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<blockquote data-quote="Herobizkit" data-source="post: 4133840" data-attributes="member: 36150">One earlier poster said it best, and I shall paraphrase thusly: &quot;If you don't max out your skills, don't bother taking them at all&quot;.&nbsp; I would add that a player should max out all of his most frequenty used skills, but should also feel free to take some &quot;knack&quot; abilities to flesh out what the character knows.In your player's case, it seems to me that he wants to be a skill monkey.&nbsp; Bards do have a lot of skill points, but still fewer points than the Rogue.&nbsp; If your player wanted to be skill-man AND a Bard, he (hopefully) made a Human and pumped his Int.&nbsp; Removing the restriction on cross-class skills is a GREAT idea; it saves your player from blowing a feat that does the same thing. Bards are feat-starved (being Masters of None), but if his Bard wants to fight in melee, he also should have pumped his Dex and taken the Weapon Finesse feat.&nbsp; With a Con of 8, he's not going to have much staying power, but hey, sometimes it's fun to tempt fate; Toughness may be an option for him.&nbsp; As for multi-classing, I can understand why he'd feel like he was short-changing his character.&nbsp; Shadowrun characters who can &quot;do it all&quot; (Decking, Magery, Combat, and Social Skills) CAN do it all with a reasonable amount of success; the Bard, not so much.&nbsp; The Bard seems to be more of a support character than a Leading Man, but really, it's all about attitude.&nbsp; IMCs, I almost always play a light-armored type with d6 or d8 HD, and I'm in melee just as often or even more often than I'm hanging back.&nbsp; That said, I have a couple of options for you.&nbsp; If you have access to Complete Arcane, there's a feat in there that lets you maintain up to 4 levels of your caster level if you multi-class... IDTBIFOM but if your player is worried about losing out on spell progression, it's a good fix.&nbsp; Lastly, multi-classing into Warlock is teh awesome for Bards; overlapping skills, free blasting power, all-day spell effects, no arcane failure in light armor and making UMD your ultimate friend is pure genius (IMO).Regardless of everything, if your player insists on making sub-optimal choices, at least consider his intent before you jump all over his design.&nbsp; Try not to penalize him, but at the same time, make it just as hard on him as everyone else.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Herobizkit, post: 4133840, member: 36150"] One earlier poster said it best, and I shall paraphrase thusly: "If you don't max out your skills, don't bother taking them at all". I would add that a player should max out all of his most frequenty used skills, but should also feel free to take some "knack" abilities to flesh out what the character knows. In your player's case, it seems to me that he wants to be a skill monkey. Bards do have a lot of skill points, but still fewer points than the Rogue. If your player wanted to be skill-man AND a Bard, he (hopefully) made a Human and pumped his Int. Removing the restriction on cross-class skills is a GREAT idea; it saves your player from blowing a feat that does the same thing. Bards are feat-starved (being Masters of None), but if his Bard wants to fight in melee, he also should have pumped his Dex and taken the Weapon Finesse feat. With a Con of 8, he's not going to have much staying power, but hey, sometimes it's fun to tempt fate; Toughness may be an option for him. As for multi-classing, I can understand why he'd feel like he was short-changing his character. Shadowrun characters who can "do it all" (Decking, Magery, Combat, and Social Skills) CAN do it all with a reasonable amount of success; the Bard, not so much. The Bard seems to be more of a support character than a Leading Man, but really, it's all about attitude. IMCs, I almost always play a light-armored type with d6 or d8 HD, and I'm in melee just as often or even more often than I'm hanging back. That said, I have a couple of options for you. If you have access to Complete Arcane, there's a feat in there that lets you maintain up to 4 levels of your caster level if you multi-class... IDTBIFOM but if your player is worried about losing out on spell progression, it's a good fix. Lastly, multi-classing into Warlock is teh awesome for Bards; overlapping skills, free blasting power, all-day spell effects, no arcane failure in light armor and making UMD your ultimate friend is pure genius (IMO). Regardless of everything, if your player insists on making sub-optimal choices, at least consider his intent before you jump all over his design. Try not to penalize him, but at the same time, make it just as hard on him as everyone else. [/QUOTE]

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