A New Bard Handbook - First Draft Complete. Thoughts?

[JoshuaD]

http://joshuad.net/new-bard-handbook/

I still have some work to do, but I think this is far enough along that I want to release it to the public. I'd like to bulk up magic items a bit, expand build options a bunch, and certainly improve the formatting (as well as getting it on UBB at some point; does anyone have a good converter from DOCX to html / ubb?)

Any thoughts or input is appreciated!

[eggynack]

Quick note, the xvart does not have an LA of -2. They have an LA of +0. Their CR is what's -2, and that's not relevant to build stuff.

[Troacctid]

Stormsinger (Fr), Ardent Dilettante (PlH), and Urban Savant (Ci) are missing, as are Dwarven Chanter (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/prc/20061128a) and Halfling Whistler (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/prc/20061121a). Marshal (MH) and Dragonfire Adept (DM) are also relevant dips, the former for Cha to [whatever] and the latter for a draconic invocation and Dragontouched as a bonus feat (which is handy if you need the dragonblood subtype for Dragonfire Inspiration).

Your math is wrong on Dragonfire Inspiration. You're seriously underrating it.

Improved Familiar, Planar Familiar, or Celestial Familiar are all good feats for a Bard.

[JoshuaD]

All good points. I did some more work on the math on Dragonfire inspiration, and you're right that it's better than my initial review. I'll adjust that once I draw a more firm conclusion.

I've updated the handbook to version 2. No real changes, except I set placeholders for the classes you mentioned and some people were unable to distinguish the colors, so I tried to choose more distinct colors.

Eventually I'll upload this to UBB. For the time being (i.e. while I'm doing rapid revisions based on input) I'm going to keep the text centralized on my webserver for ease of change.

[Hiro Quester]

It's probably worth including Lesser Aasimar in the races. +2 to Cha and Wis for LA+0. Almost brokenly good for a bard.

[Pluto!]

You should be warned that Dragon Magazine features are typically unbalanced and should be reviewed with a critical eye before being accepted into your campaign.
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Many people focus on only level 20 only when they design characters.
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If you can have a maxed-out charisma and a 16 intelligence (or 19 if you’re going into sublime chord PrC)
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I think there are better alternate class features to replace inspire competence (Song of the Heart!).
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[savage bard] Illiterate. – Illiteracy is sad. Gaining fort instead of reflex is nice. Losing prestidigitation is absolutely miserable. Losing read magic and summon monster is sad. On the whole, not worth taking.
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[Monster races section ignoring racial HD]
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pick up White Raven Tactics feat
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[Dirtesinger and Seeker of the Song rated several steps stronger than Incantatrix or Tainted Scholar, because they miss out on +2 to allies' attack rolls]
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[talking up Metamagic Song, Persist Spell, Quicken Spell, [B]Vow of Poverty for bards, treating SotWR's swift bardic music as an asset rather than hindrance]
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Cloud of Bewilderment – A cloud effect that makes its inhabitans sickend (can’t take standard actions). It targets fort, which is great. A good bit worse than glitterdust, though, and similar in effect and application.
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Warblade 1 / Bard 9 / Eldritch Knight 10

I'm not sure you know what you're talking about.

Also, Sudden Stunning Weapons are your friend!

[Red Fel]

I'm surprised you haven't played up the option of Bard-as-fearmonger. An oft-cited build in these forums involves Bard/ Sublime Chord/ Dread Witch/ Nightmare Spinner, with bits like Inspire Awe, to utterly lock down a group of enemies in pants-crapping terror. Nightmare Spinner also gives you extra mileage from your illusion spells, which are among a Bard's bread and butter. Dread Witch also lets you turn any spell with a visual manifestation (so pretty much every illusion ever) into a [Fear] spell, which only adds fuel to the fire.

Really, Bards aren't just diplomancer swordsmen with party buffs and sparkles.

[Telonius]

You should probably put in a mention of the Master of Masks prestige class, as a "red" PrC. It's a trap option, but can seem reasonable if you don't look at it too closely. (Easy entry requirements, progresses some spellcasting, etc). Good only for a one-level dip to get the Gladiator mask, and even that's pushing it.

