Doctor Despair
2020-09-13, 04:46 PM
What is Holding Bards Back?
The humble bard, a charisma-based limited caster class, is a fun and flavorful class to play and, by JaronK's tier list, a solidly T3 class. For reference, a T3 class is described by JaronK as:
Tier 3: Capable of doing one thing quite well, while still being useful when that one thing is inappropriate, or capable of doing all things, but not as well as classes that specialize in that area. Occasionally has a mechanical ability that can solve an encounter, but this is relatively rare and easy to deal with. Can be game breaking only with specific intent to do so. Challenging such a character takes some thought from the DM, but isn't too difficult. Will outshine any Tier 5s in the party much of the time.
The bard is a focused, limited caster, so next to the sorcerer (the primary charisma-based PHB caster to which the bard might be compared), it may look rather lackluster. Early game, bards gain access to first and third level spells a level later than full-casters, and have drastically fewer spells per day and spells known; late game, bards fall even further behind in casting, capping out at 6ths by level 20. Bards have some very excellent spells in their list, but everything they do with their casting is usually done better by a sorcerer.
However, what bards lack in advanced casting, they make up for with class features. Bardic music, along with the host of ACFs and PrCs that expand or alter it, offer bards a huge amount of options to buff allies, debuff enemies, and resolve non-combat encounters, along with plenty of flexible uses per day. As most bardic music is mind-affecting, however, it is often irrelevant against common enemy types (undead, constructs, plants, vermin, to name a few), higher level enemies (who have access to Mind Blank or some other spell or template-based immunity), and eventually becomes difficult to use on allies as they are driven to keep Mind Blank up as often as possible for defensive purposes. Thus, their mechanical ability is quite "easy to deal with."
There are some feats that allow bards to bypass some of these immunities, however. For example, Requium allows bards to use their bardic music on undead creatures; Green Ear allows bards to use their bardic music on plant creatures. It's a good start, but bards aren't exactly getting bonus feats as the fighter does, so taking one feat for every creature type isn't sustainable. Additionally, there aren't feats printed for every type -- to the best of my knowledge, they stopped at those two. Finally, these style of feats don't touch on immunities from spells, templates, or classes. As such, the best solution seems to be the epic feat "Music of the Gods." With this, we can lean into our identity as a bard: our music.
Accessing Music of the Gods
Music of the Gods states:
Prerequisite: Perform 30 ranks, CHA 25, bardic music class feature,
Benefit: Your bardic music can affect even those normally immune to mind-affecting effects. However, such creatures gain a +10 bonus on their Will saves to resist such effects.
As such, in order to access this feat without being level 21 or higher, we need to be able to select epic feats, and we need to be able to meet its steep skill rank requirements.
Normally, epic feats are inaccessible to characters under level 21, but there are notable exceptions. Martial Monks, for example, can arguably select epic fighter feats as their bonus feats. For our purposes, however, the Dragonwrought Kobold is more useful. Dragonwrought is a racial feat that Kobolds may start play with that makes them a dragon. According to the Draconomicon, epic feats "are available to characters of 21st level or higher. Dragons of at least old age also can choose these feats even if they have no class levels." This means that old or older Dragonwrought Kobolds should also be eligible to select epic feats. Some will argue that this means that they need not qualify for the other prerequisites, but as that would also mean that a level 1 Dragonwrought Kobold can take Epic Spellcasting, let's err on the side of caution and agree that the character must also meet the other prerequisites for those epic feats, even if they are allowed to select them pre-epic.
Music of the Gods also requires that you have 30 ranks in Perform. Normally, that would mean that you would need to be level 27 to select the feat, but as with the requirement to be level 21 or higher, there are ways to satisfy this requirement early. For example, the Primary Contact feat would allow a character to exceed their maximum skill rank by 1, although that is woefully insufficient for this job. Likewise, taking three Bloodline levels can raise your maximum skill cap by 3, which falls a little shy of the 30 ranks we need to achieve, but is a step in the right direction. The most significant way to raise your skill ranks past their normal maximum, however, is by using temporary hit dice. There are a variety of ways to gain temporary hit dice, and when they expire, there are no game rules written that remove skill ranks you've expended beyond your new, lower maximum. Indeed, with the Primary Contact feat, there is precedent for legally having skill ranks beyond your maximum without issue. Some common sources of temporary hit dice are:
Inspire Greatness, a bardic music, ironically enough, that grants 2 bonus hit dice, which can be increased with the feats Song of the Heart and Words of Creation to grant 6 bonus hit dice
Contracting one or more strains of Lycanthropy, which grants the relevant animal hit dice for each strain (sadly, not applicable to dragons)
Using the Polymorph spell (or a similar effect) to take the form of a Dusk Giant (Heroes of Horror), gaining their extraordinary Cannibalize special attack. Cannibalize, among other things, allows Dusk Giants to consume 20HD of nonsentient living creatures (take your pick of defenseless creatures like chickens, or perhaps a can of worms) to gain 1 hit dice. They can do this until they reach 24HD, and the HD fade at a rate of 1/day, assuming they don't vanish when the Polymorph ends and you lose the ability, or can be drained off by a handy negative-level-inducing undead.
