Ok, now I highly recommend Eschalon. It is easily among the most polished indie games I have ever had the pleasure of sampling. It's also been a constant cause of delay in work on Eclipse.
Without further ado, here's the Bard:
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Bard
Class Skills*: Music (See special for more details)
Special*: At creation, the Bard can select 3 more skills that function as class skills. There are no restrictions on what skills they may choose for their extra skills.
Restrictions: Cannot wear medium or heavy armor, cannot wear gloves or gauntlets, cannot wear headwear. Casting Bardic Spell-songs requires an instrument.
Description: Here's to the Bard! Musician, magician, and scoundrel, the Bard is a wandering poet whose talents include powerful magical effects through the act of Music. While all forms of music have latent magic within them, only a True Bard can utilize them to their fullest.
Legends state that the first True Bard sold his soul to a devil at some crossroads, in exchange for the magical knowledge. For the next several years, he traveled, sang, and taught; and brought up a legion of followers who formed the foundations of the modern Bardic culture. He himself, however, died shortly afterwards, under mysterious circumstances. One does not bargain with devils lightly!
A Bard tends to travel light and alone; or with a few other Bards as part of a band of musicians. As such, they are generally a Jack-of-all-trades of sorts; learning several necessary skills but never becoming proficient in anything other than their music.
Originally, the player would have selected a second class, and it would have been somewhat like the old AD&D 2E multiclass characters in that it shared the abilities of both classes. I changed it to 3 selectable skills to keep the variability up, without over-powering it. The restrictions help balance it out some.
However, you can still have a Magical powerhouse, picking up Sorcery, and Psionics to give one character access to every magical ability in the game potentially.
Any PC can learn the Music skill, which lets them use various magical instruments. However, only a Bard-classed character can learn and use the spell-songs. Other Bards will only train fellow Bards.
The origins is a reference to a certain Blues musician, Robert Johnson. Legend has it that he sold his soul to Satan (or possible a politician, hard to tell the difference) in exchange for being able to play guitar really well.
While his guitar work was still not outstanding by even the standards of the day, his songwriting was superb, and well remembered today. I'm sure you've heard of "Crossroads" and "Sweet Home Chicago".
I suggest picking up any handy collection you find of Mr Johnson, whichever has the most music on it, as well as Eric Clapton's "Me and Mr. Johnson", which is EC's versions of many of Johnson's songs. Clapton has long played many of those songs, such as "Have You Ever Loved A Woman", "Rambling on My Mind", and "Kind Hearted Woman".
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Bardic Magic
Bardic Magic is the magic of music. Requiring skill and ability in some musical instrument, Bardic magic is somewhat tiring, and more limited with it's few spell-songs. However, it is very powerful. Obviously, Bardic magic can be silenced, and the user needs both arms healthy to use it.
Bardic magic is more general in application; it's spell-songs have general effects on a given area, or on all who hear it. Currently, there are 12 songs planned; each with a non-combat and a combat version. I may rework this into having specific songs for combat and non-combat. Depends on if I feel up to writing more than 12 songs for the game. Or if I adapt some of my existing, more modern pieces.
One of the original effects was to alter the weather; to give an idea of how it worked. Another was to grant a temporary HP Regen trait to everyone within hearing range (including enemies!), and yet another had the expected effect of preventing random encounters by causing all who heard it to fall in a daze. Which included the PC's, who had to make a save each step. Which is why I removed that song.