EDIT: The Melodic Casting feat from Complete Mage needs to be in there.

[ComaVision]

My thoughts:

-Spelled 'Kobold' wrong in the races section
-No Stongheart Halfing
-No mention of the other dragonblood races in Dragon Magic
-No mention of Lesser Aasimar
-No template discussion, 'Magic-Blooded' from Dragon is nice for bards
-Why is Vow of Poverty blue?
-Chaos Music feat from Dragon can be a big deal for some builds.
-As mentioned, you're way off on DFI. It would also be helpful to mention the ways to qualify for DFI. I also think the general consensus is that this effect can stack with vanilla IC.
-You didn't talk about stealth/skill monkey at all in party roles.

[JoshuaD]

Thanks. I have no idea how I missed melodic casting, I referenced it in like 2 other places.

I've taken most (all?) of these suggestions and I am working on a new draft. Any additional notes are appreciated.

[Hiro Quester]

A few other points:

Under metamagic feats, extend spell is great for a bard. But it's worth noting you can't extend swift casting spells without making them take a full round to cast.

Metamagic song can also use bardic music to pay for metamagic like extend or persist.

It's also worth mentioning Practical metamagic (persistent spell), which lowers the metamagic cost by one spell level, enabling you to persist 4th level spells.

My bard/sublime chord used this purely to persist Sirine's Grace for the AC, CHA and DEX boost. The cha to AC was totally worth my 18th level feat.
It's worth including this spell on the spell list. My bard found it indispensable as a precombat buff, well before being able to persist it.

Quicken spell can't be used by a spontaneous caster.

But make note of Arcane Spellsurge for Sublime Chord, that makes all std action spells swift action, and makes full round casting (I.e. Metamagicked) spells into std action.

Also, Doomspeak is one of the best debuffs in the game. Many bards have skill points enough to put cross class ranks into intimidate. This is totally worth it for a caster bard, or a Bard who has caster pals who can save-or-suck that enemy. And if you cast harmonize you can use Doomspeak as a move action, and the cast at that enemy (Irresistable dance!) yourself.

Lingering song can also do one thing a harmonizing weapon and melodic casting can't do. Make ALL your bardic music last 10 rounds. This means each round you can begin a new bardic music (again these are a move action if you cast harmonize), and have them all last the whole combat.

Spells:
Heaven's Trumpet requires you to be an archon.
Irresistable dance is excellent on a melee bard. Or on a sublime chord who gets it much earlier at 6th level, then sorcerer or wizard.
Hindsight can be very useful for gathering info, and is another a sublime chord gets early.

Magical musical instruments:
The Horn of Resilience gives an extra 50 temporary hit points to one recipient of your Inspire Greatness bardic music. Great for a melee bard to bestow on himself. Or on another melee type like your party rogue who has limited hit points. Plus you get the benefit of playing IC on a masterwork horn.

It's also part of the set at contains the badge of valor. You get bonuses for having more than one piece of the set.
Oh. You have this under wondrous items. Still....

The Lyre of Building is also a useful thing to have. Protect a structure from disintegration. And if you can't often find a use for 100 people working for 3 days for 30 minutes of playing, you aren't being imaginative enough. And you can keep playing for hours once you can blow through a DC 18 perform check. (My bard helped rebuild a whole town playing all day for two days a week on a pair of these.)

[JoshuaD]

Thanks Hiro. I'm working those notes into the next version. Will post it soon.

[atemu1234]

-Why is Vow of Poverty blue?

This one worries me the most.

[JoshuaD]

40 pages of text written in a period of about 5 days. Mistakes creep in. I've corrected that in the updated version, which I'll be putting up soon.

[Hiro Quester]

Me too concerned about the VOP being blue. it's a huge Admiral Akbar sized trap, especially for a bard.

The bard can benefit a lot from magic items. Is dependent them, perhaps.

The VoP is generally acknowledged to give you way less bonuses than you could buy in a typical WLB game.

