[thejeff]

I've never had luck with Healing Song. Sure, it can heal your archers if they get hit, but for it to work you've got to have your (unarmored low hp) mage up among the people getting hit. The number of archers you save isn't worth the mages you lose. And that doesn't count the archers that just die from one hit (or lose an arm)

Soothing song is brilliant for big battles, though. It needs critical mass, but 4-5 bards casting it can keep a lot of mages going indefinitely. They'll default to it often enough even after the scripts run out.