Combining the Polymorph method with three levels of a Bloodline (or even just one use of Inspire Greatness) would leave us with a maximum skill rank of 30 or higher. If we can maintain this for long enough, we could use the retraining rules to load all the skillpoints we gained at our most recent level, but the easier method is to use the psionic power Psychic Reformation to shuffle our skillpoints around to their desired locations.
As a result of the processes in the spoilers, a Dragonwrought Kobold can take Music of the Gods as early as we can afford the Polymorph and Psychic Reformation, meaning we could take it as our level 3 feat; our level 1 feat must be Dragonwrought. That prompts the question, however: in addition to the basic bardic music abilities granted by vanilla bard, what PrCs or feats would interact with Music of the Gods?
Bardic Prestige Class and Feat Options
After some splatbook diving and critical examination of bardic music, I found that some abilities consume bardic music, but don't seem to count as bardic music in and of themselves. For example, Lyric Spell is a Bardic feat that allows you to expend charges of bardic music to cast spells, but explicitly counts as part of a spellcasting action, not bardic music. In addition, some things create alternate subsystems that look a lot like bardic music, but don't seem to have any text allowing them to count as bardic music. For example, the Evangelist gains "Great Orator" rather than bardic music, and while its class levels stack with bard to determine the strength of their abilities, the great orator abilities seem to be entirely distinct from bardic music.
I decided to take a closer look to make a more comprehensive list at the prcs. The two criteria I was initially interested in were:
Does this class or feat expand the ways we can use bardic music, or does it offer its own subsystem?
If this choice expands our bardic music, do any of these expanded musics have the Mind-Affecting tag so as to benefit from Music of the Gods?
Bard: Yes, and yes, of course.
Dawncaller: Yes, and yes.
Dervish: No.
Dirgesinger: Probably yes, and yes. "Each use of these songs counts as a use of bardic music."
Dread Pirate: No.
Dwarven Chanter: Maybe, and yes. "Chanting follows the same rules as bardic music."
Evangelist: No.
Exalted Arcanist: No.
Fochlucan Lyrist: No.
Heartfire Fanner: Yes, and yes.
Lyric Thaumaturge: No.
Memory Smith: No.
Mourner: No.
Ollam: No.
Prestige Bard: No.
Purple Dragon Knight: No.
Seeker of the Song: Maybe, yes. "Seeker music follows the same rules as bardic music."
Stormsinger: Yes, and no.
Sublime Chord: Yes, and no.
Troubadour of Stars: Yes, and yes.
Virtuoso: No.
War Chanter: Maybe, yes. "War chanter music follows the same rules as bardic music."
Warrior Skald: Yes, and yes.
Arcane Accompaniment: No.
Artist: No.
Battle Dancer: No.
Captivating Melody: Uses charge, no.
Chant of Fortitude: Uses charge, no.
Chant of the Long Road: Uses charge, no.
Chord of Distraction: Uses charge, no.
Courageous Rally: Expands Inspire Courage, so yes.
Devoted Performer: No.
Doomspeak: Uses charge, no.
Dragonfire Inspiration: Expands Inspire Courage, so yes.
Dragonsong: No.
Enchanting Song: Uses charge, no.
Epic Inspiration: No.
Epic of the Lost King: Uses charge, no.
Extra Music: No.
From Smite to Song: No.
Green Ear: Mimics Music of the Gods for plants, but also affects Virtuoso.
Group Inspiration: No.
Haunting Voice: No.
Ice Harmonics: Uses charge, no.
Initiate of Hlal: No.
Initiate of Milil: No.
Inspire Spellpower: Explicit yes, yes.
Ironskin Chant: Uses charge, no.
Lasting Inspiration: No.
