The Definite d20/D&D Conversion thread

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Jürgen Hubert

To be honest, I'd rather not - I rather like the idea of making arcane magic more unified and blurring the boundaries between arcane magic-using classes.

The only reason bards are arcane casters in d20 is because they felt the need to limit spellcasting to two types. They really just cast bardic spells, which are a mix of arcane and divine spells -- at level 1, 3/26 spells are otherwise divine-exclusive (cure light wounds, remove fear, undetectable alignment), at level 2 7/35 (animal messenger, animal trance, calm emotions, cure moderate wounds, delay poison, enthrall, silence, sound burst), and so on.

In general, it's probably fair to say that bardic mages do get healing spells, and don't get elemental magics unless they also fall in a non-elemental college (such as air spells in sound).