D&D 2E 2e Bard vs Wizard Class Balance

[dmhelp]

Were the bard benefits worth losing 7th to 9th level spells and slower spell progression?

You could use some armor, but not cast spells in it.

You could use all weapons, but had rogue thac0.

You gained the least useful thief skills.

You gained some minor song abilities (usually buffed in video games).

If bards were not up to snuff what did they need?

 

[James Gasik]

Well the xp tables only help them in the early parts of the game. While it takes 2500 xp for a Mage to hit level 2 and the Bard is already level 3 at that point, by the time the Bard can cast a 10-die fireball at level 10 (160,000 xp), the Mage is level 9, and has a 5th level spell to throw around, an order of magnitude above the Bard's single 4th-level spell. Because Mages can specialize, they gain more spell slots, and they automatically receive spells when they level up.

Similarly, a 20th level Bard has 6th level spells, but with the same xp, a Mage is 16th level and throwing around 8th level spells; a big difference.

The Bard must always find spells to scribe into their book, subject to the same rules as the Mage. The Bard also does not receive a 10% bonus to experience for having his Prime Requisites at 16 or higher (and unlike the Mage, even if he did, he has two, Dexterity and Charisma vs. Intelligence).

This isn't to say the Bard doesn't shine in some situations; their ability to use magic items was superior to the Thief's, they had a chance to identify magic items or produce useful bits of lore without needing magic, and in cases where caster level matters (say you're playing a Spelljammer campaign, a Bard makes for a great helmsman). But their other abilities are too lackluster; their fighting ability is poor, while they could have better AC, it turns off their spellcasting, and inspiring others is about as useful as a Bless spell, and harder to use.

I would suggest the following: allow Bards to cast spells in armor (no shield). Or at the very least, allow them to wear leather armor, if that's a sacred cow you're not willing to slay. Allow for elven chain maybe? Make bardsong easier to use in battle (one turn as opposed to three full rounds), and provide better bonuses than a simple Bless spell at higher levels. Trade out Climb Walls and Pick Pockets for more useful abilities to a group (I like Find/Remove Traps and Open Locks to be good choices) so that your Bard provides real utility for a party worried about traps and ambushes, and is a viable alternative to a Thief (or Thief/Mage).

And that's probably enough; while I'd like the Bard to have slightly better combat ability, survivability, and magic use, you can't have all three. If you still find the Bard a bit weak, you could offer them one of two choices at creation: d8 Hit Die and Cleric Thac0 OR the ability to specialize in a school of magic if they desire.

 

[Voadam]

They also got better HD than wizards, combined with their lower xp requirements they generally had a lot more hp than a wizard.

A 2e half elf bard was generally similar to a B/X elf with the exception of the 2e armor restriction.

 

[Ath-kethin]

Bards were one of my favorite classes in 2e, and I truly wish the 5e bard followed that design intention. It was a feasible gish, and it was easy enough to handwave or reskin the music requirement if it didn't fit your character concept. A bard wasn't great at anything, but could fill in for almost any other class in a pinch. I miss that tradeoff.

 

[James Gasik]

I don't mind the Bard as a full caster, since their spell list is less robust than a Wizard or Cleric's to justify their other class abilities. But while that balance works out ok now, it would not have flied in 2nd Edition. Also as to Bard hit points, we're talking what, another 10 hit points on average? That's not nothing, but we're basically talking being able to tank one more hit from an Orc. Hit points were terrible in 2e unless hit point rolls were fudged (very common) or you were a Warrior class with a really good Constitution. Compare a 16 Con Bard (max hit points, 80) vs. an Elven Fighter-Mage with a 17 Con (max hit points 98*).

*I think. HIt points for Multi-classed characters was always confusing, so this could be 96.5 or even 91.5 (depending on whether or not you applied the extra +1 to Wizard Hit Dice or not).

 

[Willie the Duck]

Bards, Rogues, and even Rangers to some extent in 2E were all in the same boat -- their abilities looked good on paper (being generalists with broad ability), but once you were plunging into the dungeons and going up against waves of monsters, they generally didn't perform as well as specialist casters or warriors (or even very often fighter-mages).

