Not disagreeing but my experience with forage is almost an 80/20 split, 80% food for about 20% water. and I hit it anytime it's up not just casual with it.
I have two characters with forage and both have the same results. Which means I have to buy water or summon drink: Summon drink is superior as it only takes a few minutes for me to cast up a 20 stack that's good for a full play session.
My preference against Halflings is purely aesthetic, I can't stand the first person camera view. I feel like I have my chin on the ground from such a short race. Wood elves are as small as I am willing to go.

I've got a max necro and high level monk and neither have had any problem with getting food/water purely from forage and the iksar cap is way lower than a druid will generally have.

Not sure on that, I get loads of food so much I have 20 stacks in the bank. Pods of water not so much, I end up buying water flasks when needed

Bard can be soloed or grouped to 60 absolutely naked, with maybe a couple 2gp items bought off merchants such as a Hand Drum or Lute. Has to be the easiest to play unfunded.

Necro probably close second, except at some point you'll want Jboots and a CoS for quality of life, which bard doesn't need.

Well there is the cost of songs/spells too.

During your leveling, you inevitably kill mobs who will drop coin / trash weapons etc. That's enough for the most important spells to level to 60. For a swarming bard, it's like 5 songs total, all of them cheap.
For a necro, it's a little more spells, but not that much really. Undead charms, lifetaps, snare, bind, gate, FD... Mostly cheap spells.


I understood "unfunded" as "no external money supply". If it's "no coin spent during leveling to 60", then I guess the only real class for that would be Monk, just H2H melee to 60 and hope for the best.

I appreciate those facts, it's just people like to misrepresent bards as '2pp on instruments and nothing else'. It's not just 60 levels of nonstop adding mobs to the kite. Occasionally you need to finish a bunch of mobs without adding pulls, to have a chance to loot, which does have an impact on efficiency.

I'm not sure I'm getting your point. I leveled (to various levels) a bunch of untwinked bards swarming naked when it was still really fun (pre 25 nerf). The hand drum and a lute were the only things I ever had to buy, along with 4-5 songs. Finishing mobs was never an issue, you can DoT them and/or melee with whatever janky weapon you picked up during your journey...

If you have several mobs to finish (example: cactus and chicken in OT won't assist each other so you can have both running), just charm one and stick on another. Or even just camp out to clear aggro and save time.

I'm not talking about the bard class in general, just about the "easiest unfunded class" aspect of it.