So for a while, I was considering going Troubadour of Stars. My GM suggested it, since we're playing a (mostly) good aligned party, and we have a Champion of Gwynhwaryf(sp?). However... we gradually came to realize just how mediocre, bordering on crappy, it was:
Half spell progression
Celestial Magic: a useless(for a bard) second level ability(since there are no Bard spells that require a celestial component)
bardic music abilities that would be ok, if they didn't put further strain on the action supply
and to top it off, the 9th level ability, a spammable 7th level cleric spell, turned out to be useless once we noticed the little phrase "the troubadours caster level is equal to her class level". Yay... at level 19 I can deafen lvl 9 and blind lvl 8's.
So for a while, I threw that class away, and started making plans to go into Sublime Chord. Sadly, I decided this rather late, so I was looking at something around 50 weeks of downtime retraining. I was surprised to find out that my GM hadn't given up on Troubadour. He resented the crappiness of troubador, especially since it requires an exalted feat (and a nigh useless one at that), which puts some heavy restrictions on the actions you can take. So a few days ago, he presented a errataed version to me.
His stated goal is that it be as good, in its own way as Sublime Chord. So without further ado, here are his proposed changes:
Full spell progression
Celestial magic replaced by Celestial Music: Bardic music effects may now be activated as an immediate action
Celestial Symphony: if you use words of creation to boost it, the caster level becomes your bardic music level.
So yah, comments? do you think he's hitting his goal? Overshooting? Undershooting?