well i find the bard a almost must have for my colony.
the fact that he increases the mood for colonists who need it when he is on socail duty and gives random insperations when he does that makes him a very valuale support class.

if he doesnt do anything for you maby look if he has the socail job standing at 1 and the ablity is activated. if those things are true you should be seeing a big change in mood and also a nice insperation from time to time

Ah! So I need to have those too. ok thank you very much

Bards only really shine in colonies of 20+ pawns apparently.

Its arguably the best trader and best in social skills, also gives a substantial mood boost to most of the colony by chatting them up, finally: It grants your pawns the highest level of inspirations at random. In example: 100% tame chance, 100% recruit chance, etc etc etc.

The bard is not a front line combatant, but is a HUGE help with colony management. I'd put it above that of the commander.

My bard seems to constantly inspire people. Half my colony is inspired at any given time, but it's mostly useless ones like taming inspirations when no animals are on the map or shooting inspirations on my melee characters. Most of the recruitment I've done has been 100% success from inspiration, same with the taming. The weird thing is it isn't even the warden or the animal tamers that get those inspirations. Some random guy with 0 social got inspired recruitment so I made him warden for a day to recruit a prisoner. I'm trying to train everyone a bit in either crafting or art because the creativity inspirations are going to everyone randomly too.

I have 6 legendary silver or jade royal beds, a set of legendary prestige cataphract armor, and two legendary large jade sculptures and I have only been on the colony for 120 days. Tons of masterworks around too.

From my experience Bard is extremely useful, in fact i always managed to have one. It manage worst mood debuff. Also having a mana pool and regen is something i highly value.