Mind you, 2E isn't really balanced to begin with. Especially once the splats started coming out. You picked what you wanted because you liked the flavor.

 

[James Gasik]

Yeah, especially when a Specialty Priest of Coyote gets all the thieving abilities up to 10th level, lol.

 

[dmhelp]

I was thinking of modifying the bard spell progression slightly so that they get the same maximum spell level as a wizard of equal experience (but less spells overall, so almost like the opposite of a specialist wizard). It ended up being the same number of spells per day compared to the standard PHB bard, until level 20 when they got one extra.

Level​	1​	2​	3​	4​	5​	6​	7​	8​
1​	1​	​	​	​	​	​	​	​
2​	1​	​	​	​	​	​	​	​
3​	2​	​	​	​	​	​	​	​
4​	2​	1​	​	​	​	​	​	​
5​	2​	2​	​	​	​	​	​	​
6​	2​	2​	1​	​	​	​	​	​
7​	3​	2​	1​	​	​	​	​	​
8​	3​	2​	1​	1​	​	​	​	​
9​	3​	2​	2​	1​	​	​	​	​
10​	3​	2​	2​	1​	1​	​	​	​
11​	3​	3​	2​	1​	1​	​	​	​
12​	3​	3​	2​	2​	1​	​	​	​
13​	3​	3​	3​	2​	1​	​	​	​
14​	3​	3​	3​	2​	1​	1​	​	​
15​	3​	3​	3​	2​	2​	1​	​	​
16​	4​	3​	3​	3​	2​	1​	​	​
17​	4​	4​	3​	3​	2​	1​	1​	​
18​	4​	4​	4​	3​	3​	1​	1​	​
19​	4​	4​	4​	4​	3​	1​	1​	​
20​	4​	4​	4​	4​	4​	2​	1​	1​

 

[James Gasik]

It's an interesting idea, but you do realize that this has the odd result of Bards getting new levels of spells before Wizards do? A Wizard needs to hit 13000 xp, for example, to cast their first 3rd level spell. The Bard using this progression would get to do that at 10000 xp!

 

[TBeholder]

I don't see why Bard or other "lesser spellcasters" should have highest-level spells like primary spellcasters. It's not like everyone with improving to-Hit chance can take specialization like Fighter. But it's only a part of the problem.
Another part is whether our obeisance to the ill-defined idea of “balance” requires to compare characters of the same level or the same XP total. The former doesn't make much sense, the latter runs into the fact that in AD&D2 Individual XP award are a thing, thus XP sums in one party will not be the same, and even the sign the disparity for the specific party will strongly depend on the campaign.

Of course, Bard class does have problems specific to it. Bard class in *D&D in general (on High Concept level) is built around a mix of capabilities that are either:

1. Stealthy.
2. Showy, i.e. the opposite of stealthy.

Obviously, these subsets don't mix well. Also, the stealthy subset is necessarily inferior to that of the purely stealth based class.
Looking at the context, in AD&D1 it was introduced as a prestige class for rather high level and already dual-classed characters. AD&D2 version is a simplification of this.
Considering 2 points above, if it looks a bit broken, and it's not clear how to fix it without breaking in an overpowered way (within framework of AD&D2), this should not be a surprise.

Another view of the problem is: Bard and all other "lesser spellcasters" (as well as Hammer Horror Cleric) are ersatz-multiclasses. As such, they were needed in AD&D1-2 at all only due to multiclassing being too clunky. And as an atavism of a hundred Exxtra Kustom classes with their little Exxtra Kustom spell lists in an older edition that didn't have multiclassing at all.
But in this context, the first question necessarily is: if “Bard” class as presented is de facto an implicit Thief/dabbling-Wizard(Song)/pure-Bard multiclass, what would purified dabbling-Wizard (<thaumaturgy school>) and pure-Bard classes look like? To the laboratory!