Ellrin
2013-02-12, 01:05 AM
Never tried my hand at messing too much with a bard before, so I thought I'd get some suggestions from the playground. I'm probably going to use a couple of archetypes--the Moso (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/bard/archetypes/rite-publishing---bard-archetypes/moso) from Rite Publishing's Way of the Yakuza and the Detective (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/bard/archetypes/paizo---bard-archetypes/detective).
All official PF material is welcome. I'll take some suggestions from 3rd-party materials; and as you can see below, 3.5 feats, PrCs, equipment, and base classes are on the table, provided they don't conflict with official PF material.
The idea: Bard 2/Swordsage 1/Bard 4/Lyric Thaumaturge 1/Jade Phoenix Mage 1/X 1/Sublime Chord 1/Jade Phoenix Mage 9
Build:
Concept
Essentially I want him to be a debuffing, action-stealing, gishy sort of... thing. Obviously he's going to be a skillmonkey for a large part of his career, as well, but a lot of skills are probably going to need to go towards qualifying for my prestige classes--Sublime Chord is a harsh mistress. The main reason I'd use this character would be if the guy playing the party rogue, who hasn't contacted us for a long time, winds up not joining when we start (campaign starts late this month at level 1); in which case I'll want to be able to play party face/sense motive/disable device/general skillmonkey during those early levels when we won't be able to handle those roles as well with other classes.
Non-negotiable points.
Lawful Neutral Drow (though I haven't chosen alternate racial traits, etc.)
Rolls: 16, 16, 14, 14, 13, 10
Negotiable Points.
Ability Scores (with racial modifiers)
STR 13
DEX 16
CON 8
INT 14
WIS 16
CHA 18
Progression
Bard 2 (with moso and detective archetypes)
Gives me bard spells, bardic performance (careful teamwork +1, counterfear, countersong, and ward), eye for detail, trapfinding, bonuses vs. illusions and disguises, a bonus spell known; blinds me, but effectively gives me blindsight 20ft.
Swordsage 1
Gives me swordsage maneuvers/stances, weapon focus with a variety of weapons, +1 init.
Bard 4 (with moso and detective archetypes)
Gives me bard spells, bardic performance (careful teamwork +2, song of life, inspire competence +2), lore master 1/day, bonus spell known, +5 ft. "blindsight"
Lyric Thaumaturge 1
Gives me bard spells, bardic performance, bonus 1st and 2nd spell per day.
Jade Phoenix Mage 1
Gives me arcane wrath, rite of waking (which is essentially bardic knowledge lite), one extra maneuver known.
X 1
I'm not sure what to take here. The obvious choices are lyric thaumaturge and swordsage; the former gives me casting, performance, and a free feat that would need recrunching for Pathfinder, but could be quite useful depending on how the numbers fall; the latter gives me +1 initiator level, another maneuver and stance known, and a bonus to AC, which is very helpful to the martial side of the build, especially considering my low, low HP. Any other suggestions would be welcome, too.
Sublime Chord 1
Gives me sublime chord spells and bardic performance. I may be able to swing something with bardic knowledge, too, considering that JPM's rite of waking is pretty similar, but with only one level of SC, it wouldn't make a difference unless my DM was feeling kind.
Jade Phoenix Mage 9
Gives me +8 levels of SC spells and casting, +9 to initiator level, 4 more maneuvers known, 3 more maneuvers readied, 1 more stance known, empowering strike, quickening strike, and all the other JPM goodies blah, blah, blah.
Other Considerations.
Qualifying
I shouldn't have any troubles qualifying for Sublime Chord, thanks to the way Pathfinder handles crossclass skills (and the rest of the prestige classes have pretty easy requirements and/or requirements I would be fulfilling anyway. The skill tax could be troublesome for my martial maneuvers, but I'm sure that much can be worked out.
