Bards feel like Healer Clerics:

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dominantdrowess
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Bards feel like Healer Clerics:

Post by dominantdrowess » Thu May 19, 2022 4:16 pm

I feel like they're too strong for team fighting. They are, much like Healer Clerics used to be:

If you have one, and the enemy does not: You win. I don't see a lot of counterplay involved if they use their instant ability and buff everyone before they die.

I feel like bard may be a little bit overtuned in an effort to make them more popular? Absolutely a necessary class at the moment.

The AC, AB and skill bonuses from the custom songs are.. wild.

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Re: Bards feel like Healer Clerics:

Post by Ork » Thu May 19, 2022 5:01 pm

If they die, bard & curse song are immediately dispelled. Kill the bard. But, yes, this is usually the case. Have a bard on your team? you've won.

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Re: Bards feel like Healer Clerics:

Post by Scraps » Thu May 19, 2022 5:09 pm

dominantdrowess wrote:
Thu May 19, 2022 4:16 pm

I don't see a lot of counterplay involved if they use their instant ability and buff everyone before they die.
I thought Bard Song and Curse Song were removed on a Bards death with this rework? Specifically so killing a bard who sings for his buddies, then runs into your side to curse bomb and die was actively punished.

Also old baseline 30 Bard Song gave 7 AC 19 to all skills, 2 Ab, 3 magic damage, 3 will 2 fort/reflex. And of course old Curse song mirrored that. And you could reach that in full plate.

Bard is more popular now, but power crept? Overtuned with the rework? I don't know, I think they were even more broken before the rework.

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Re: Bards feel like Healer Clerics:

Post by Scurvy Cur » Thu May 19, 2022 8:03 pm

I think the recent reduction to discipline effects of songs was a very good move. There are some remaining outliers though:

1) I don’t like song of the heart. I get the desire to give cha/caster bard a capstone, but I feel like it inflated the AC/AB numbers we had post danger dolphin’s update (which were carefully selected to be just a hair below where vanilla NwN bard would sit unless a specific +1 AC sub song was selected).

I would consider changing this feat from +1 to all bard song numbers to something more caster themed, like “bard gets 1 ESF of choice plus one epic spell that’s not conduit, mummy dust, or EDK”

2) Sail. Here it really does feel like there’s no counterplay to a bard, because the bard is never in any danger of being focused to end the song, and the system feels like it assumes your crew is going to have a bard if you want to do top end content. I’ve given more extensive feedback on this particular issue in the sail thread, but it does feel genuinely mandatory to have a bard here.


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Re: Bards feel like Healer Clerics:

Post by AstralUniverse » Thu May 19, 2022 8:22 pm

Where are all these bards? I barely see any bards. I suspect the bards are all sailing...
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Re: Bards feel like Healer Clerics:

Post by Kenji » Thu May 19, 2022 9:49 pm

The solution is this:
We introduce a mini-game via NUI similar to that of guitar hero or osu! where the bard is required to play these minigames to keep their bard song effects going. The effectiveness of the bard songs will be determined by how accurate the keynotes are hit based on a rating system (S, A, B, C, D, F, with + and -). This will both simulate actual singing or strumming/playing an instrument and thus a modicum of realism is achieved.

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Re: Bards feel like Healer Clerics:

Post by Ork » Fri May 20, 2022 2:15 am

I love guitar hero!

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Re: Bards feel like Healer Clerics:

Post by Babylon System is the Vampire » Fri May 20, 2022 2:55 am

Scraps wrote:
Thu May 19, 2022 5:09 pm


I thought Bard Song and Curse Song were removed on a Bards death with this rework? Specifically so killing a bard who sings for his buddies, then runs into your side to curse bomb and die was actively punished.

This was never a thing. If you did this as a vanilla bard (which was a hell of a lot stronger than the current bard) you essentially committed suicide and put your team down a man to cost the other side a half a round and a 150 coin potion each.

