How to make a Sublime Chord?

[danielxcutter]

Okay, I know about the Sublime Chord PrC. The thing is, I'm not sure what spells to take, and I'd love advice for feats to take as well. And I mean before *and* after entering Sublime Chord.

I wish to take spells that have a decisive "bard" feel to them, but I want to take more castery spells that aren't on the Bard list as well, or spells like Summon Monster that are on both lists. So a balance between "bard" and "caster", I suppose. I know that blasting sucks, but I'd still like to slip in a spell or two at the very least as well.

Also I just want to do Bard 10/Sublime Chord 10. Partly because I'm lazy and partly because the 3.5 version of Virtuso loses a caster level and using the 3.0 version is cheating. Also the class features of SC are cool, if not really that good. I know there are other PrCs that work too, but I'm not interested.

Finally, please stay away from cheese that "technically" works, or is way too OP to use in a game. This is practical optimization, folks.

[gogogome]

Only time I used sublime chord was to make a bard get planar binding.

The only other time I used sublime chord, I forgot, but it was dip-tastic. You only need 1 level bard, so it was like wizard5/bard1/4ClassDipsLikeCleric/SublimeChord.

Sublime Chord is a lesser wizard/sorcerer, so you only go it if sorcerer/wizards are not allowed, you want to turn your bard into a wizard, or you are dip-tastic and want level 9 spells.

[danielxcutter]

Sublime Chord is a lesser wizard/sorcerer, so you only go it if sorcerer/wizards are not allowed, you want to turn your bard into a wizard, or you are dip-tastic and want level 9 spells.

The second one, that's the case here.

[Crake]

There are a few bard spells that are super low level for bards, compared to other classes, two off the top of my head are legend lore at level 4 for bards, but level 6 for sorcerers and wizards, and hindsight, which is level 6 for bards, but level 9 for sorcerers and wizards, two very interesting and fun spells to use. I'm not sure of any other examples, but I'm sure they're out there.

Other good spells include everyone's favourite glitterdust, alter self and polymorph.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Lyric Spell is pretty good, especially if you're going Bard 10/ SC 10 as you'll have tons of daily uses of bardic music.

Versatile Spellcaster is pretty good for getting more higher level spells.

Obtain Familiar and Improved Familiar can be useful, especially since the familiar can use your UMD ranks.

There aren't a lot of feats you really need for this build, so you can easily go for some Inspire Courage optimization for a strong contribution in the early levels, and it's still useful later on with Melodic Casting to keep it active while casting spells.

You can pick up point-blank shot and precise shot and use a bow early, and those are also useful for ray attacks.


Regarding the level build, you don't really need more than eight Bard levels, so Bard 8/ Virtuoso 2/ Sublime Chord 2/ Virtuoso 8 is typically the go-to build. If you don't want to use Virtuoso, a few single-level dips in something like Mindbender or Dragon Devotee can be extremely useful.

You could also go with an Inspire Awe + fear effects build. Something like Bard 8/ Dread Witch 1/ Nightmare Spinner 1/ Sublime Chord 2/ Dread Witch 4/ Nightmare Spinner 4 would be good, take the first level of each of those classes as early as possible for the class skills. Inspire Awe plus Haunting Melody, combined with Intimidate and Never Outnumbered plus Imperious Command plus Fearsome armor (DotU version), a low level area effect spell like Sound Burst with Fell Frighten Spell, even Dreadful Wrath if you can qualify for it, will disrupt opponents enough that your party can just walk all over them. The Fear Handbook (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?389244-Caedrus-Art-of-War-vol-1-Fear-Handbook) will have more information on that type of build.

[Troacctid]

Virtuoso is really not that great if you're already a Bard. It's mostly useless unless you're doing Inspire Courage optimization, which Sublime Chords typically don't need to bother with, as they have high-level spells that they can use instead. If you were prestiging, you would probably choose a different one. (There's a full list of spellcasting prestige classes in my sig.)

As a Bard 10/Sublime Chord 10, you mostly just do Bard stuff at low levels and transition to Sorcerer stuff at high levels. Most of my Sublime Chord builds swap out Inspire Courage for Inspire Awe, because when you have more powerful spells, giving enemies a -2 to their saving throws is pretty legit. You also get to choose between the standard Bard, Savage Bard, or Bardic Sage, all of which are valid choices with pros and cons to each. I like Bardic Sage because extra spells are great.

[ZamielVanWeber]

Lyric Thaumaturge is cool if you want to be a caster bard. Bard 5/Lyric Thaumaturge 5/Sublime Chord 1/Lyric Thaumaturge 5/whatever 4 (something that fully advances casting) will give you some interesting options beyond a more conventional sorcerer build.

