Bards and their Sucky Greatness [A massive rant about bards]

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Iceborn
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Bards and their Sucky Greatness [A massive rant about bards]

Post by Iceborn » Sat Apr 28, 2018 9:11 am

I love bards.
They are by far one of my favorite thematics for a character; a bard can be everything. They are the engineers of the social world, the other face of the Rogues - and now that rogues are actually not terrible, I want to bring the spotlight toward bards.

What is great about bards? Other than the theme, bards have two very strong points - their skill selection, which allows them to be nearly anything, and their song, which is, by far, the stongest buff/debuff of the game. And anybody that disagrees shall be defenestrated.

Now, what sucks about bards? Everything else.

Join me as I deconstruct bards in the composition of their elements to explain why one of the most interesting concepts for a character (at least in my opinion), is also one of the classes you will see the least in game.


Let's examine first the components of what makes the class. In fact, I'll use the power of FORUMING to color how good or bad these things are.

D6 Hit Die
4 Skillpoints/level
Start with simple weapon proficiency, shield and up to medium armor.
Reflex and Will as main saves
A feat that grants them +1 lore per bard level.
A 3/4 AB progression, and now the two main crunches of the class:
Spontaneous arcane magic that goes up to the sixth level, and...
Bard song

Let's take one by one now and explain what are these funny colors that I have chosen.

Hit Die : Bards are closer to the lower end of the HP that they can have. If you have been playing for a while, you know that the modules can be ruthless at time and you can take plenty of damage just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. There are explosive traps and many AoE spells that have the bad habit of finding your frail, nutrient-starved body. Beefing up with copious amount of constitution is somewhat recommendable, regardless the kind of bard you are playing.

Skillpoints : Now, I said before bards get a pretty diverse array of skillpoints, and that's true - they all the combat-worthy skills (tumble, UMD, discipline, concentration, even Spellcraft) and plenty of utility stuff (persuade, perform, pickpocket, hide, move silently, even taunt!) - but however amazing their array of skills is, their skills per level is not - having a pitiful amount for a character with theme is being a jack of all trades is generally lame. So most of those skills go largely unused since you can't take copious amounts of intelligence too.

Weapon proficiency : Starting with simple weapon proficiency is horrible, but at least you get the shield, and there are enough simple weapons to go by. Most bards will eventually multiclass into something with at least martial proficiency, which makes choosing for a weapon less of a hassle - alternatively, taking Exotic Weapon is good. Very much the same, medium armors are not that bad from the get-go.

Saves : Double saves are good. I like double saves.

Bardic Knowledge : This feat is nothing to not shake the stick at. +1 lore may not seem much, but having free lore points is precious for characters with few skillpoints, and it also means that you can effortlessly hit the 40 lore to be simply able to understand every language. In this aspect, they serve as great agents and diplomats.... once they hit the necessary levels, at least.

AB Progression : It's a 3/4, so it means it doesn't suck, but it naturally means that you need to multiclass pre-epic into a full-BAB class to get your fourth attack. Pretty standard.

Cas-... No, let's go for the song first. Song : The Song is precious, but it's not something that is merely taken for granted. Surely, Once a bard reaches the best of their potential, usually between 16 to 20 levels, with two clicks they can buff and debuff to make a flat +8/-8 AC/AB difference, screw all the skills over and even deal a little damage to booth. This is a great tool to have in any conflict, and potentially a gamechanger in any PvP. HOWEVER, it is not without a price, since the Song is tied directly to the bard level and the Perform score - a level 16 bard needs merely 30 to make use of the skill, which is alright. A level 20 bard needs 50, which is a tad harder to get. That's one less skill that we have from our already limited skill selection. And not to mention, you do need to take Curse Song as well - another less feat, just to make use of your core abilities. But okay, it's a small price to pay for it.

Casting : Now, this is where this goes south. If you see our attributes above, you pretty much realized that bards have only two buttons that do anything other than the right click to cut things down (which in most cases, they do very inefficiently). What makes that better and saves this class from being an UMD-bot with only the song? Casting. Casting gives just enough layer of complexity to the character so they can actually do stuff other than explode into sound from time to time.
And bard spells are awesome.

Most of the bard spells are based around sound, and they deal in either buffing of some sort, mind effects, detection or the occasional small oddity, so they have a pretty varied choice. They are spontaneous casters, which means they don't have to prepare spells beforehand, but they have a small selection of them. Being a caster means that you also need a decent score of at least 16 of charisma to make use of all your spells. Which is not precisely convenient, since we already established that we need some intelligence to make use of the skills, constitution to not die horribly, and either strength or dex depending which kind of bard we want to build.

Now we have a character which stats spread too thin and fewer build options to be effective, and mind, I'm saying merely effective, and not optimale tamale. Let's discard the worst of them first:

"Caster" bard: The purely supportive build with no offensive potential whatsoever other than occasionally throwing a small mind spell - which don't really work too well, as bards are designed more toward battle-casters and they don't have enough spells or abilities to function as a full support character. Not to mention, being pseudo casters they don't even get epic spells or epic spell focus.

