[mad=dog]

All right. It's just that I have personally felt my Blade stall a bit after level 30. All I can show for 3.6 million XP is one spell and a few traps and greater evasions. I think it is very reasonable to decrease the potency of certain classes, but in the case with bards they have made the level progression steeper after level 30 (you need 100000 xp more pr. level than you should have according to DMO-HLC) and slaughtered the spell progression table completely. I happen to think it disrupts the bard character concept.
To compensate fighters they have included a far more liberal version of the HLA "All-around attack" called "Whirlwind". Originally a whirlwind attack would root the figther in the same fashion as the blade class power Defensive Spin. They even have Greater Whirlwind without penalties. I think (but I don't really claim to know) that GM'ing was nerfed because it would make some fighter kits too powerful. Not true fighters. With twohanded weapons you can place two stars in the weapon proficiency and three stars the twohanded weapons and gain almost the same effect as the "old" BG1 GM. Of course this is not exclusive to figthers anymore.

Last but not least you are absolutely correct about the traps. I find it out of character and I would have preferred a bit more magic, but I cannot claim I am underpowered. Actually this ordeal is an attempt to remove some of the traps and replace them with a bit more magic. Not make bards even more powerful. I hope that this last bit have been apparent all along this discussion.

EDIT:
I was writing this before Neomi's reply. Bards have been placed into the rogue category in AD&D 2ed, but as I said merely for convinience. They might as well have been placed elsewhere.
I would never EVER place readily available Timestop in a Blade's hands. It's kind of nice to have a few scrolls as a last resort though.

[ 04-28-2004, 11:01 AM: Message edited by: mad=dog ]