What can we do with Fey Bard?

[Coidzor]

Other than Diplomancing + Wild Empathizing at the same time or pretending to be a sorcerer at high levels with Sublime Chord.

Was reminded of them after reading ye olde Supermount thread (http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19866958/Supermount!) and this thread about optimizing Person Man that died (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=132192)(:smallfrown:).

Got to wondering what they really synergized with still from the standard bard and what new things other than supermounting were opened up as a result of the change.

Pertinent Info:
Gain
Animal companion (as druid), nature sense (as druid), resist nature's lure (as druid), wild empathy (as druid).

Lose
Bardic knowledge, inspire courage, inspire competence, inspire greatness, inspire heroics.

[Zaq]

Gain: A tiny shred of Druidicism
Lose: All of a Bard's defining class features

Let's just be honest with ourselves, no?

Anyway, there's still Fascinate, Countersong, Suggestion, Song of Freedom, and spells. Oh, and we still have a class feature named Bardic Music, so we can take feats and stuff that are based off of Bardic Music. The Half-Elf Bard sub levels seem like a decent idea. You could go for a debuffer (Haunting Melody, Improved Trip, Netherese Battle Curse, and whip proficiency all go a long way), but we're not really doing much with our feyness.

[Akal Saris]

Well, I guess you could buff your AC nicely with bardic spells. But you're giving up the most easily optimizable parts of the bard for the AC, which is hard to improve besides using your WBL on it.

[Thurbane]

Could you use Obtain Familiar to get some Arcane Hyrophant shenanigans? You'd still need Trackless Step (1 level dip in Wild Runner) and something like Southern Magician to qualify.

So, something like Fey Bard 7/Wildrunner 1/Spirit Shaman 1/Abolisher 1/Arcane Hyrophant 10..a bit of a mess, but you'd get 17th level Bard casting, 11th level Spirit Shaman casting, a beast of a Companion/Familiar, and 11th level wild shaping. I'm sure someone can tidy that up better than I can...

Just checked - you don't even need a familiar to get the benefits, so forget the Obtain Familiar feat.

[WinWin]

Just fey bard? No. Best benefit is for races with RHD that nead a lot of frontloaded class features for PrC entry. I don't think it's bad at all, but I'm not going to claim it is superior to the standard bard except perhaps in early levels, when having an animal companion is a big deal.

Can do a bit when Divine bard, Savage Bard and/or Bardic sage are thrown in to the mix. Use a bit of realms material and you have a character than can qualify for a lot of wierd PrCs with little effot, especially when combine with a few Realms feats. Divine Fey Bard, with a feat that allows divine spells to count as arcane makes a great entry to Arcane Heirophant. Use it to potentially advance bardic and Sublime Chord, with a few levels of Lyric Thaumaturge.

I don't agree lat loss of Inspire competance makes the Bard bad. That's the same logic that makes people thinks clerics are bad when they don't cast healing spells. All it does is trade out an option you may not have been interested in using for more focused uses. Such as metamagic, snowflake wardance or whatever.

[Ernir]

You could qualify for Charming the Arrow (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/fey/20030815a), but that might be best used if you didn't trade away Inspire Courage.

[Jiruharudo]

*Resurect thread*

I've been looking into this, and personally I think losing inspire courage isnt too bad if you use some feats:

Prerequisite
Perform 12 ranks, Bardic music class feature,
Benefit
By singing or playing music, you grant a +4 enhancement bonus to the Strength and Constitution scores of every creature of the animal or plant type within 30 feet of you. This bonus lasts only as long as you continue performing.
This feat will allow you to buff your animal companion and any animals you summon with your new spelllist from savage bard.

You can channel the power of your draconic ancestry into the attacks of your allies.
Prerequisite: Cha 11, dragonblood subtype, bardic music.
Benefit: When you use your bardic music to inspire courage, you can choose to imbue your allies with dragonfire. This choice made when first activating the ability, and the choice applies to all allies affected.
Special: Each ally so inspired loses the standard morale bonus on weapon attack rolls and damage rolls. Instead, he deals an extra 1d6 points of fire damage with his weapons for every point of morale bonus that your inspire courage ability would normally add to the attack roll. For example, an 8th level bard using this ability would add 2d6 points of fire damage to his allies' attacks. If you have the Draconic Heritage feat or if you are a half-dragon, the extra damage is of the energy type (acid, cold, electricity, fire, or sonic) that corresponds to your heritage or your draconic parent instead. If your feat or your parent is not associated with one of these energy types, this feat has no effect for you.
This one is debatable, since you do not require Inspire Courage, the text does state that if you USE inspire courage, you can forgo it for this. Thoughts?

And now you should be able to make it work by throwing the feats Devoted Performer and/or Initiate of Milil in to get the "Uber Mount" funzies by choosing Halfling Outrider at lvl 11 ish. Fochlucan Lyrist would have been a little better, but as we all know, horrid to get into require-wise.

Id prolly go with a Glimmerskin halfling, paladin levels till 5 at least, then Fey Bard, then going into Halfling Outrider adding feats: Dragonfire inspiration, Initiate of Milil, Mounted Combat , Mounted Archery.

Youre gonna need some items to bump up bardic music and getting extra rider feats (riding boots)

Sidenote, initiate of Milil should get you inspire courage etc I feel, but in Paladin form.

Still sup-par ...But this is my penny in the box.

[Akal Saris]

Well, I guess you could buff your AC nicely with bardic spells. But you're giving up the most easily optimizable parts of the bard for the AC, which is hard to improve besides using your WBL on it.

Yeah, well I stand by my answer from 2011!

[nedz]

Bard 5 / Wild Soul 10 / ...
Even the alignment requirements match.

Maybe grab Summon Monster 1 and Spontaneous Summoner at some point, assuming you have some Wisdom ?

[Ben Powers]

...paladin levels till 5 at least, then Fey Bard...

How dat work?

[Jiruharudo]

How dat work?

I asume you mean alignment wise?

Well either with Paladin of Freedom (which fits the Outrider and the feybard flavorwise) or Devoted performer.

[Ben Powers]

I asume you mean alignment wise?

Well either with Paladin of Freedom (which fits the Outrider and the feybard flavorwise) or Devoted performer.

I did! And I forgot about devoted performer. Cool.

[Haruki-kun]

The Winged Mod: Turn Unthread!