Must have non bard, for bard spells?

[CyberThread]

Just dinged 6th level, what do you folks think, a bard could benit from most, from the other spell lists.


I get up to 3rd level spells, and only two of them.

[SaintRidley]

Things that might help make this easier:

What spells do you already know?
What are the other casters in the party?
What do you want these two spells to do for you?

[KevlarTheD]

Just dinged 6th level, what do you folks think, a bard could benit from most, from the other spell lists.


I get up to 3rd level spells, and only two of them.

I was just looking at building a character that went 6 Lore Bard tonight. The spells I thought could be especially useful:

Fireball (classic) or I suppose Lightning Bolt if you want some ranged punch to start encounters off with a bang.

You can also go for a buff like Haste or Fly.

Of course if all depends on your party makeup... a dragonborn with wings generally won't need a Fly spell, for instance. IMO Revivify and Remove Curse are great toolkit spells that can get you out of a pinch if your party otherwise lacks access to them. If you have a Cleric and a Paladin in the party, though, skip 'em.

[Ferrin33]

Just dinged 6th level, what do you folks think, a bard could benit from most, from the other spell lists.


I get up to 3rd level spells, and only two of them.

Armor of Agathys, 1st level warlock spell. Very powerful for defense, especially along with Blade Ward. Takes a raging barbarian to get through that without dying. (or some luck)

[Eslin]

Animate Dead and Find Steed.

[CyberThread]

Fair enough, okay so what I have already garnered at is...


lighting arrow, and animate dead. Do not consider other spell casters, my bard is often alone or pushing a segment without magical aid of others.



As for spells already known, he does have the ritual caster feat(Just so I could buy up a bunch of spells... meh )

For class based spells I have,

Prestidigitation , Dancing Lights, Message

Healing Word, Charm PErson, Hidious Laughter, Detect Magic

Enhance Ability, Cloud of Daggers, Invisiblity

Stinking Cloud, Hypnotic Pattern


(Ritual Stuff)
Identify Illusory Script Leomund's Tiny Hut magicmouth , unseen servant, speak with animals

[TheOOB]

You want to try and cover something your party doesn't do well, be it AoE damage, curing conditions, fighting single tough foes, ect. I'm a fan of contagion myself.

[unwise]

For me, it is Fireball. I have utility in spades as a bard. Sometimes I just want to rack up a body count.

Find Steed gives you a cool horse with some cool advantages so is not bad if it fits your style. Some people have misread the rules, combined it with munchkinism added some fairy dust and decided that the spell doubles your DPR. As such, take some suggestions with a bad of salt.

Zombie making is not something to build a character around unless you DM wants to support that kind of game.

[Eslin]

For me, it is Fireball. I have utility in spades as a bard. Sometimes I just want to rack up a body count.

Find Steed gives you a cool horse with some cool advantages so is not bad if it fits your style. Some people have misread the rules, combined it with munchkinism added some fairy dust and decided that the spell doubles your DPR. As such, take some suggestions with a bad of salt.

Zombie making is not something to build a character around unless you DM wants to support that kind of game.

Find steed has advantages other than blast shape loopholes, it also doubles things like communion

And you don't need to build a character around raise dead, it's one spell. If you're going to be in a space where an army is useful (fighting another army, hunting down a sphinx etc), find a nearby graveyard and spend your spell slots raising yourself a regiment of skeletons. It's worth one spell - its not always useful, but very strong when it is.

[CyberThread]

The bard should defiantly use one of the slots for blasting. I just wonder if should go with fireball which does way more damage but has higher defense and immunity issues versus lighting arrow which you still have to make an attack roll for less damage and range.

Wnything seems to scream fireball.

[Shining Wrath]

Find steed has advantages other than blast shape loopholes, it also doubles things like communion

And you don't need to build a character around raise dead, it's one spell. If you're going to be in a space where an army is useful (fighting another army, hunting down a sphinx etc), find a nearby graveyard and spend your spell slots raising yourself a regiment of skeletons. It's worth one spell - its not always useful, but very strong when it is.

I suggest discussing spell doubling using Find Steed with your DM, as I suspect many will cast Detect Cheese and tell you they don't care about RAW, your horse does not also contact another plane and ask a question. Or if they do, they contact Orcus.

[Human Paragon 3]

How about Revivify? You can sing your friends back from the dead.

[Simian]

I don't have the spell lists in front of me but I'm assuming this spell is druid and not bard.

Lvl 2 spell Spike Growth is amazingly useful for encounters. Creatures take 2d4 piercing damage per square of movement through spike growth area. No save. Also, if they did not see the area during the casting of the spell it requires a perception check equal to your spell save DC to even notice that the ground is dangerous. As if that wasn't enough, the area also counts as difficult terrain, meaning they're spending twice as much movement to move around in it.