[Eldariel]

Bare 9/Virtuoso 1/Sublime Chord 2/Virtuoso +8. It's great on all levels. Great Bardic Music (Inspire Greatness is really useful with e.g. Polymorph and Song of Arcane Power), all the spells. Pick like a Sorc: one spell for each job and as many generalist effects as possible. Stuff like PAO, Summon Monster, Disintegrate, Slow, Glitterdust, etc.

Bard-list notably has Irresistible Dance at 6, which is incredibly powerful. Then general utility like Scry, Teleport and Plane Shift, and minionmany in Planar Binding, Simulacrum and maybe even Animate Dead. Glibness.

[Xethik]

As ZamielVanWeber mentioned, going something like Lyric Thaumaturge is great. You can get away with dropping 3 spellcaster levels before Sublime Chord. So "Bard" 7 (read: anything that advances Bard casting) works fine. You can do things like Paladin 2, War Weaver 1. Or Crusader/Warblade 2 Jade Phoenix Mage 1. But I get the impression you are pretty stuck with Bard 10/Sublime Chord 10. Just felt like worth mentioning for anyone else who finds this thread looking for similar advice.

For spells, my Bard/War Weaver/Sublime Chord uses these quite often, but it is worth noting we don't have standard WBL or magic items, so YMMV:
1st
Inspirational Boost - +1 to Inspire Courage
Immediate Assistance - Re-roll skill checks
Improvisation - 2 x CL points to be spent on attack rolls, skill checks, and ability checks
Loresong - Don't have this one but worth mentioning for awesome skills

2nd
Heroics (Lyric Thaumaturge) - Give out Fighter feats. Works fantastically with War Weaver
Glitterdust - A staple
Heroism - War Weaver synergy

3rd
Haste - A staple

4th
Ruin Delver's Fortune - Boost saving throws by Charisma, which can be absurdly high with Bard spells like...
Inner Beauty - Boost Charisma with a good duration
Greater Mirror Image - Big durability improvement

5th
Greater Dispel Magic - Nice getting this with a spell level discount
Blink, Greater - More survivability

6th
Nixie's Grace - Stacks with Inner Beauty. Gives a lot of stats and other benefits

[Eldariel]

Far as Bard-specific spells, I want to emphasize the beauty that is Harmonize. Normally your Move Actions are kinda wasted, especially on your Shadow Conjurationed Phantom Steed. This allows you to turn them into nearly spell effects in bardic music. Inspire Courage, Dragonfire Inspiration and Inspire Greatness are all very powerful songs when used right, and the others definitely have their places too and being able to weave them in and out as needed is great. And the first turn, you just cast Harmonize and start your song as a Move Action so it's close to "free" to cast. You can drop song each turn and let their lingering effects do the rest (Lingering Song for added points if you find yourself in marathon slogs regularly).

[Troacctid]

Another option that's actually quite nice if you're starting at a low level is to take an animal companion. The action economy and early-game melee power it provides can be very strong and well worth giving up some of your musical abilities, especially if you weren't planning to min-max them in the first place.

[Vaern]

Ruin Delver's Fortune - Boost saving throws by Charisma, which can be absurdly high with Bard spells like...
An important thing to note about this one, for those not familiar with it, is that its casting is an immediate reaction that you can use it on someone else's turn as they're attacking you. And in addition to the saving throw boosts, it can also grant evasion, immunity to poison, immunity to fear, or a decent amount of temporary hit points.
As someone who has played a bard/sublime chord in an unoptimized group, I can attest that this spell has saved my life more times than I can count and is the bane of my Dr's existence.

[Xethik]

An important thing to note about this one, for those not familiar with it, is that its casting is an immediate reaction that you can use it on someone else's turn as they're attacking you. And in addition to the saving throw boosts, it can also grant evasion, immunity to poison, immunity to fear, or a decent amount of temporary hit points.
As someone who has played a bard/sublime chord in an unoptimized group, I can attest that this spell has saved my life more times than I can count and is the bane of my Dr's existence.
Yes, sorry. I didn't emphasize enough how good this spell is. And it doesn't just boost that one save: it last 1d4+1 rounds. The Evasion alone has saved my character multiple times and the poison immunity has at least once, too. Temp HP isn't the best use but you take it when you need it; it's a fantastically broad spell. It will be useful in most fights, which is what you really want out of Spontaneous casting spell known.

[Eldariel]

Yes, sorry. I didn't emphasize enough how good this spell is. And it doesn't just boost that one save: it last 1d4+1 rounds. The Evasion alone has saved my character multiple times and the poison immunity has at least once, too. Temp HP isn't the best use but you take it when you need it; it's a fantastically broad spell. It will be useful in most fights, which is what you really want out of Spontaneous casting spell known.

