Bard (Advanced Dungeons & Dragons
Bards in First Edition AD&D were a special class unavailable for initial character creation. A character could become a bard only after meeting specific and difficult requirements, achieving levels in multiple character classes, becoming a bard only later. The process of becoming a bard in the First Edition was very similar to what would later be standardized in D&D as the prestige class—the First Edition bard eventually became the Fochlucan Lyrist prestige class in the Third Edition supplement Complete Adventurer.[citation needed]
To become a bard, a human or half-elf had to begin with very high ability scores: Strength 15+, Wisdom 15+, Dexterity 15+ and Charisma 15+, Intelligence 12+ and Constitution 10+. These daunting requirements made bards one of the rarest character classes. Bards began the game as fighters, and after achieving 5th level (but before reaching 8th level), they had to change their class to that of thief, and after reaching 5th level as a thief (but before reaching 9th level), they had to change again, leaving off thieving and begin clerical studies as druids; but at this time they are actually bards and under druidical tutelage.
Bards gained a limited number of druid spells, and could be any alignment that was neutral on at least one axis. Because of the nature of dual-classing in AD&D, bards had the combined abilities of both fighters and thieves, in addition to their newly acquired lore, druidic spells, all level dependent druidic abilities, additional languages known, a special ability to know legendary information about magic items they may encounter, and a percentage chance to automatically charm any creature that hears the bard's magical music. Because bards must have first acquired levels as fighter and thief, they are more powerful at first level than any other class.
This version of the bard is a druidic loremaster, more than a wandering minstrel and entertainer, though the bard does have song and poetic powers as well.
Congrats! You are a Bard!
Now that you've remorted for the first time, (this page is really for you, the first time bard), and you've spent some weeks with the game, you're ready to take on the Bardic College and discover one of the most challenging, and therefore, rewarding classes in the game. A multi-remort bard is really one of the truly powerful members of your dual-multi arsenal, allowing you to solo-farm any boss mob in the game.
Check out this page on the two remort classes.
This page is a collection point of the various Bard Class resources on the wiki.
Review each before you embark upon your long remort journey. Each provides more detail regarding the experience and equipment you'll need to navigate the bardic colleges (providing a good basis of song deployment tutorials) and the equipment you'll want to acquire along the way. Bards have severe equipment limitations, so you must pick up special damage, mana and regen equipment from your time within the college. You won't be able to return to a college that you've level graduated from, so you'll have to carefully navigate those colleges while you level qualify to run them, and then resign yourself to re-running them upon your next remort.
Statistic Re-Rolling
Upon re-remorting as a remort class, your prime statistics (STR WIS INT DEX CON CHA) will be auto-rerolled and you'll most like have to continue to re-roll at any Phrenologist until you get decent prime statistics. You'll want to re-roll at least to 6-7 to perfect stats, since your goal as a Bard is to attain 25 CHA for maximum song affect. Here's a page regarding stat re-rolling.