As far as I'm aware, Bard has always started with just the hand Xbow, with one of the first few corpses you can loot (After the first combat with the imps with Lae'zel on the Nautiloid) containing a Rapier (This drop does in fact vary between classes, many other classes get a Scimitar or Dagger instead)
That said, I never experienced EA so I don't know if it was different then.