Dex bard: These bards usually have a greater defensive potential, multiclassing into different stealth-based classes and some full-bab class to balance offensive potential. Being on cloth means that you can use most of your spells freely, and in theory, would work the best.. except for one problem: Bards don't have nearly any damage source within their own kits. They get +2 from Warcry, +3 from the Song, and that's it. A combination on fighter and rogue/assassin may be good enough to get some half-decent scores, but it's nothing to shake the stick at.

So what is the most obvious solution to not have horrible damage? Well, we have two options - we cheese, or we go STR.
Let's cheese.
And when I say cheese, I mean divine cheese. The only combination that makes use of the charisma score is one of the strongest dip classes in the game - both blackguard and paladin will allow you to take divine might/divine shield feats, which, with a properly raised score, will net a lovely +9 AC/Damage to temporarily make our character not horrible.

Alternatively, or even combined with this, we can go STR.
So we build our strength bard. Put on Diggy Diggy Hole in its 10 hours version and prepare to hit level 15 in one day - and then we remember our next glaring monster. We are an arcane class. We have ASF. Arcane Spell Failure. Hi.

Arcane Spell Failure is the most annoying part of playing a strength bard.
So how does one deal with it?

Option A: Don't. Screw ASF. Screw everything. You send half of your spellbook to the void, and just take the armor off to use the buffing spells when you need them. I rate this an annoying/hahakillme.
Option B: Use Greensteel. Sure, you could use greensteel, but greensteel still has an innate 5%, requires you to raise dex to use the most of it, and you still lose a few points of AC that would be great to have elsewhere. The Spellthief armor makes it better, but it still requires a heavy investment in dex to make the best of it. I rate this a lol/no.
Option C: Take Still Spell metamagic. Well, not the ideal choice, but it sorta works. You don't get level 6 spells stilled, and it'd be nice to have Mass Haste stilled for those situations... and it's also one less feat in a pretty feat-constricted build to begin with, but you may be able to afford it. Of course it'd be neat to use other metamagic like Extend Spell, but building a bard is a matter of watching somebody else eat a cake and be grateful you got to watch it. I rate this a notcake/cake.


And then we finally get to play a bard. For no more than a month before the constant sights of every kind of character outperforming you in any aspect makes you realize your character is irrevocably a failed sorcerer which only redeemable feature is the song.

TL DR: Bards are annoying to play, for all the wrong reasons. They either delegate to purely support roles, or the few main-bard builds that can shine are incredibly annoying to level and require a lot of micromanagement to do practically as much as any other build.

There may be many that disagree, and those that would feel the same. This is just my opinion, and I don't know precisely what I would add or change, except one thing:

Remove ASF from light armors for bards. Bards don't have ASF while they are using light armor in DND, but they do in NWN for REASONS. Removing ASF from light armors seem minimal, doesn't upset nearly anything and makes for playing a bard something vastly more enjoyable by simply not having to butt heads against ASF so much. And I wouldn't be opposed to both raising the hit die to d8 and 6 skills/level.

Thanks for reading.
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Dr. B
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Re: Bards and their Sucky Greatness [A massive rant about bards]

Post by Dr. B » Sat Apr 28, 2018 12:35 pm

Dude, really? Can we please stop nitpicking and inventing problems that don't exist?

Bards (depending on your playstyle) are fun as hell to play, and personally I don't want to see more, because I'd rather they be less common. The solution to the OP's problem is that he shouldn't play one.

Many people, casual players especially, enjoy support roles that require minimal effort. The advantage to hanging back and playing a support Bard is that you can RP your music.

Divine dip Bards are extremely entertaining, and the levels of power they can reach justify the long windup and "micromanagement", as the OP calls it, which is engaging and makes the game challenging. Moreover, they can hold their own even when not fully buffed.
Last edited by Dr. B on Sat Apr 28, 2018 12:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Bards and their Sucky Greatness [A massive rant about bards]

Post by RamblerTeo » Sat Apr 28, 2018 12:45 pm

Bards are in a very good place, if you think otherwise, you should not comment on stuff like this.

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Re: Bards and their Sucky Greatness [A massive rant about bards]

Post by Ork » Sat Apr 28, 2018 12:59 pm

Only issue with bards is dispel bait, and truthfully that is a hard counter to their otherwise invincibility.

I'm down for the ASF in light armor tho.

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Re: Bards and their Sucky Greatness [A massive rant about bards]

Post by Sockss » Sat Apr 28, 2018 1:30 pm

Bards are very strong, like, top tier strong. ???
Thankfully this team is no longer being used.

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Re: Bards and their Sucky Greatness [A massive rant about bards]

Post by Peppermint » Sat Apr 28, 2018 1:32 pm

Eh? I leveled a bard a couple years back. It was one of the easiest experiences ever.

Bard is actually S-tier. It's not for nothing that nearly every server nerfs the class pretty hard.

Adjustments to encourage alternative playstyles (e.g. a caster bard) could be pretty neat, but the class definitely doesn't need love in the traditional sense.

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Re: Bards and their Sucky Greatness [A massive rant about bards]

Post by Zaravella » Sat Apr 28, 2018 1:55 pm

Bards are one of my favorite classes to play in a role-playing server. Why? They ae able to interact with literally EVERYBODY. They are designed to be spies. They are not fighting characters - they use their incredible charisma to goad people into fighting for them instead. I daresay you misunderstand the class, and I didnt mean that to be rude. I love love love... bards...

