Bards, in general, are exceedingly powerful both in combat and outside of combat. One of the big problems as well, something Lichmaster very briefly kind of alluded to but didn't mention directly, is that bard get a bunch of cool abilities, but as they level up they don't really get MORE, they kind of just get access to them all at once. So you're going from a class that has a handful of really powerful abilities and you can only choose one, to a class that can just have the entire handful all at once with no meaningful choice involved.
Let's take a look at my party's bard, for example. So bear in mind, he went Minstrel and by level 8 had a +5 CHA and a +2 WIS and a really good CON as well, so he was rolling with 7 bardic inspirations. More than average, but I don't think ANY bard should have less than a +4 in CHA by level 8 so that's not crazy to me. He chose the focus that allowed him to affect a number of creatures with his hymns = to his CHA, he went with the Vocal specialty, so he had advantage on every concentration check, and once he hit level 11 he changed his Hymn Focus (because we asked him) to "Hymns no longer require concentration" and took the Vocal master, so his spells could never fail concentration checks
So at almost any point in the campaign he could:
- Give the entire party +5 to all saving throws
- Give every creature disadvantage on hitting ANY member of the party
- Give the entire party 1d8 or later 1d10 temporary hit points per turn
- Never possibly fail any concentration checks for both Hymns and Spells
- Cast both a concentration spell AND a hymn at the same time
And all of this wasn't even mentioning the other insane things he COULD have done, like being able to multi-cast polymorph and just have multiple giant monkeys on the field. Now, naturally, the counter-argument to this is "But it all costs 1 bardic per turn", but honestly? That's not even a high cost. Even if he only had 5 bardic as would be normal if he didn't have the Minstrel subclass, that's 5 entire rounds he can do this. Not to mention he can, as a reaction, switch any of the hymns at the end of a creature's turn. Bards barely use their reactions, so this is almost always an option. I understand I'm glossing over minor costs that contribute to chipping away, but in terms of game-feel, it genuinely just seemed to my entire party (the bard himself included) that he could just keep this up for an entire combat without it ever even eating into a single of his other incredibly powerful resources like spell slots. Further, by level 5 he gets all his inspiration back on a short rest, so he can basically go nova twice per dungeon. The 60-foot range on Hymns is also insane because Hymns only specify a creature needs to perceive your performance, so you can totally do it behind full-cover as long as your party isn't deaf. Idk how big you all make your maps, but a 60-foot RADIUS is basically the entire map unless you've decided to suicidally move a million miles away from your party. It also didn't feel good that I, as the DM, was pressured to build encounters specifically to counter him. I don't WANT to have to throw in a "Dispel Magic" user in every combat encounter, I don't WANT to have my big baddies supernaturally just "know" who to target.
All of this is to say, the bard feels tremendously
passively powerful, which isn't a good type of power, at least to me and my party. It doesn't feel like they have meaningful choices, they have incredibly powerful choices that always work, affect basically everyone, and are nothing more than a "set it and forget it" mentality. They get almost all of their tricks at a relatively low level, and all levelling up does is mean they don't have to choose, they just get more of their tricks all at once, and that doesn't help with their level scaling. There are also some cool ideas in there that are just never capitalized on, like having bards specialize in a "School" of magic, but that's only used for like three of their ten arts, and one of them is very useless
So I didn't see a viable way of "tweaking" this, and by the end of looking over all of this, I realized there just wasn't any salvaging this class as it is. I ended up re-writing pretty much the entire battle hymns, hymn focus / specializations, and both art specializations and art masteries, as well as a few supporting rules baked into the Bard class to help smooth everything over. Like I said, we haven't playtested any of it yet (my party is in a long downtime at the moment), but it looks very promising
Sorry for the effort-post lmao
