Let's talk about the evangelist dip

[But Will It Blend]

I don't even see evangelist as a problem because it gives players more interesting build options. I've never sat here thinking "Man that bard sure is the most broken thing I've ever seen because of an Evangelist dip". I think it gives them meaningful choices. And you are giving things up in exchange. I feel like changing it means you're going to see a lot fewer people willing to play bard if the choice simply becomes "Lmao 30 bard with song of heart or bust". Because a bard loremaster, frankly, who doesn't hit full song, is 100% useless if there's another bard around. And that isn't hyperbole.

Bard is either all or nothing. If you're not the best you may as well not be there.

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

I think the answer to evangelist is easy, and I mentioned it above though it got lost in my 4 posts too long exchange with astral above. Option two is the easiest fix and makes the most sense. But as you can see in the two posts above mine, at this point it presents another preferably avoidable issue.

If there is one thing that the evangelist dip proved, is that with the exception of the dirge variant which I think is way more powerful than people are giving it credit, there's probably a way to let people have more variety in bards without breaking it. That on the other hand however is not an easy fix and is much deeper than I have given real thought to at this point. I did have some suggestions I was formulating around song of the heart, so I will just expand those thoughts to feasible bard dips that wouldn't break the game and respond to this thread with what I have by the weekend. It won't be perfect, I'm clearly not the strongest number cruncher, but if the best it does is spark an idea on how to tackle it then I would consider that a success.

[-XXX-]

What does an Evangelist dip do for Bard?

• div dip for div might/shield
• opens multiclass options while preserving lvl 30 song

At the cost of:

• extra APR from selfish solo
• reduced CL

So it's a tradeoff & IMO 30 Bard is probably still a slightly more powerful option, but I can absolutely see the FOMO for skipping LM and all its QoL goodies. Giving pure 30 Bard one ESF perk* to choose from might alleviate that.

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*it's -yoink. Bard shines in the sailing system where -yoink is a key tool to grab buddies while sailing. At least that'd be the #1 reason for me to choose Ba/Cl/LM over 30 Ba right now.

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

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*it's -yoink. Bard shines in the sailing system where -yoink is a key tool to grab buddies while sailing. At least that'd be the #1 reason for me to choose Ba/Cl/LM over 30 Ba right now.

Yoink + domain sail bonuses and gift of the explorer. So, you actually get a hard +10 to your sail score lol.

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

I don't think you're alone in your sentiment, but I need a more tangible solution here to your problem if you have any in mind.

I was going to take the next few days, write up a complete revamp of the bard class, and confuse the hell out of everyone in the process. I'd still be willing to do that, but before I got started, I said "I should write up an easy fix too". Once I did, it seemed so clean and easy and something that can be done right now that I'm going ahead and posting this in the here and now as a quick fix.

If any dev would be interested in revamping the bard class and don't have ideas just yet, hit me up and I will definitely share my thoughts if I don't end up just posting them at some point anyways.

Easy fix

Remove +3 to dispel for epic bards

give Loremaster full synergy with bard song. The one thing that this does that could be potentially objectionable is give access to open lock and disable trap while having thirty bard song, but since they do that with the evangelist dip anyways I didn't account for it here. I'll also mention that rogues cunning is a bard spell just in case.

give fighter one per 2 synergy, letting a 26/4 bard fighter get to 28 which is most of the bonuses they want while being weaker vs dispels like the evangelist dip is. This is definitely a boost over what the egangelist dip is, but I don't think its a game breaking one.

I think these two are the main versions of splash damage from removing the evangelist dip, and their current builds should be easy to move over to them. If I am missing something, feel free to chime in anyone.

As far as dirge goes, I think its already powerful with 22 song. Its ab is one less, its ac is two less, its saves and damage are the same as a 30 bard song. So really the main gap is just with skills. I think thats a fair trade for having epic undead, epic necro focus, and powerful dirges that aren't easily removed by lessor restoration potions.

Just as an add on in case you missed my post above where i didn't ping you, this would be in conjunction with option 2, making it so evangelist needs a majority of cleric levels.

[-XXX-]

Yoink + domain sail bonuses and gift of the explorer. So, you actually get a hard +10 to your sail score lol.