If you want a hard hitter, who can survive almost anything, make one of those fighter based builds. Or wizards with really strong summons.
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Re: Bards and their Sucky Greatness [A massive rant about bards]

Post by Nitro » Sat Apr 28, 2018 2:11 pm

Zaravella wrote:
Sat Apr 28, 2018 1:55 pm
Bards are one of my favorite classes to play in a role-playing server. Why? They ae able to interact with literally EVERYBODY. They are designed to be spies. They are not fighting characters - they use their incredible charisma to goad people into fighting for them instead. I daresay you misunderstand the class, and I didnt mean that to be rude. I love love love... bards...

If you want a hard hitter, who can survive almost anything, make one of those fighter based builds. Or wizards with really strong summons.
Built right they are great fighting characters, they're some of the best fighting characters even.

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Re: Bards and their Sucky Greatness [A massive rant about bards]

Post by One Two Three Five » Sat Apr 28, 2018 2:17 pm

aw dude iceborn come on

Anyway, to actually, you know:
1. "They are not fighting characters"
They're so good at it. Like. So good. So, so, so good at it. Not 'WM Crits' good, but still, like, one of the best classes to get in there and mix it up with. Especially with a party. Yes, you can mess that up by making a charisma or dex-based bard but that's like being suboptimal on purpose.

2. Other niches
Spellcasting bards would be cool. Sublime Chord or Seeker of the Song over in tabletop land do that, I think, I'm pulling from memory. Something where you lose combat prowess (maybe in the same way healer cleric does) and get an expanded spell list somehow. IDK.

Otherwise I.. Legit have never had a problem running a bard here. Your main complaints, Iceborn, seem to be that you want the bard to be something other than what it is: an armored, prebuffing gish with a buff/debuff button and divine feat synergy (this last applies to everyone with CHA tho). What they aren't is an offensive caster (warlock, mages, druid? cover this), a pure support character (healer cleric, I guess?), a pure mundane melee, etc. So they don't have IGMS and Mass Heal. What they do have is a chassis that's almost certainly in, I dunno, top 5 of NWN class skeletons? So long as you don't try to build a bard as something it's not, and you don't try to do Everything (A bard that tries to max ranks on all of its skills like a rogue might, see also 'something it's not) the dang class is almost idiot-proof.

Definitely never hit a point where they're 'annoying to play.' If you try to play one as a sorcerer? Yeah, annoying. You try to play one as a rogue? Annoying.
But if you try to play a bard as a bard (Medium-to-heavy armored prebuffing unique-party-utility melee or MAYBE archer) you're not going to be disappointed. Unless you do the archer thing, I guess, but even that's probably doable.
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Re: Bards and their Sucky Greatness [A massive rant about bards]

Post by BegoneThoth » Sat Apr 28, 2018 2:42 pm

Iceborn wrote:
Sat Apr 28, 2018 9:11 am
I love bards.
They are by far one of my favorite thematics for a character; a bard can be everything. They are the engineers of the social world, the other face of the Rogues - and now that rogues are actually not terrible, I want to bring the spotlight toward bards.

What is great about bards? Other than the theme, bards have two very strong points - their skill selection, which allows them to be nearly anything, and their song, which is, by far, the stongest buff/debuff of the game. And anybody that disagrees shall be defenestrated.

Now, what sucks about bards? Everything else.

Join me as I deconstruct bards in the composition of their elements to explain why one of the most interesting concepts for a character (at least in my opinion), is also one of the classes you will see the least in game.


Let's examine first the components of what makes the class. In fact, I'll use the power of FORUMING to color how good or bad these things are.

D6 Hit Die
4 Skillpoints/level
Start with simple weapon proficiency, shield and up to medium armor.
Reflex and Will as main saves
A feat that grants them +1 lore per bard level.
A 3/4 AB progression, and now the two main crunches of the class:
Spontaneous arcane magic that goes up to the sixth level, and...
Bard song

Let's take one by one now and explain what are these funny colors that I have chosen.

Hit Die : Bards are closer to the lower end of the HP that they can have. If you have been playing for a while, you know that the modules can be ruthless at time and you can take plenty of damage just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. There are explosive traps and many AoE spells that have the bad habit of finding your frail, nutrient-starved body. Beefing up with copious amount of constitution is somewhat recommendable, regardless the kind of bard you are playing.

Skillpoints : Now, I said before bards get a pretty diverse array of skillpoints, and that's true - they all the combat-worthy skills (tumble, UMD, discipline, concentration, even Spellcraft) and plenty of utility stuff (persuade, perform, pickpocket, hide, move silently, even taunt!) - but however amazing their array of skills is, their skills per level is not - having a pitiful amount for a character with theme is being a jack of all trades is generally lame. So most of those skills go largely unused since you can't take copious amounts of intelligence too.

