subplotkudzu | The Bard Debate

Corylus and I were discussing D&D the other day, and apparently the RPG Town Hall's Gamers, Ethics & Religion board has a strong anti-Bard sentiment. I'm not sure why? Is it because as they're designed as a generalist and therefore not as optimized as the other classes? I have gotten the sense from other people in the hobby that Bards are weak or useless, and this doesn't gibe with my experience.

The Arabian Nights game has

netcurmudgeon's bard, Khalil, who I certainly think the player has found highly effective. As GM I've never seen him as weaker than other members of the party. The old curmudgeon has some awful dice luck when it comes to taking damage with that character, but experience shows that it's just dice luck, and he's done some impressive examples of stayupedness when needed.

Of course, Khalil might be helped by the nature of the Arabian Nights setting: no one is wearing heavy armor, there's lots of talking and storytelling with the NPCs, the genre rules dictate that mercy and charity work and that most people can be convinced of the error of their ways. This obviously all plays to the Bard's strengths in a way that heading down into the dungeon does not -- the Arabian Nights genre could very well need a communications specialist.

Specific to this group, there is no Cleric among Khalil's allies (as opposed to my other game, set in Russia with a Russian Orthodox Paladin, a Khazar Rabbi & an Earth Cultists Ranger - healing is thick on the ground), which gives him the niche of being the groups healer with his Cure Light and Cure Moderate wounds spells. His other magic lets him take out specific opponents (sleep, hold person) and alter thee field of battle (silent image, glitterdust, plus his singing), and when I built the character I made sure none of the other spellcasters had his spells to prevent shtick dilution.

Finally, the PCs were built in a distinctly non-optimized manner ($), which may have had an effect. As GM I prevented shtick dilution by not giving Cleric as an option, and the party rogues don't have the same skills. This system also made Khalil the highest Str character to start with the only magic sword and shield. This is not the usual Bard structure, but it certainly made him combat effective in relation to the other PCs

Maybe that's what it takes to make the Bard work as a class - setting plus carving out additional niches. I don't know. I'm interested to hear any other D&D players thoughts.

Mind you, we're still using the 3E rather than 3.5 rules round here, and we weren't all buying another round of the things.