Is it just me or has anyone else noticed this? It almost seems as if the
Bard class was designed with two distinct, and antagonistic philosophies in
place.

On the one hand we have our skill sets and equipment availability's. These
when viewed alone definitely seem to put the bard in a Jack-of-all-trades,
completely self-sufficient, ultimate lone wolf mode. We can do a little bit
of everything skill wise but nothing really well and many things just barely
enough to maybe get by.

On the other hand we have our spell abilities. These are definitely
designed with bards as the ultimate party animals in mind. Our magical
abilities magnify immensely with each member we add to our group, and are
underpowered at best if we are alone with some notable exceptions.

After looking at our class thru these lenses, I came to the conclusion that
all our class balance questions seem to be caused by these two conflicting
design philosophies. Our skill set does not really support our magical
abilities well, and our magical abilities lends itself better to the skill
set of a true caster than it does to what we have. Looking at Bards this
way only makes them appear even more cobbled together than before and while
our spell system does seem to have a definitive focus that is coherent and
well thought out, our skill set pales by comparison. If our skills
complemented our magical abilities more I think there would be few
complaints, but as it is they are totally unrelated with the exception of
our instrument skills.

What do the rest of you think on this issue? Are our skills really
complementary to our magical abilities or are we a disjointed class, bound
by a conflict between two different pictures of what a bard should be that
were never resolved? Would we be better served by a simpler skill set that
improved our abilities to better align with other hybrids, or should some of
our near-useless skills be better replaced with skills more in keeping with
our more caster-like nature? If Paladins, Rangers, and Shadowknights are
melee types with some secondary spell abilities as seems apparent, shouldn't
we be more aligned to be spell types with secondary melee abilities? I
would argue our melee abilities are already secondary as we get far fewer
melee skills than the other hybrids and cannot use the high damage ratio two
handed weapons they can. Thoughts?

Kitasi of E'ci

PS I didn't come up with this all on my own, but it grew out of discussion
at the latest gathering of my guild the Armigers of Mirth at our local Dave
and Busters. It was actually our main cleric who first questioned the
dichotomy.