I've seen it said (sorry I forget who, but someone in this playground) that VoP is only a not-terrible idea if many of these conditions apply:


Your game is not very optimized
Your DM is very stingy with magic items (e.g. much of the campaign is away from civilization, no stores where you can buy magic items).
You are playing with significantly less than Wealth by Level
You are playing in a core game (many of the better magic items are not in your books)
You are a druid in a game without wilding clasps (who can't easily use items in wildshape, so being item-independent is a slight advantage)


Very few of these apply to a bard. You at least need a musical instrument (many boosts to bardic music from these ). With UMD as a class skill and skill points to spare, not being able to use wands or staves (esp. from other classes) alone would be problematic.

[TheCrowing1432]

Theres a lot of red in there.


I dont think you need to go out there and list EVERY single possible option, especially when the majority of them seem to be poor choices.


Also, why is disguise self green but the skill is black?


Spells > Skills.

Alter Self/Disguise Self/Hat of Disguise are all better then the Disguise skill itself.

[JoshuaD]

Also, why is disguise self green but the skill is black?

Spells > Skills.

Alter Self/Disguise Self/Hat of Disguise are all better then the Disguise skill itself.

Alter self is broke, and should be taken if your DM allows you and you want to go for maximum power.

As I mention in the header of the spell section, the key to bard spells is wide application. We have an extremely limited spell list, so we have to pick spells that can solve a variety of problems. +10 to disguise is not a good choice for a spell, even though the skill itself might be useful at times.



Theres a lot of red in there.


I dont think you need to go out there and list EVERY single possible option, especially when the majority of them seem to be poor choices.

Maybe. I know that, as a player reading handbooks, I am grateful for more information. I had done the research, so I included it. It may save people a few hours of work looking over dead-ends.

[ComaVision]

Maybe. I know that, as a player reading handbooks, I am grateful for more information. I had done the research, so I included it. It may save people a few hours of work looking over dead-ends.

I agree with you. I'd much rather have a trap listed and identified in a handbook then see it independently and potentially mistake it as good. Looking forward to your edit.

[Gabrosin]

Good to see someone producing an updated Bard handbook. I've recently been creating one for an upcoming campaign, using some of the same reference works you cited. Your early comment is spot on: builds that focus on level 20 are not useful for most games. Having a class that you can optimize to be strongly effective, but not game-breaking, at low levels is the way to go, and bard fits that perfectly.

A few notes on your handbook:

You can totally tank as a bard, if you mix it right, specifically with crusader. True, most of the tanking comes from the crusader side, but it's a powerful pairing and worth mentioning to raise that red rating up a bit. On the other hand, bards are poor healers. They get a couple of tricks (UMD and healing hymn, mostly) but their spells known and spells per day are too limited to be expected to carry the healing burden. Also, wand of lesser vigor >>> wand of CLW.

You sort of imply you should swap inspire competence for Song of the Heart, but Song of the Heart requires inspire competence, so your first chance at a swap is suggestion. All comes down to which type of bard you'd rather be, combat or social.

Frankly, bluff should be purple, especially because you're going to get Glibness eventually. You're guaranteed non-lawful so start lying to everyone and everything.

Even though intimidate is cross-class, it should be rated higher. Fear-stacking bards are a really solid archetype, and it's worth the trouble to get intimidate on your list.

I agree with the rating on listen, but you need 13 ranks in it for Sublime Chord, so you should probably note that, since SC is a very common prestige for bards.

I'd turn Collector of Stories blue or purple, because Knowledge Devotion is purple.

Everywhere you mention White Raven Tactics, you mean Song of the White Raven. WRT is a different thing entirely.

Spellsword, as a one-level dip, is definitely not red. It's trivial to enter, progresses spellcasting on the first level, gives a good progression bump to the most important saves, and even knocks off a little spell failure in case you want to use a shield or something.

The single biggest omission from your list is Jade Phoenix Mage for combat bards. It gives 8/10 spellcasting, full BAB, Devoted Spirit maneuver progression, and provides two powerful early class features: Arcane Wrath, where you can turn a spell slot (even a cantrip!) into a bonus to attack and damage, and Mystic Phoenix Stance, where you pick up small CL and AC bonuses and up to DR 10/evil, which really adds up. If you hold off on most of its levels until after you go into Sublime Chord, it can help you progress SC to ninth level spells and still get you to around +17 or so BAB at 20th. Good early, good late. If your DM allows Tome of Battle, this should be blue for a combat bard and purple for a Sublime Chord gish.