I'm not sure Melodic Casting is even worth a feat in PF; as near as I can tell, you can cast spells while maintaining bardic performances in PF, so the only advantage it grants is using Performance instead of a normal Concentration check; to that end, it's possible my DM could be convinced to waive that prereq for Lyric Thaumaturge, which would remove all feat tax from my PrCs entirely.
Feats, Traits, Skills, Etc.
I haven't put any thought at all into feats or traits, and only so much thought into skills as was necessary to make sure I could pass the prereqs for my PrCs. We're not using flaws, and since I'm going drow, I have a total of 10 feats to work with (plus any bonus feats I might get from class levels, though there isn't much of that in this build). We're taking 2 traits each; and if I take the Adopted trait, I would qualify for dwarven racial traits, as my drow was raised by dwarves--long story. (Not that I saw any I liked the last time I looked through those, but I hadn't come up with this build back then.)
Spells, Maneuvers, and Stances
Like feats, I haven't really thought too far into spells, maneuvers, and stances yet. Because of flavor, I'm going to be strongly preferring debuffs and disrupting actions, though buffs and other non-direct-damage actions are definitely worth considering. Direct damage and healing, at least in terms of spells, are back-burner; it'll be more open for maneuvers, since I want to be able to be relatively effective with the swords I'll be toting.
Conclusion
I get 16+ caster level, 15+ initiator level, bardic performance to 8th or 9th level (depending on what X winds up being), 9th level sor/wiz spells, and up to 8th level maneuvers, and all that without anything that seems overtly munchkiny to me. I'll probably wind up taking practiced spellcaster to beef up my caster level, and I'll have to see if my DM will let me homebrew an analogous feat for initiator level. Because I don't get to retrain maneuvers (at least not as a class feature), I'll need to be very careful selecting the maneuvers I do get, but that's not a huge issue; though I'll definitely be a little underpowered on that front. I'm going to try to convince my DM to use fractional BAB, otherwise I'll be stuck at... I think +14 at level 20?
Thoughts? Is going with a low-con blind spellcaster and martial adept gish suicide? The rest of my party is going to be relatively low op, so I don't think we'll be running into challenges that will cause horrible death on a regular basis. I really like the RP idea of a blind mystic swordsman, and other than the low con and blindness, I think this build is actually pretty effective; but I just don't know how terrible the con and blindness will make me.
All official PF material is welcome. I'll take some suggestions from 3rd-party materials; and as you can see below, 3.5 feats, PrCs, equipment, and base classes are on the table, provided they don't conflict with official PF material.
The idea: Bard 2/Swordsage 1/Bard 4/Lyric Thaumaturge 1/Jade Phoenix Mage 1/X 1/Sublime Chord 1/Jade Phoenix Mage 9
Build:
Concept
Essentially I want him to be a debuffing, action-stealing, gishy sort of... thing. Obviously he's going to be a skillmonkey for a large part of his career, as well, but a lot of skills are probably going to need to go towards qualifying for my prestige classes--Sublime Chord is a harsh mistress. The main reason I'd use this character would be if the guy playing the party rogue, who hasn't contacted us for a long time, winds up not joining when we start (campaign starts late this month at level 1); in which case I'll want to be able to play party face/sense motive/disable device/general skillmonkey during those early levels when we won't be able to handle those roles as well with other classes.
Non-negotiable points.
Lawful Neutral Drow (though I haven't chosen alternate racial traits, etc.)
Rolls: 16, 16, 14, 14, 13, 10
Negotiable Points.
Ability Scores (with racial modifiers)
STR 13
DEX 16
CON 8
INT 14
WIS 16
CHA 18
Progression
Bard 2 (with moso and detective archetypes)
Gives me bard spells, bardic performance (careful teamwork +1, counterfear, countersong, and ward), eye for detail, trapfinding, bonuses vs. illusions and disguises, a bonus spell known; blinds me, but effectively gives me blindsight 20ft.
Swordsage 1
Gives me swordsage maneuvers/stances, weapon focus with a variety of weapons, +1 init.