Weapon proficiency : Starting with simple weapon proficiency is horrible, but at least you get the shield, and there are enough simple weapons to go by. Most bards will eventually multiclass into something with at least martial proficiency, which makes choosing for a weapon less of a hassle - alternatively, taking Exotic Weapon is good. Very much the same, medium armors are not that bad from the get-go.

Saves : Double saves are good. I like double saves.

Bardic Knowledge : This feat is nothing to not shake the stick at. +1 lore may not seem much, but having free lore points is precious for characters with few skillpoints, and it also means that you can effortlessly hit the 40 lore to be simply able to understand every language. In this aspect, they serve as great agents and diplomats.... once they hit the necessary levels, at least.

AB Progression : It's a 3/4, so it means it doesn't suck, but it naturally means that you need to multiclass pre-epic into a full-BAB class to get your fourth attack. Pretty standard.

Cas-... No, let's go for the song first. Song : The Song is precious, but it's not something that is merely taken for granted. Surely, Once a bard reaches the best of their potential, usually between 16 to 20 levels, with two clicks they can buff and debuff to make a flat +8/-8 AC/AB difference, screw all the skills over and even deal a little damage to booth. This is a great tool to have in any conflict, and potentially a gamechanger in any PvP. HOWEVER, it is not without a price, since the Song is tied directly to the bard level and the Perform score - a level 16 bard needs merely 30 to make use of the skill, which is alright. A level 20 bard needs 50, which is a tad harder to get. That's one less skill that we have from our already limited skill selection. And not to mention, you do need to take Curse Song as well - another less feat, just to make use of your core abilities. But okay, it's a small price to pay for it.

Casting : Now, this is where this goes south. If you see our attributes above, you pretty much realized that bards have only two buttons that do anything other than the right click to cut things down (which in most cases, they do very inefficiently). What makes that better and saves this class from being an UMD-bot with only the song? Casting. Casting gives just enough layer of complexity to the character so they can actually do stuff other than explode into sound from time to time.
And bard spells are awesome.

Most of the bard spells are based around sound, and they deal in either buffing of some sort, mind effects, detection or the occasional small oddity, so they have a pretty varied choice. They are spontaneous casters, which means they don't have to prepare spells beforehand, but they have a small selection of them. Being a caster means that you also need a decent score of at least 16 of charisma to make use of all your spells. Which is not precisely convenient, since we already established that we need some intelligence to make use of the skills, constitution to not die horribly, and either strength or dex depending which kind of bard we want to build.

Now we have a character which stats spread too thin and fewer build options to be effective, and mind, I'm saying merely effective, and not optimale tamale. Let's discard the worst of them first:

"Caster" bard: The purely supportive build with no offensive potential whatsoever other than occasionally throwing a small mind spell - which don't really work too well, as bards are designed more toward battle-casters and they don't have enough spells or abilities to function as a full support character. Not to mention, being pseudo casters they don't even get epic spells or epic spell focus.

Dex bard: These bards usually have a greater defensive potential, multiclassing into different stealth-based classes and some full-bab class to balance offensive potential. Being on cloth means that you can use most of your spells freely, and in theory, would work the best.. except for one problem: Bards don't have nearly any damage source within their own kits. They get +2 from Warcry, +3 from the Song, and that's it. A combination on fighter and rogue/assassin may be good enough to get some half-decent scores, but it's nothing to shake the stick at.

So what is the most obvious solution to not have horrible damage? Well, we have two options - we cheese, or we go STR.
Let's cheese.
And when I say cheese, I mean divine cheese. The only combination that makes use of the charisma score is one of the strongest dip classes in the game - both blackguard and paladin will allow you to take divine might/divine shield feats, which, with a properly raised score, will net a lovely +9 AC/Damage to temporarily make our character not horrible.

Alternatively, or even combined with this, we can go STR.
So we build our strength bard. Put on Diggy Diggy Hole in its 10 hours version and prepare to hit level 15 in one day - and then we remember our next glaring monster. We are an arcane class. We have ASF. Arcane Spell Failure. Hi.

Arcane Spell Failure is the most annoying part of playing a strength bard.
So how does one deal with it?

Option A: Don't. Screw ASF. Screw everything. You send half of your spellbook to the void, and just take the armor off to use the buffing spells when you need them. I rate this an annoying/hahakillme.
Option B: Use Greensteel. Sure, you could use greensteel, but greensteel still has an innate 5%, requires you to raise dex to use the most of it, and you still lose a few points of AC that would be great to have elsewhere. The Spellthief armor makes it better, but it still requires a heavy investment in dex to make the best of it. I rate this a lol/no.
Option C: Take Still Spell metamagic. Well, not the ideal choice, but it sorta works. You don't get level 6 spells stilled, and it'd be nice to have Mass Haste stilled for those situations... and it's also one less feat in a pretty feat-constricted build to begin with, but you may be able to afford it. Of course it'd be neat to use other metamagic like Extend Spell, but building a bard is a matter of watching somebody else eat a cake and be grateful you got to watch it. I rate this a notcake/cake.


And then we finally get to play a bard. For no more than a month before the constant sights of every kind of character outperforming you in any aspect makes you realize your character is irrevocably a failed sorcerer which only redeemable feature is the song.

