I discovered something the other night, logging in to DDO. Despite my love for bards and monks, I've actually found they're two of the most stressful/difficult classes to play. I think I've managed to narrow down why.
In DDO, monks get a lot of nifty, customized abilities that weren't part of 3rd edition. It adds some flavor and flash, and there's some talk about them being overpowered, which of course makes them desired by anyone who wants to be unbeatable. I have to admit that they can be very lethal in dealing out massive amounts of damage, and pretty quickly. In that regard, they're on par with a dual-wielding rogue with sneak attack. Yet fighters and rogues both have ways of dealing with the aggro that comes from dealing massive damage: fighters have more HP, and can wear shields to increase damage reduction, while rogues have an enhancement ability that decreases the aggro (or "hate" as it's called in-game) that their sneak attacks produce. Perhaps a Constitution-heavy monk would be better at taking the hits, but they'd also be less adept at giving them. Some of the monk abilities can reproduce a few beneficial (but at low to mid-level relatively unused) clerical spells, like removing blindness or curing diseases, but overall I end up feeling like I should multiclass into rogue or cleric so I can be more useful.
Bards are another issue, one that extends beyond just DDO. Jack-of-all-trades, master of none, yes, I get it. They're supposed to be able to make up for an existing lack in party balance, tossing in whatever low to mid-level magic is necessary that the cleric and wizard are too busy to cast. Plus they get the bard songs. But the bonus the party gets from the songs is minimal, and in many cases is easily replaced by spells from other classes, and you'd be hard pressed to find a party that wouldn't rather have a second cleric than a bard. Because the bard's role is so varied, you either end up wasting time trying to figure out what your role in this party needs to be, or you end up being told what you should be doing which may or may not correlate with the skills and spells you've taken as a bard. Regardless, more often than not you end up feeling superfluous or just plain weak.
More than clerics, I think bards have a significant in-game and balance reason for needing the ability to switch spells on a daily (or in DDO, per-rest) basis. It wouldn't really help their survivability, but it would let them tailor their abilities to each party a bit better, much like a wizard or cleric can. As it is, in DDO they can change one spell every 3 real-life days, and pay in-game currency for the privilege.
The rules for bard and sorcerer spells were based on a system in which the character would be played with (generally speaking) a single group. It didn't account for having five different parties in a single day, and having to re-figure your character's role in each of them.
2 comments:
Having stuck with AD&D (no bloody 2, 3, or 4) for decades, it's occurred to me more than once that monks and bards were both deliberately underpowered. More than one gamer has reinvented them. Bards, in particular, always bugged me because of having to gain 5 levels in two different classes before you even get to start on a bardic journey, and then you're still underpowered. Even your ranger buddies start to get spells before you do.
I've always regarded all the "mixed" classes as someone to plug into very small parties, where a JoT might be more useful than a specialist.
In a small party, yeah. A 3rd Ed. Bard could stand in for a cleric or wizard in a pinch, possibly even a rogue so long as the party only came across relatively easy traps and locks (3rd Ed. made an arbitrary ruling that, no matter how good you were at picking locks and disabling traps, only actual Rogues could pick, find, and disable anything above a certain difficulty level). It could be arguable, though, that the party would be better off with a cleric over a bard, even if it meant no arcane caster and not having the limited rogue abilities.
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