A Bard Fix

[Human Paragon 3]

Reposted from Homebrew forum in hopes it will actually be read:


Yes, bards are not that bad thanks to their spellcasting, but at lower levels you know they're just not that great. They're supposed to be a jack of all trades, master of none, but instead their incompetent at basically everything. Their main class feature, Bardic Music, is usable a piddling once per day at 1st level, and it doesn't get much better until about 6 when you get Suggestion and a decent number of uses per day. Fascinate is good, but, like most Bard abilities and spells, useless against a wide variety of mindless or imune opponents.

Supposedly this is fixed by their versatility, but bards fall painfully short in every party role:

Fighting: Pathetic compared to all full BAB classes as well as monk, rogue, and the full-casting cleric. The longsword proficiency they get does not come close to making up for a lack of sneak attack and poor HP. If they want to be able to cast spells, they'll have light armor or worse, too, making them useless as a front-liner. In short, they can never take the place of the party meler in the event he goes down.

Arcane Spellcasting: Pathetic compared to that of the wizard and sorcerer. A lack of abilities and shortage of feats compounds this.

Healing: You get some, but not enough to fill the priest role adaquately should your party lack one.

Skills: You get a fair smattering of them and a good amount of skill points, but the inabillity to search for traps make you a far second place to the rogue. This would be OK- the rogue is supposed to be the master of skills- except that you are also lacking a few important adventuring skills such as survival, ride, and handle animal which actually makes you third place in the skill breakdown behind Ranger, who, like the rogue, is actually useful in combat. Bardic Knowledge is rather limited in its attempt to make up for this.

Social interactions: The Bard is great here. He shines as a party face and does it better than any other class, although sorcerer, rogue, paladin and a number of other classes can do it almost as well.

The Fix:

To round out the bard a bit, I suggest the following fixes:

Skills: All skills are class skills. This makes the bard a well-rounded skill monkey, even if his total skill output is worse than the rogue.

Hit Dice: Bring it up to a d8. There's no reason he should have less HP then the more powerful cleric. If he wants to be able to fill in for a mele class, this is a must. The standard bard is by far the worst core combatant besides wizard and sorcerer, who at least have powerful offensive spells at level 1.

Class Features:
At level 1: Bonus Feat. This feat can be taken off of either the Wizard of Fighter bonus feat list. An extra feat will do a lot to round out the bard, either giving him a much-needed combat edge over the rogue or cleric, or giving him a leg up in the magic department. This also makes him more versatile and more customizable.

Swift Aid: The bard is adept at distracting enemies. Once per round, he can use the Aid Another action in combat as a swift action. This makes up for his extremely limited use of Bardic Music at low levels.

At level 2: Insightful Dodge (When wearing light armor or no armor, the bard can add his INT bonus, if any, as a dodge bonus to is AC when not flat footed or surprised). This gives him a respectable AC making him actually useful in mele. He can't fight if he's afraid of being eaten alive by even the smallest enemies. This also frees the bard up to wear low AC check penalty armor and spellcast freely.

At level 3: Another Bonus feat to further customize the bard.


Together, these class features make the bard useful at low levels before stronger magic and musics kick in. He still isn't a better fighter than the fighter, better skill monkey than the rogue, better caster than the wizard, or better woodsman than the ranger, but he is finally second place

[Talya]

Their main class feature, Bardic Music, is usable a piddling once per day at 1st level, and it doesn't get much better until about 6 when you get Suggestion and a decent number of uses per day.

Most bards will end up with 4-5 uses of bardic music at level one (either the Artist feat or the Extra Music feat).

Fighting: Pathetic compared to all full BAB classes as well as monk, rogue, and the full-casting cleric.

They'll generally clock a monk, depending where they focused their ability scores. Most will wear a chain shirt, which with their usually highish dex score puts their AC as good as most heavy combatants at low level.

Arcane Spellcasting: Pathetic compared to that of the wizard and sorcerer. A lack of abilities and shortage of feats compounds this.