I don't think difficult terrain is as good as it was in pathfinder/3.5. In those it prevented people from getting the free 5 ft step/shifting so you could get more attacks of opportunities on ranged weapon users and casters if they tried to move away.

It's amazing for setting up a trap, or just for some battlefield control.

It's one of the few battlefield terrain spells I've seen that can damage a creature more than once per turn and also one of the few that gives no reflex save to reduce the damage. Plus it comes a full 2 levels before the wall spells.

It's a 40ft diameter circle so I don't think creatures will simply jump over it. Though they could avoid some of the damage by jumping 10 feet over it and moving normally the rest of the way.

Finally, I don't believe it deals any damage to creatures that aren't moving in it, or initially when it's cast. So you could just cast it on your party's archer and wizard and creatures trying to get to them would take damage. As long as they stood still they can shoot and cast and not take any damage.

Anyway, the uses are quite numerous and very tactical. Each situation could use it a different way. Personally I think it's an amazing spell.

Additionally, paladin's get a lot of spells other than Find Steed that are some of the best DPS spells for TWF. Such as an aura that gives everyone within 30 ft +1d4 damage per hit or a self buff that gives you +1d4 damage per hit +1d4 per additional spell slot. Rangers give you one of the most amazing spells for ranged attacks, though it would require you to be 11th level I think before you could take it. It gives you 2 ranged attacks as a bonus action whenever you use an action to fire a ranged attack. Not sure if you could combine this with the haste spell or if it has to be an attack action vs just firing a bow on your hasted action attack.

I think paladin's get a couple of other decent aura spells that might be ways of giving yourself and nearby party members immunities or resistances etc.. I feel like the paladin and ranger only spells are balanced to the fact that they get spells at higher levels and only up to 5th tier so look at those as being more powerful when wielded by a bard who gets more slots and additional higher tier powerful spells as well.

[Rummy]

If you have a monk, a warlock, or a battle master fighter in the party, Rope Use is a fantastic choice. If you have two or more of those it is far and away the best choice. One hour rests become WAY more viable in dungeons when you carry around your own pocket dimension.

[Eslin]

I suggest discussing spell doubling using Find Steed with your DM, as I suspect many will cast Detect Cheese and tell you they don't care about RAW, your horse does not also contact another plane and ask a question. Or if they do, they contact Orcus.

Not sure I get this one. Find Steed lets you double self cast spells and they were playtesting this for years - they were obviously aware bards could get both Find Steed and a variety of really interesting self cast buffs, and left it in. If the bard wants to spend most of his best class feature on a really specific set of combos, why not let him?

[Naanomi]

shillelagh based on Charisma can be very fun with the right support.

[MeeposFire]

shillelagh based on Charisma can be very fun with the right support.

I keep trying to utilize this but every time I do I run into problems.

Now just to show that I like the idea at high levels this would be really sweet with decent damage options, good number of attacks, and thematic as heck however getting into this at a decent level (at least decent to me) seems difficult.


Essentially to make this work you need at least 3 levels of warlock, 6 levels of lore bard, or 10 levels of valor bard so that you can get the spell in the first place as a cha based spell. Each of these have advantages and major limitations on a practical 1-20 based character. This assumes that I remember the abilities correctly.

The basic build is valor bard and it can get the spell no questions asked at 10th level. The advantage is that it requires no multiclassing, you get two attacks, and you get both medium armor/shields. It has one glaring problem though in that it takes you 10 levels to get it which I think is too long if you start at levels a bit before you then (I would say 6th level or lower). During that time you either have a bad attack stat (assuming you have dumped str), using a different weapon (such as a finesse weapon to use your dex though that may also be low if you are planning to use medium armor), or are staying out of melee entirely. You can also add warlock levels to this to get cha to damage again which is a nice option.

Tome warlock gives you the earliest access to the spell but it also has problems. By going tome you lose access to getting cha to damage a second time. It also delays your second attack to level 9 which is also fairly late for a melee type character.

If you use lore bard you get access to the spell which allows you to go hexblade. This means you get the cha to damage twice and you can get your second attack as well. The downside is that you miss out on medium armor/shields from the valor bard and you cannot attack while casting a spell (not that big of a deal but worth noting). You can get the armor back with a feat but that costs you an ability boost so it is not a free lunch (slows down polearm master acquisition or delays armor even further). Depending on how you decide how invocations work you can get your second attack at character level 8 or at character level 11 if you need a literal 5 levels of warlock (which is more than you probably want). Advantage over the valor bard option is quicker access to the spell but possible slower access to armor and extra attacks.


As far as I recall these are the basic prototype builds for using the spell and each have issues (other builds involve losing the second attack which I think defeats the purpose). I am not 100% sure but I think this is a case of an awesome idea but it takes too long to come online unless you start with a higher level character where you don't have to live with the suck/mediocrity for half of the entire game.