TL DR: Bards are annoying to play, for all the wrong reasons. They either delegate to purely support roles, or the few main-bard builds that can shine are incredibly annoying to level and require a lot of micromanagement to do practically as much as any other build.

There may be many that disagree, and those that would feel the same. This is just my opinion, and I don't know precisely what I would add or change, except one thing:

Remove ASF from light armors for bards. Bards don't have ASF while they are using light armor in DND, but they do in NWN for REASONS. Removing ASF from light armors seem minimal, doesn't upset nearly anything and makes for playing a bard something vastly more enjoyable by simply not having to butt heads against ASF so much. And I wouldn't be opposed to both raising the hit die to d8 and 6 skills/level.

Thanks for reading.
Bards are great. They arn't pre-nerf spellsword great where you were the master of arcane and martial while dual wielding non light weapons, but they're great right now.
\

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Re: Bards and their Sucky Greatness [A massive rant about bards]

Post by PinataPlethora » Sat Apr 28, 2018 3:49 pm

Bards are the best. Probably a third of my characters have been bards, or taken bard levels.

Only thing I'd change is maybe making Bard Song a free action, since I generally don't hold my sword in my mouth.

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Re: Bards and their Sucky Greatness [A massive rant about bards]

Post by Scurvy Cur » Sat Apr 28, 2018 4:17 pm

Well, since we're already firmly on board the pretension train, go ahead and join me as I deconstruct the deconstruction, Ice.
Iceborn wrote:
Sat Apr 28, 2018 9:11 am
Hit Die : Bards are closer to the lower end of the HP that they can have. If you have been playing for a while, you know that the modules can be ruthless at time and you can take plenty of damage just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. There are explosive traps and many AoE spells that have the bad habit of finding your frail, nutrient-starved body. Beefing up with copious amount of constitution is somewhat recommendable, regardless the kind of bard you are playing.
Bards, properly built and itemized, have enough HP considering everything else that's on the table. Not counting an endurance potion (which is an easy 60 hp for any class that can click buttons). Of the three primary bard builds (25 Bard/ Fighter 5 or Paladin, 20/6 Fighter/4 Pal or BG, and Bard20/Fighter 5/Paragon5), HP totals will look basically like:

25/5: 470
20/6/4: 430
20/5/5: 410

Really, all of these numbers ought to consider the con pot, but I kind of vaguely remember that you don't like using consumables. These should be fairly survivable, provided you get con on your gear about when the content starts getting tough (and remember to use the templar plate on either the 20/6/4 or 20/5/5 build).
Iceborn wrote:
Sat Apr 28, 2018 9:11 am
Skillpoints : Now, I said before bards get a pretty diverse array of skillpoints, and that's true - they all the combat-worthy skills (tumble, UMD, discipline, concentration, even Spellcraft) and plenty of utility stuff (persuade, perform, pickpocket, hide, move silently, even taunt!) - but however amazing their array of skills is, their skills per level is not - having a pitiful amount for a character with theme is being a jack of all trades is generally lame. So most of those skills go largely unused since you can't take copious amounts of intelligence too.
20/5: 188 skill points, +33 if human
20/6/4: 178 skill points +33 if human
20/5/5: 188, +33 if human

This puts them about 1 skill up on other main melees (and bards are a main melee if you do them right), from having 2 more skill points per level, but having to spend one of them on perform. There's no need to buff this so long as bard remains as potent as it is in melee.
Iceborn wrote:
Sat Apr 28, 2018 9:11 am
AB Progression : It's a 3/4, so it means it doesn't suck, but it naturally means that you need to multiclass pre-epic into a full-BAB class to get your fourth attack. Pretty standard.
Since we're on the primary melee class topic, we need to address this one. Bard has a 3/4 AB progression, but also has a couple of buttons that effectively add 7. For 10 minutes a click. With the benefit of curse song factored in, effective bard AB ought to sit somewhere between 50 and 52. This is overlooking the fact that the +2 friendly AB and -5 enemy AC also boosts the party. And the fact that bards can slam home a taunt for another -6 AC on most targets.

A helpful maxim to put this in perspective: A cleric can press 3 buttons to give themselves 12 AB. A bard can press 3 buttons to give their party 13 AB.

And none of those 3 effects can be dispelled.

I know you're not advocating an AB buff but a buff to HP or skill points, which you are advocating, probably needs to benchmark off of the fact that the bard isn't a support class, really. It's a melee class whose presence just so happens to roid up the party as a side effect.

Alright, I'm actually just going to skip to your conclusions, because I think I suffered brain damage watching you complain that you need to spend feats on things necessary to your class. There's a chance if this bothers you that 3E D&D really isn't your game.

But your suggestions, if mostly misguided, are at least worth directly addressing.

More HP: No. Bards have one concrete weakness. Maybe one and a half (the half weakness is dispelling; in PvE it can be played around though, and in PvP, the one bard build that really gets hit hard by dispel also doesn't lose any of its key survivability buffs to it, and has the time to regoose the haste as needed). That weakness is subpar HP/difficulty standing up to focused nuking. Their HP isn't cripplingly low, but it does make playing a bard difficult when there's a ton of nuke flying around.