It's +12 hard sail, but that's not really a problem - it basically plays out as a free ESF:sail (or rather being able to skip it). Ship crew sail score is capped at 100, so there are diminishing returns to an excessive sail score & it all pales in comparison to the power of sea shanties anyway.

I'd still choose 30 Bard for selfish solo APR and max CL, even if it means I'd have to take SF+ESF:sail. The only missing piece is -yoink for sailing QoL, is what I'm saying.

[perseid]

I don't really find the Evan dip to be an issue. Is it extremely build efficient? Sure. It's a good dip. But lots of things are good dips, for the longest time Paladin was a comparably impactful dip when used in Brycer builds and the only reason that changed is because Paladin got buffed to the point it made more sense not to multiclass it anymore. So... I don't see the issue myself.

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

Yoink + domain sail bonuses and gift of the explorer. So, you actually get a hard +10 to your sail score lol.

It's +12 hard sail, but that's not really a problem - it basically plays out as a free ESF:sail (or rather being able to skip it). Ship crew sail score is capped at 100, so there are diminishing returns to an excessive sail score & it all pales in comparison to the power of sea shanties anyway.

I'd still choose 30 Bard for selfish solo APR and max CL, even if it means I'd have to take SF+ESF:sail. The only missing piece is -yoink for sailing QoL, is what I'm saying.

That's not entirely accurate. the ship average maxes at 100, which means your hypothetical 120 sail means someone else can have an 80 and you still hit 100 sail. It comes into play more on bigger ships where it's harder to get a crew that all hit 100, and is generally the role of your caster cleric, or caster druid, ect.

And you were right, it is +12, I thought I remembered the loremaster bonus getting lowered to 4. So, if I'm on a three man, its like adding +4 to my song, and a six man its like adding +2 to my song, as another way to look at it.

[-XXX-]

That's not entirely accurate. the ship average maxes at 100, which means your hypothetical 120 sail means someone else can have an 80 and you still hit 100 sail. It comes into play more on bigger ships where it's harder to get a crew that all hit 100, and is generally the role of your caster cleric, or caster druid, ect.

And you were right, it is +12, I thought I remembered the loremaster bonus getting lowered to 4. So, if I'm on a three man, its like adding +4 to my song, and a six man its like adding +2 to my song, as another way to look at it.

A bard/lm/evang gets to 115 sail if they max build for it - that translates to adding +5 hard sail to two other people while crewing a brig or +2.5 hard sail to five other people aboard a flagship. Thing is:

• your sea shanty is giving +15 soft sail bonus to everybody, which should be bringing all the other characters with 50 hard sail ranks to 100 already
• won't really make much difference with those who don't build for 50 hard sail ranks as they'll still fall short
• the only cases where this really matters is while sailing with sail build characters who aren't quite max lvl yet (which I don't hate TBH)

Finally, I wouldn't say that any perception of "X build can get too high sail too easily" would be my biggest balance concern with regards to the sailing system as a whole right now as the final value of said sail score directly depends on what ship the character is sailing on (it's more about ship stats than build stats ATM).

[AstralUniverse]

The one elegant solution (to a problem that I'm not even sure exists tbh but I'll go along with it) here, if the goal is to make LM and/or evangelist less mandatory for sailing, is to turn the Secret of Sail bonus from hard to soft. This evens the gap between those who can easily push to soft cap and those who cannot (because they arent bards and dont want to depend on bard or whatever else reason there may be). This directly lowers the value of dipping cleric, because you'd no longer need LM for hard sail, so you can go pure bard.

That's my two cents.

EDIT: Oh, and we could aswell make the domains sail bonuses also soft.

[-XXX-]

I disagree with that - the less sources of hard sail bonus we get right now, the more sailing characters get shoehorned into WIS builds.
IMO turning all sail bonuses into soft ones without divorcing the sail skill from wisdom wouldn't be a good solution.

As I said above - there are diminishing returns to excessively high sail as the crew score caps at 100.
A melee build gets much more out of the explorer gift with regards to sail than a cleric or a bard right now IMO.

