I played a bard in our last campaign. I liked him, but I did feel shorted in the sk pts. Thats all the bard needs to fix him up. Just those two lousy skill points, and he would have been perfect. Same goes for the ranger, too. And we need to fiddle with that whole two weapon-fighting thing, but thats another thread. In fact, thats many many many many many MANY other threads.
So what happened to him you ask? Well, I tried supplementing his skill points by taking a level of rogue. I also thought maybe with the sneak attack, he could team up on enemies with his fighter/rogue brother. Unfortunately, I didn't take rogue at first level, thus shorting myself on sk pts again, but it doesn't matter, cuz we aaaaaaalllllll died.
But lets think about this. Apparently, the designers must have thought that with his arcane spellcasting and bardic music, 6 skill pts would have been overkill. Do we mostly disagree with this?