arcane Disciple (Healing); if things start going south, you can drop a cure critical wounds or heal on the party and get the hell out of Dodge, but you wouldn't be taking over the party healer role from the cleric or druid (assuming that's what they're doing) because you can't use Arcane Disciple spells more than 1/day each, so you wouldn't be stepping on any toes.

 

[Deset Gled]

With this party, I would probably want to play it straight. Either a single classed arcanist (wizard or sorcerer, depending on the campaign) focused on blasting, or a straight tank (barbarian for pure force, fighter if you have access to enough splatbooks to have fun with the feats). No multiclassing, no funny stuff. It's time to show the group what you can do if you stop messing around. Sure, you won't be min/maxed, but if the DM is having trouble with handling a bard, showing the group the power of a reasonably focused character should open their eyes a bit.

 

[xigbar]

It depends on whether or not/what kind of message you want to send to the players/DMs. If you want to send a message to the DM, make a well optimized character, and since your DM can't handle situations competently, a Charger Barbarian will probably wreck his encounters, and show the players what single classing (with a slightly below average power class) can do. Another option is to fill in with a stealth based build, something to move ahead of the rest of the party so they don't rush in to bad ends, and be good at melee as well. Swift Hunters would be nice. If you would like to subtly raise the overall effectiveness of the party, the Weaver suggested earlier is nice. If you can convince your friend not to Rogue/Cleric, take the Cleric spot yourself, and DMM the hell out of your party. Another option is a Conjurer, since they usually evade DM attention, and set the field up so that the other classes can actually function as intended.

 

[Greenfield]

To be clear, I'm not trying to criticize our current DM. I know it came off that way, but that wasn't my purpose.

He got frustrated because one of his "big blob of hit points" monsters got hurt by a spell that he wasn't all that familiar/comfortable with. I've been playing it for a while, so it wasn't an ambush, but it just felt "wrong" to him that a level 2 spell could take a big combat monster completely out of the fight.

 

[PureGoldx58]

Whatever your decision, speak with the DM. Point him to these forums or BG and ask him to bring up the power of Bards...

If when he does this he realizes that the only reason you are shining is because everyone is so dull that they are covered in miles of mud and cement you should probably mention to the players why you are showing them up.

TL;DR it is the DMs fault for not noticing how weak you should be and how powerful the rest could be.

 

[PureGoldx58]

To be clear, I'm not trying to criticize our current DM. I know it came off that way, but that wasn't my purpose.

He got frustrated because one of his "big blob of hit points" monsters got hurt by a spell that he wasn't all that familiar/comfortable with. I've been playing it for a while, so it wasn't an ambush, but it just felt "wrong" to him that a level 2 spell could take a big combat monster completely out of the fight.

Tell him that, that is what casters DO and if he doesn't like it only allow melee builds. My DM of my first campaign was comfortable with us when we all (a party of spellcasters sorcerer,bard,wizard,cleric) were just using direct damage spells, but once I started looking up spells and using things like Moon Bolt or battle field control he started getting upset... I pretty much had to show him the massive list of spells I had access to and the few I won't use because I don't agree with how much it would make me outshine other members of the party... He suddenly realized that casters>all.

 

[Greenfield]

With the Sand Shaper and Sublime Chord classes added to the Bard, he's an odd mixture of weakness and strength.

He has some kick-ass spells, and a remarkably broad range of options for a Bard, and the Save Dc's are pretty respectable*, but he has very few actual spell slots.

He can melee, kind of like a chicken can fly. Doesn't mean he should, or that he does it well. BladeWeave is really the only thing that makes him even slightly dangerous in a close fight.


*Any spell he has that's worth casting in combat is in a higher level slot than a comparable spell in a prime caster class, and he has a good Charisma score.

 

[PureGoldx58]

With the Sand Shaper and Sublime Chord classes added to the Bard, he's an odd mixture of weakness and strength.

He has some kick-ass spells, and a remarkably broad range of options for a Bard, and the Save Dc's are pretty respectable*, but he has very few actual spell slots.

He can melee, kind of like a chicken can fly. Doesn't mean he should, or that he does it well. BladeWeave is really the only thing that makes him even slightly dangerous in a close fight.


*Any spell he has that's worth casting in combat is in a higher level slot than a comparable spell in a prime caster class, and he has a good Charisma score.

It sounds like a fun class, honestly. But something a Cleric for instance should be able to outshine.

 

[Greenfield]

Oh yeah, just about any class that's primarily a spell caster outshines the Bard as a caster. You can bump him with feats, expand his spell range, add meta-magics as you will, you're turbo-charging a moped. It's a really first rate moped when you're done, but it's still a moped.