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

Well, I don't want to get lost in the mire of sail scores, since it's a completely different conversation, but no, it's not a soft bonus lol. It's more added to the average ship score, which covers for that weaponsmaster that couldn't make room for epic focus sail, ect. And no, it's not breaking the game (Just my spirit because I feel like it's better than song of the heart bards at this point on a ship), the only "Broken" aspect I can see so far is what it does for dirge, since a regular dirge is also lacking epic feats so you are trading 3 cl against dispels (2 of which can be made up for with abj defense) for +1 ab +2 ac and a plethora of +5s to skills and other small bonuses over what the dirge normally gets from bard song.

But forget power for a second. If I told you that because of some tweaks to (picking something random) druid, it now gave a 20 fighter 7 weapons master 3 druid all the fighter bonus stuff as if it were a 30 fighter, you would be saying that's crazy. This is the same thing as that, it's just not as powerful. This is not a normal dip, it's the only dip that fundamentally breaks what was set up balance wise around these classes.

Now, it would be super easy to fix. Snip, snip, evangelist requires a majority of cleric levels. But 2, or 3 years, whatever it's been is a long time and people have characters already. And if there's one thing it proved is that there is room for more flexibility with bard splashes. So, the real question is, how do you keep that flexibility (and as a result, variety in builds) a viable option so people who built around evangelist already have something to turn to.

I gave my thoughts on that up above in the post I quoted kenji in, and after some thought i would already add ranger to the 1 per two levels bard song synergy. Feel free to point out any builds I missed, or numbers you think are wrong, and let's get this right instead of hanging on to the thing that breaks the design philosophy of multiple classes.

[AstralUniverse]

killing evangelist dip is not a solution to anything at all.

the example with 20 fighter 7 wm 3 druid would make sense if fighter had spellbook, and if druid killed your CL. Besides those things evangelist is also a div dip, but this requires 13 str, lots of cha, doesnt get cha-saves, loses bab if taken pre-epic (which you do when you take div feats). Everything you're getting here is costly. You're getting lvl 30 song while multiclassing, yes, but it costs you quite enough when you care about things like apr, spellbook's cl vs dispels and other things a fighter for example doesnt really worry about. So really not an equivalent situation. Also ranger (and some other classes too) already get some form of synergy with bard song, which affects the bonuses of the base-line song, just not necessarily sea shanty.

I dont think killing evangelist dip just because of an alleged issue with sailing, is justifiable.

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

Lol, astral. This thread is not about an "alleged issue with sailing", its effect on sailing is how it caught my interest in the first place full stop. I think you are too smart to not get my point about dirge, or how it fundamentally breaks what the design space was for these classes, but I don't want to accuse you of arguing in bad faith and setting up strawmen, so I will assume you just don't get it and help you out some.

The correct answer for your stance is "I think evangelist is fine as it is, it's a happy accident." It's a legit stance; you don't need to bend over backward to try and find the best way to word my stance to make it sound like a nothing burger to justify it.

[AstralUniverse]

I genuinely thought you're criticizing the effect of evangelist dip on sailing, in that it allows bards to maintain lvl 30 song, while dipping 2 different dips (evangelist and loremaster) who give hard sail bonus. My bad. I honestly dont see what dirge has to do with it.

We can compare 20 bard 10 dirge, to 17 bard 3 evangelist 10 dirge and see how evangelist affects the setup.
Without evangelist, your ac will be lower, but it will be pretty decent. You will afford more con, int and cha when you dont need 13 str. You will afford a lot more feats when you dont need power attack, divine shield,, sf abjur and ad abjure. You will also have more spells between 17 and 20 bard.

With evangelist, you now have absurd ac, but longer wind up. Worth noting here that your extra ac is all dodge, and that bard already has enough ac that the best way to tackle it in pvp is through flat-footing - something divine shield doesnt help you with, at all. you are down 3 cl vs dispels which you can kill your feats to make up for 2 of the 3 as mentioned above.

The biggest upside for evangelist here is maintaining the 30 song, when having 10 dirge, but dirge at least gives undead summons full song. And if it wasnt for the lvl 30 song, 20 bard 10 dirge would be objeticely better, so it's fine.

