Willie the Duck
Legend
In 1e I think I only saw them in NPC or 'make your character at high level' situations, where the difficult entry point was circumvented.I don't think I ever saw anyone play a Bard in 1st or 2nd edition AD&D. The first time I ever played a Bard was in 5th edition, and I had a grand old time right up until he was killed by a Giff after my character told him he was so fat his butt provided allies with cover. It was the very first scenario of the campaign.
I definitely saw them in 2e. Doubly so if we include characters that got rolled up rather than saw a lot of actual play. The reddish-brown splatbook ("complete" series) era of 2e for my group was rife with people making up bards and swashbucklers and pirates and priests of increasingly specific mythos that would rarely if ever see play -- and when they did it suddenly become apparent that a lot of these options don't work great when the game still has dungeons full of wights and orcs and dragons.
The 2e bard had a lot of promise as a generalist -- until the rubber hit the road.
- Even though they could wear armor, they couldn't cast spells unless it was the rare-as-hens-teeth elven chain; so they were either 'caster-until-the-spells-are-gone (then armor up),' or 'caster if you give me 5 minutes').
- They could wear chain mail and use any weapon; but they still had thief-like ThAC0, d6 hp, stat requirements that statistically precluded also having a stellar Str and Con, and just not being a warrior (with access to the extra attacks and better stat leverage that implies).
- Perhaps most importantly, the would be taken instead of taking a thief character (as the were listed in the rogue subsection, and had some thief abilities), but lacked the rather-important open locks and find/remove traps abilities.