Heartwarder is fantastic... except for the absurd feat tax to get in. Also, I love the way it grants you a conditional Spell Focus (Enchantment) at sixth level, when you needed that feat as a prereq for the whole class.

Consider mentioning the Touch of Healing reserve feat; a bard who learns Cure Moderate Wounds and takes this feat can always heal his whole party back to half health, unless he's out of level 2 slots for the day. It's not a high optimization choice but in practical play it'll save money on items and let your team adventure longer each day.

I like that you noted Vow of Nonviolence/Peace as an option for bards who want to buff and face but not dive into melee, but seriously, Vow of Poverty is still bad.

Doomspeak should be rated higher. A lot higher.

Dragonfire Inspiration should be the purplest purple you can find. That and Words of Creation are the two bard options I ban in my campaigns. Well, Leadership too, of course.

Improvisation is better than you give it credit for because it scales so well at higher levels. Yeah, its duration's not great, but as the spell you cast right before you kick down the door, it lets you pack a huge punch in the earliest rounds of combat, which are the most important ones. Its out of combat utility on top of that make it a must learn. I'd mark it blue at a minimum.

Level 4 should be Greater Mirror Image. It and Greater Invisibility should probably be purple. Ruin Delver's Fortune too. Immediate action spells that say "you don't die" are priceless.

Sirine's Grace is probably worth mentioning, though I'm not a fan personally because of its short duration. A fine choice to persist, if you're going that route.

How is Otto's Irresistible Dance not purple? Okay, sure, you need a melee touch attack to deliver it. Then they... do nothing for 2-5 rounds, NO SAVE. With a penalty to their AC and reflex saves for good measure. Oh, and they provoke AoOs on their turn. Unless they have good SR or are immune to compulsions, they're dead. Period.

There is a wondrous item in the Arms and Equipment Guide called Tessellated Armor. It's a box full of metal shapes that interlock to form full plate on you as a standard action. They're more flexible than normal full plate, so it counts as medium armor. If your DM lets you make this item out of mithral... you can get light armor full plate with +3 max dex and I think a -1 ACP.

If that doesn't work, the Psychoactive Skin of Ectoplasmic Armor from the MIC gives +8 to AC as light armor (+2 max dex, -6 ACP). Ask your DM if you can enchant it as normal armor. If not, this isn't the option for you, and you should move on to something much more expensive like halfweight mithral full plate, the battle caster feat, or a monstrosity like twilight feycraft githcraft mithral full plate and a level of Spellsword. Again, work with your DM if you want to get into a really nice suit of light armor.

I hope you can further flesh out the items section over time. One big miss is the Slippers of Battledancing in the DMG2. On a Snowflake Wardance TWF Charisma-SAD build, they let you stretch your attack bonus even higher. You can use a Dorje of Hustle (or other options with a lenient DM) to get the extra move action you need in order to trigger these and use TWF.

All told, great work and keep refining it until it's the definitive handbook!

[Troacctid]

Also, wand of lesser vigor >>> wand of CLW.
Well not necessarily in this case, since Lesser Vigor requires a UMD check where Cure Light Wounds does not.

[Saintheart]

Couple of things:

In terms of spells, someone already mentioned Sirine's Grace. I'd recommend that, but especially in combination with the spell Fugue, which allows battlefield control, the strength of which is based on your Perform check.

[JoshuaD]

I just finished an update. Gabrosin, thanks for your post. I didn't see it until I finished, so I'll incorporate those changes in the next version. Very good information there, thank you.

Link here: http://joshuad.net/new-bard-handbook/

Older versions can be found at the following links, if you want them for some reason:
http://joshuad.net/new-bard-handbook/version-1.htm
http://joshuad.net/new-bard-handbook/version-2.htm
http://joshuad.net/new-bard-handbook/version-3.htm

[JoshuaD]

I worked in most of your notes, Gabrosin. Thanks a lot. I still have a bit more to do (items and song of the heart), but got most of it in.