[TheOOB]

Find steed has advantages other than blast shape loopholes, it also doubles things like communion

And you don't need to build a character around raise dead, it's one spell. If you're going to be in a space where an army is useful (fighting another army, hunting down a sphinx etc), find a nearby graveyard and spend your spell slots raising yourself a regiment of skeletons. It's worth one spell - its not always useful, but very strong when it is.

Find steed allows you to use spells only target you on your steed as well. "blast" type spells, such as cone of cold have a range of self, but they clearly target an area, and potentially many many foes. Range != Target.

[Shadow]

I am not 100% sure but I think this is a case of an awesome idea but it takes too long to come online unless you start with a higher level character where you don't have to live with the suck/mediocrity for half of the entire game.

No multiclass warlock build has to deal with the suck at any level.
They just have to deal with playing a blaster until the rest of thier abilities come online.


Find steed allows you to use spells only target you on your steed as well. "blast" type spells, such as cone of cold have a range of self, but they clearly target an area, and potentially many many foes. Range != Target.

Have you seen the flowchart though?
:amused:

Here is their description of how and why it works:
http://s4.postimg.org/5yeempcn1/Bardic_Ultrahorse.png

And here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=18112483&postcount=40) is my response to the flowchart.

[TheOOB]

Have you seen the flowchart though?
:amused:

Here is their description of how and why it works:
http://s4.postimg.org/5yeempcn1/Bardic_Ultrahorse.png

And here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=18112483&postcount=40) is my response to the flowchart.

The flowchart reeks of being cherry picked, and I believe your response is 100% correct. I think the problem arises from the fact that the word "target" is not a games rules term like it was in 3e. In 3e the word "target" refers to the target line of the spell entry. In 5e, the word "target" refers to the the English language word, as there is no formal game definition of the term.

Even solely using their own picked lines, the target is still a point of origin for an area of effect, and not a creature. You happen to be said point of origin, but a creature of any kind was never the spells target.

[Eslin]

Again, using find steed to double line/cone spells is rules abuse and liable to cause injury by flying DMG. The proper use for find steed is to combine it with all the interesting buffs you can get as a bard, because apparently it never occurred to the designers that classes other than paladins would get the spell.

[borg286]

Here is my list. Feel free to comment.
Some highlights of spells to snipe are:
6th: 3rd level Aura of Vitality(70 HP total for out of combat healing), Fireball (obvious), Haste(obvious)
10th: Wall of Force(no save impassable wall), Black tentacles of forced intrusion(BC + damage)
14th: Magic jar (awesome!), Reverse gravity (BC, falling results in prone with no save + 10d6 damage in open space no save, 20d6 if ceiling is 100' high)
18th: Wish (duh), true polymorph (I'm not being creative, I know), Gate (Very versatile spell)

[Soras Teva Gee]

I suggest discussing spell doubling using Find Steed with your DM, as I suspect many will cast Detect Cheese and tell you they don't care about RAW, your horse does not also contact another plane and ask a question. Or if they do, they contact Orcus.

Not even required... Horses can't speak even if they magically understand a language right?

Also since Commune doesn't specify its target in its own text targeting the deity (not you) is a perfectly valid interpretation, thus Find Steed does nothing. Though taking that as license for your steed getting petted by its patron for a minute is probably far more hilarious.

Like most supposed "by RAW" arguments so far I find they are not simply abusing the rules but ignoring or lying about them counting on nobody challenging the additions the speaker makes to the rules of their own accord for the same old (but completely valid) defense about RAI. Which isn't even necessary in many case because the speaker is wrong. Although given the intro chapter DM fiat and thus RAI has a strong hand then in the past anyways.

So putting forward "novel" interpretations really shouldn't be for more then comedy value.

[Cambrian]

The whole find mount cheese is just ridiculous. 5th Ed. stresses common sense and cone of cold doesn't target self (though if a player wanted to target themselves I'd be happy to oblige). Back on topic...

Just dinged 6th level, what do you folks think, a bard could benit from most, from the other spell lists.


I get up to 3rd level spells, and only two of them.I agree with others: a blasting spell would be highly useful.

Not sure if it's as powerful as I believe but Counterspell (MTG blue player...) always seems highly useful, and outside of a few Inspiration Dice it seems a College of Lore bard will have a lot of free actions given usually they'll be hiding in the back. Counterspell's usefulness depends on whether you can identify a spell/SLA while it's being cast to know when it matters-- so check with your DM.

[MinaBee]

The most exciting part of that class feature for me is getting access to 3rd level Ranger and Paladin spells before the rangers and paladins will.

I've got my eye on Conjure Animals.