So far I've been running a College of Swords archery Bard for my first playthrough, a blind Tactician run, and he became my main damage dealer after he hit level 6.
- He spent most of act 2 with 22 AC thanks to shield and medium armor proficiency. Now he has 24 with Act 3 gear.
- Ranged Flourish lets him strike an enemy twice per action as long as he has inspiration die, and inspiration die recharge on short rest after level 5. This + Sharpshooter + Haste means he's potentially shitting out 200+ damage opening rounds, and he can split that across multiple enemies from range. That's before we get into talking about multiclassing.
- Risky Ring from act 2 makes the Sharpshooter penalty nonexistent, and there are very few things in the game that will attempt to hit you with any ranged saving throw effects worth a damn.
- You can do an optional 1 level dip in Fighter to gain longbow proficiency to wield the crit longbow in act 3, along with the archery fighting style so your sharpshooter shots damn near never miss by endgame.
- Magical Secrets at level 10 lets you pick up two useful spells from other classes, which includes things like Counterspell and Haste.
- There is a ring in act 3 that lets you cast Illusion or Enchantment spells as a bonus action after a successful weapon attack. Bard has a lot of useful Illusion and Enchantment spells, one of which is a damaging psychic damage cantrip if you don't want to use any spell slots that turn, another a single target spell that can be upcasted for up to 7d6 damage (not that I recommend this, see below).
- There is a helmet that boosts your spell DC by +2 for every successful weapon attack you make, stacking up to +7. After a round of attacking, hardly anything short of outright immunity will be able to resist your bonus action Illusion/Enchantment spell, which includes extremely powerful crowd control options like Hold Person, Hypnotic Pattern, Hold Monster and Otto's Irresistible Dance.
If Larian continues updating the game to add more 5th and 6th level spells, Bard might get a crazy AoE damage/debuff 5th level Enchantment spell:
Synaptic Static, one of the few spells targeting Intelligence saving throws and it really screws up enemy rolls if it takes hold.