More Skills: Also no. No other frontline melee class can pack as many skills in, even with perform bought, as bard can. No reason to buff their skill point total.

ASF removal on light armor: Actually, this isn't a bad idea. If you're in light armor as a bard, you've probably already shut yourself out of any of the top end bard builds (I'd say you did an oops, but it's fine playing suboptimal things so long as you both know that it's what you're doing, and ask for buffs that would make good stuff too good). Go ahead and give bards -asf if in light armor.

tl;dr: Bard is a very strong class, played correctly. It's biggest drawback is that it's hard to build optimally and probably harder to play optimally. If you want a simple bard, you can just go full con and live the "press bard song for your friends" life. It sounds vile to me, and I'd never do it personally, but it is viable for someone that just want the party buff life.

Having a couple of classes like this is fine, and we should be leery of buffing a couple of the server's apex melee builds by eliminating the only serious weakness they've got.


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Re: Bards and their Sucky Greatness [A massive rant about bards]

Post by The1Kobra » Sat Apr 28, 2018 4:36 pm

I find that with bards, the gap of power between those that don't go 4 paladin or blackguard, and those that do is immense. +9-10 saves, AC, Damage provides huge benefits. I've played 2 bards before, one dexer, one STR, neither optimally built, admittedly. Still, there's a definite gap in power depending on multiclass combinations.

Greensteel armor was the go-to back in the day for STR bards, but now they provide 5% ASF, and it happens more often than not. It can be kind of jarring to constantly switch between cloth to buff, and then putting armor on before a fight, to switch back to cloth when buffing, and back. Dealing with even 5% ASF can be an annoyance, even if it's not a game-breaker.

There is the spellthief armor, though that's only available rather late-game, and before then, there aren't any options for any 0 ASF armor, even light armor. I figure most of the paladin/blackguard bards use the templar armor and still spell.

I can definitely say that a dex based bard gets the short end of the stick, having the damage output of a wet noodle, even if they don't have to deal with the ASF issues. The only way I could see one of those working optimally is with harper paragon, and given the difficulty in attaining it, it's definitely not a build option for most bards.

Also, just an FYI: The curse song is restorable with a lesser restoration, so it's not undispellable.

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Re: Bards and their Sucky Greatness [A massive rant about bards]

Post by TimeAdept » Sat Apr 28, 2018 5:10 pm

I think legitimately the only change I'd do to bard is some -asf on light armor. the clas is in a great spot as is.

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Re: Bards and their Sucky Greatness [A massive rant about bards]

Post by R0GUE » Sat Apr 28, 2018 10:17 pm

I think you could fix the problem with bards with only a few small things. First off, bards right now are perfectly fine in groups as support characters, which is what they are primarily intended. They are also excellent in RP situations due to their utility. But if you wanted to make them just a little more powerful for solo/PvP how about:

1. Up their HD to d8. Since Rogues just went up to d8 it means bards are the only d6 class left. Thats not really fair. It seems to me if druids are d8, then bards should be also.
2. Give them a craftable armor at mid/high tiers that is a type of elven chain that gives high AC bonus with no spell failure and a high dex limit.
3. Let them have a familiar similar to the sorcerer. Bards were given the ability to find familiar up until 2nd edition. In BG and IWD they had them. This would give them a companion to allow them to back up and spellcast when they need too. If you want to make this a bard only feat, like in 3.5 and Pathfinder I'm fine with that.

Any thoughts?

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Re: Bards and their Sucky Greatness [A massive rant about bards]

Post by Cortex » Sat Apr 28, 2018 10:23 pm

R0GUE wrote:
Sat Apr 28, 2018 10:17 pm
I think you could fix the problem with bards with only a few small things. First off, bards right now are perfectly fine in groups as support characters, which is what they are primarily intended. They are also excellent in RP situations due to their utility. But if you wanted to make them just a little more powerful for solo/PvP how about:

1. Up their HD to d8. Since Rogues just went up to d8 it means bards are the only d6 class left. Thats not really fair. It seems to me if druids are d8, then bards should be also.
2. Give them a craftable armor at mid/high tiers that is a type of elven chain that gives high AC bonus with no spell failure and a high dex limit.
3. Let them have a familiar similar to the sorcerer. Bards were given the ability to find familiar up until 2nd edition. In BG and IWD they had them. This would give them a companion to allow them to back up and spellcast when they need too. If you want to make this a bard only feat, like in 3.5 and Pathfinder I'm fine with that.

Any thoughts?
Bard, as they are usually built, are quite fine, and leaning on the stronger side of things even if slightly.

What doesn't exist is support for caster bard, which I don't think was ever its intended purpose.
:)

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Re: Bards and their Sucky Greatness [A massive rant about bards]

Post by R0GUE » Sat Apr 28, 2018 10:42 pm

Cortex wrote:
Sat Apr 28, 2018 10:23 pm
R0GUE wrote:
Sat Apr 28, 2018 10:17 pm
I think you could fix the problem with bards with only a few small things. First off, bards right now are perfectly fine in groups as support characters, which is what they are primarily intended. They are also excellent in RP situations due to their utility. But if you wanted to make them just a little more powerful for solo/PvP how about:

1. Up their HD to d8. Since Rogues just went up to d8 it means bards are the only d6 class left. Thats not really fair. It seems to me if druids are d8, then bards should be also.
2. Give them a craftable armor at mid/high tiers that is a type of elven chain that gives high AC bonus with no spell failure and a high dex limit.
3. Let them have a familiar similar to the sorcerer. Bards were given the ability to find familiar up until 2nd edition. In BG and IWD they had them. This would give them a companion to allow them to back up and spellcast when they need too. If you want to make this a bard only feat, like in 3.5 and Pathfinder I'm fine with that.

