“You’re doing great, guys… we got this…” (Hope that was inspiring, here’s your +1 Damage / +1 To Hit, please come back in 6 seconds for my repeat performance.)
I just realized how funny the concept is that we gloss over that bards basically spend the 30 seconds a fight lasts just complementing people one after the other. It feels right when combat is spaced out over a few hours, but when you condense it back down to 30 seconds it just gets goofy again.
I’ve been playing Pathfinder 2 recently, and bards are a lot more exciting there. In PF2, you get 3 actions per turn (there’s no “standard action” and “move action”, everything just costs a number of actions, so you can, for example, move 3 times, or attack 3 times, or any other combination of things), and Inspire Courage affects every ally in a 30’ radius and costs only 1 action, and is functionally unlimited aside from the action cost (you don’t have a limited number of uses per day or whatever). It’s effectively an action tax but at least it doesn’t take your whole turn to do it, and you can still e.g. cast a spell (typically 2 actions, varies by spell), or move and attack after inspiring everyone.
Bards in PF2 are also ‘full’ spontaneous casters; they feel absolutely great to play.
Just a bard? Just a bard?!
My brother in Tiamat, Bards are the most OP base class in the game!
