POOPOO MCBUMFACE said:
Right, fuck it, reinstalling. We'll see how far I get this time. Now to remember my party setup... think I had a dragon-thing fighter, mook ranger, female hobbit bard, human valkyrie, human mage and dwarf cleric. Thinking of dropping the bard, I went for it because of that one ludicrously good item they apparently get but I'm not sure I can be bothered with it. Switch it for an alchemist, maybe? Can't remember the classes too well.
Bards are awesome. Sure, their bonus to communication is useless, but they are the most versatile class ever.
Bard uses magical instruments that cast powerful spells, using up only stamina, can pickpocket, can tackle locks and traps (albeit poorly), has good starting values of artifacts and mythology, can use a large number of bard-only items many of which give hefty boosts, can be made into serious frontliner, or ranged attacker on top of bardic skills, especially with help of class specific gear and/or Bloodlust sword, and accelerates party recovery 2x when camping.
Finally, a bard with maxed out music skill and high enough bard level to use all the instruments, can be dualed with almost no ill effects other than loss of bard specific gear (not instruments!), loss of party recovery boost and loss of laughable communication skill boost.
OTOH, alchemists have access to alchemical spells which include all the clouds, can spontaneously produce potions and bombs while camping, have great alchemy, which is no less broken as a source of income than it is in Morrowind, and make a decent monster identifiers and grenadiers.
Still, they are not nearly as versatile as Bards.
Also, you don't seem to have any lock&traps specialist apart from Bard, so dropping her would be bad.
Ranger will start developing into mini-alchemist and Valkyrie into mini-cleric at lvl5, so if you really do want to substitute something, you might want to swap Valkyrie or Cleric for someone Psi-capable like Monk or Psionic.
