Song of the Heart vs EDR 3 for bards

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

First let me say there was a recent bard conversation, though it wasn't really about what I am going to talk about here. For reference however-

viewtopic.php?f=37&t=44834

As for why I'm writing this post now? Well, I'm about to play a bard for the first time since the changes were first done, and since I was playing a bard when the massive overhaul happened, I never really wanted to look at it too deeply, I already knew my last bard was now vastly inferior to what looked to be the two core bard builds now, charisma vs constitution.

But as I look at it now, I realize that's it's not a choice of two..not really. For a charisma bard you need four epic feats, 2 of which are relatively pointless to the bard, the second cadence is neat but not really important either, and then song of the heart that gives a +1 to everything the song is boosting. Nice, but when compared to EDR3 builds, you have less flexibility as a charisma bard, you have one less feat and while your song is a little better you are undoubtably going to be easy pickings for the other side.

So, me being me, I spent the morning thinking about possible solutions while I got some work done.

Step 1, raise the charisma to 27, eliminating the ability to get even a little edr for your bard.

Step 2, Boost the range of the song to double or triple the current radius with song of the heart.

Step 3, boost the dc of all bard spells by 2 for bards with song of the heart.

Now I'm probably stuck with a con bard, since I want to start my new character this weekend, but I really think going forward changes along this line to song of the heart is the way to go. I know bard song is very hard to balance, but I don't think these changes would break the class. In fact, I think you could even add a little more to the charisma bard, since even with these changes the con bard might still be better. But at least this presents a real choice, instead of what exists now, the choice and the trap.

[Rei_Jin]

Bard is… hard to balance, but I would honestly always recommend going with EDR3 over SOTH, as one is negated by a silly little spell called Silence, while the other is not.

The investment requirement for SOTH is so high that it shoehorns your build, and makes involvement in PvP situations less likely (meaning we no longer get IE EDR3 SOTH bards being nigh on unkillable buff bots, thankfully).

I like the idea of SOTH, but I can never justify taking it when there are so many better options for a bard to take!

[Hazard]

I liked the idea of a SOTH bard having a sort of 'selfish-solo' song that would give them defensive abilities like damage reduction and stuff. A type of panic button to increase survivability. Still not as good as EDR3, but something to close the gap between the two build options.

Either that or SOTH could just be ... better. Maybe +1 everything per 10 levels. So if you're 27/3 it's +2 and if you're 30 it's +3? I don't know. I haven't thought about more than a minute. Maybe ignore that one.

[Spriggan Bride]

SOTH is bragging rights if you want to always be the best bard in the group. You're the one who will always get to sing if there are multiple bards. Maybe that matters more to some people than PVP, it might to me depending on the character (stuck up artist over battle bard)

I have the feeling you can still build an EDR 3 bard with SOTH if you take harper or zhent levels. Maybe I'm not supposed to bring this up.

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

I have the feeling you can still build an EDR 3 bard with SOTH if you take harper or zhent levels. Maybe I'm not supposed to bring this up.

Well, at least someone is having a good time, but this wasn't really about "I wish I could get song of the heart and EDR3". I totally get why EDR3 bards are annoying and if I had my druthers, it wouldn't even be an option for bards. But since that's a much easier fix than making it so the only real bard alternative has to jump through a million hoops so it can't get up to edr3 and song of the heart at the same time, I have to assume it came up already and was dismissed as a possibility for whatever reason.

With all that said, that leaves only one real option to try and make it a bit more of an either/or, and that's enhancing the benefits of going charisma based.

Just to really break down the comparison-

With an EDR3 build, I only need 19 base con (though odds are I would go 20) leaving me more room for dex which is great for touch attack stuff, relevant to a bard if you look closely. I only need 3 epic feats each of which builds up a little more to the dr of 9 giving me more room for fun feats or stuff that makes me better in combat, my choice, in epics. And I'm a lot tougher to kill, which is super relevant thanks to the aura radius that bard song has now.

With a charisma build, I need 25 charisma, which means little to no room for dex, which makes dark bolt a lot less potent...which means in at least some ways I'm a worse caster than the con build despite going deep in the casting stat. I need 4 feats to get to the main cookie, and the cookie is really the only one I care about. Epic reputation is pointless for just about every bard, since they go perform over bluff, leadership becomes less important in epics because the companions don't hold up, and taunt and intimidate while good have no business being on a build that the high charisma requires. And while extended mass haste is always welcome, I don't want to trade two epic feats for it. Anything else I might want extended I could just use the pre-epic feat that I somehow have to take anyways to get access to the two epic UC feats. All this, and I'm still an easy to kill build who has to stay close to the fight and who's main thing gets shut off by a level 2 cleric spell.

So yea, while I'm totally cool with taking the lesser choice (edr is probably going to be the way to go unless you break song of the heart) I don't want to take the choice that makes me a fool. My hope in starting this thread was that we could come up with some ideas to make soth bards better, so it becomes an actual decision.

[AstralUniverse]

Yeah I also like the idea of utilizing selfish solo for an entirely different purpose when the bard has the soth feat. since a bard with soth doesnt care about apr, or extra ab for themselves, but they care a lot about how squishy they are. If a bard with soth uses selfish solo they basically throw their soth investment out of the window for no apparent reason, and therefore currently should never use selfish solo and probably never do.

What if, when a bard has a soth feat, selfish solo would give some resistances and DR instead of ab/damage/apr? The bard using it is already useless to their party and doesnt have any real damage source to pressure anyone by themselves.. so I dont see a problem. It would make the soth taxes less painful, in the meanwhile EDR bard remains tanky while singing to their party.

[Hazard]

Yeah I also like the idea of utilizing selfish solo for an entirely different purpose when the bard has the soth feat. since a bard with soth doesnt care about apr, or extra ab for themselves, but they care a lot about how squishy they are. If a bard with soth uses selfish solo they basically throw their soth investment out of the window for no apparent reason, and therefore currently should never use selfish solo and probably never do.

What if, when a bard has a soth feat, selfish solo would give some resistances and DR instead of ab/damage/apr? The bard using it is already useless to their party and doesnt have any real damage source to pressure anyone by themselves.. so I dont see a problem. It would make the soth taxes less painful, in the meanwhile EDR bard remains tanky while singing to their party.

Perfect.