I'm about to start the game but I'm having issues with deciding who to include in my party. Is it worth it to have a Bard in my group? What are their advantages/disadvantages in a nutshell?

advantages: cheaper stuff if you use the bards high cha to buy stuff, consider this redundant if you have a sorceror though, the immunity to fear song is good, none of the other songs seem to do much for me though.... their healing spells make em a useful backup healer...

disadvantages: weak spell casting, get shredded in melee combat...

Not worth it trust me in te middle of the game they get useless and u get mad at your self because u wonder y u put a bard in your group and u end up starting the game over agian! They are the weakest characters in m opionion except for Haer'Dalis!!!!!

Bards have the same fighting skills as thief, but they get to cast mage spells too, at higher levels. It's like having a thief with stats boosting skills that can also cast fireball spells and such they even get some minor healing spells.. Not bad in my opinion. They make good suport characters, they can be used as mage, healer, fighter, archer, buffer, anything.

To be perfectly honest with you I only use the bards so I can take advantage of the instruments that they use. They are quite handy...What I did was to have a fighter with one level of bard to use the instruments and have the Use magic device ability up a notch.

Non-plot spoilers
There is a quest that a bard can resolve quickly. Near the Wandering Village you find a barrow wight that has lost a jewelled horn (or something) I think a high level bard can compose a song about him instead, so you don't have to go traipsing around after the horn.
Also I find that with a bard, I get more dialogue options like 'that reminds me of a tale I heard once'. I don't know if that has much of an overall effect on the dialogue though.

also the biggest plus, once they get the healing song you dont need to rest for healing spels that often, thats makes them all worthwhile

No pun intended - but for me all those *What´s the best class ???* and related questions are a bit *useless* ...
Which classes are useful or not and which is the best and the worst depends entirely on your style of playing. So there are no general answers for those questions.

Just my 2c - but lately there was quite much activity around these questions ...

Well I'm not very experienced with Bards so I just wanted some feedback as to how well they do in IWD2, what advantages and draw-backs they give to the party, and so on. This isn't supposed to be a "is the Bard the best class" thread... although it would be rather interesting to hear someone plead their case for the Bard as the best class in the game ;)

I have tried a bard and I find them troublesome, you have to control them always and in a 6 party game this can very daunting task keeping an eye on all your 6 chaarcters.