Editing Bard (section)

===3rd Edition===
The idea of the Bard being the weakling class mostly started in 3rd edition. Here, it become more separate from the newly renamed Rogue, and it gained its own distinctive spell-list, which included some spells on both the [[Wizard]] and [[Cleric]] lists - Bards were the only non-Cleric non-Druid classes in the corebook to have access to Cure Wounds spells. But, individually, the class was pretty weak if taken entirely straight from the corebook; as 3e progressed, bards became more powerful because they could be customized better with feats and [[Prestige Class]]es. 3.5 Edition splatbooks almost always included good spells, feats, and prestige classes for bards--so by the end of the print run Bards had a spectacular amount of options to choose from (some extremely strong). Bards were initially classified as [[Tier System|tier 3]], though later revision of the system revised this to only being tier 3 if they had open sourcebooks and drops them tier 4 if playing core only.

On the other hand, a lot of their abilities were just ''busted''.  Bardic Knowledge basically meant they never had to worry about failing any kind of knowledge check by even mid-levels, and with even modest [[Munchkin|optimization]] their Jack of All Trades skill could let them effectively replace almost any actual skill-person in the party. Plus, even a half-caster is still a caster, and this was a [[CoDzilla|caster's world]].

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