Any thoughts?
Bard, as they are usually built, are quite fine, and leaning on the stronger side of things even if slightly.

What doesn't exist is support for caster bard, which I don't think was ever its intended purpose.
The purpose of a bard as a caster is to buff, augment, control. It's not to do damage really. That works great in groups. They really are a class oriented around helping their party.

I think the discussion is if they need a boost for solo play? Buffing and augmemting themselves is another thing they can do. But this example happened to me ingame the other day:

I was soloing a cave in the Deep Thicket and the roaches and beetles were falling before my blade just fine. Then I ran into the roachmaster.

He gave himself DR so it would have been nice to have the opportunity to back up, find a spell or scroll that could help me break through the DR, so if I had a familiar to help me with that it might have made my fight go better.

As it was, my AC was still doing fine, but he hit me with a disease that took my con down to 0 in only a few turns, so I died anyway. Again, maybe if I'd had a chance to control the situation and step back to cast a spell things might have gone differently.

Also I realize bards get Summon creature. But for RP reasons I'm not going to summon a dire spider for example. Also at low levels known spells are valuable, and forcing a player into a must have spell is not great.

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Re: Bards and their Sucky Greatness [A massive rant about bards]

Post by TimeAdept » Sat Apr 28, 2018 10:45 pm

Refusing to cast summons on a class with summons then complaining you don't have a meatshield isn't the fault of the class.

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Re: Bards and their Sucky Greatness [A massive rant about bards]

Post by R0GUE » Sat Apr 28, 2018 10:51 pm

TimeAdept wrote:
Sat Apr 28, 2018 10:45 pm
Refusing to cast summons on a class with summons then complaining you don't have a meatshield isn't the fault of the class.
I'm only saying it could be an option. Like I said, there is a precedent for bards to have familiars. And sorcerers/wizards get both familars and summons, and druids and rangers get summons and an animal companion.

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Re: Bards and their Sucky Greatness [A massive rant about bards]

Post by Scurvy Cur » Sat Apr 28, 2018 10:56 pm

The1Kobra wrote:
Sat Apr 28, 2018 4:36 pm
I find that with bards, the gap of power between those that don't go 4 paladin or blackguard, and those that do is immense. +9-10 saves, AC, Damage provides huge benefits. I've played 2 bards before, one dexer, one STR, neither optimally built, admittedly. Still, there's a definite gap in power depending on multiclass combinations.

Greensteel armor was the go-to back in the day for STR bards, but now they provide 5% ASF, and it happens more often than not. It can be kind of jarring to constantly switch between cloth to buff, and then putting armor on before a fight, to switch back to cloth when buffing, and back. Dealing with even 5% ASF can be an annoyance, even if it's not a game-breaker.
Not actually true. Greensteel at most has always been the armor you go to when your party is too heavy on melees, and could really use a mass haste guy. I know on all three of the bards I've played to significant level, they spend upwards of 95% of their time in full plate. One was played before greensteel existed, one was played with original greensteel, and one was played with the 5% asf greensteel (well, actually, he just skipped it, but it was around).

There was just never a point at which the loss of 4? 5? Something like that AC felt justifiable to be able to cast without still spell. I know a lot of bards used greensteel, but a lot of them were also bards that reported feeling like they never had enough AC.
The1Kobra wrote:
Sat Apr 28, 2018 4:36 pm
I can definitely say that a dex based bard gets the short end of the stick, having the damage output of a wet noodle, even if they don't have to deal with the ASF issues. The only way I could see one of those working optimally is with harper paragon, and given the difficulty in attaining it, it's definitely not a build option for most bards.

Also, just an FYI: The curse song is restorable with a lesser restoration, so it's not undispellable.
While it's not undispellable, the action economy of doing this usually runs against the guy chaining potions to avoid the suck. At the very least, he's kicking himself out of expertise for a round every time he does it.

Of all the times I've done bard pvp (and there's a lot of it), I've run into two people who thought to resto off the curse song. They both died trying to recover from the "flat foot yourself with no expertise to fix a debuff" position it put them in.


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Re: Bards and their Sucky Greatness [A massive rant about bards]

Post by MissEvelyn » Sun Apr 29, 2018 3:51 am

Unfortunately, Bards only shine when multi-classed. They're terrible if you go single-class bards. The comparison is made to other classes on Arelith.


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Re: Bards and their Sucky Greatness [A massive rant about bards]

Post by Cortex » Sun Apr 29, 2018 4:02 am

Pure bards actually get a ridiculous bard song which is borderline overpowered in a group, although that's all they'll have.

