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Incontrol88
2010-10-10, 02:43 PM
Hey all. A buddy of mine did a series of articles on spicing up the Bard in 3.5 for my gaming blog, The Community.

With his permission I'm going to re-post them here for your enjoyment!

Bardzilla I: The Melee Monster (http://incontrol88.wordpress.com/2010/08/09/bardzilla/)

Bardzilla II: Boomstick, Buffer and Beyond (http://incontrol88.wordpress.com/2010/08/19/bardzilla-ii-boomstick-buffer-and-beyond/)

Bardzilla III: Increased Strength Through Jazzercise (Or, Optimizing Music) (http://incontrol88.wordpress.com/2010/08/27/bardzilla-iii/)

Hope you like! If you have a response to a particular article, please comment there!

Morph Bark
2010-10-10, 03:06 PM
The idea of Mel Gibson as a bard is entertaining.

Incontrol88
2010-10-10, 03:39 PM
Haha yeah if you like the pictures make sure to mouseover them :smalltongue:

Logalmier
2010-10-10, 03:43 PM
Haha yeah if you like the pictures make sure to mouseover them :smalltongue:

BUT WHERE ARE THE SPARKLES?

Greyfell
2010-10-12, 08:30 AM
I'll definitely have to read these when I get a chance. Love any good bard building advise.

Incontrol88
2010-10-12, 08:44 AM
Yep, and my buddy who authored the series has quite a lot of it. Bard was his first ever class choice so he kind of has a soft spot for it.

Keld Denar
2010-10-12, 09:45 AM
I left a comment on the 3rd article. My biggest thing were that he's advocating the use of the Song and Silence(3.0) Virtuoso. Virtuoso was reprinted in Complete Adventurer(3.5), and there were some pretty significant changes to Inspire Courage and bardic music in general. That makes a couple of his claims invalid. The only way stuff from previous editions should be used is if it wasn't reprinted. Since Virtuoso was reprinted, the most recent version should be used. Thats like saying its ok for baseball players to use steroids now since they could before 1991, when in fact there are new rules in place concerning steroid usage that supercede that precident. Bardic music doesn't even work like it did in 3.0, so even a source that wasn't updated (like Races of Faerun's Warrior Skald) don't really mesh well with the current model. It used to be that BM was just one single class feature, and your ranks in Perform unlocked the different songs. Now, each song is a class feature. You don't get Suggestion just because you have 9 ranks in Perform, you get Suggestion for being a 6th level bard. If you PrC out of bard before 6th, you don't get Suggestion...

I also voiced my dissenting opinion on Words of Creation. What I didn't mention is that BoED is one of the worst edited books printed for 3.5. Worse even than Complete Champion, which has blatent typos in it. Almost nothing in it is balanced by any definition of the word, falling so staggering on either side of the underpowered - overpowered spectrum with VERY little material falling in between. Just sayin.

Incontrol88
2010-10-12, 11:11 AM
Thanks for the reply/comment Keld! I told the original author about it and I'm sure he'll reply on The Community at his earliest convenience.

Godless_Paladin
2010-10-12, 03:02 PM
Bards can be fantastic. They've very noticeably gotten a lot of stealth buffing from various sources over the years.

Generally, the best bard builds I know fall into one of the following categories:

1) Sublime Chords. You get 9th level spells, along with some choice Bard features.

2) Warrior bards, usually Song of the White Raven multiclass combos that get 9th level maneuvers, access to the Bard spell list, and something like +8 Inspire Courage / Dragonfire Inspiration as a swift action by level 8 and a bunch of attacks.

3) This is only really an honorable mention, because I don't think it's really something you want to have in your games: Core Bard abuse can get really nasty, creating a situation where you can Fascinate anything (so basically, a "win or do nothing" situation) as well as extreme Diplomacy abuse. These builds are problematic in actual games for, IMHO, fairly self-evident reasons. There's a reason it's on the "CharOp Campaign Smashers" list!

(Note: All 3 of these Bard archetypes make good use of the stealth buffing of Inspire Courage throughout many sourcebooks to add a very nice buff, either +xd6 elemental damage or +X/+X to hit and damage, to their allies)

4) Homebrew, like Eela's Seeker of the Song fix. Guess that hardly counts in a discussion like this, though.

If there's some other category, feel free to enlighten me.

All that said, one thing a Bard player has to realize is that you really do want to pick a specialization and stick to it. You will still be fairly versatile (for example, Song of the White Raven bards still get low level spells and wand it up with access to the Bard spell list, and they have no shortage of skill points!), but there are other classes that do full on Jack of All Trades better.

Dusk Eclipse
2010-10-12, 03:10 PM
Just commenting that we already have a Bardzilla....<.< >.> Flickerdart did one... don't remember if that was TO or CO. Let me see if I can find a link to it.