Look, bards are not all that hard to kill. A dex based bard in the right hands is likely the strongest, but it also needs the sort of player that is willing to understand they have no chance alone against anyone with their average of 20 damage per hit. And I can tell you for certain as a player of a dex bard that I am far from unkillable despite being able to get really good ac under optimal conditions. They already have been nerfed on discipline which was absolutely unnecessary, so I have no idea what you guys expect.

Some class combinations work better in a group together then others, that's always going to be part of nwn bard or no.

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Re: Bards feel like Healer Clerics:

Post by Babylon System is the Vampire » Fri May 20, 2022 3:06 am

Scurvy Cur wrote:
Thu May 19, 2022 8:03 pm


2) Sail. Here it really does feel like there’s no counterplay to a bard, because the bard is never in any danger of being focused to end the song, and the system feels like it assumes your crew is going to have a bard if you want to do top end content. I’ve given more extensive feedback on this particular issue in the sail thread, but it does feel genuinely mandatory to have a bard here.
You've got this backwards. Under the current sail system, bard is the counter play to the best sail builds. I say current because word is there are some changes in the works. But without bard, a character who does 33 ranks in sail, takes the skill focuses and swaps out for sail gear but is not a wisdom based class or a class that boosts them to the 50 soft cap (alla lore master) is going to be in the mid to high 70s. Bards push them up to the mid 90s, where caster wisdom based classes and swash loremasters are naturally. You remove bard song, and those mid to high 70s builds (that they had to jump through real hoops to get!) are now just bait, not even good enough for the crews that want to max out their score. And this is Arelith, everyone is going for max scores.

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Re: Bards feel like Healer Clerics:

Post by dominantdrowess » Fri May 20, 2022 6:47 pm

Have we considered implementing a sail cap, as a compromise between those? So those people don't -have- to go so hard? Perhaps some combination of wisdom, feats, song and gear hitting a sail cap? And the job of a sailor is to get there by any means necessary? So someone with feats can just wear normal gear, and clean up their inventory, etc?

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Re: Bards feel like Healer Clerics:

Post by In Sorrow We Trust » Sat May 21, 2022 11:36 am

Scurvy Cur wrote:
Thu May 19, 2022 8:03 pm
I think the recent reduction to discipline effects of songs was a very good move. There are some remaining outliers though:

1) I don’t like song of the heart. I get the desire to give cha/caster bard a capstone, but I feel like it inflated the AC/AB numbers we had post danger dolphin’s update (which were carefully selected to be just a hair below where vanilla NwN bard would sit unless a specific +1 AC sub song was selected).

I would consider changing this feat from +1 to all bard song numbers to something more caster themed, like “bard gets 1 ESF of choice plus one epic spell that’s not conduit, mummy dust, or EDK”

2) Sail. Here it really does feel like there’s no counterplay to a bard, because the bard is never in any danger of being focused to end the song, and the system feels like it assumes your crew is going to have a bard if you want to do top end content. I’ve given more extensive feedback on this particular issue in the sail thread, but it does feel genuinely mandatory to have a bard here.
I thought about changing SotH to behave similar to AoV, except to all attributes, on a high cooldown and a duration of either half an hour or an hour. Alternatively just making it give +1 or +2 to all attributes on bard song.

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Re: Bards feel like Healer Clerics:

Post by AstralUniverse » Sat May 21, 2022 12:18 pm

In Sorrow We Trust wrote:
Sat May 21, 2022 11:36 am
Scurvy Cur wrote:
Thu May 19, 2022 8:03 pm
I think the recent reduction to discipline effects of songs was a very good move. There are some remaining outliers though:

1) I don’t like song of the heart. I get the desire to give cha/caster bard a capstone, but I feel like it inflated the AC/AB numbers we had post danger dolphin’s update (which were carefully selected to be just a hair below where vanilla NwN bard would sit unless a specific +1 AC sub song was selected).

