You'll have 10d6 HP and a good spell book, even if you're stuck casting spells at low level for a while. For crazy fun, dual-class a 10th level bard to Wizard. Human dual-classes can do similar things, but require a lot bigger stats.

Core also allows a half-elf ranger/druid, which advances REALLY slowly, but has many of the same advantages. I mean, even a core Human or Half-elf druid can do these things, but it gets pretty nasty with a halfling. Hitting 3rd level, when they can move quickly through brush that slows everyone down, and start throwing Charm Person or Mammal. Combine halfling stealth and bonus with throwing weapons/slings, with druid spells and abilities, and you can make someone who is a nightmare to deal with (elves a little less so their weapon bonuses aren't useful on a core druid, and a Con hit is a little worse than a Strength hit, unless either makes you take a penalty). especially if you allow a halfling druid. While they can't reach the heights a wizard does, rapid leveling plus spell scaling by level makes them formidable, if they manage a good spell list.ĭruids have a very good mix of abilities, too. If you start edging into allowing them a lot of wizard-only items (like wands, rings of wizardry, etc.), they become VERY competent spellcasters, fairly quickly. I've always been of the opinion that bards can border on broken, if they're not treated strictly BTB. Things didn't start to get near broken until close to the end of 2e's run with the addition of the 'Complete' splats, that added various 'kits' to the game, and even then they weren't what you could call broken, when compared to 3.X. The addition of casting times for spells, for instance, gave melee types the chance to interrupt a potentially lethal spell.and there were no '5 foot steps' to get instantly out of range, or 'defensive casting.' (But that's a whole different topic.)

While the core mechanics of 1e and 2e (such as THAC0) were a bit clunky, there was a lot about 2e that kept the classes (and multi-classes) pretty much in balance with each other. The original 1e Bard was borked as hell, but 2e reined it in and made it actually playable. 2e had specific multi-class combinations, and restrictions on multi-classing that kept things from getting to 3.x levels of silly brokenness. Using the PHB only, is there any class/multi-class that would be considered “broken” or is just really damn good?Not really.

Adnd 2e all classes