First level spells feel useful and powerful, only having 2 though makes me feel completely useless pretty quickly if I do not hold onto them. I am sure most casters feel like this. If the party is a lot of martial classes or martial classes and a cleric I am counting on not being useful for 80% of fights.
Inspire courage, The + 1 starts out feeling really cool, but I quickly realized it doesn't do a lot. +1 to attack only makes the attack 5% more likely to hit with how high Monster AC is it is unlikely to affect crit chance at all as Nat 20's seem like the must hit for a crit. The + 1 damage sounds useful, until you realize that if that 1 damage is not the difference between it being alive and it being dead than it is just adding to overkill from a later hit.
Skills: this is actually what feels the worse about this class. You start with 6 skills + your intellect bonus trained, but because you do not get anymore skills ranked up per level than any other class it does not feel like it matters if it is 6 skills, 5 skills or 3 skills, you will still only be able to get 3 to legend or 2 to legend and 1 to master and 1 to elite, and you will always feel the need to get performance up first which causes you to fall behind everyone else who will be taking what ever skill they feel is most useful for the campaign. It makes the bard, which I have always felt to be the "skill monkey" next to the rogue, feel like the least flexible character in terms of skills as you are pigeon holed into maxing out one of your skills for in combat performances.
Overall: spells are nice in the few fights you get to use them, if you do not have a cleric you will not get to use anything except healing spells because you do not have enough slots and your spells are not strong enough to justify using them over keeping the fighter or barbarian topped off. Skills feel awful do to being pigeon holed into a skill and thus having less flexibility than other classes while still having just as few skills as them. As cool as Inspire courage sounds on paper it has very little real affect. Ultimately there seems to be very little reason to bring a bard or even an occult spell caster for that matter over any other class. They just do not bring anything to the table except a good laugh at how ridiculous you can play them.
Inspire courage is one of the strongest buffs in the game right now. You impact the whole group, and that means the damage you add should actually be multiplied by the group members acting. So in your example of more martials than casters you are even more effective!
On the first attack of the turn, that +1 will enable a higher critical range for a lot of minion class enemies, turning a hit into a one shot kill in many cases.
For skills, you really need to take flexible performance into account, which allows you to multiply that wasted investment in performance into more higher level skills than other classes.
So I don't want to invalidate your feelings about the class, just to give some perspective that may help you to reevaluate your experience. In my Playtest, I distinctly remember two cases where the +1 was the difference between living and dead minions. It's not as rate as you think, especially at low levels, due to minions having 1HD worth of life.
A tip.
Do not increase Performance. Do not take Versatile Performance.
There is literally no benefit whatsoever to having Expert or higher training in Performance, and it will just drag you behind with skills when you are supposed to be good at them.
Before someone mentions "having multiple skills in one", you need the other skills anyways to get the feats.
I am trying to have it written off the game, if it's not clear.
Thank you guys for replies. Also I would like to hear thoughts on the class from others so far as well. My feelings may change as we continue to play, but ya this has so far been the "feeling" I get when playing.
As for the inspire courage, while I know it is one of the stronger buffs of the game, I also acknowledge that SO far we haven't had an enemy that had an AC lower than 14 to my knowledge and I do not believe even with my + 1 that we can beat that by 10 with anything other than a 19 or a 20 so I guess it does increase crit range by 5%, which would kill completely 5% of the time, but I could also have attacked and hit the thing with literally any other class and had around a 50% chance that when my ally attacks it on the next turn it dies (chance of my to hit with other class) and if that was a melee class I could moved to flank the thing giving a good bonus anyway.
Further while it is adding to multiple of my allies attacks it is still just 1 damage per attack. If that 1 damage is not the difference between alive and dead than it is still over kill. Whether that over kill ends up being 1 damage, 2 damage or 4 damage by the end of the fight 4 not real damage is still not real.
That said I know for a fact that my +1 damage from inspire courage HAS been the difference between a character living and a character dying at least 2 or 3 times with just the first adventure, but I also know that if I played a martial class myself I would have had the same results with just hitting the thing 1 time and by now I would have either killed more targets or been the difference more. I think the case here may be Sacrificing Charisma down to 16 at the start to have better strength or dexterity might very well be the way to go with a bard that does not have more than 2 team mates or 3 team mates as being good with a weapon and being able to contribute directly to a fight with a weapon just seems more efficient, also in this case I believe myself just moving more towards the front so that I can move swing and cast shield on my first round and cast inspire should it go beyond that may make me feel more useful.
Ediwir wrote: A tip.
Do not increase Performance. Do not take Versatile Performance.
There is literally no benefit whatsoever to having Expert or higher training in Performance, and it will just drag you behind with skills when you are supposed to be good at them.
Before someone mentions "having multiple skills in one", you need the other skills anyways to get the feats.
I am trying to have it written off the game, if it's not clear.
That's straight up wrong. Seriously. All of your metamagic feats that do wonders for your action economy rely on good performance checks, so every bonus counts because if you manage to crit it's way better than normal, specially because you're rolling against High-Difficulty DC for EVERY level, so don't count of getting easier over time and remember that this is only on simple situations, the GM can pile difficulties depending on the situation of the story (too noisy, need for stealth, etc).
Better instruments are important as well.
Example of my level 1 bard: I managed to crit once on my performance and Inspire Courage was up for 3 rounds without any investment in actions after the fact, this left me free to move, cast telekinetic projectile magic missile on subsequent rounds. If you don't crit, you'll still be getting 1 extra round of round economy.
Just so you know, OP, Inspire Courage is better than a level 1 spell in every way, I'm talking about [Bless], which is a terrible spell now and must be buffed, but it still won't be better than inspire courage, wanna know why?
Because Inspire Courage is a single action and can have its duration extended by doing what you're good at, Performance. You'll also give better bonuses and it's an unlimited option for you.
You're basing your arguments in very wrong assumptions and evaluations, Bard is one of the most well designed class right now and with just a little bit of adjustments and it's good to go.
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I ran a group through The Lost Star and I feel that the bard was the MVP of the team. He was using Inspire Courage in every fight and there were many instances where the paladin or cleric would have missed their attacks had the bard not done so. The bard also summoned a bobcat which was able to grab a quasit trying to evade the party, enabling the others to kill the quasit easily. Sure, bards don't get the spotlight and seldom actually kill things themselves, but as it is now the bard is an excellent force multiplier for any party.
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