everyone else hitting 3 times , my Bard only once and scores at highest 7, is this usual?

Paladins, Warriors and Monks get extra attacks at higher levels, Bards, Rogues and Hunters don't.

Thanks for that at least i know it isnt a bug , thought that may be the case

Yes, that's normal behavior, unless you're playing the Amiga version of 1 or 2 (in which case Warriors don't get extra attacks).

Later in the series, you can get extra attacks by anyone by singing the Rhyme of Duotime (+1 attack) or casting Divine Intervention (+8 attacks for the battle, among other things, but at a cost of 250 SP).

I beleive that Paladins get their extra attacks slower than the Warriors and Monks do, so don't worry if your equally leveled Warrior is getting more attacks than the Paladin in your party.

Once you get Stone Blades for your Paladin and Warrior, number of attacks is of a more academic interest.
That's when the Monk starts to lag behind, when he can't kill one enemy with 8 attacks. In the original BT 2 this was somewhat balanced by the Monk actually being able to hit the toughest monsters, since chance to hit in BT 1 and 2 was based on the attacker's AC for some reason.

From a BT1 standpoint, this isn't really a factor.
* Stoneblades, I believe, don't drop in classic versions of BT1.
* Enemies don't have much HP. At level 32, in fact, Monks will be averaging over 255 damage, and no enemy has over 255 HP; hence the monk might as well be scoring criticals.
* In the Apple 2GS version, my front line characters are missing fairly often despite having the best possible AC.

It's only in BT2 where enemy HP gets to the point where Monks aren't good at killing enemies, at wich point just get a Kato's Bracer and find a suitable monster to use SPBI on.

Stoneblades do drop in BT1, but not until *very* late in the game. Like the last level or two in Mangar's Tower. As an annoyance, they're only usable by Warriors (makes sense) and Hunters (?!?) so you can both critical hit AND stone something at once.

I didn't know that none of the enemies had more than 255 HP. That would explain why MIFI was always killing things once my mages got to LVL 30 or so.

As for the Monks not killing enemies in BT2, I got one at a high enough level that he was doing close to 2K damage with his 8 attacks when he hit, which was way more than any of the weapons were doing. This was on the Apple II version, and my friend who had the C64 version was doing the same. Hitting the enemies at the higher leveled dungeons was always difficult, though.

I don't remember Monks being able to get that powerful in BT2 (at least not without casting the Dreamspell, of course). On the other hand, in BT3 I remember Monks suddenly dealing over 2k damage at level 35 or so in the 8-bit versions, and at level 60 in the DOS version.

Maybe it was BT3 that they were doing 2K damage? It's been a long, long time since I played them on my Apple IIc or C64! Perhaps it was "only" 1200 or so in BT2, as I'm almost positive they were doing 4 digits worth of damage. I'm certain that the monks were doing much more damage than the weapon-wielding characters in Bt2 at higher levels, though.