[Troacctid]

So, regarding LA races, as long as you're listing them, some good +2 LA templates:
Half-Fey (FF) gives you +4 Cha, +2 Dex, +2 Wis, and -2 Con; a pretty fast fly speed with good maneuverability; and a selection of useful spell-like abilities, including charm person at will, which is pretty fantastic.
Shadow creatures (LoM) gain shadow blend, which gives you total concealment in any illumination less than full daylight. Basically, it's permanent greater invisibility. It's kind of insane. You also get to choose from a laundry list of powerful special abilities like fast healing, evasion (good combo with invisibility), and plane shift (to or from the plane of shadow only) as a spell-like ability.
Phrenic (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/monsters/phrenicCreature.htm) creatures (EPH) get +4 Cha, +2 Int, +2 Wis, and a bunch of psi-like abilities. Psi-like abilities are automatically augmented as much as possible to a maximum of your HD, so they're actually seriously powerful, and you get a lot of them. Also, they're Cha-based, so it works out nicely with the stat you're already raising.
Also, you should probably not ignore racial HD. Doppelgangers, for example, have +4 LA, but +8 ECL due to their 4 RHD.


Bardic Sage (UA, p 49): Adds additional spells and bonus to knowledge in exchange for a higher need for intelligence and reduced duration of Bardic music abilities. This is interesting. If you can have a maxed-out charisma and a 16 intelligence (or 19 if you're going into sublime chord PrC), this might be worth pursuing. The big upside is an extra spells known, which is typically a hard limitation for bards.
How do you not have this as blue? It's so great. Minor penalty to Reflex in exchange for extra spells? Sign me up! Intelligence for casting is basically irrelevant since even a standard Bard is probably going to have a 14 or 15 there anyway. (You're not taking Words of Creation otherwise.) It's even more irrelevant if you're going into Sublime Chord, which switches you right back to Charisma once you hit 4th level spells.

I mean, the Reflex penalty isn't nothing, so it's not, like, an actual freeroll, but it is still pretty great. For comparison, would you rather have Lightning Reflexes as a bonus feat once, or Extra Spell as a bonus feat six times?


Divine Bards (UA, p 50) : Wisdom used to determine if you can cast a spell, Charisma used for all other factors, some spells added to the bard spell list. This makes the bard have to pump wisdom to 16, and wisdom is his one easy dump stat. The spells you gain are not exciting, skip this one.
Don't forget it also lets you cast in any type of armor with no chance of arcane spell failure, so you can potentially dump Dex.


Fey Bard (UA, p 58 ): gain animal companion, nature sense, resist nature's lure, and wild empathy as a druid. Lose bardic knowledge, inspire courage, inspire competence, inspire greatness, and inspire heroics. Mechanically, this is a big loss. This is an interesting way to roll your own ranger/caster, but I don't endorse it.
I played one of these once and it honestly isn't bad at all. Yes, it's a big loss, but it's also a big gain, especially at low levels, where Bards are traditionally weak but animal companions are very strong. Remember, this isn't a wimpy Ranger animal companion, it's a full-strength Druid companion, which can be pretty badass. "But what will I do without my buff songs?" The same thing you used to do in the second round of combat, after you'd normally use your buff song, except now you do it in the first round. Cast haste, cast grease, attack with a bow, attack with Snowflake Wardance, I dunno, whatever. You can still do all that stuff just fine.

The animal companion falls off somewhat at higher levels, especially if you want to prestige, but a. that's not a big deal because by that point you have high-level spells and you are awesome on your own anyway, and b. if you want to, you can use the class feature retraining option from Player's Handbook II to get your Inspire Courage back later on.


Inspire Awe (DrM, p 13): Gain ability to inspire awe instead of courage. Opponents become shaken, with a chance at saving. Generally, this is a terrible exchange for Inspire Courage. A fear-based bard might want to look into this, though.
It's not terrible, it's awesome. *cough*

Seriously though the save DC on it is basically unbeatable and it's a pretty good debuff. You're giving them -2 to all their attacks, which is quite solid; -2 to saving throws, which is a great lead-in to your plethora of enchantments and is useful even out of combat; and -2 to skill and ability checks, which is effectively a +2 bonus on your team's trip checks, Bluff checks, and any other opposed rolls you might make. Furthermore, it stacks with other fear effects to disable enemies completely. Bottom line, it is absolutely a worthy replacement for Inspire Courage, and if you don't want to invest build resources into stuff like Words of Creation and Dragonfire Inspiration, or if you have a small party that doesn't benefit as much from mass buffing, or if you have a party of mostly casters that are forcing saves instead of rolling attacks, I think it is easily better.


