Or rather, should there not at least be a psychic archetype for bards that trades out arcane spellcasting for psychic spellcasting? My reasoning for this is how the spells are cast. Many arcane spells are cast with Verbal and Somatic components whilst psychic spells are Mental and Emotional. Now, V and S can have much artistic flair, yet I feel, as a musician in real life, that M and E would play a greater part in generating supernatural effects when it comes to art-based magic.
Kind of hard to do music without sound(*), and kind of hard to do music other than singing without motion, while miming requires motion(*).
(*) Yes, I know that one modern composer (John Cage) came up with a piece called 4'33" that is just silence. But that works just once. Presumably approximately the same would be true for miming, except that you could come up with a few different weird poses to freeze in to make it work several times, but even so, not enough to make Still Spell a very good Feat investment for a Bard.
I like bards as hedge magicians, having picked up magic through a life of learning about the great mages and warriors of old. I prefer that over the psychic, "emomancer" that 4th Edition flavored them as. But I can see that as an archetype.
It seems like that would be a good optional archtype, because....
1. Not every bard uses sound. There are several non-sound based perform options.
2. A lot of bard abilities do rely on influencing thoughts and emotions.
Instead of performance, I can actually see some kind of effect that simply instills good feelings psychically into your allies.
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I'd go for an archetype, and call it the beguiler.
