The bard character class has gotten worse over the years. We were first introduced to the bard as a "half caster" class in AD&D 2nd Edition, and today we know it as the excellent game, For Gold & Glory. If I am playing a bard, I will go back to the source implementation and stick with a solid Second Edition retro-clone.
The Second Edition's bard character class is not an easy class to play! The ability score requirements are high, and you can only be a human or a half-elf. The idea of dwarven bards, half-orc bards, and all sorts of other bards was never a "thing" back in Second Edition.
If you want the "modern" bard, the mix-and-match races and classes, play 3.5E and never go any further. This is still a good version of the class, but beware of the infamous "Wizards' bloat," where the 3.5E bard takes 4 pages of text-heavy rules just to describe the class, whereas FG&G does it all in just one page. The Second Edition has a BX-like simplicity to the game, even though it is a repackaged First Edition and shares all the complexity and depth.
I love you, 3.5E— you are the best version of Wizards' D&D ever made —but you are horribly, terribly overwritten and a mess of unorganized ideas and concepts. The game is barely playable without cheat sheets and lengthy FAQs. You are unplayable without a copy of the 3.5E SORD, explaining things the designers failed to lay out clearly in the rules.
Um, where is our 3.5E retro-clone?
Typically, the OSR would jump in on a project like this and knock out a few million on Kickstarter, but we have never gotten a great 3.5E retro-clone yet. Pathfinder 1e needs to be sunsetted, and the time is right to rebuild a classic game, strip out the accursed OGL, and make it open for everyone to play and create for. If you do end up writing a 3.5E retro-clone, please do not clone the word count.
In the Second Edition, bards are arcane casters. In the Third, you begin to see them as mixed arcane and divine casters, where they have healing spells. This is where the entire class starts to go off the rails. No longer do you need to play smart, figure out how to make a limited power set work for you, and lean heavily on your bard abilities. In the Third Edition, magic (and the written rules) starts to replace player skill. And you begin to think a bard can replace a cleric, which is just wrong.
A well-played Second Edition bard takes a lot of player skill to make it work; it is not an easy class. Your "party strength" will decrease, since you do not have a pure thief or mage in the party anymore. The bard will constantly need to prove themselves through creative play, a design choice I like. By the Fifth Edition, forget it, the player pandering has taken over, and the bard class is equal to or stronger than most pure caster classes, with better and more flexible powers. There is no such thing as a well-played Fifth Edition bard since the class is so easy.
Back here in Second Edition, if I had to pick one: bard, thief, or mage? That is a tough choice to make, and the bard always comes out second or third, depending on the amount of social roleplay we expect. Is this a dungeoning game? I would go for the thief. Is this a long-term campaign? Then, the mage. Only in social games does the bard begin to creep up in desirability, and then we factor in the far more desirable ranger for exploration campaigns.
And forget letting a low-skilled player pick a bard. This isn't some sort of gatekeeping; it is just that the class isn't for novice players or players unwilling to make it work. You need to be an excellent player to turn a class that has a very narrow and specific power set into an asset, and there will be moments where you will change the direction of the campaign.
Player skill matters!
But, a Second Edition bard in combat? Chainmail, no shields, and a bow, and you are not a front-line fighter. You can't shoot your bow and sing, so to grant the inspire courage bonus, you need to be performing for three rounds, and the bonus begins on the fourth. The fight could be over, and you haven't even gotten to the chorus yet. You don't get spells until the second level. But join the club, in Second Edition, everyone sort of sucks; you just suck a little less in a few social areas.
But again, this is what makes Second Edition fun. You are not over-reliant on "the designers giving you powers and abilities." You need to use your brain for once, and not your character sheet. You are a second-level bard. You know one first-level spell per day. You have a few thief skills and no backstab. You have a few specific class abilities. How do you make yourself useful?
Go to the armory and start buying weapons. Get a bow and help out as a ranged attacker. Lean heavily on your lore, counter song, and hear noise abilities. Be the person who can help identify magic items. Know your ultra-specific class abilities and use them every chance you can get. But for the most part, you will be a second-line melee fighter and primary ranged attacker.
Put your delusions of grandeur away and learn how to contribute to party damage without special, flashy, overdone player-pandering powers. In many regards, you are like a ranger or paladin, someone with a few special tricks that needs to be able to fight in melee or put out consistent ranged damage.
Everyone needs to worry about gear, encumbrance, and hand-to-hand combat. You need to be smart to make a limited set of powers work. The designers are not shoving powers at you to make the game easy and constantly distract you. If I play a bard in 5E? I can mostly ignore the equipment list. If I play a bard in 2E? Chainmail weighs 40 pounds, and I am already pushing toward becoming lightly encumbered. I may go for leather or studded leather and carry gear and treasure.
I need to make wise choices here, not just "armor up to the max" like you do in modern D&D.
In the First and Second Editions, your gear and speed of movement are a part of your "character build," and each piece of gear you can carry is like a specialized power. Do you have a rope and a grappling hook? No climbing skill rolls are needed, and even the other characters in the party can climb a rope. That rope is a "get out of jail free" card you can pull in specific situations that mostly lets you bypass needing to make skill or ability rolls.
Modern D&D (3.5E and beyond) tends to "screw the players" and assumes you need to constantly make skill and ability rolls to attempt actions with equipment. In classic D&D (1E and 2E), equipment works like a "modern game character power" and mainly does not require a skill roll. You pay the price in hauling that rope around and suffer encumbrance penalties, guess what? That rope will work wonders when you need it to. That rope is now part of your "character build," and you are free to use it in whatever creative way you want to, and I, as the referee, will be very generous when it comes to you using it.
This is a huge, huge difference between classic D&D and modern D&D.
In modern D&D, they need to use skill systems to weaken equipment, and they ignore encumbrance rules to do so. What "gives you power" is what "the designers grant you," like they were benevolent, all-controlling gods. Equipment is often used to gatekeep skill rolls, preventing you from even attempting the action without it.
In classic D&D, equipment grants special character powers and replaces the modern design theory of "designers giving you toys" like you were children needing to be entertained. You pay the price in hauling backpacks filled with junk, tracking the weight, and balancing your load and treasure-hauling capacity, and you get instant, no-roll-needed benefits. Don't have equipment? Okay, give me an ability score roll and pay the price for not having the right tools for the job.
There is such a stark, fundamental difference here; I do not know why more people do not see it.
And if you want to play bards and modern character classes, go back to Second Edition and try For Gold & Glory. I would skip 1E clones that try to remake bards, and just experience the classic design again. You may find you like the gritty, innovative, creative play style here better than you do, with game designers consistently tossing toys and powers at you to try to please you.
Second Edition rocks, and it improves on every concept and design later ruined by overgenerous game designers in 3E and beyond, while still giving you the OG modern classes and roles. This is where modern gaming originated, and it is the purest form of what we know as D&D today.
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