Talk:Bard/@comment-81.104.204.181-20180307004220/@comment-8506165-20190524215826

This is a very late reply, but I'll make it anyway on the offchance it's still useful to you or someone who scrolls through this comment chain in future!

I'm something of a bard enthusiast - all the old RPGs that let me play bards I tend to roll one up. So I'm probably biased here, but I think the bard tends to be criminally undersold. With that said, a party of five bards and one thief is going to struggle a bit compared to a more balanced party composition. This isn't because the bard is weak - the Mage is one of the strongest classes in the game and five mages will struggle - it's more because they're not able to utilise their strengths all that well.

Bards are quite equipment-dependent. One of their big selling points is that they can use near enough any weapons, wear any armour up to chain, and use most of the magical items in the game. The problem a five-bard party runs into is gear distribution: there's only so much elven chain or Bracers of Defence, only so many good bows, only so many scrolls for the really important spells. A full-bard party could likely still manage BG, mind, but their early game would be quite rough until they could pick up a big selection of wands, necklaces of missiles, arrows of detonation and so on. Bard Song no longer stacks in EE, so they lose out on the cheese potential of stacking that too.

However, this doesn't mean bards just suck full stop. They're still a very useful class, particularly as part of a more balanced party: they're tankier than mages while being comparable casters at early levels, with the potential to wield bows as well which are significantly powerful in BG. Bard Song isn't bad either - Jester Song will work quite often, regular Bard Song is still +1 luck which can be very useful, and Skald Song is great. If you learn your timings, you can also have your bard singing and perform actions in between the "ticks" of Bard Song, so they can still throw out a spell or loose some arrows while still providing that utility. BG also throws a lot of wands at you, so having a bard around to make some good use out of those is handy, for when the Sleep or Web spells they can cast just aren't quite cutting it.

In BG2, they'll be able to make use of most of the gear that's not going on anyone else thanks to their liberal weapon restrictions, their caster level will be higher than a Mage with equal XP for those Skull Traps and Dispel Magics and so on, and while they may not match a fighter they're not that bad at just attacking in melee or at range, particularly if you're running a Blade rather than an unkitted Bard. They can also make good use of any useful scrolls you've got kicking around to fill any gaps in their own magical arsenal, and they have a few exclusive instrument items which can be useful on occasion. They don't get the higher-level spells, but the lower levels actually contain more of the "essentials", like Stoneskin, Protection from Magical Weapons, Mirror Image, Web, Greater Malison, etc...

Once you get over 3m XP and start getting access to HLAs they get Use Any Item, for the potential to equip any of the great gear you'd otherwise be selling because it's locked to one class or not that useful for the rest of your party, Enhanced Bard Song which represents a massive increase in total damage the party deals, and of course the deadly Spike Traps, which notably can one-shot any boss in the game if you lay down enough of them before the fight begins. They can still be near-impossible to kill through a combination of Mirror Images, Spell Immunities, Stoneskins and Protections from Magical Weapons, so their poor AC won't really matter. With all the tools at their disposal they can normally find something to do for any fight. Indeed, various people have solo'd the game all the way from Candlekeep to the end of ToB with solo bards, including modded games which increase difficulty, so they're clearly not worthless.

So they may not be as good at fighting as a fighter, but with their extensive bags of tricks they can certainly be incredibly useful with a fair bit of game knowledge. They're probably not the most beginner-friendly class, but they're far from being bad. Blades in particular shine, but even an unkitted bard or a Jester can be effective in the right hands.

(Pickpocket does kind of suck though. I'll give you that one.)