Magical Appraisal - Upgrade detect magic to Identify, yes please!
You don't need a skill trick to do this. If you make a Spellcraft check to identify the school of magic of a magic item's aura and succeed by 10 or more, you gain the benefit of an identify spell on that item. It's faster, easier, and has no material component. Alternately, just grab an Artificer's Monocle (MIC) for 1500 gp and you can concentrate for an extra minute on detect magic to gain the benefit of an identify spell with no material component or Spellcraft check.


Dragonfire Adept (DM ) - This class is similar to the warlock in mechanics. I don't see any advantage to going into this; it doesn't directly synergize or amplify any bard class features.

Warlock (CArc 8) - Not worth dipping into. You just get an eldrich blast, which is a flashy long-bow. You have much better things to do with 1 level.
Possibly you missed the actual effect of the invocations you could get? Beguiling Influence is available to both classes and it is worth a +6 to all social skills. DFA can also give you Draconic Knowledge, which is a +6 bonus on all Knowledge checks, plus Spellcraft, potentially nice on know-it-all types. DFA gives you Dragontouched as a bonus feat, which is useful for enabling Dragonfire Inspiration, and an at-will breath weapon, which can be used with the Entangling Breath feat for a no-save debuff that's nice to have on a support character.


Stormsinger (Frost 71) - Full spell progression and some additional bardic musics. Requires two bad feats for entry, though, which is a real bummer. I haven't looked at this too deeply, but I feel like there's the potential for abuse by maximizing the winds ability.
Control winds is an extremely powerful spell, especially if you can boost your caster level. Stormsinger gives you a crapton of daily uses of it, with a boosted save DC and two built-in caster level boosts (+2 if it's stormy or cold out, and an effective +3 for keying off Perform ranks instead of character level). That's well worth two feats. Plus, since you get control winds at character level 10, it conveniently segues right into Sublime Chord. It's also worth noting that it's one of the rare Bard prestige classes that is compatible with the Divine Bard variant, although that doesn't matter very often.


Virtuoso - Can be used to increase the spellcasting levels of sublime chord, or of bard. Very strong class that also gives some cool bardic music abilities. You have to give up one level of spellcasting to get into this, but you get full progression after that plus the musics.
I don't see what's so strong about it. You know what else progresses inspire courage and spellcasting? More levels of Bard. And straight Bard doesn't lose a caster level, either.

Virtuoso is only good for Bards if you are using it to advance Sublime Chord casting. Otherwise it's just a worse version of the base class. Even if you're advancing Sublime Chord, I'd still only take it on a dedicated Inspire Courage build; if I'm not optimizing Inspire Courage, I'd much rather take Urban Savant, Ardent Dilettante, Stormsinger, Soulcaster, Mystic Theurge, Cerebremancer, etc. The perks you could be getting from other classes are more exciting than an extra 1 or 2 points of morale.


Celestial Familiar (BoED41) - Quoting that handbook: This isn't worth it a feat for a template. The magical beast type isn't going to benefit your familiar, except maybe from darkvision, but many already have it. Most familiars have 1-3 HD. So all your familiar gets is: Darkvision, resistance to Acid, Cold, Electricity, smite evil. Which is worthless since animal have crappy charisma scores and familiars don't progress HD.
You're not taking the feat for a celestial version of a normal animal. You're taking it for a coure eladrin, which kicks major ass and is one of the best familiars in the entire game. (The other best familiars are imps/quasits and lantern archons. There's also mirror mephits if you don't mind cheese; they get simulacrum as a spell-like ability 1/day, which is broken as ****, but I expect most DMs wouldn't let that option fly.)


Vow of Peace (BoED p48) - This would probably pair up with vow of non-violence.
Since Vow of Nonviolence is a prerequisite, I think that goes without saying. :smallwink:

[Gabrosin]

Well not necessarily in this case, since Lesser Vigor requires a UMD check where Cure Light Wounds does not.