I would consider changing this feat from +1 to all bard song numbers to something more caster themed, like “bard gets 1 ESF of choice plus one epic spell that’s not conduit, mummy dust, or EDK”

2) Sail. Here it really does feel like there’s no counterplay to a bard, because the bard is never in any danger of being focused to end the song, and the system feels like it assumes your crew is going to have a bard if you want to do top end content. I’ve given more extensive feedback on this particular issue in the sail thread, but it does feel genuinely mandatory to have a bard here.
I thought about changing SotH to behave similar to AoV, except to all attributes, on a high cooldown and a duration of either half an hour or an hour. Alternatively just making it give +1 or +2 to all attributes on bard song.
That would make it quite useless for everyone except the bard and for everyone else it would result in +1 to skills and saves of stats which arent maxed yet. People will always gear according to their self-buffed state. That means +7 to their stats on the gear in most cases, unless they have transmutation or meta-magic. It would certainly not worth the same investment it currently requires imo (but if the cha requirement is removed, it could help melee bards).
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Re: Bards feel like Healer Clerics:

Post by -XXX- » Sat May 21, 2022 12:24 pm

Kenji wrote:
Thu May 19, 2022 9:49 pm
The solution is this:
Kenji also wrote:Adding Bard to the list of classes to delete:
Monk
Druid
Bard

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Re: Bards feel like Healer Clerics:

Post by Itikar » Sat May 21, 2022 3:40 pm

dominantdrowess wrote:
Thu May 19, 2022 4:16 pm
I feel like they're too strong for team fighting. They are, much like Healer Clerics used to be:

If you have one, and the enemy does not: You win. I don't see a lot of counterplay involved if they use their instant ability and buff everyone before they die.

I feel like bard may be a little bit overtuned in an effort to make them more popular? Absolutely a necessary class at the moment.

The AC, AB and skill bonuses from the custom songs are.. wild.
This really has always been the case, even in Neverwinter Nights vanilla. If the enemy has a bard and you do not, you have a massive disadvantage. Period.

Arelith at least gives you the chance to kill off the bard in order to cancel the song effects, so it's already an improvement over vanilla. On top of that there are the counters to Bard Song and Curse Song, that existed in vanilla NWN, and which still works in Arelith just fine. So, use those tools.

As for changing this state of affair, it's very dangerous, as it's basically what the bard exists for. Sure, sail can be touched in any way one desires, bards do not exist for sailing, but their role in team battle is pretty much the cornerstone of the class. So trying to alter that risks making the bard borderline irrelevant, as by themselves they are not really that special, out of maybe a handful select builds.

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Re: Bards feel like Healer Clerics:

Post by Waldo52 » Sat May 21, 2022 4:16 pm

I am deeply uncomfortable with "If you have a bard, you win." Bards are a relic from first or second edition D&D that sing in battle. It's clownish and I don't want to be obligated to work with one. I don't want to be in a situation where I know I'll lose a group fight because the other side has better Broadway talent.

I've probably shared this story on the forums before, but about 15 years ago (give or take) World of Warcraft pretended to introduce the bard as an April fool's joke. Even for the developers/player base of a brain dead game where space alien paladins and kung fu pandas ride motorcycles, the idea of a bard was perceived as silly.

The Arelith dev team is not deleting bards. If I thought there was even the slightest chance of that happening I would complain about them ten times more and get politically active on the subject. Sadly they're here to stay and all I can ask is to please not make bards a necessity.

We know they're buffers but let's not make their buffs inordinately powerful to the point where this one class constitutes a mandatory battlefield role. If they're going to remain a near necessity then I'd really like to see non-perform equivalents, either through a path or a class with a similar role and none of the flavor baggage.

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Re: Bards feel like Healer Clerics:

Post by Babylon System is the Vampire » Sat May 21, 2022 4:44 pm

What flavor baggage? It's your character play how you want to here on arelith, and people take advantage of that with clerics, paladins, druids. ect. Why does a bard have to be a broadway star in your eyes lol?