Bard 4 (with moso and detective archetypes)
Gives me bard spells, bardic performance (careful teamwork +2, song of life, inspire competence +2), lore master 1/day, bonus spell known, +5 ft. "blindsight"
Lyric Thaumaturge 1
Gives me bard spells, bardic performance, bonus 1st and 2nd spell per day.
Jade Phoenix Mage 1
Gives me arcane wrath, rite of waking (which is essentially bardic knowledge lite), one extra maneuver known.
X 1
I'm not sure what to take here. The obvious choices are lyric thaumaturge and swordsage; the former gives me casting, performance, and a free feat that would need recrunching for Pathfinder, but could be quite useful depending on how the numbers fall; the latter gives me +1 initiator level, another maneuver and stance known, and a bonus to AC, which is very helpful to the martial side of the build, especially considering my low, low HP. Any other suggestions would be welcome, too.
Sublime Chord 1
Gives me sublime chord spells and bardic performance. I may be able to swing something with bardic knowledge, too, considering that JPM's rite of waking is pretty similar, but with only one level of SC, it wouldn't make a difference unless my DM was feeling kind.
Jade Phoenix Mage 9
Gives me +8 levels of SC spells and casting, +9 to initiator level, 4 more maneuvers known, 3 more maneuvers readied, 1 more stance known, empowering strike, quickening strike, and all the other JPM goodies blah, blah, blah.
Other Considerations.
Qualifying
I shouldn't have any troubles qualifying for Sublime Chord, thanks to the way Pathfinder handles crossclass skills (and the rest of the prestige classes have pretty easy requirements and/or requirements I would be fulfilling anyway. The skill tax could be troublesome for my martial maneuvers, but I'm sure that much can be worked out.
I'm not sure Melodic Casting is even worth a feat in PF; as near as I can tell, you can cast spells while maintaining bardic performances in PF, so the only advantage it grants is using Performance instead of a normal Concentration check; to that end, it's possible my DM could be convinced to waive that prereq for Lyric Thaumaturge, which would remove all feat tax from my PrCs entirely.
Feats, Traits, Skills, Etc.
I haven't put any thought at all into feats or traits, and only so much thought into skills as was necessary to make sure I could pass the prereqs for my PrCs. We're not using flaws, and since I'm going drow, I have a total of 10 feats to work with (plus any bonus feats I might get from class levels, though there isn't much of that in this build). We're taking 2 traits each; and if I take the Adopted trait, I would qualify for dwarven racial traits, as my drow was raised by dwarves--long story. (Not that I saw any I liked the last time I looked through those, but I hadn't come up with this build back then.)
Spells, Maneuvers, and Stances
Like feats, I haven't really thought too far into spells, maneuvers, and stances yet. Because of flavor, I'm going to be strongly preferring debuffs and disrupting actions, though buffs and other non-direct-damage actions are definitely worth considering. Direct damage and healing, at least in terms of spells, are back-burner; it'll be more open for maneuvers, since I want to be able to be relatively effective with the swords I'll be toting.
Conclusion
I get 16+ caster level, 15+ initiator level, bardic performance to 8th or 9th level (depending on what X winds up being), 9th level sor/wiz spells, and up to 8th level maneuvers, and all that without anything that seems overtly munchkiny to me. I'll probably wind up taking practiced spellcaster to beef up my caster level, and I'll have to see if my DM will let me homebrew an analogous feat for initiator level. Because I don't get to retrain maneuvers (at least not as a class feature), I'll need to be very careful selecting the maneuvers I do get, but that's not a huge issue; though I'll definitely be a little underpowered on that front. I'm going to try to convince my DM to use fractional BAB, otherwise I'll be stuck at... I think +14 at level 20?
Thoughts? Is going with a low-con blind spellcaster and martial adept gish suicide? The rest of my party is going to be relatively low op, so I don't think we'll be running into challenges that will cause horrible death on a regular basis. I really like the RP idea of a blind mystic swordsman, and other than the low con and blindness, I think this build is actually pretty effective; but I just don't know how terrible the con and blindness will make me.