Doctor Despair
2015-12-08, 06:38 PM
TL;DR: What different things/roles can a bard/bard prc do at level 20?
So I started playing DnD about... it must have been a year and a half ago by this time, and my first character was a spring-attack monk. I never did the most damage, nor was I the tankiest, but I had some skill points to throw around, the movespeed was silly, and I kind of filled in the areas that our two-druid-and-a-paladin party was missing in both roleplay and skills. I had a great time learning the rules and fell in love with the game, immersing myself in the DMs world.
Now, I'm playing a binder with a much less experienced DM. I was hoping to have the same experience, but... it just isn't as immersive, for a variety of reasons. Regardless of that, I found myself thinking of my next character. The DM was running an epic campaign, so I figured I'd look at magic since I had yet to play a normal mage-archetype character and two members of our party were already big beefy melee damage dealers.
I researched all the wizard and spellcasting PrCs and slowly realized that magic, in even its simplest form, was broken in 3.5 (very late to that bus, I know). Mages haven't killed all the gods and replaced them because they haven't felt like it yet. I like to imagine that Bocobb smites all magic-users at level 10 out of self-preservation, or in the case of Kobold wizards, level 1. Regardless, this led to a skewing of my perception of the game. Everything suddenly seemed lackluster and paltry, subject to the simplest whim of any epic caster that came our way. I tried getting hyped for some sort of rogue character who could at least avoid being killed by a wizard, but it was hard to find identity as anything but completely invisible, inaudible, and undetectable, and even that took some cheese (I'm looking at you, Godblooded of Vecna).
I tried to figure out how I could reengage with DnD and it occurred to me that I had the most fun when I was doing silly things with bluff, diplomacy, and the like. I'd avoided pumping them since I discovered the ease with which one could abuse diplomacy, but with my highly unoptimized monk, it had still led to a lot of flavor in the campaign, and it occurred to me... I have never played a bard! Epic-level bard shenanigans sounded fun enough, with the added benefit that no epic mages should ever want to kill the character (I hope? D:). I do, however, know precious little about bards; no one has ever played one extensively in my parties besides a one-level dip for bardic knowledge. What kind of bard archetypes are out there? Can they only buff in combat effectively (not that that's at all a meager thing!)?
For reference on what kind of abilities my party has -- one built a four-armed melee character with the intent of being able to kill a god if ever it came down to raw damag, pumping out ~1500 with all four attacks. I'm not sure if I should even try for combat utility at this point -- or maybe I should? I suppose that depends on what sorts of things bards can do at epic levels.
So I started playing DnD about... it must have been a year and a half ago by this time, and my first character was a spring-attack monk. I never did the most damage, nor was I the tankiest, but I had some skill points to throw around, the movespeed was silly, and I kind of filled in the areas that our two-druid-and-a-paladin party was missing in both roleplay and skills. I had a great time learning the rules and fell in love with the game, immersing myself in the DMs world.
Now, I'm playing a binder with a much less experienced DM. I was hoping to have the same experience, but... it just isn't as immersive, for a variety of reasons. Regardless of that, I found myself thinking of my next character. The DM was running an epic campaign, so I figured I'd look at magic since I had yet to play a normal mage-archetype character and two members of our party were already big beefy melee damage dealers.
I researched all the wizard and spellcasting PrCs and slowly realized that magic, in even its simplest form, was broken in 3.5 (very late to that bus, I know). Mages haven't killed all the gods and replaced them because they haven't felt like it yet. I like to imagine that Bocobb smites all magic-users at level 10 out of self-preservation, or in the case of Kobold wizards, level 1. Regardless, this led to a skewing of my perception of the game. Everything suddenly seemed lackluster and paltry, subject to the simplest whim of any epic caster that came our way. I tried getting hyped for some sort of rogue character who could at least avoid being killed by a wizard, but it was hard to find identity as anything but completely invisible, inaudible, and undetectable, and even that took some cheese (I'm looking at you, Godblooded of Vecna).
I tried to figure out how I could reengage with DnD and it occurred to me that I had the most fun when I was doing silly things with bluff, diplomacy, and the like. I'd avoided pumping them since I discovered the ease with which one could abuse diplomacy, but with my highly unoptimized monk, it had still led to a lot of flavor in the campaign, and it occurred to me... I have never played a bard! Epic-level bard shenanigans sounded fun enough, with the added benefit that no epic mages should ever want to kill the character (I hope? D:). I do, however, know precious little about bards; no one has ever played one extensively in my parties besides a one-level dip for bardic knowledge. What kind of bard archetypes are out there? Can they only buff in combat effectively (not that that's at all a meager thing!)?
For reference on what kind of abilities my party has -- one built a four-armed melee character with the intent of being able to kill a god if ever it came down to raw damag, pumping out ~1500 with all four attacks. I'm not sure if I should even try for combat utility at this point -- or maybe I should? I suppose that depends on what sorts of things bards can do at epic levels.