PDA

View Full Version : Reworking the 3.5 Bard



Dsurion
2011-07-16, 02:13 AM
Let me start off by saying there's nothing particularly wrong with the bard as-is.

I have a growing consensus among my group that we really don't like X-per-day use abilities, but plenty of us like the bard concept. The problem is, most of what the Bard does is based on Bardic Music uses, especially Bard Prestige Classes (or so I hear, I haven't looked a great deal myself).

I was wondering what other ways one could go about limiting the usage of Bardic Music uses without making it X-per-day as it is. The proposed solution so far is to make Bardic Music require a perform check with a very low initial DC, and build on it from there, making each later use progressively more difficult.

I was thinking something like DC 10 to start, plus 1 or 2 per use, and perhaps more for certain abilities. A side project would be to require this system for spell usage as well, but that's perhaps for another time.

Unfortunately, I have no real experience with setting a DC for something like this. Would anyone else have any thoughts to share?

I should also note that most of my group is very low-optimization, and we don't often play games beyond sixth level.

Kellus
2011-07-16, 02:18 AM
I will warn you massively that if you make the only limiting factor the skill check DC that there are an enormous number of ways to cheese out skill check results. It's virtually impossible to set a DC that will simultaneously be reasonable for unoptimized peopleplayers also be playable for optimizers. Which means you just need to assume that people are going to be able to hit whatever DC you set, and make sure that you have some other limit in mind such as charges (the current method), rounds per day, mana points, stress, or something else.

Dsurion
2011-07-16, 02:25 AM
Well, fortunately for me, none of my group likes to optimize.

Unfortunately for me, I was too foolish to post that originally :smallredface:

Iferus
2011-07-16, 02:31 AM
A 20th level character can safely make a DC 50 check.
A first level character likely has a bonus of 4 ranks + 3 cha, and will likely gain a +2 masterwork item soon (I'll assume a +1 bonus for the first level, on average). DC 10 is very easy, and DC 18 gives a 50% chance to succeed. Assuming we want a likely success on the first level but not much more, we can start at a DC of 15.

Increasing the DC by 2 per level will scale OK. If you're low-op, you may want to decrease the initial DC, to put a bit more power in the lower levels.

Any feats that grant an extra daily use of BM decrease the DC of the first attempt by 2.

Dsurion
2011-07-16, 02:47 AM
A 20th level character can safely make a DC 50 check.
A first level character likely has a bonus of 4 ranks + 3 cha, and will likely gain a +2 masterwork item soon (I'll assume a +1 bonus for the first level, on average). DC 10 is very easy, and DC 18 gives a 50% chance to succeed. Assuming we want a likely success on the first level but not much more, we can start at a DC of 15.

Increasing the DC by 2 per level will scale OK. If you're low-op, you may want to decrease the initial DC, to put a bit more power in the lower levels.

Any feats that grant an extra daily use of BM decrease the DC of the first attempt by 2.
That's actually a good point. I hadn't even considered masterwork items or the CHA bonus. I mostly just thought about it in terms of Perform ranks only. Even without the masterwork item, that's still +7, which means at 10 you'd only fail on three or lower. That does seem a bit too easy.

On the other hand, a base DC of 15 is still pretty hard to get early on if you don't have tons of skill-enhancing items.

Gideon Falcon
2011-07-16, 09:13 AM
Therein lies the rub. As Kellus said, you can't simultaneously make a skill DC touchable by unoptimized characters and challenging to optimized ones, simply because of the enormous bonuses that can be amassed through magic items. +20 to a skill is a trivial price for a 20th level character, and it leaves them at a much higher threshold than those that spent their gold elsewhere.

However, Kellus' work on these forums produces a solution: In his Truenaming fix, the problem is avoided by the description of the Truenaming skill; There are no magic items which may add a bonus to truenaming checks. This, combined with a few other details, means that the skill check is much harder to optimize, and when optimized it is still within the same range as when unoptomized.

Similarly, you could rule that masterwork tools and magic items do not add bonuses directly to the perform check made for bardic music.

playswithfire
2011-07-16, 10:02 AM
You could always just make it use/encounter instead of per day and adjust the uses accordingly. 1/encounter at 1st and increase by 1 at 4, 8, 12, 16, and 20, maybe. Assuming 4 encounters per day, the math is about right.

Or you could probably come up with a way to make bardic music abilities work like ToB maneuvers.

begooler
2011-07-16, 03:23 PM
Okay, I have an idea, but be warned, it's based off of how Truenaming works.

Right. Done crying? Okay.
So whenever a Truenamer uses an utterance, the DC to use it again increases. Now, for Truenamers, this rule combined with the fact that it becomes more difficult to use their class abilities (rather than easier) as they level really adds up to a lot of suck. However, I think the same mechanic can be used to good effect if you think it through.

Let's say that using Bardic Music is a base DC of 15. And let's say it remains DC 15, even when you are level 20. But that's just for the first time you use it. Each time you use a Bardic Music effect, the DC to use Bardic Music again increases by X. Perhaps the more powerful Bardic Music abilities increase it by even more. This increase in the DC is cumulative, and it remains until you rest.

So, the more you can boost your skill check, the more Bardic Music uses you effectively get for the day. As you increase in level, more ranks in perform will allow you to get more uses, but you can also use magic items, spells, and other class features to boost your skill check and get more uses. This I think would be workable for an unoptimized player, as well as an optimized one. The difference is that the optimized player gets to successfully use his Bardic Music more times per day.


If you don't like the idea at all of players having limited resources per day, use a system like maneuvers, that give 'per encounter' uses.

Yitzi
2011-07-16, 09:07 PM
Similarly, you could rule that masterwork tools and magic items do not add bonuses directly to the perform check made for bardic music.

I'd say that you might want to allow masterwork tools, as it's only +2 (quite manageable) and it makes sense that you can do it better with a good instrument than a normal one...magic items are definitely out, though; I'd make the in-game rationale that trying to use magic to directly improve your usage of magic leads to interference.