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Re: Bards feel like Healer Clerics:

Post by Dr. B » Sat May 21, 2022 5:31 pm

Waldo52 wrote:
Sat May 21, 2022 4:16 pm
I am deeply uncomfortable with "If you have a bard, you win." Bards are a relic from first or second edition D&D that sing in battle. It's clownish and I don't want to be obligated to work with one. I don't want to be in a situation where I know I'll lose a group fight because the other side has better Broadway talent.

I've probably shared this story on the forums before, but about 15 years ago (give or take) World of Warcraft pretended to introduce the bard as an April fool's joke. Even for the developers/player base of a brain dead game where space alien paladins and kung fu pandas ride motorcycles, the idea of a bard was perceived as silly.

The Arelith dev team is not deleting bards. If I thought there was even the slightest chance of that happening I would complain about them ten times more and get politically active on the subject. Sadly they're here to stay and all I can ask is to please not make bards a necessity.

We know they're buffers but let's not make their buffs inordinately powerful to the point where this one class constitutes a mandatory battlefield role. If they're going to remain a near necessity then I'd really like to see non-perform equivalents, either through a path or a class with a similar role and none of the flavor baggage.
Having read this and some of your other posts about Bards, my takeaway is that you'd be bad at roleplaying one. There are a myriad of imaginative ways in which the concept can be played out.

In real life, music has been played before and during battle for thousands of years, both to inspire comrades and demoralize enemies. Furthermore, being under the effects of a Bard Song does not imply that the Bard is still playing or performing.

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Re: Bards feel like Healer Clerics:

Post by AstralUniverse » Sat May 21, 2022 6:47 pm

Guys just remember that (for combat at least, not gonna delve into Sail mechanics) a bard in a vacuum doesnt equal 100% guaranteed win. If the bard is buffing crappy builds and the enemy team has another good support class and even slightly better builds, the fight wont be as one sided as some people make it seem. Like.. I agree that bard *is* the best support class in the game, but I also think it's very squishy, has 0 kill pressure on their own because their thing is buffing others. So if bard did not strongly tilt the favor to their team in pvp then what are they even there for.

My two cents are that melee bards should make some kind of comeback and that caster bard should gain more tools for soloing pve but have lower powercreep on the end-game lvl 30 songs.
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Re: Bards feel like Healer Clerics:

Post by Itikar » Sat May 21, 2022 7:08 pm

The matter is also that, in group combat, it is not also just bards. Wizards and clerics are very important too and almost needed in practically every group. I don't see what is the need to single out bard in particular. I would argue that bard is actually less useful than either a wizard or a cleric, or a knight, in fact, because it just gives bonuses instead of performing a role with specific spells. Sure, the songs make the bard versatile and has some specific tools, but other than the sailing, I don't see why a bard is /strictly/ needed.

If anything a bard can balance out situations where you have a smaller group facing a bigger one.

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Re: Bards feel like Healer Clerics:

Post by Zavandar » Sat May 21, 2022 7:16 pm

A properly built bard really isn't that squishy.

Image
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Re: Bards feel like Healer Clerics:

Post by Babylon System is the Vampire » Sat May 21, 2022 7:40 pm

Zavandar wrote:
Sat May 21, 2022 7:16 pm
A properly built bard really isn't that squishy.

Image
I'm not going to deny this build is strong, but it does have its weaknesses against certain things and really, who wants to play a gnomish bard or a dwarven bard that isn't a battle bard? I know folks play certain things strictly for the powerlevel, I'm not a fool, but this is even more boring than a charisma healer cleric was. You literally do nothing save try not to die. Sure, you can cast extended mass haste but so can the spell sword and they are doing insane damage along the way.

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Re: Bards feel like Healer Clerics:

Post by Hazard » Sat May 21, 2022 7:48 pm

Bards are not squishy. Bards are very tanky, if built properly.

But I think they're fine as they are.

