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Well yes, a bard shifted to say a fighter retains the ability to play musical instruments, but his musical ability stays frozen since (1) his level as a bard no longer rises, and (2) the music skill becomes "locked", or no longer rises with practice or level-ups. Point #2 is of course moot if his music skill is already at 100.
The shifted bard does not lose any HP or stamina from shifting. And yes, he'll likely finish the game as something like a lvl 18 bard/lvl 7 fighter. However, if you've raised the right attributes/skills while he was a bard, such as str/dex/spd and sword and close combat, then I wouldn't worry about his ability to frontline as a low-level fighter. For fighters, class levels are not as important as skill levels (unlike spellcasters where class levels are a factor in the ability to learn spells). To oversimplify a bit, a level 7 fighter with 90 in sword skill will fight just as well as a level 25 fighter also with 90 in sword skill. AFAIK, the only difference will be in HPs and stamina, as the pure fighter will probably have more compared to a dual-classed fighter. OTOH, if you've neglected fighting attributes/skills for your bard and developed, say dagger instead of sword, he'll make a poor fighter and maybe a better rogue. In short, you want to maximize the use of whatever attributes/skills you've already built up in your first profession, rather than let it all go to waste in your second profession. That's the reason it's much better to plan for dual-classing in advance, rather than doing it on the fly.
Oh and I'm not sure it's a good idea to put a dual-classed bard/fighter in the frontline. Not that he can't hack it, but I would personally still find him more valuable playing instruments, shifting to fighter is really just to get a little more value after a plateau has been reached.
[ 03-05-2002: Message edited by: Nix ]
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