[3.5] Bardic Buffer

[Mari01]

The group that I play with has always thought Bards were useless so I set out to prove them very very wrong via optimizing Inspire Courage.

CG Silverbrow Human Bard 6

ACF: Healing Hymn, Eberron Bard
1) Dragonfire Inspiration H) Melodic Casting
3) Song of the Heart
6)Words of Creation 6) Haunting Melody (Suggestion swap)

My current gear consists of the Badge of Valor, a Masterwork drum, a Healing Belt, and the gloves and goggles from the Rainment of the Four in the MIC. My DM ruled that Words would double only the base amount of IC so altogether I'm looking at: Bard: +1 SotH: +1 x2 = 4. Then adding in Inspirational Boost, Badge of Valor, and the Masterwork drum for a total of +7/+7. My current tactic is to get the bonus to hit on my first round, and then DFI in the next for a total of +7 to hit and damage on top of 7d6 worth of fire damage. My question is what should I do now? Almost all of the Bard prestige classes are either at 6 or 10? I was think going into Seeker for double music and since we dont have a magical blaster. I know that Sublime Chord is better, but I want to focus more so on the music than spells.

TL;DR: Criticize my Bard build. All suggestions welcome.

[kardar233]

I prefer Masterwork Natural Horn to the drums; more portable.

Bard 20 is perfectly good, as Crystal Echoblades give half (??) your Bard level in bonus Sonic damage.

[Gullintanni]

Bard 20 is perfectly good, as Crystal Echoblades give half (??) your Bard level in bonus Sonic damage.

I'm tempted to agree. You could build a more powerful character by going Bard 8/Virtuoso2/Sublime Chord2/Virtuoso 8 or Savage Bard 5/Ur-Priest 2/Mystic Theurge 10/Bard3+...but these lack purity, and the Bard levels aren't really doing the heavy lifting. Though you can still optimize IC on these characters and get the best of Sorcerer/Cleric casting and Bardic Music, it's kind of cheating :smalltongue:

Bard 20 all by itself kicks all kinds of tail and relies only on its bard levels to do it.

One thing to consider is grabbing Lingering Song. I believe a bard can activate DFI, then vanilla Inspire Courage on the round after. This ends your DFI, but with Lingering Song, you've got the benefit of both songs for 9 rounds. If there's anything still standing after 9 rounds of optimized DFI+IC combat, something went very very horribly wrong.

[Manateee]

The Seeker is a really crummy blaster, especially if combined with a music-based buffing role. It has some serious endurance problems.

The music progression is why a lot of people like weaving Sublime Chord levels into a Virtuoso progression. Dipping Warrior Skald to continue the Bard class feature progression can also be a good idea. It gets the same buffing music as a Bard, plus some extra utility songs, plus the Sublime Chord's CL boost, plus level 9 spells.

For something different and still blasty, the Stormsinger in Frostburn also gets to blast, while maintaining casting progression - and it generally gets better blasting effects than the Seeker of the Song.

If you just want to focus on musical buffing, Warchanter with a Warrior Skald dip does all that the Bard does, plus gets to stack music effects, grant allies its near-full BA and drop a Heedless Charge-type buff (without the charge requirement) on its party members (though if you're cranking IC hard enough, this benefit is less meaningful).

[Mari01]

How does Lyric Thaumaturge from Complete Mage stack compared to Virtuoso? The sonic might ability makes it seem as though I could be a competent blaster so long as I picked the right spells (sonic). My options fore taking Seeker pretty much locked my feats into Extra Music at the higher levels. I'm cross classing Intimidate so I can also take Doomspeak at level 9. Is there anything about seeker that gives it a saving grace? I like the flavor of it. If Sublime Chord turns out to be my very best option then I'll take it all the way through.

[Chronos]

You can improve Dragonfire Inspiration by taking the Draconic Heritage feat. The problem with fire damage is that, being the most common kind of elemental damage, it's also the most commonly resisted. Draconic Heritage will effectively let you pick some other element to use instead, and with the right choice of dragon, sonic (which almost nothing resists) is available. If your DM won't let that fly, then you could at least go with acid, which still effects the majority of things.