Here is the link (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=8595585)

Keld Denar
2010-10-12, 03:22 PM
You talking about the build that uses Metamagic Song and Talfirian Song to persist a handful of bard songs per day?

This one? (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=154326)

Dusk Eclipse
2010-10-12, 03:52 PM
Yeah that one....

sonofzeal
2010-10-12, 05:49 PM
I also voiced my dissenting opinion on Words of Creation. What I didn't mention is that BoED is one of the worst edited books printed for 3.5. Worse even than Complete Champion, which has blatent typos in it. Almost nothing in it is balanced by any definition of the word, falling so staggering on either side of the underpowered - overpowered spectrum with VERY little material falling in between. Just sayin.
I disagree. In my opinion, Complete Champion is far worse, for reasons you probably fully understand already. I just don't think BoED is as unbalanced as you suggest. The Tier System for PrCs (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=5198.0) gives 5/23 unbalanced PrCs in one direction or another, so a 78% "decent" rate there. That's better than BoVD (76%), Complete Arcane (74%), Complete Divine (71%), Libris Mortis (71%), Magic of Incarnum (64%), or DotU (63%).

Exalted Feats are generally weak but occasionally useful, Sacred Spells are similarly underwhelming but situationally beneficial, and the magic items are kind of borked but there aren't many of them. And there's a lot of top-notch cosmology and world-building there, fleshing out the Upper Planes more than any other book.

On the whole, I'll give it a pass if you're willing to look past "omg poisons r ebul" and similar shenanigans.

Godless_Paladin
2010-10-12, 05:57 PM
I find it rarely justifiable to condemn an entire book (that said, there are exceptions...). The Book of Exalted Deeds is no exception, and there is more in there than crappy fluff, Good Poisons, and Vow of Poverty / Saint cheese. There's 191 pages (+web enhancement) of material written by multiple, distinct authors in there. Sure, there's some nonsense in there (like the aforementioned "Poisons are Ebul"), but there's also some fun material that you can adapt to your campaign in order to enrich it. This is the case with a lot of supplements.

As always, I advise picking and choosing things from books, not choosing entire sourcebooks to use or disallow.

As for "Worst Edited?" Maybe you haven't read the likes of "Dragons of Faerun."

T.G. Oskar
2010-10-12, 09:20 PM
I also voiced my dissenting opinion on Words of Creation. What I didn't mention is that BoED is one of the worst edited books printed for 3.5. Worse even than Complete Champion, which has blatent typos in it. Almost nothing in it is balanced by any definition of the word, falling so staggering on either side of the underpowered - overpowered spectrum with VERY little material falling in between. Just sayin.

And what was updated was reduced into near-nothingness (*coughcoughAmuletofRetributioncoughcough*). Though, I think that the really broken magic item was left standing (Cloak of Starmantle, IIRC).

Don't get me wrong; unlike Keld, BoED is one of my favorite books, though I treat it with respect. Even I have to admit that there are things in there that are...controversial at best (cf. "Poisons are EBUL!!!"), but it offers a good bit of advice that otherwise wouldn't be considered on people (namely, that being good isn't just being non-evil). Treat it as a campaign setting, and you can have a load of people playing Exalted characters and a DM that can deliver Exalted adventures (but not using the Exalted (tm) books, if you know what I mean).

But, returning to schedule: Bards. Oft misunderstood, loved by many but loathed by many more. I recall someone I knew explicitly saying that bards were weak and proving Fighters were stronger, using a thought experiment in Core and taking advantage of a lack of a properly used Bard (I wasn't aware of how good Grease could be), and then extending that to all levels. Good that I decided to play a Bard with a Bard-loving DM, which helped me understand at least one of the ways I could play the Bard:

Why I should play the damage dealer, when my song causes all of the damage dealers to deal more damage? The more damage they deal, the more damage I deal by comparison because otherwise they wouldn't have done it :P

No healer? No problem!

No face? Heck, I was innately going for Diplomancer, but without all the nice perks of split-second Diplomancy.

But yeah, I realized that being the 5th man, allowing everyone to fight well and work well in social situations helped me a lot. It also built upon my favored playstyle (being the buffer), so I found a lot of love for Bards. And introduced me to some of the tricks eventually all bards get to know (Song of the Heart + Inspirational Boost for good IC on the first few levels, for example, although I believe Dragon Magic wasn't available at that moment).