This is without even getting into how awesome it is if you can persist it. By 9s, Metamagic Song + Practical Metamagic: Persistent Spell allows you to persist it naturally and getting a bunch of massive all-day boosts to everything is superb. And that's a rather fair use of Persistent Spell as it stands (sorta: if doing "fair persisting", turning those 1 round or short duration buffs into all-days is the strongest use it offers); Metamagic Song has spell level cap, so it's not all that broken even. Of course, Practical Metamagic nd Dragonfire Inspiration both require Dragonblood.

[Pleh]

A player's guide to Sublime Chords (https://www.ultimate-guitar.com/tabs/sublime_tabs.htm)

sorry, I couldn't resist....

[Hiro Quester]

I played a bard/Sublime chord a few years back. Very very fun.

I played it as a fairly gishy self-buffing Bard 10/Sublime Chord 2/ Heartfire Fanner, Abjurant champion. Main role is face, party buffer, then melee.

Two levels of Sublime Chord is good (the second level song that increases your CL is awesome). After that find a bardic prestige class you like. (I played a Heartfire Fanner for bardic music that grants your party members temporary use of fighter bonus feats --that was a very often requested song.)

An essential spell for a sublime chord is definitely Harmonize (RoS; 2nd level). It makes starting a bardic music a move action (so you can both sing and cast in the same round).

The other awesome spell that you get early is Irresistible dance. 6th level for bards, 8th level for sorcerer wiz. Sublime chord gets it as a 6th level spell, at level 13.

Seconding Ruin Delver's Fortune. It's awesome. It saved my bard's life many times.

Improvisation spell (2nd) gets you a pool of luck points to use for skill checks (e.g. during crucially important performances) equal to twice your CHA bonus.

Also at 4th level, check out Sirine's grace, for both buffing your dex and Cha +4, and adding your CHA bonus as a deflection bonus to AC.

For feats, Melodic casting is essential. It's a bard's combat casting, plus it enables you to cast while performing a bardic music, and to dump concentration --make perform checks instead.

Doomspeak is possibly the best bardic feat. You insult someone as a bardic music and it makes them so offended that they are -10 (!) on al saving throws, skill checks, attack rolls for a round. It's possibly the best debuff in the game.

The Shadow spells --Shadow Conjuration (5) Shadow Evocation (6) , and greater shadow Evocation (8)-- are great for adding versatility to your limited spell list. Limited wish for similar reasons.

Edit:

This is without even getting into how awesome it is if you can persist it. By 9s, Metamagic Song + Practical Metamagic: Persistent Spell allows you to persist it naturally and getting a bunch of massive all-day boosts to everything is superb.

It's debatable that persisting it is worth it; immediate action casting means you cast it as needed, right before you roll your save. And you'd ned to cast it (persisted) 3 or 4 times, since you choose the effect at casting time. Even with Metamagic song, 9th levels spells and bardic music are limited resources.

And there are other 4th level spells well worth persisting, like Sirine's grace for a decent buff to your AC.

[Xethik]

Also at 4th level, check out Sirine's grace, for both buffing your dex and Cha +4, and adding your CHA bonus as a deflection bonus to AC.

For feats, Melodic casting is essential. It's a bard's combat casting, plus it enables you to cast while performing a bardic music, and to dump concentration --make perform checks instead.

The Shadow spells --Shadow Conjuration (5) Shadow Evocation (6) , and greater shadow Evocation (8)-- are great for adding versatility to your limited spell list.

Seconding all this. Sirine's Grace and Nixie's Grace have some overlap. You can probably get away with just having one, but Persisting Sirine's Grace and Extending Nixie's Grace is great at later levels, with Inner Beauty to add even more stat goodness. To cheapen the cost of Extend, you could look into the Bardic Metamagic feat. It lets you spend Bardic Music on metamagic, without increasing spell level. Really nice for those cheap MMs like Extend and I found myself excess Music to Persist at the end of the day.

You can also take Ability Enhancer feat (Dragon magazine if I recall) to make your stat buffs even better, which works really well with Sirine's Grace and boosting debuff spell save DCs.

[Eldariel]

It's debatable that persisting it is worth it; immediate action casting means you cast it as needed, right before you roll your save. And you'd ned to cast it (persisted) 3 or 4 times, since you choose the effect at casting time. Even with Metamagic song, 9th levels spells and bardic music are limited resources.

And there are other 4th level spells well worth persisting, like Sirine's grace for a decent buff to your AC.

