This is kind of embarrassing, given as how I have beat every other IE game extant, but howinhell do you detect traps in IWD2? I turn on searching next to a chest I *know* has a instakill trap in it. Its one of the ones in the north of the horde fortress. Search skill is 5, which should be enough to find the damn thing, but no luck. I also tried searching for some of the traps on the bridges south of the fortress, no luck there either.

Cast Find Traps with my cleric, still nothing. Have my monk and my theif standing there searching while I cook myself a pizza, still nothing.

Has to be a bug, right? I do have the latest patch, but it didnt make any difference.

Maybe it is a glitch in your game....my ranger 'searches' and finds nearly every trap and the little rogue takes care of business from there. 'Course that's when I remember to activate the search .... ;)

Depending on which level of the game you are, your search skill will have to be at least 11 or higher. I had the same problem as well and found that the more search skills i entered i found more traps. That could one of the cases or probably that certain trap was not meant to be detected. It all depends on where you are in the game.

If you have a bard, the "tymora's melody" song helps with some skills. I used the song around twenty times, and I could easily pick any lock. Although it's almost cheating...

I still had to use bard songs at hard battles.

Do bards play a major role in the impending battles? I havent played a bard before, i thought bards were only songsters and not healers and i couldnt see where they fit in. I need healers and figthers and wizards, but havent played a bard before

Haven't played the game *yet*, but I did complete IWD (plus HoW & ToLM) and I found that a bard is quite useful to have in the party, as they can double up as secondary mages in addition to the useful bard songs they have. Much better than in BG/BG2 anyway, where the selections of songs are more limited.
Of course, IWD2 is based on 3E rules of D&D, so I'm not sure if this still holds true...

Bards are very versatile a can be used as a back up for situations. Their high Charisma make them good leaders and they can identify items (see the manual for Bardic knowledge). They learn spells like sorcerers. Bards have all the weapon skills of a fighter but without the specialisation. And on top of that you had Bard Music some of it quite helpful in battle especially War Chant of Sith.
The there are the specific bard items.

The main problem with Bards is using the right tactics, depending on the situation play them as either a second line fighter or a spell caster/musician.

Also some of the quests or dialogues have different options or outcome if you have a bard in the party. Such as Chapter Three in the Wandering Village area.

Bards probably aren't the choice of power gamers but they can make your adventuring interesting experience.