Messages

Well bards are not supposed to be able to cast spells while using their bard song, not that NWN enforces that limitation. Any spellfail reduction is better than none though. However in this instance it will apply to any arcane spellcasting they cast not just the bard spells. As was said before there is no way to attribute the spell type.
 
Which is fine I will run out and make an elven wizard/bard/fighter right pronto, hold on while I roll that up :). Five rounds of no asf casting in leather armor is wicked nice.
 
Plus bard songs apply to the whole party so you'd have to script it so it only affected the bard and then was removed only from the bard when the song ended.
 
It is better imo to modify the onequip/unequip to specifically work with bards who have no other arcane caster class. That ensures that they are only using it on bard spells because they don't have any others.
 
And really lol bard spells are not so powerful, don't come so early and in not such great numbers that casting them in even AC 4 armor is a huge balance shift. In fact the whole class's casting ability is supposed to be balanced against that. Plus you have modified mage armor here to not help for armors greater than 3 so the potential for any overbuffing is low.

The fact they don't get arcane spell failure reduction in light armor AND NWNs 3.0 bard grants them 2 fewer skill points per level hurts.
 
You could throw a hook in your onequip/unequips to check for:
 
characters has bard levels
character is equipping light armor
character has no other arcane spellcasting classes (sorc or wiz)
 
if all conditions are met you can apply the appropriate arcane spell reduction as a temporary effect directly to the armor and remove it when the armor is unequipped.
 
This is doable without haks and would be effective for all single arcane spellcasting class bards from the day updated.
 
Imho this would give bards a little more ability to take a hit without sacrificing one of their rare and beloved spell slots on mage armor. And in a full analysis of the low level spellcasting ability, they just don't get enough spell slots to make still spell worthwhile.
 
Just a thought.

A base class is a class, a collection of abilities, it requires nothing specific of it unless otherwise specified.
 
All that is required of a bard is that they are non-lawful. By PnP rule it doesn't even require them to have any skill points spent ranks in perform. Although not doing so cripples one of their main class abilities. Nor are they required to have a charisma greater than 10 by rule in PnP, NWN requires them to for some mechanical reason I cannot remember. Again such a bard would lose access to one of their primary class abilities but it is not required in PnP.
 
A thief is not required to steal nor is a bard required to perform in taverns or crack wise. Those can be entertaining examples of bards, but they are not the only kind.
 
I have played a bard that was those things, I have played a bard that sung holy elven songs or elven battle songs to inspire his elven warband (akin to where possibly my current elven character is going). I have seen a dwarven chanter who emoted one to three word phrases while his 'bard song' was in effect. I had the priveldged of watching a gypsy bard/shadowdancer who claimed they could not sing that inspired others by 'dancing' through combat and using the various bells and fetishes on their body along with their movements, claps and humming to inspire.
 
None were any one thing and none of them would have considered themself a bard or minstrel. Asking the dwarven chanter to 'perform' for a crowd not headed into battle would have gotten you punched in the face. The gypsy would have cut you, thinking that performance meant something else :).
 
For a class as possibly diverse as a bard I would most definitely not pigeonhole their RP into one or two little boxes.