Over all. Seems like a good design, but I will acknowledge that for someone who doesnt care as much about their CL and also wants domains for more hard sailing bonus, evangelist is a no brainer and is mostly only upsides, but that's ONLY in regards to sailing where traditional character stats are negligible. There's also no space for loremaster if you're a dirge singer which is the core of my confusion.

I also kindly ask you to stop trying to ridicule the stuff I say, when I only address the issue at hand and you deflect it to talk about me, Astral. Stop. It's irelevant here.

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

I am not ridiculing you lol, I was pointing out how I perceive you to be arguing. But perhaps I got it wrong, because your last post made it seem like you aren't even reading what I am writing, just skimming for things to argue against, and that you don't understand bard song fundamentally.

The dirge build isn't swapping +1 ab and +2 ac for 3 less cl for itself, because that +1 ab and +2 ac applies to its epic tier undead, and the weaponsmaster and archer you travel with for an easy example. You wouldn't try and squeeze in divine shield, you already have enough ac, and you just stealth it up to hit the corners when people come after you. And yes, the dirge already has a boost to their undead with their bard song, but that doesn't overlap the additions you get for having 30 bard song, it stacks as far as I can tell.

The base dirge (20/10) is already hysterically more powerful than the base 30 bard, if you break it down by the numbers. I think even 22 bard song is too much personally, but i lost that argument when the class was released. The only real downside was the lack of extra epic feats and the slightly weaker bard song, which evangelist allows you to cheat on.

Since you refused to scroll up and read my suggestion, I will bring it down to you. I think you will find that where I am going with it presents a lot of opportunity to have the same flexibility for the jankier builds while taking care of the dirge issue in one swoop.

Easy fix

Remove +3 to dispel for epic bards

give Loremaster full synergy with bard song. The one thing that this does that could be potentially objectionable is give access to open lock and disable trap while having thirty bard song, but since they do that with the evangelist dip anyways I didn't account for it here. I'll also mention that rogues cunning is a bard spell just in case.

give fighter one per 2 synergy, letting a 26/4 bard fighter get to 28 which is most of the bonuses they want while being weaker vs dispels like the evangelist dip is. This is definitely a boost over what the egangelist dip is, but I don't think its a game breaking one.

I think these two are the main versions of splash damage from removing the evangelist dip, and their current builds should be easy to move over to them. If I am missing something, feel free to chime in anyone.

As far as dirge goes, I think its already powerful with 22 song. Its ab is one less, its ac is two less, its saves and damage are the same as a 30 bard song. So really the main gap is just with skills. I think thats a fair trade for having epic undead, epic necro focus, and powerful dirges that aren't easily removed by lessor restoration potions.

Just as an add on in case you missed my post above where i didn't ping you, this would be in conjunction with option 2, making it so evangelist needs a majority of cleric levels.
[/quote]

As I said later on in the thread, I would add ranger as a 1 per 2 level synergy to give bard an archer option or a dual wield option as well as being an animal empathy bard (something you can do without the ranger levels, but it does add a bit of flavor).

[AstralUniverse]

Oh well, I did try, at good faith, I swear. But I officially give up on this thread.

I do sencerley hope no one is reading this 'feedback' seriously because it's a pile of nonesense for the most part, and I mean that with every ounce of respect I can muster, after attempting to break this down in to smaller chunks and analyze the 'issue'. I tried my best.

[PowerWord Rage]

1) 6 + 1/3 of Cleric levels count towards Bard Song / Curse Song effective level progression
2) For the duration of Divine Favor (1 hour), instead of increasing AB and Damage:
Gain +4 Bard Song and Curse Song effective levels

I think, the core issue that is being debated over and over, and perhaps getting a little well complicated with various other builds being mentioned on the earlier pages are basically the above.

Am i accurate to say that,

A level 3 Bard and Level 3 Cleric will actually have the following bard song scaling ( assuming that they've other 10 levels of other base classes ie: could be fighter / barbarian whichever for a total of 16 character levels )

Bard song scaling
3 (Bard) + 7 (6+1 Cleric) + 4 (divine favor, yes i am aware that people use the wand to cast it, it's sold commonly in shops for a reason) = 14.

