Bards are a fun class to play, mainly due to the songs and multi-purpose abilities.
When you start your character, you will have a choice of Fighter, Scout, Mage, or Priest. Picking Scout will start you on the path to Bard.
Once you get to level 9, you must complete a quest to select what path you will follow. Your choices will be Predator, Bard, or Rogue. You will pick Bard.
A quick side note about these archtypes:
Predator leads to Ranger - master with a bow, or Assassin - master at rear attacks and stealth.
Bard leads to Troubador - happy songs to damage opponents or buff self and party, or Dirge - painful laments to torment your opponents.
Rogue leads to Brigand - uses fear and confusion against enemies, or Swashbuckler - dashing yet fast and deadly.
Once you get to level 19 you will complete another quest to select your final path and class. You will choose between Troubador (good) or Dirge (evil).
Although not famous for the best damage output, Bards are very good for party buffs to increase attack speed, health/power regen, damage mitigation, movement speed, and more. All this and they can still contribute nicely to DPS. Their damage abilities are in the form of songs instead of spells (same thing, just a different effect). For some of your battle songs, you will quickly and automatically pull out a musical instrument, strum or beat it out, and resume attacking. (again, same as casting a spell, but you don't wave your arms around like those sissy Conjurers)
They dual-wield weapons, one in each hand, which gives you the benefit of the stat boosting properties from both weapons.
I consider Bards to be a jack-of-all-trades, useful in many more instances than other classes.
I would take my Troubador out more, but he recently caught the crafting bug.
Good Luck :)