Originally Posted by
Mecheon
don't forget the hot mess that was how Bards were implemented back in the day
so, okay. Back in early D&D, if you wanted to be a bard? You had to start as a Fighter. Then, between levels 5 to 8, you need to Dual Class to thief. Not multi-class, dual class, which was a thing only humans had because Gary Gygax had a Thing for humans getting exclusive stuff, and pretty much meant you had to be a human (until later splatbooks added alternate bard options and 2E opened it everyone because, frankly, this part alone is dumb) to be a bard, or a half-elf. Dual-classing pretty much set to back to level 1 and when you hit that 5-8, you'd get your Fighter abilities back. But, then, as a Thief, between levels 5 to 9 this time, you had to multi-class as a Druid
And this stack of three classes somehow made you a bard and able to play musical instruments. I'm reasonably certain various old MMOs that did this class stack thing made a bit more sense than this
you may or may not be surprised to know that all of that was ditched in 2E and they just made Bard the regular jack of all trades its known for