If that is so, i think...something is seriously wrong with this evangelist sub-class.
It will mean that for a single dip of evangelist sub-class (3 levels), you actually gain 11 levels worth of bard song scaling ( with divine favor )

Edit: Perhaps this class is made with the vision of a Cleric with majority level in Evangelist but it's clearly abused here if people are taking dip of 3 of this class, just to bump an 11 increased bard song scaling.
Just like Deathless Mastery can be moved to level 15
Why not make the base 6 bonus and 4 from divine favor ONLY if the cleric is above level 15 as it was for War priest for majority level to enjoy certain perks?

Or i am mistaken here and that Evangelist is actually being created with the purpose of being a dip class rather than majority?

No matter how i see it, this is an /-ABUSE-/ rather than class or skill vision.

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

That's it in a nutshell. And just saying that should have been enough for everyone to say, "hey that doesn't seem right", but instead people want to argue power levels around it. Thats where you see us getting lost in the shuffle, and some people will try to use said shuffle to make others seem stupid.

Another problem exists though, how do you deal with all the people that have characters based on the evang dip currently, because it's been like this for years. And since some of these dips proved that bard isn't broken with certain splashes, it seems only fair to try and work something out where their character isn't just toast now.

This is Kenji's last post in the thread, for reference, since its already buried.

I don't think you're alone in your sentiment, but I need a more tangible solution here to your problem if you have any in mind.

For example, it could be a mix or none of the following:

• Reduce Evangelist to Bard Song scaling to Evangelist levels instead of flat 6
• Evangelist only gets the bard song levels when it is in the majority
• Nothing changes, Evangelist is in a good spot

Feel free to hash out the details on Discord or here. One can only do so much with sentiments rather than actual values for execution.

[PowerWord Rage]

Oh yes, I had saw Kenji's post but didn't actually think too much about it when i wrote my 1st post about sailing RP until i went for further more indepth read.

I mean, if this exist for a long time, it's time to fix this really. Sure, it will affect many players who are already in comfortable zones but everyone should agree that -
Something which is an abuse does not make it any less of an abuse, even if it does not cause much harm and perhaps already in comfortable zone.
What's wrong, should not have any justification in the first place. This entire thread that we're arguing and debating about something that is already in the /wrong/ is quite alarming. This thread ought to have been, why is this not fixed?
3 dip of evangelist for 11 bard song scaling, tell me, how this is actually going to convince people?

And yes, Kenji's post on suggestion is sound.
I think, Evangelist get bard song if majority level is the right way that it should have actually been.

Edit: Tbh, Arelith is super massive and there're many play around with builds / class etc. This is a good reason that many players including myself, and surprisingly myself, are only aware of this thing that actually exist
Well, since i don't play bard...in my entire NWN life ( including Arelith and older times )

Honestly, it's not that i can't see that Evangelist has not caused any unbalanced or overpowered build etc because over the period of probably years of it's existence, this has already been proven.
But I am not sure if the first group of people perhaps who discover how you can use this dip to maximize the bard song scaling do not actually feel that this is quite not right? I mean, no one actually report this issue until now and because of that, many people such as myself are not really aware of it.
Though we've to keep in mind that we should not use the length of it's existence to treat an abuse of this level ( 3 level dip for 11 bard scaling ) as normalized when it wasn't normal in the first place.

Totally trying to be respectful here and if my post actually makes people upset or feel that i am disrespectful, feel free to highlight to me and i'll change the way i write, the best i can.

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

I wouldn't stress your post. I think the people that have these builds have to be considered somewhat because of how long they have been around, since it gave the illusion (or perhaps reality, we will see where the ball lands) that it's ok to play them. and I don't think the word "abuse" is one I would have used for people playing a class that by all accounts seemed to be allowed for the past three years. And finally, it sounds like most folks including devs knew of the dip's existence, so it's clearly been brought up before in some capacity or another.

But I also get your reaction, it was the first one I had when I found out about the dip a month ago. I think if everyone was being honest with themselves, they likely all had the same initial reaction when they first heard it. But at this point, they are so far past the shock factor and are now in "hold on to my goodies" stance III.