Lingering Song: No.
Lyric Spell: Uses charge, but explicitly says this counts as a spellcasting action. Weaker case than the other charge-consuming abilities.
Melodic Casting: No.
Metamagic Song: Uses charges, no.
Misleading Song: Uses charge, no.
Music of the Gods: Duh.
Music of the Outer Spheres: Explicit yes, yes.
Ranged Inspiration: No.
Rapid Inspiration: No.
Reactive Countersong: No.
Requiem: Mimics Music of the Gods for undead, but also affects Virtuoso.
Snowflake Wardance: Uses charge, no.
Song of the White Raven: No.
Sound of Silence: Uses charge, no.
Subsonics: No.
Sunken Song: No.
Talfirian Song: Uses charge, no.
Warning Shout: Uses charge, yes.
Windsinger: Uses charge, no.
Words of Creation: No.
That left us with this short-list to consider for effects:
Dawncaller: Inspire courage, and music that grants barbarian rage, fatigue-deferral, or DR and various strength-related bonuses. Also gain music that can make an antipathy effect. Antipathy is a level 9 spell, and it lasts 2 hours per class level, so this could actually be notable for some sort of optimization.
Beginning at 6th level, a dawncaller with 14 or more ranks in Perform (sing) can use song to help protect an area from incursion by unwanted creatures. Dawncallers generally use this song to protect a goliath tribe's camp at night. The dawncaller must sing the song of warding for 5 minutes; when this time has elapsed, he creates an antipathy effect that lasts for 2 hours per class level. The Will save DC for a song of warding is 10 + class level + dawncaller's Cha modifier. Song of warding is an enchantment (compulsion), mind-affecting ability. Keeping this effect up on the Dawncaller's person can offer some significant protection against any that engage from any sort of close or medium range.
Dirgesinger: Invoke a -2 debuff to enemy will saves, attack rolls, and damage rolls, or bolster undead against turning, or force confusion on an enemy, or deal a bunch of strength and dex damage, or animate a corpse (with all class features and spells) with total loyalty until the Dirgesinger stops performing. The animation is interesting (even if it doesn't benefit from MotG), but the confusion is probably the highest OP effect. The confusion lasts until the bard stops performing and 5 rounds thereafter, and has an effective range of 60 feet, so it can pretty easily disable a powerful foe.
A dirgesinger of 3rd level or higher can use song or poetics to inspire maddening grief in a living creature. The creature must be within 60 feet of the dirgesinger and able to hear him. Unless the target succeeds on a Will save (DC 10 + the dirgesinger's ranks in Perform), she becomes confused for as long as the dirgesinger performs and for 5 rounds thereafter. Song of grief is an enchantment (compulsion), mind-affecting ability. A 10% chance to act normally, 10% chance to attack the bard with melee or ranged weapons, 30% chance to attack the nearest creature (probably an ally), 30% chance to totally disable, 20% chance to flee or be disabled? Seems very effective. Only works at 60 feet and on a single enemy, however, but still notable.
Dwarven Chanter: Gain a "war chant" that is like inrpite courage, but doesn't scale, and also gives enemies a -1 debuff to attack and damage rolls. A little underwhelming when we're looking for epic synergies.
Heartfire Fanner: Grants two mind-affecting abilities. One is Inspired Fight, which allows the fanner to grant one or more allies a feat from the fighter feat list OR a feat the Fanner has. The other ability is Prolonged Passion, which allows the heartfire fanner to inspire one or more targets to prolong almost any effect on them for rounds equal to the fanner's charisma. This doesn't prevent them from being dispelled or dismissed, however. This seems of note, too, as you can use this on allies, as the text suggest, or on foes.
Inspired Fight: At 1st level, a heartfire fanner with 11 ranks in Perform can ignite a martial passion even beyond the ken of normal bardic inspiration by stirring the hearts of warriors already heady with battle.
This ability confers bonus feats upon an allied subject within 30 feet of the heartfire fanner. The target is free to choose which feats he receives from the feats the heartfire fanner possesses or the fighter class bonus feat list. The target must meet all prerequisites to receive the feats, although he can use one bonus feat as a prerequisite for another.
The heartfire fanner bestows a number of bonus feats equal to the number indicated in Heartfire Fanner advancement table.