I like having the constant Cha-bonus to everything as well as evasion. Immediate actions are some of the most precious of resources higher up; that's where your Celerities, Alter Fortunes (or equivalents) and Greater Mirror Images and such come in. Thus I don't like investing the action in Ruin Delver's Fortune in combat. On higher levels, action economy gets all the tighter.

[Anthrowhale]

If you have access to Dragon Magazine, you might consider Trickster Spellthief 9/Heartfire Fanner 1/Sublime Chord 10. As a Trickster Spellthief all bard spells are on list as well as all Sorcerer/Wizard abjuration, divination, enchantment, illusion, and transmutation spells. And, you can steal spells (to cast yourself or to power your own spells). And you can steal spell-like abilities. And you can grant any fighter bonus feat with your song. I haven't had a chance to play this build yet, but it looks pretty fun.

[Hiro Quester]

I know this possibly doesn't apply to DanielXCutter, since he says he's not interested in alternative PrCs. But for posterity's sake for those who use this thread for reference, and since this has been mentioned, let me chip in a caveat:


If you have access to Dragon Magazine, you might consider Trickster Spellthief 9/Heartfire Fanner 1/Sublime Chord 10. As a Trickster Spellthief all bard spells are on list as well as all Sorcerer/Wizard abjuration, divination, enchantment, illusion, and transmutation spells. And, you can steal spells (to cast yourself or to power your own spells). And you can steal spell-like abilities. And you can grant any fighter bonus feat with your song. I haven't had a chance to play this build yet, but it looks pretty fun.

It's important to note that Heartfire Fanner grants the bardic music abilities of a 5th level bard, and all the bardic music abilities are available, as long as you satisfy the required ranks in perform. For making a character "bardic" without ranks in bard, it's pretty awesome.

However, this build might have problems.

Heartfire Fanner has a heavy skill and feat tax: requires 10 ranks each in Perform and Diplomacy, plus Skill Focus: Perform and Negotiator feats.

And sublime chord requires a heavier skill investment (KN: Arcana, perform, profession: Astrologer, spelcraft and listen, as I recall).

I don't know Trickster spellthief. Is that a combination of Spellthief and Arcane Trickster? The limitation is that Perform is cross-class for both of them.

So you need a way to get Perform as a class skill. I doubt you could afford to pay for cross-class ranks. Plus with cross-class rank limitations, you would never be able to satisfy prerequisites.

And if you used a feat to get Perform on your skill list, you might be seriously restricting your abilities, given how many other feats you need for prerequisites (not to mention for character abilities).

[Xethik]

I know this possibly doesn't apply to DanielXCutter, since he says he's not interested in alternative PrCs. But for posterity's sake for those who use this thread for reference, and since this has been mentioned, let me chip in a caveat:



It's important to note that Heartfire Fanner grants the bardic music abilities of a 5th level bard, and all the bardic music abilities are available, as long as you satisfy the required ranks in perform. For making a character "bardic" without ranks in bard, it's pretty awesome.

However, this build might have problems.

Heartfire Fanner has a heavy skill and feat tax: requires 10 ranks each in Perform and Diplomacy, plus Skill Focus: Perform and Negotiator feats.

And sublime chord requires a heavier skill investment (KN: Arcana, perform, profession: Astrologer, spelcraft and listen, as I recall).

I don't know Trickster spellthief. Is that a combination of Spellthief and Arcane Trickster? The limitation is that Perform is cross-class for both of them.

So you need a way to get Perform as a class skill. I doubt you could afford to pay for cross-class ranks. Plus with cross-class rank limitations, you would never be able to satisfy prerequisites.

And if you used a feat to get Perform on your skill list, you might be seriously restricting your abilities, given how many other feats you need for prerequisites (not to mention for character abilities).
For the most part, Trickster Spellthief (Dragon 353) trades Sneak Attack improvements and skills for Bardic spellcasting progression.
It doesn't, however, give Perform as a class skill. So you'll need to get that elsewhere.

[Anthrowhale]

Trickster Spellthief grants: K(arcana), Listen, Spellcraft with 4+int skill ranks/levels

Heartfire Fanner requires Perform 10, Diplomacy 10 as well as a 2-feat tax and grants Listen and 6+int skill ranks/level.

Sublime Chord requires K(arcana) 13, Listen 13, Perform 10, Profession 6, Spellcraft 6.

So, if you take Apprentice[Entertainer] which grants perform and diplomacy as class skills, you can do something like Trickster Spellthief 7/Heartfire Fanner 1/Spellthief 2/Sublime Chord 10 with a tax of 3 feats and about 5 skill ranks per level. This is doable with Int 12 or 10 if you are human.

Overall, the costs seem to be in the 'expensive but not showstopper' regime.