You'll need to somehow get 100 perform, and then be level 30 to get bard/curse song with the following stats:

+2 AB
+3 Damage
+3 Will
+2 Fortitude
+2 Reflex
and now things get spicy
+48 temporary HP
+7 AC
+19 skills
:)

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Re: Bards and their Sucky Greatness [A massive rant about bards]

Post by Dr. B » Sun Apr 29, 2018 4:20 am

MissEvelyn wrote:
Sun Apr 29, 2018 3:51 am
Unfortunately, Bards only shine when multi-classed. They're terrible if you go single-class bards.
This applies to most single-class builds. There are certainly worse single-class options than Bards. It's not really an issue with Bards, per se; single-classing is just usually a bad idea.

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Re: Bards and their Sucky Greatness [A massive rant about bards]

Post by Iceborn » Sun Apr 29, 2018 4:28 am

Just to nitpick at a few thoughts that I read over.

Familiars:
While I love familiars, most of them have a strict RP use of 0 utility in Arelith, and the few that have some utility are overused (I'm looking at you, fey). Wouldn't mind having the option.

Greensteel:
Greensteel armor is horrible. There's nearly no case where it is worth taking, I agree, and the few times that it is actually taken, that 5% of spell failure is a constant thorn on the side that comes up in the worst moments.

Summons:
Bards only go as far up as Summon Creature VI, with a very slower progression than a proper caster. By the time you can get the second summon, they are severely outclassed by the creatures in the modules and barely serving any utility other than being a quick distraction. EVEN if you go mostly pure pre-epic and do get to VI as early as possible, they will not be particularly helpful and still die pretty quickly to the power difference of the mobs, since these spells are balanced for full casters, and not bards.

Skills:
Most bard builds do range somewhere between 160 to 200 skillpoints at level 30, having at least a 14 int modifier. Most melee bard builds will need: Perform, Discipline, Tumble, Spellcraft, some UMD, and some Heal. Maxing the former 4 will consume 142 skillpoints. Add a generous +12+13 on each UMD and Heal for a total of 167. That leaves us just enough to max one more skill and personalize our character, which, I don't know about you [Insert name here], but I'm rather fond of customizing my character to have a little of an unique feel, and not just survive in combat. Lore, Search, Hide/Move Silently, PP, Listen all come to mind as things I wished I could afford without having to push the int score to crippling amounts.

In fact, let me take a pic about a standard starting ability score:
Image

A little stretched thin as-is. And that's even assuming negative dex that can be amended with cats grace, assuming you'll be armor-swapping or still-casting in full plate since you certainly won't be able to use the dex score of any other kind of armor.
Imagine having even less, such as the case of playing an elf, a halfing, or if you do as much as dare to play a dwarf bard. The gift system makes it so it's possible, but not without some unnecessary struggling.



Disclaimer 1: I'm not talking about either dip bards here, or pure bards - the standard multiclassed bard build with 16/20 bard levels is more or less what I'm basing my thoughts on.
Disclaimer 2: Personally, I've been playing a str-based bard with all the standard skills and one multiclass, and while I don't like having to flip 40 wands and chug a set of potions before any fight, I've been doing that with little reserve since I don't really have much of an option to actually survive.
Reminder 1: Characters don't start at level 30, and taking them to high epics can take a considerable amount of time - in which they will not have some of the skills that actually give them the trademark edge of awesome.
Last edited by Iceborn on Sun Apr 29, 2018 4:47 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Bards and their Sucky Greatness [A massive rant about bards]

Post by Hunter548 » Sun Apr 29, 2018 4:33 am

MissEvelyn wrote:
Sun Apr 29, 2018 3:51 am
Unfortunately, Bards only shine when multi-classed. They're terrible if you go single-class bards. The comparison is made to other classes on Arelith.
Bard is actually probably one of the better classes to go pure on. It's not great, and can't solo very well unless you spam wounding whispers and kits, but it's pretty good. Compare to, say, a pure class fighter that dissolves against anything you can't left click into oblivion, or a pure rogue who wants to be as far from his enemies as possible to avoid the ol KD lock, but has to get close to do non-single digit damage, and bards look pretty okay. Pure bards at least have a niche in a party.


Now, granted, the only actually good pure class is warlock, but that's the name of the game in systems based on 3.0/3.5.

Edit: Since you decided to mention me specifically Ice - That personally looks like plenty of room to personalize your character to me. You can pick up a smattering of search and lore if going for a more professional adventurer/explorer feel, pickpocket if you wanna be a street urchin or criminal underworld bard (Invis spells will help here). Or you could go the route Jinxy and I did on Nathaniel and Valentina and work to get minions who have higher skills than you do when you need them, and work to enable them via buffs (Bard song) or just being a disteaction for them.

Tangent aside: You've got space to personalize your character there anyways, and I've always found roleplay to be a better way to personalize the exact details than 15 ranks in pickpocket you'll use a handful of times.

I sympathize with the attribute apread being painful (I've been trying to max a dex paladin work for the past few days) but that's not unique to bards. Pretty much any class that cares about more than (Attack Stat) and constitution has the same problem.
Last edited by Hunter548 on Sun Apr 29, 2018 4:46 am, edited 1 time in total.
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