For every three character levels the heartfire fanner has, he can bestow bonus feats to one additional creature. Each inspired creature may select her own feats. The heartfire fanner must perform his bardic music for round and the targets must hear him before they gain the bonus feats. The feats remain for as long as the heartfire fanner sings and for 5 rounds thereafter. This is a mind-affecting ability. Unlike other bardic songs, the heartfire fanner cannot use this ability on himself; he can only inspire others with it. Inspired fight is considered bardic music, so using this ability takes up one use of the heartfire fanner's bardic music ability for the day.The ability to grant allies floating feats cannot be understated in terms of resource conservation. If the bard can get access to a quick method of swapping their own feats around (Psychic Reformation comes to mind, but it's probably inaccessible and has a 10-minute manifesting time regardless), this could add a lot of adaptability to the party; even without relevant feats on the bard, the ability to grant floating Martial Study adds so much versatility to the party composition.
Prolonged Passion: At 5th level, a heartfire fanner with 13 ranks in Perform learns not only to inspire passionate emotion in others, but also masters the art of blending his music to amplify his allies' existing passions.
This use of bardic music inspires one target within 30 feet of the heartfire fanner, and one additional target for every three heartfire fanner and bard levels the character possesses.
The duration of any one spell, or any one extraordinary, supernatural, or spell-like ability effecting the targets of prolonged passion is increased by round per point of Charisma bonus of the heartfire fanner. The target of prolonged passion chooses which effect to extend when the heartfire fanner uses the ability. Thus, a raging barbarian targeted with prolonged passion by a fanner with a Charisma of 18 could rage for an additional 4 rounds, and a fighter under the effects of a haste spell would retain the benefits of that spell for an additional 4 rounds. Likewise, the effects of another type of bardic music (such as inspire courage) can be extended.
Only creatures currently under the effects of an effect with a duration can gain any benefit of prolonged passion. If the extended effect ends prematurely (through dispel magic, for example), prolonged passion no longer has any effect.
The heartfire fanner must perform for round and be heard by his targets for the song to take effect. Prolonged passion is a mind-affecting ability. Prolonged passion is considered bardic music, so using this ability takes up one use of the heartfire fanner's bardic music for the day. The heartfire fanner cannot target himself with this ability. Prolong ally buffs, prolong enemy debuffs; this ability is probably as good as your party, although I'd imagine when combined with Melodic Casting, there is a strong option for bards to prolong otherwise shorter spell-effects on enemies.
Seeker of the Song: Grants a million abilities (actually 17). Only one is mind-affecting, however. This allows the Seeker to cause any creature that can hear them performing to need to make a concentration effect when casting spells, or else lose the spell and have no effect. This is what countersong wants to be, and given that eventually casters are the best of the best, this may be one of the best options available to an epic bard. The bard need only keep it playing at all times for what amounts to a limited, but selective AMF.
A seeker of the song of 6th level or higher with 19 or more ranks in a Perform skill can turn the power of the primal music against magic effects. Any creature that can hear the seeker perform must make a Concentration check opposed by the seeker?s Perform check in order to cast a spell. If the Concentration check fails, the spell is lost and has no effect. If the Concentration check succeeds, the spell is cast as normal. A hymn of spelldeath is a mind-affecting ability. Anti-casting on any enemy that can hear the speaker seems powerful enough, but combine it with Subsonics so that it works on enemies that cannot hear it for maximum effect. This seems like one of the highest-OP uses of the ability, and I'd think it puts Seeker of the Song in as a mandatory inclusion. As if that weren't enough, you can use an extra use as a Dispel Magic centered on the Seeker, and gets extra action-economy from the Seeker's Combine Songs and Subvocalize class features.
Troubadour of Stars: Play music that requires a fixed DC for evil creatures to cast spells or use SLAs, or inspire hope (+2 to saves, attacks, ability checks, skill checks, damage, extra save against fear and despair, and use the perform check instead of the save against fear and despair if the perform is higher), or copy a holy word spell. The holy word ability is probably the most valuable one here, but your caster level is limited to your class level, and given you can't take this class from level 1, only being able to use is on HD9 or less creatures is super underwhelming.
War Chanter: War chanter's signature abilities actually aren't morale effects or mind-affecting. The only music this class grants you that benefits from Music of the Gods is Inspire Recklessness, which lets you buff one ally to be able to trade our AC up to their BAB to add it to their attack roll s for a round. Damage is fine, but again, this is a little underwhelming, especially as it only affects one enemy.