So, it's nice that someone blogs about how people can make useful, nice Bards regardless of their playing style. It's a shame that the original intention of a Bard (being a little bit of everything) was not so strongly supported with PrCs that could really support a bit of two sides; Warchanter is good, but since you lose buffing your increased damage and fighting capabilities aren't as strong as, ironically, a proper Bard; Seeker of the Song doesn't superpower your music to guarantee your loss of actual magic spells; Sublime Chord is only saved because it superpowers your magic which is really good; Virtuoso is mostly saved because of using Sublime Chord with it, and Lyric Thaumaturge is saved because it's quite close to the regular bard, but sacrificing your songs for slightly better spellcasting without going to the extremes of Sublime Chord. As for the rest...I won't mention much, except that Dirgesinger is a sin upon design.

Gabe the Bard
2010-10-13, 12:35 AM
I think a Dirgesinger would make a decent NPC villain. I kind of like the idea of a creepy vocalist whose songs can reanimate the bodies of recently slain monsters.

But as someone who is playing a bard with Words of Creation and Song of the Heart, there's only thing that can easily reduce the impact of that high inspire courage, and that is DM fiat. Our DM simply sent higher CR monsters AND gave us less XP and magic items. He said that our party didn't need the extra treasure, since they were all getting plus +12 attack bonuses from the bard songs.

T.G. Oskar
2010-10-13, 01:00 AM
I think a Dirgesinger would make a decent NPC villain. I kind of like the idea of a creepy vocalist whose songs can reanimate the bodies of recently slain monsters.

I think you said the magic word. Or at least, the magic concept: the Dirgesinger would have been awesome if it were plural, and if at least the class allowed some progress of bardic songs along with expanded spells dealing with necromancy.

Instead, not only you have to get that at the very last level, you can only use it on ONE character, and the rest of the abilities only support undead, so you could use them if you had ways to raise undead...which, unless you UMD Animate Dead, you can't do so. Oh, and not only do your skills are reduced, you don't get UMD.

So, instead of decent spellcasting, great songs, 3/4ths BAB, 6+Int skill points and a great selection of skills, you get...3/4 BAB and some songs. That's 3/5ths of the bardic abilities down the drain for 2/5ths of abilities that simply do not compare.

In resume: you don't awaken the dead (plural) with your song, to fight with you. You awaken ONE dead creature (singular) to fight with you, but it's gonna be pretty weak to handle it and you don't have the tricks of necromancers, dread necromancers or clerics to support them. Because you don't have Inflict Light Wounds, or the ability to really awaken the dead to use the Corpsecrafter line or something.

I...guess you get my point now.


But as someone who is playing a bard with Words of Creation and Song of the Heart, there's only thing that can easily reduce the impact of that high inspire courage, and that is DM fiat. Our DM simply sent higher CR monsters AND gave us less XP and magic items. He said that our party didn't need the extra treasure, since they were all getting plus +12 attack bonuses from the bard songs.

Oh, it wasn't that high. I never got more than 6th level I believe with my Bard, and the DM didn't allow Words of Creation (much worse when my Bard shifted alignment from CG to CN, and given a good argument for it because my character was quite selfish but never evil or truly antagonistic), so it got mostly to +3. MIC wasn't there yet so I couldn't add Badge of Valor, and I usually went with IC first and Haste later, then...moving around, using a super-special whip I got or simply trying to support a bit more, but it wasn't dull in any case; battles ended quicker, and I really got to do a lot in the campaign at a social level so it was never dull at all. Actually, quite the fun character.

Incontrol88
2010-10-13, 01:01 AM
To everyone who commented ON the Community site, the author just got back this evening and your comments now have replies.

@DuskEclipse: Sorry about the potential redundant post. My friend wrote those articles and titled them as such for my site before I even registered on this forum. Definitely wasn't trying to step on anyone's toes.

...what a freakish coincedence though, really.

Gabe the Bard
2010-10-13, 05:05 AM
Oskar, I agree with you. The concept of the Dirgesinger is great, but it needs some retooling. The single animated creature should be more like twice your level of hit dice of animated undead, and the duration should last longer than just when you're singing. It would be great if it progressed spellcasting as well and added Necromancy spells to the bard spell list. Actually, that would make a pretty fun villain to play with.

I do love the flavor of the Bard as someone who can turn the tide of battle with his music and diplomacy. Bardic inspirations are great, and I like to max out Diplomacy as well, usually more as a scenario-saver than a breaker.

In a recent session, we were trying to retreive a stolen artifact from a small city of super-orcs (think Uruk-hai from Lord of the Rings). We were thinking of ways to sneak into the city, when one of the players suddenly charged up to the city walls and started shouting at the orcs to come out and fight him. Well, they showered us with arrows, and an army of archers and mages gathered along the city walls. The party was on the verge of retreating, when my Bard gave a song-speech about how cowardly the orcs would be if they didn't send out their champions to face us party-to-party. I rolled a natural 20, and the army of orcs, being confounded and outraged, stopped shooting at us and sent their champions to the gates. It saved the scenario that day, and it was one of the prouder moments for my bard.