That's fair, though most bards are maxing UMD with high Charisma from the start. A level 1 bard with 4 ranks, 18 Charisma, and Nymph's Kiss is already at +10 to the DC 20 check. Throw in a masterwork tool here, a Charisma boost there, a couple more ranks from leveling up, pretty soon you can hit DC 20 without thinking. But before that, sure, CLW away.

[JoshuaD]

@Troaccid: Awesome, thanks for the input. I will incorporate those notes as well.

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

Needs mention of firre eladrin, which has unlimited bardic music as a Su ability.

[ComaVision]

Minor fixes to your Dragonfire Inspiration segment:

-The average damage of a d6 is 3.5, not 2.5
-You wrote 'rouge' where you meant 'rough'
-In the Excel sheet, the max possible hit chance should be 95% and the bottom should be 5% (nat 1s and nat 20s respectively)

Shaping up to be a really good resource.

[JoshuaD]

@Coma: Thanks. :-) Good point on the excel sheet, I'll correct that.

Regarding damage: The average damage of a d6 is 3.5, but the difference in damage is 2.5. Inspire courage is 1 damage and 1 attack, dragonfire inspiration is 3.5 damage. So we are comparing 1 attack to 2.5 damage, effectively.

I'll make that more clear in the next version, as well.

[JoshuaD]

I'll add an index along the left side, too, with some page anchors. The manual is getting a bit long.

[JoshuaD]

Is there any argument that you can replace inspire competence with song of the heart? I had a few people tell me that I could replace it a while back, and I never caught the requirement that Gabrosin pointed at.

I'd really like to be able to replace inspire competence with song of the heart. Is there any argument, or is Gabrosin simply right?

[Theodred theOld]

Not sure why whirling blade is red. I get alot of damage out of that one, especially when IC is pumping out +7/+7 or more or DFI is adding +6d6 and you get to add your CHA to hit and damage (which should be relatively high for a bard) and bladeweave is active (forcing multiple will saves vs dazed). Also song of the heart requires inspire competence so barring a really generous dm you're stuck.

[Gabrosin]

Is there any argument that you can replace inspire competence with song of the heart? I had a few people tell me that I could replace it a while back, and I never caught the requirement that Gabrosin pointed at.

I'd really like to be able to replace inspire competence with song of the heart. Is there any argument, or is Gabrosin simply right?

Hey man, I'd really like it if that were the case too. But it seems pretty clear.


A character can’t use a feat if he or she has lost a prerequisite.

Even if you were allowed to make the swap, not having inspire competence means you don't gain the benefits of the feat. You can ask your DM for an exception, but that's all it would be.

On the flip side, if you intend to trade out suggestion anyway, there's little reason not to trade out fascinate as well. And your DM might let you sub Song of the Heart for a crappy song from a bardic prestige class if you feel the need to keep suggestion. Either way, you're probably not getting it as a freebie until sixth level at the earliest.

[Hiro Quester]

Is there any argument that you can replace inspire competence with song of the heart? I had a few people tell me that I could replace it a while back, and I never caught the requirement that Gabrosin pointed at.

I'd really like to be able to replace inspire competence with song of the heart. Is there any argument, or is Gabrosin simply right?

People want to be able to do it. the origin is probably this from ECS:

A bard can take these feats any time she would normally gain a feat, or can choose one of them as a bonus feat instead of gaining a new form of bardic music at 3rd, 6th, 9th, 12th, 15th, or 18th level.
These bard feats are Haunting Melody, Music of Growth, Music of Making, Song of the Heart, and Soothe the Beast.

So you can take it as a bonus feat instead of any bardic music you gain, except the prerequisite of Inspire Competence. So you could take it instead of Suggestion at 6th level.

[JoshuaD]

Yup, that's what did me in. I'll have to fix the handbook (and my current character :smallannoyed:) soon. Thanks guys.

[JoshuaD]

Improved the formatting a ton tonight. Will be incorporating the changes you guys pointed out soon.

[Windaar]

I am building a bard and I just have to say, THANK YOU for this!! Still useful all these years later. :)

[truemane]

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