Warrior Skald: Cure fatigue, or cause enemies to be shaken, or make people get some benefits of the Endurance feat, or give a bunch of buffs to one or more allies (+4 to attacks, damage, saves, and AC), or cause enemies to be frightened, or cause enemies to be panicked, or buff allies with barbarian rage. The ability to render foes panicked is definitely the best option here, as it ends an encounter. It works on any enemy within 20 feet, and requires a will save of 10 + skald levels + cha, so a bloodline and cha-buffing can raise the DC a bit, but the DC will always be pretty low compared to the other options that use a perform check. It is still notable though!
A 9th-level warrior skald's oratory is so frightening that few can withstand it. Once they've heard the warrior skald for a full round, opponents within 20 feet must succeed on a Will save (DC 10 + warrior skald levels + Cha bonus) or be panicked (-2 morale penalty on saves, and creature flees or cowers, dropping items) as long as the warrior skald continues to recite and for 5 rounds thereafter. This is a mind-affecting, language-dependent ability that counts as three daily uses of bardic music. Panicked creatures are completely neutralized. However, the 20-foot range makes this... situational. Additionally, the limited DC makes this less useful than other abilities. This is probably better than the Dirgesinger's ability, given it ramps folks all the way up to panicked and adds charisma, but the limited range makes it debatable.
Courageous Rally: Build an anti-fear feature into your bardic music! ... except that, if you want Music of the Gods to be useful here, that makes this specifically and only useful against the victims of a Dread Witch, I'm pretty sure.
Dragonfire Inspiration: Do lots of damage! Useful in low-OP campaigns where you have access to epic feats (or if you have undead or plant party members), but there are typically better ways to dispatch enemies than damage by the time you're optimizing to bypass immunities. Notable, however.
Inspire Spellpower: Increase your allies' caster levels by 1! It's a notable way to help your party members who are not in melee, although I'm not sure how many scenarios exist where this is the optimal music to use.
Music of the Outer Spheres: The debuff modes don't benefit from Music of the Gods, but it does let you buff the DCs and AC of allied aberrations who are otherwise immune to mind-affecting effects. The DCs-mode might make this useful on a cohort, although cohorts with epic feats may be few and far between.
Warning Shout: As an immediate action, grant a single aly a +5 to a reflex save and Evasion, as of the monk class feature, until your next turn or until they make a reflex save. This mode is somewhat relevant, but still not high-OP. On the other hand, unlike the other modes included here, this only has a loose case to count as bardic music, as it consumes bardic music charges, but does not explicitly count as or expand bardic music.
Lyric Spell: With the weakest case to work so far, this would be the strongest option if it did work, allowing all the bard's mind-affecting spells to bypass an immunity to mind-affecting. However, like Warning Shout, it is not explicitly bardic music, and unlike Warning Shout, it is explicitly said to count as a spellcasting action (which may or may not preclude it from counting as a "bardic music" action). If you can swing this at a DM's table, this with Sublime Chord, perhaps theurged with Ur Priest using Fochulan Lyricist, is probably your best option, but this is shaky RAW/RAI at best.
Early-Game Class and Feat Selection
The ability to deny enemy spellcasting (unless they beat our absurd perform check with a concentration check) seems too valuable to give up, especially when combined with the Subsonics feat to explicitly prevent them from identifying the source of the problem if you don't have a visual component to your performance (such as using your perform: sing to hum). This is a unique ability that disables a lot of enemy archetypes, and provides a lot of protection from traditional high-OP scry-and-die tactics. Therefore, we will necessarily want to include 6 levels of Seeker of the Song in any build. Seeker requires Skill Focus: Perform, and unfortunately the PrC is from Complete Arcane, so there's no getting around using it for our level 3 feat.
We could then follow this sort of simple progression for a build to rush access to the Hymn of Spelldeath:
Level
Class
Feat
Key Feature/Note
1
Bard
Dragonwrought
Gain Bardic Music, Bardic Knowledge, Countersong, Fascinate, Inspire Courage, and level 0 spellcasting.
2
Bard
-
Gain level 1 spellcasting.
3
Bard
Skill Focus: Perform
Gain Inspire Competence.Polymorph/Psychic Reformation use to get 30 Perform, 13 Knowledge (Arcana).
4
Seeker of the Song
-
Gain +2 AC when performing, Seeker Music, and Burning Melody. Niche defensive option, but great offensive option.
5
Seeker of the Song
-
Gain use of two musics at once to double our relevant action-economy. Song of Unmaking lets us bully constructs, but not much else.
