Taurec's page

1) Unless you have a 24 Charisma by level 7, you're now out of 3rd level spells (haste and good hope). That's a substantial amount of resources to blow all at once.

2) 3.5 has a tradition of not balancing feats buffing the same thing from multiple sources. Song of the Heart + Inspirational Boost + MW Drum was broken before Pathfinder. Is it necessary for PF to go back and fix every broken feat or item or spell in 3.5?

3) Considering that the spells enable (as oppose to disable or destroy the bad guy), they're not that out of hand. A wizard could cast 2 empowered scorching rays in the same time at the same level. No one is going to argue that is overpowered, but it is 84 average damage. . . enough to kill most CR 7 encounters by itself.

My point was not to say that Pathfinder should rebalance all previusly published feats and spells but at least they should look an the boni certain abilitys provide and look for stacking outrages befor they introduce them (for example inspire courage, Good Hope and recitation)

Adding Good hope and at the same time removing other options like inspire greatness song of freedom is something that bothers me here. This and the lack of options to refine / broaden your bardic music with feats like the Cleric with his Channel energy can is my point. At the moment all i see is more stacking less options for the bard and his bardic music. Everything points to inspire courage wether you use the above discribed options or not.

As for the recources there is alway the option to use scrolls or let the wizard/cleric cast the haste spell. If you do the math you will soon find out that the enhance spells/abilitys are by far better than the damage spells because they enance everybody: characters animal companions, Horses (take a look at the former war horse) and gods forbids summoned Monster.
Add up the damage and your evoker starts multicassing with fighter out of frustration.

I share the opinion that the pathfinder bard feels broken. The delay of core skills to later level due to the versatile performer class feature is in contradiction to what a Bard should be.
My main issue with the Bard though is not the decreased power compared to the other classes but the bad backward compatibility of the Bard to existing 3.5 products.
Over the years Wizards of he Coast published some nice character options (Feats, Spells Magic Items, Prestige Classes). Pathfinder changed several related core feature as a result many of these options went obsolete or seem (at least to me) a bit overpowered.
Several of the nice Bardic Music feats: e.g. Melodic Casting Lingering Song (and in context the Harmonizing weapon enchantment) are no more valid to take and would be substituted by Extra Music.
More exotic feat options like Windsinger (stormwrack) and Snowflake Wardance do not fit in the new rounds per day mechanic and require heavy adjustment.
As mentioned before Inspire greatness feels useless now in contrast Inspire courage got even better than it was in 3.5 to a point that I would say it is broken if you consider all basic options. Let me give you an example:
A 7th level Bard gives a +2 inspire courage bonus.
Taking the Song of the Heart Feat (Eberron Campaign Setting) and the Inspirational Boost Spell (Spell Compendium) raises this Bonus to +4.
If he Bard uses a mw Drum (Complete Adventurers) the Attack and Damage bonus increases to +5. As This bonus is no longer a moral Bonus it stacks with Good Hope Spell to +7. To grand this bonus the bard only need one round of actions (swift action move action and Standard action) The next Round he casts Haste increasing the Attack bonus further and granting an additional Attack.
A 7th level Bard who is accompanied by a 7th level Cleric pushes it over the top when the Cleric casts Recitation (Spell Compendium , luck bonus) resulting in a:

+11 Attack +7 Damage +5 to all Saves (+8 to fear effects) +3 to AC in round 2 for all Party members plus enhanced movement or additional Attacks.

I’m pretty sure this is not the kind of boost the pathfinder designers had in mind when they changed the Bard and the types of Boni different spell grant. At this point boni stacking does not end spells like Rage, and other enhancement spells like Enlarge stack with this already insane combat bonus.

In conclusion the bard is not weak as stated before but in my opinion it is the part of the book that is least thought thru. He lacks the versatility and Jack of all trade feeling but instead mutated into a bonus giving monster. There are no real Feat options for the Bard in the book like for Clerics and Barbarians.
I hope the designers think again on the bard and provide him with valid options in future supplements and fix the backward compatibility.

This power seems to be a bit out of line as you can move your opponent without any restisance (exept that you must hit the target).
This came to when i was reading the "Quotoctoa´s wrath" encounter in "Here there be monsters" (Dungeon142).
Fighting on a cliff edge or something like that is a common setting and dangerous enough with the existing bullrush rules.
I suggest to make the abilty depandent on the subjects CMB either by an aditional rol ore a damage threshhold depending on the size of the subject to be moved.
This would make this ability a bit more complicated but there are so many deadly suroundings (water, swamp, lava pools etc.), that moving your enemy at will with minimal resistance can make such enviroment dependant encouters to dangourus.

You could actually interpret it this way but what would be the result of this?
Clerics with no real ties to there chosen domains if they take a prestige class, wizards who only get there bonus spells for schools halfway if they take a prestige class.
The later one is not that big issue from the compatibility point of view, but the first one is as many cleric prestige classes depend on domain access.

You take a PrC theorectically to advance some abilities at the cost of others. The plain fact is that under 3.5 the PrC's were made too well, so well in fact that the 20th level base class player became more rare then hen's teeth.

I agree with you, but pathfinder clerics are as they are written at the moment hardly compatible with any prestige class from any source. The problem is that the designers did not separate the class powers from Spell casting abilities (Caster Level).

In 3.5 if you are granted another domain during game play, you get all of it's abilities. This case is no different, as far as I can tell.

3.5 domains used Caster level as well: It just gave you bonus spells, even if you classed out of cleric.

That’s right! But the design goal of the new Domains was to buff the Cleric compared to the prestige classes and the new divine base classes, and make the Cleric class a valid choice compared to a prestige class. If you make everything caster level dependent and give the prestige classes the same access to the new domain powers than again there is no point in being a cleric past level 7.

I think it will be very hard to make the new domains backward compatible.
I would go back to the old format where clerics have domain spells, depending on the caster level and add class level depended domain abilities above level one. This way the player can choose weather to take a prestige class and advance there or getting the fancy new domain powers.

Same for the Wizard: Tie the Bonus Spells to the Caster Level (as in 3.5) and the School Abilitys to the Wizard level. Again this way the character can choose between prestige class and base class.