No, I don't play a bard.

The only thing that bothers me about them is that they can have 100% uptime on detecting any stealth build. That's disgusting and needs to go.

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Re: Bards feel like Healer Clerics:

Post by Zavandar » Sat May 21, 2022 8:20 pm

Babylon System is the Vampire wrote:
Sat May 21, 2022 7:40 pm
You literally do nothing save try not to die.
Then you are not playing a song bard to its full potential.
Intelligence is too important

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Re: Bards feel like Healer Clerics:

Post by Babylon System is the Vampire » Sat May 21, 2022 9:43 pm

Zavandar wrote:
Sat May 21, 2022 8:20 pm
Babylon System is the Vampire wrote:
Sat May 21, 2022 7:40 pm
You literally do nothing save try not to die.
Then you are not playing a song bard to its full potential.
I haven't played it at all, I made my bard about 4 days before the nifty changes ... So yeah I'm just going off theory, I will take your word for it.

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Re: Bards feel like Healer Clerics:

Post by Waldo52 » Sun May 22, 2022 4:49 am

Dr. B wrote:
Sat May 21, 2022 5:31 pm
Waldo52 wrote:
Sat May 21, 2022 4:16 pm
I am deeply uncomfortable with "If you have a bard, you win." Bards are a relic from first or second edition D&D that sing in battle. It's clownish and I don't want to be obligated to work with one. I don't want to be in a situation where I know I'll lose a group fight because the other side has better Broadway talent.

I've probably shared this story on the forums before, but about 15 years ago (give or take) World of Warcraft pretended to introduce the bard as an April fool's joke. Even for the developers/player base of a brain dead game where space alien paladins and kung fu pandas ride motorcycles, the idea of a bard was perceived as silly.

The Arelith dev team is not deleting bards. If I thought there was even the slightest chance of that happening I would complain about them ten times more and get politically active on the subject. Sadly they're here to stay and all I can ask is to please not make bards a necessity.

We know they're buffers but let's not make their buffs inordinately powerful to the point where this one class constitutes a mandatory battlefield role. If they're going to remain a near necessity then I'd really like to see non-perform equivalents, either through a path or a class with a similar role and none of the flavor baggage.
Having read this and some of your other posts about Bards, my takeaway is that you'd be bad at roleplaying one. There are a myriad of imaginative ways in which the concept can be played out.

In real life, music has been played before and during battle for thousands of years, both to inspire comrades and demoralize enemies. Furthermore, being under the effects of a Bard Song does not imply that the Bard is still playing or performing.
Meanie :(

I get that music on the battlefield is a historically important thing, but NWN generally supports small scale skirmishes of 10v10 much better than it does large scale battles. If you have twenty thousand men lined up and 200 of them are playing the drums or blowing the horns that definitely makes sense. One guy in a party of ten just seems like the guy in the fight singing his heart out.

I do understand your point about the lingering effects of a bard song, and this makes the class feel a bit less ridiculous. Maybe the song and dance stuff happens before the fighting begins, and I could see how this reduces the overall silliness of the class to some degree. But I still don't enjoy the flavor of bards. For the most part I enjoy arguing with you on these forums but in meters of personal taste there really can't be a winner and a loser.

I will agree with you that I'd be terrible at roleplaying one. I've tried, and for your sake I'll try again tonight. You're kind of my forum nemesis but I really respect you.

A lot of the player base disagrees with me on bards and monks, which is totally okay. My problem isn't only with the fact that these classes exist (and oh boy is that a problem) but that they're credibly accused of being overpowered or mandatory in a party setting.

Nature themed party? Better get a bard.

Gritty gang of thugs? Better get a bard.

Random writ squad? Hopefully there's a bard.

Radiant heart or Myon gank squad? Bard.

If bards are allowed to exist, which sadly they are, they absolutely should be above average buffers. But they shouldn't be that much better than clerics and shamans and knights. Especially knights. Can we please get some knight love?

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