As far as power level goes, you are right mostly that it didn't break anything. The effects it has on the sail meta is a little obnoxious simply because who wants to horseshoe cleric into their bard's backstory, And the melee's can escape the dispel thing by using consumables exclusively even though that seems like more work than it's worth.

The dirge however is 95% pure upgrade over what it's supposed to be, and while scouring classes for dips just now I also noticed that you could go a dwarven defender edr bard with 15% physical immunity for your party added to your 30 song thanks to one of the second-tier stances. So, it's not without things that are a bit overpowered.

What I hope is coming soon, is some clarity from the devs. If you guys want to fix this and are open to allowing more bard dips with certain classes, you should say so. People might actually stop fighting me on this and start helping with the brainstorm. I don't want to put pressure on you, but if you remain silent on a position people are just going to turtle up in hopes the next thing takes over the conversation and leave me here talking to myself, which already got old a few posts back. If you feel like you have enough of the conversation that kenji asked for, but need time to discuss it internally, just say that.

[AstralUniverse]

I gave up on the thread. I'm not really here dont mind me.

But uh...ehem..

this info has been on the wiki on the path description for the past 3 years.

• 6 + 1/3 of Cleric levels count towards Bard Song / Curse Song effective level progression
• For the duration of Divine Favor (1 hour), instead of increasing AB and Damage:
  Gain +4 Bard Song and Curse Song effective levels

[Zariu]

The suggestion to make evangelist require majority levels is the most destructive suggestion I've seen. And would legitimately destroy a number of builds.

Clearly you just care about what is bothering you personally, and don't care to consider letting other people just have fun with something that gives bard more variety. I'll give you a hint, the answer you should really actually be looking at, is just what can 30 bard get to feel a little better? The suggestion of an epic skill foci for example.

Because, your problem as you have stated multiple times is just that your 30 sailing bard feels bad. The solution should not be to take a sledgehammer to evangelist dip. When a minor bit of tweaking to bard 30 would likely solve all your complaints upon your own build. That's a terrible lack of good sense in game design.

[Zariu]

To follow up from my prior post, if the idea of making 30 bard have its own small perks to be a more viable feeling option does not suit you, you need to consider why.

I do think I already know the answer due to what you suggested to change with evangelist to only if majority and other things you wrote about rp. You hate cleric dips because you expect them to be played a certain way and so want this changed to force people not to use this dip they have been.

In which case first, dips like monk and such have never been controlled like that and really shouldn't be as it would be a nightmare for the team and forces rigid builds and rp. Second, the more sane suggestion for that case would be to move the evangelist functionality to another class without the weight of rp expectations. Rather than just let's kill a ton of builds.

Edit: Also clerics come in many flavors dependant upon church and function. Holding every cleric to "holyman/holywoman" rp inspired by our own real life clergy is actually a very incorrect depiction of Forgotten Realms clergy which has a great deal of nuance.

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

Alright, guys, I'm going to close out my involvement with this thread with a quick lesson in basic logic. To have your argument logically sound, you need 1 to infinity premises based on fact, and a conclusion that can be the only logical result of said premises. For example:

Premise 1: Areliths balance is a carefully orchestrated thing, with many devs working on many different things that all have to be fit together.

Premise 2: The 3 level evangelist dip was a mistake that broke the design balance of two classes (bard and dirge) unintentionally.

Conclusion: The evangelist dip shouldn't exist.

Now, if your counter is "you just want to ruin peoples fun because you don't want to play a cleric dip" not only is that not a logical conclusion to any premise, but it's also not even a good premise itself. You don't know me well enough personally to attribute any hidden agenda to my opinion as fact beyond what I tell you, and I have said multiple times in this thread already that while the sailing aspect is what put this monstrosity on my radar, and talked about specific classes here and there, the fact that it shouldn't exist at all is the main issue.

I've tried to be patient with 4 pages of these pointless counter points (2 pages of which can be attributed to one person) because I realize this is an emotional issue for some. You've had this toy that by all logical assessments you shouldn't have ever had for three years now, and it feels bad to think it could be taken away. And until this post, I was still trying to find a solution for the less egregious uses of the evang dip, but that's over now.

As far as I'm concerned, the chips are going to fall where they may that this point, and I'm not going to lose sleep over it either way.