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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 6310426" data-attributes="member: 82106">Well, this is of course why the Wizard|Swordmage is so scarily effective, you have a full-on Aegis AND you can stand back and blast away/keep the enemy away from you. Its stupid good.OK, I have to admit I don't really know anything about all these Bard tricks you are referencing. I'm playing one in 3.5 and the class appears strictly inferior when played in any non-cheese mode. I'm not saying the 3.5 Bard doesn't WORK, it is just pathetically weaker than a full caster. The cleric and the wizard KICK ASS, and the Bard plinks away on his instrument and once in a while casts a minor spell. The rest of the time he tries and fails to be a rogue, lacking key things like open locks etc. He can shoot a bow credibly well, his bardic music is modestly useful, and his spells come in handy, but that's about it. Lore is handy, but to call him a skill monkey seems overblown. He's got a rather narrow skill list, which isn't seemingly particularly better than the other PCs. Maybe I'm missing something there, but as I see it the class lacks a clear focus and you'd be vastly better off playing a MC'ed wizard/rogue instead in a mechanical sense.Now, THEMATICALLY, I think the 3.5 Bard is fine. Truthfully the problem really isn't so much with the bard itself as it is with the whole balance of the game. Still, in play it feels like you had to lose 50% of your effectiveness to play a fun theme, and I'm not even level 2 yet and already outstripped by every other PC in the party. That was roughly my impression. I really don't listen much to the complainers about classes in 4e, they overblow things a lot.Yeah, I have never personally done the comparison, but it seemed a bit weak to me. Still playable though.Eh, they work OK in paragon. Its like all the e-classes, if you compare your character to some optimized PHB1 build you just cry, but if you just play it then it works and you find that 4e really plays well with non-optimized characters. The problem was that the first batch of classes/feats/items had a lot of cruft and a lot of loopholes. They are really quite overpowered at higher levels in competent hands. Not enough to break the game quite, but enough to degrade it and make the more fun interesting builds look bad. So when you get a Vampire, or a Bladesinger, or many of the e-classes to some extent, then they look bad and uninteresting as combat options by comparison to the super stupidly tricked out 25th level Battlefield Archer larded with 101 minor-action attack tricks and PBS feat chain. I play with people that don't care about charops though, they take feats and pick classes that work for them, and they are reasonably effective, but if someone plays a Vampire then at level 20 they aren't doing 1/8th of the damage of the rogue or 1/4 as much as the wizard.</blockquote>

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