So, It's been something like 8 years since I played Morrowind - or 7, all I know is that i spent two years playing this game pretty much every day and even after all this time I'm very familiar with the trap door inside the ship where you start

Havn't played many singleplayer games in years, and the fact that it seemed like I couldnt get into singleplayer games anymore buged me, so I finally decided to complete skyrim, and thanks to that - I now feel like I'm ready for Morrowind again, let's say skyrim was like a warmup lol.

Anyway, enough of my rant and so here's the deal.

I love bards, or to be exact - fantasy bards, so thats what I will be rolling for my comeback in morrowind.

Now, I always used to create custom classes, and even sometimes the random generated class (where you anwser a bunch of questions).

What you guys think, is the pre-defined bard class good enough? It is pretty close to what I had in mind for a bard - basicly to me a bard in fantasy settings would be something like this as far as traits etc goes:

Buffs - Buffing themself and their allies through songs.

• Buffs that increase themself and their allies ability to fight.
  
• Runspeed - being a player of the EverQuest series, in my mind bards buff movement speed.
  
• Heals - I don't really see them as adept healers, but having some sort of restoration powers using their singing, allowing their allies to get better sooner.

Debuffs - Lowering their enemies ability to fight through songs.

• Debuffs that lowers enemies ability to fight.
  
• Crowd control - for exemple calm - mesmerizing creatures using their songs/playing their instruments.

I also see them as semi scout/thiefs but not assassins - more a mix between a warrior and a scout. More agile then your typical warrior and thus using light or medium armor, 1h swords and possibly a shield.

Being adventurers and travelers - The way I think of them, they get most of the insperation for their song from their own adventures. They would be good treasure hunters, being adept lockpickers and in general good at acquiring loot.

Charisma, ladies men etc. - Being able to charm other people for better prices while bartering, people are more willing to trade information with them etc - people generally like them.

And my own personal spin on them is that I like to see them as good merchants, travling across the lands - selling treasures and what not.

I also want to say that I enjoy min/maxing so if you guys have any tips on how to make the class as good as possible but without building something that doesn't really fit the description of a bard, then that would nice.

So for the build I'm thinking something like this:

Fav Attributes: Personality,Intelligence

or: Personality,Agility

Major skills:
Speechcraft
Longblade
Block
Athletics/Acrobatics
Alchemy

Minor skills:
Merchentile
Illusion
Medium/Light armor
Security
Restoration/Enchant or alteration.

Birthsign: Steed (For speed as mentioned above) or the Lady.

As I mentioned before, I enjoy min/maxing so if I could get some pointers on how to get the most out of leveling while still staying true to either my concept or your concept of a bard that would be great.

I used to know this game in and out, but nowdays games are so streamlined that you get spoiled/lazy

I would definitely put Restoration as a major for the buffs including restore fatigue which helps a lot with running. If you're a min/maxer, I would put Illusion either as a major (to get immediate use of it) or a misc (to max Personality leveling). Otherwise, it looks good. What race are you considering? If it's not Imperial, I'd take Lady for the Personality boost.

Imperial indeed. And I was thinking of going with the Lady.

What do you think about short blade instead of long? also I was thinking about getting Personality and luck.

Well, you lose the nice Imperial Long Blade bonus but if you're taking Stealth Specialty, you get a small bonus to Short Blade and it will level quickly through use as well as raising Speed as a side benefit.

Ok, thanks. If you have your own ideas on how to create a bard - please share if you don't mind.

I think you're on the right track. Personality, I think, defines the Bard as a type. Illusion is maybe the most important skill for Calm and Charm (along with the more practical invisibility and paralyze). Speechcraft too, to represent the glib talking and entertaining skills. Add Restoration for buffs and you have the whole traditional Bard skillset.

http://morrowind.inventivegamer.com/tools/chargen/?character=,,,3,2,7,6,1,22,21,26,10,13,25,19,20:
Specialization: Stealth
Favored attributes: Intelligence, Personality
Major skills: Long Blade, Block, Light Armor, Acrobatics, Speechcraft
Minor skills: Enchant, Illusion, Mercantile, Security, Sneak

So in short, a sword and board light armored rogue-ish sort of a character. For a more honorable bard I would replace Security and Sneak with Unarmored and Athletics.

I'm not sure why the built-in character class only has Medium Armor. I've always seen bards as light armored.

This is what I'm looking at right now (in-game)

Specialization: Stealth
Favored attributes: Personality, Luck (I remember luck being a good thing to pick up for min/max'ing) It also kinda fits the bard, I guess.
Major skills: Speechcraft, Long Blade, Merchentile, Restoration, Illusion
Minor Skills: Medium armor, Block, Athletics, Acrobatics, Security

Havn't played this game in 7-8 years or w/e - I see you list minor skills as well. I thought thoes skills are basicly all the skills you didn't pick or am I missing something?

Tbh I don't see Acrobatics as a must but I'm not sure - thinking I might switch it out for sneak. Perhaps security is a waste without sneak?

Me to also see bards as light armored but raising endurence with medium is also nice, for more running and such.
I pick athletics because well, I like my bards to be fast runners (EverQuest did this to me)

Edit: I now realised that I have all skills with the attribute personality are amongst my Major and Minors, this might not be a good idea perhaps?

Whereas many of the preset classes are unbalanced, the bard is one of the most balanced and workable default classes.

I have created the class for now and it looks like this:

Race: Imperial
Birthsign: The Lady
Specialization: Stealth
Favored attributes: Personality, Luck
Major skills: Speechcraft, Long Blade, Merchentile, Restoration, Light Armor
Minor Skills: Illusion, Block, Athletics, Sneak, Security

After some reading on various forums I'm now starting to remember that the way to get the most out of leveling was to put the skills you WONT use alot as your majors etc.. However, I think it will be safest to play the game in a bit more standard fashion first, after so many years of not playing it.

Thanks for all the input, but please if you feel like giving some more advice and what not, do not hesitate to do so.

I'm sure it is, but the way I see bards are a bit different from how the devs see it.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I assume it would be a bad thing to lets say have all skills tied to personality amongst your major and minor skills and not a single personality skill in misc?

So like fragonard said, I should probably have illusion as a misc skill even tho it feels wrong - Havn't played this game in so many years that it feel silly to not focus on your class defining skills when making a class.

It seems wrong doesn't it but If you're using vanilla leveling, it almost makes you do it this way. You could consider Madd Leveler which levels attributes on-the-fly so you don't have to plan each level. This is another no-performance-impact mod that really makes the game progress more smoothly.

Here if you're interested:
http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=5316