Balance wise Bard is actually overpowered in the right settings and NWN implementation is much stronger and better than DnD implementation where he has multiple different songs as you want to do.
There is just one change that I highly suggest, it is in my Community Patch and thats a small buff to level 30 song that requires crazy 100 perform. The strongest build uses RDD and cannot have level 30 bard anyway, so there should be an incentive and benefit of not taking RDD and going 30 bard+. In vanilla nwn, there is none.
*correction: bard 30/rdd 10 is possible, but loses 1 attack per round, not worth it. 30´bard/4bg/6rdd loses 4str 2int and 2cha to get lvl 30 song that by default grants only 1 AC more (and 1ab virtually from curse song).
Anyway, why is bard overpowered.
he can use spellscrolls for free in vanilla (as almost all of them have errorneously bard use limitation even if bard can’t cast it, CPP fixed this though)
as UMD class he can use any item in game so he can often use something strong intented for other classes, also spellscrolls, wands
there are harps for bard with useful spells
Lich lyrics
Lasting Inspiration making song lasts 100 rounds
Curse song is essentially +5-7 AB +2 AC +2 devast DC
he multiclasses extremely well with BG, RDD and also PM in vanilla, if aligment can be changed paladin too
can self buff improved invisibility, strongest buff in vanilla nwn
can self buff haste which makes him top choice in modules and servers where haste on items is not available
Just want to point out this is vanilla - and it does not (as shadooow said) follow tabletop.
Most servers modify it to at least some degree to better adhere to tabletop.
I somewhat suspect someone at Bioware really liked bard
@ Shadooow - I thought bard song was hardcoded. So you can replace the bard music with another music? What is the file? Also, is it in a .bif? If so I have never been able to do that stuff.
Shadooow meant what’s in the sound column of the visual effect. You want different sounds, you make additional vfx that are the same in that way.
The only part of bard song that’s sort of hardcoded is the engine handling for gethasfeat. Everything else is 2da (as for any feat that runs a script) or script. Might be a 3.5 implementation of bard on the vault that you could use as a template for what you want to do.
It seems that the OP was talking about actually playing a music track as the sound effect for Bard Song, instead of using the short default sound effect “dum, de-dum, de-dum” which normally plays. While that might be possible, you’d have to get hold of copyright-free music from somewhere in order to do it. Then there’s also the matter of integrating it into the game.