Well, yes. They're not really supposed to be as good as a wizard or sorceror, with their other abilities, but we all know it doesn't even up unless you take Sublime Chord.

Healing: You get some, but not enough to fill the priest role adaquately should your party lack one.

You can do better than a druid or an evil cleric in that role, though.

Skills: You get a fair smattering of them and a good amount of skill points, but the inabillity to search for traps make you a far second place to the rogue. This would be OK- the rogue is supposed to be the master of skills- except that you are also lacking a few important adventuring skills such as survival, ride, and handle animal which actually makes you third place in the skill breakdown behind Ranger, who, like the rogue, is actually useful in combat. Bardic Knowledge is rather limited in its attempt to make up for this.

I have generally found knowledge and interaction skills are just as...perhaps even more useful...than survival, trap sense, ride, or handle animal.

Class Features:
At level 1: Bonus Feat. This feat can be taken off of either the Wizard of Fighter bonus feat list. An extra feat will do a lot to round out the bard, either giving him a much-needed combat edge over the rogue or cleric, or giving him a leg up in the magic department. This also makes him more versatile and more customizable.

This just means bardic music is doing +3 at level 1 instead of +2. It might go a way toward helping balance the melee types, though. Animal Companions don't benefit from bardic music, while fighters do. Since almost all level 1 bards start with extra music or artist feats, it might be nice to have some customizability, but I guarantee you that that second feat would, 99% of the time, be Song of the Heart. (For human bards, it already is.)

[BardicDuelist]

Bard's don't really need to be fixed. The only thing I would add is a variant class feature that gave up one of your bardic songs for trapfinding, useable with your bardic knowledge modifier instead of search skill, that costs a use of bardic music.

Even without that, they are a fine class. They are not really a jack of all trades, but a party face. They're not supposed to be the scout, but the guy that bails the party out. They are perfectly capable of this.

With the awesome PrCs that are out, they can become rather uber too.

[Squash Monster]

Within the course of two feats, you can turn the existing bard into a melee monster that can outperform even C.o.D.zilla in certain fights.

They are Words of Creation, which doubles your Inspire Courage, and Snowflake Wardance, which lets you add Charisma to hit (I don't mean to keep pimping this feat but, well, this feat is fantastic).

The level 8 bard I was helping a player make ended up with +24 to hit. I think that's a pretty good start.

[TempusCCK]

Having never played a Bard, exept as an NPC when I DM, I cannot really say with a great wealth of experience if this fix would work, however, I can say that in my personal opinion, the Bard would probably be a much better contributor had they more options with their Bardic music.

Inspire Competence, Suggestion, bleh bleh. It's all very simple and limited. I want more magical effects from my songs. Some sourcebooks do a good job of expanding it, but were I to ever play a Bard, I would homebrew tons of different songs for my lyric adventurer to use.

[Kyeudo]

Bards don't need fixing. People just need to learn how to build bards better.

[MorkaisChosen]

Rae all these feats that make Bards so insanely awesome Fighter or Wizard bonus feats? If not, read th description...

[Aquillion]

Bards don't need fixing.

They have UMD, diplomacy, and a reason to max CHA, with some other abilities that will keep them useful the rest of the time. That alone would make for a powerful class, but they also have enough other skills and skill points to compete with rogues for the skill monkey role, minor spellcasting ability that can be helpful in a pinch, and the ability to cast in light armor.

The problem most bards make is that the focus too much on one ability of the class, especially fighting, bardic music or casting (without some PRC like Sublime Chord, anyway, or a feat chain to help in that area.) You're comparing bards to fighters, sorcerers, and clerics... that's your mistake.

Compare them to rogues. They're basically skill monkey types for a more city- or civilization- oriented adventure, and a less dungeon-trap-filled-backstabbing adventure. If you compare them to rogues with that in mind, you'll quickly see that they're not that bad at all.