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Message: <blockquote data-quote="der_kluge" data-source="post: 179056" data-attributes="member: 945">What's wrong with the bard?  Jesus, where do I start?First off, I agree that the Bard should get more than 4 sp per level, but it really goes beyond that.  For starters, some of the skills don't make sense.  The description mentions that Bards can act as spies, yet Spot is not a class skill.  Also, they get Scry as a class skill.  For all those Bards that like to spend their days sitting behind crystal balls.  Yea, that makes sense.Solution - Add Spot as a class skill, remove Scry; Increase SPs to 6 per level.Secondly, the songs just suck.  Fascinate is somewhat useful, but it lasts a round per level, which means that it doesn't become really useful until higher level.  Inspire courage is the only really useful song Bards have.  Countersong is likely never to be used, and the suggestion song only works on fascinated creatures.  The inspire competence song is equally worthless.Lastly, Sorcerer-based spellcasting makes absolutely no sense for the bard.  For a class that's supposed to learn spells from their travels, they have severe limitations.  Here's the scenario, a Bard is at a bar, and a wizard is sitting there, and the wizard likes the Bard and agrees to teach him a new spell.  But, the Bard has already reached his maximum spells for that level.  So, the Bard says, "Sorry, I'd love to learn it, but I've already reached my maximum spells for this level.  Find me again in a week or two."   That makes absolutely no sense.  To be done right, the Bard needs Wizard-like spellcasting, and a spellbook, but obviously need a new spell progression chart to match a weak spellcasting ability.  But, there shouldn't be any limit to the number of spells a Bard can learn.The bottom line is, a Bard is NOT a jack-of-all-trades class like it used to be.  It has been designed to be ONE thing - a manipulator.  Consider the skills, the spell selection, and the songs, and the fact that it is a charisma-based class.  If you play the Bard as anything other than someone who takes spells like 'charm person', 'suggestion', and 'hypnotism', along with lots of ranks in Bluff and Diplomacy you're really shooting yourself in the foot.  I'm playing a 2nd level Bard in a game now.  She just reached 2nd level.  I went round and round with my DM about these problems, and I started working up a new Bard class, but decided that I should at least play the Bard as is before trying to play a new class.  It seemed only fair.  I still have my reservations that the Bard is an extremely weak class.  I also made darn sure that the game was going to be HEAVILY focused on social-interaction and role-playing.  I was not going to play a Bard in a dungeon crawl, or a forest-based game, just as I would not play a druid in a city-based game.  The only change we made to the Bard was to give it Spot as a class skill.  That's it.  I'm going to play it, and have fun with it, as I really like the character concept I've come up with.  I think the Bard class is extremely limited, and really weak.  But, I'm playing it, more or less as is, and I'll post at a later date once I get to a higher level to see what I think about the class after I've played it some more.</blockquote>

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