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