Now, obviously, if you disagree that the Bard needs fixing, this thread may not be for you. Fair warning, I don't care and won't have much patience for "the bard is good stop" type opinions. The purpose of this thread is to establish elements of the Bard that don't feel right to some of us, and workshop ideas for variant class features, new spells, enhancements in the form of new uses of bardic inspiration, or whatever else we can figure out, that will make the Bard feel like a Bard.
So, what feels off?
1) Bardic Inspiration. It's not just that I miss 3.5 "Song of XYZ" mechanics. If it was, I could just add them back in as new spells. Bards inspiring one friend at a time, for a benefit the friend can use later, at such a fairly low level...it's just weird. It feels completely off, to me. A group buff that buffs the group for the duration, or other zone effects, would feel right. The Paladin's aura feels more bardic than bardic inspiration, to me.
2) The spells. Both, how much spellcasting the bard gets, how limited the list is, how focused on enchantment and trickery it is, just all of it. Vicious Mockery is cool, and then it just sort of...is powerful and bland. Meh. I literally can't play a bard without tweaking the spell list. It's, for me, garbage.
3) It almost never feels like a bard is emboldening the hearts of their allies and demoralizing their enemies with "mere" words.
4) It's mostly sparkle and mechanical efficacy, with no substance. It gets so many features, and I can't imagine why to care about half of them. Song of Rest and Expertise are about all I can imagine keeping in a total ground-up rewrite. Even Jack of All Trades I would put in a feat or something. Hell, switch the Bard and Rogue, and give the Rogue JoAT and give Bards earlier expertise and another trained skill.
5) Words words words. Do they even matter to the Bard? Song or no song, the Bard should be able to make people weep or dance on command.
So, what can be done? What needs to go in order to turn bardic inspiration into a group buff that is more specific in effect but effects all allies that can hear you when you use it? Or maybe who can hear you within 100ft, whatever.
What can be done about spellcasting? Drop secrets and instead lean into subclasses with bonus spells, and reconfigure what spells the bard naturally gets? Drop it to artificer style 1/2 caster to make more room for Bard abilities, or beef up the list with unique Bard spells?
What kinds of things can be done as class features to make the Bard the person you don't want to allow to speak, even if their hands are tied and they're tapped out of spells? The person you're afraid to anger, even if your know your guards are more than a match for the bard and their allies? The person who can turn a nation against her monarch in a single season, with a single song? The person who can heal with words, without it being clear if it involves spellcraft or not. Maybe even the person who can calm the savage beast like a druid, without using druidic magic, and can command the dead to rest or to live again, without investment or holy blessing? The person who knows the power of names and the old words and of old and new stories.