6
Seeker of the Song
Subsonics
Gain Dirge of Frozen Loss. Another niche defensive option, but strong offensive one that adds some BFC elements.
7
Seeker of the Song
-
Gain +2 to saves while performing, Song of Life. Strong option for addressing disease and poison, plus massive single-target healing.
8
Seeker of the Song
-
Gain the ability to start a second bardic music as a swift action, Anthem of Thunder and Pain. Despite the dramatic name, it is again a niche defensive option followed by a strong offensive option.
9
Seeker of the Song
Music of the Gods
Gain Hymn of Spelldeath. Enemies are largely prevented from casting spells, and you can area dispel magic using bardic music (and exclude allies from the effect).
By level 9, we can stymie enemy magic, dispel ongoing effects, deal a lot of damage, protect ourselves and the party, heal enormously, and cure disease/poison, along with normal bardic fascinate/courage. This leaves us with a lot to contribute to social situations and combat, but in exchange we've delayed access to level 2 and 3 spells (well, all levels of spells, but specifically these by level 9), Suggestion, and Inspire Greatness. As such, it would probably be wise to add at least one level of Heartfire Fanner in. The remaining levels of Seeker are relatively underwhelming (use of bardic music to TP only ourselves short distances, interfere with nearby enemy bards, another blast attack, and use of bardic music to banish extraplanar creatures), so we could add it in at level 10 (delaying Music of the Gods so that we can take Negotiator to meet the prerequisite, and then Psychic Reformation it back).
Mid-Game Class and Feat Selection
Following reaching the Hymn of Spelldeath, we have some options.
We can try to scramble to reach worthwhile casting ability to provide wider versatility
We can try to expand on our synergies with Music of the Gods and expand our bardic music
With regard to the former, our best bet might be to take three more levels in a bardic casting class (effective level 7 Bard spellcasting), to qualify for Sublime Chord at level 14. We'd still be able to reach 8th level spells by level 20, which is not great, but it brings us back up to par with normal bardic spell progression -- and then exceeds it a bit at the end. Planning for this, we might actually see a progression along this path:
Level
Class
Feat
Key Feature/Note
1
Bardic Sage
Dragonwrought
Gain Bardic Music, Bardic Knowledge, Countersong, Fascinate, Inspire Courage, 10 divination spells, and level 0 spellcasting.
2
Bardic Sage
-
Gain level 1 spellcasting.
3
Bardic Sage
Skill Focus: Perform
Gain Inspire Competence.Polymorph/Psychic Reformation use to get 30 Perform, 13 Knowledge (Arcana). Trade Inspire Competence for Soothe the Beast
4
Seeker of the Song
-
Gain +2 AC when performing, Seeker Music, and Burning Melody. Niche defensive option, but great offensive option.
5
Seeker of the Song
-
Gain use of two musics at once to double our relevant action-economy. Song of Unmaking lets us bully constructs, but not much else.
6
Seeker of the Song
Subsonics
Gain Dirge of Frozen Loss. Another niche defensive option, but strong offensive one that adds some BFC elements.
7
Seeker of the Song
-
Gain +2 to saves while performing, Song of Life. Strong option for addressing disease and poison, plus massive single-target healing.
8
Seeker of the Song
-
Gain the ability to start a second bardic music as a swift action, Anthem of Thunder and Pain. Despite the dramatic name, it is again a niche defensive option followed by a strong offensive option.
9
Seeker of the Song
Negotiator
Gain Hymn of Spelldeath. Enemies are largely prevented from casting spells, and you can area dispel magic using bardic music (and exclude allies from the effect).
10
Heartfire Fanner
Psychic Reformation Negotiator into Versatile Spellcaster
Gain Inspired Fight, Bardic Musics known, use of musics up through Inspire Greatness, and level 2 spells
11
Sublime Chord
Psychic Reformation Versatile Spellcaster into Melodic Casting
Gain level 4 and 5 spells
12
Sublime Chord
Music of the Gods
Gain Song of Arcane Power, use of Song of Freedom
We can maintain our Song of Spelldeath to interfere with enemy casters, use Subsonics to hide the fact that we are playing bardic music in the first place, and use Melodic Casting to use our spells to resolve problems simultaneously. Add in the Swift Concentration skill trick at some point to allow us to use concentration spells while using bardic music, too. We oddly don't get level 3 spells known (except our divination spell) or any level 3 spellslots, but we do get spells all the way up to 9ths at level 19, only two levels later than the wizard!
With regard to the latter, we could transition into Dirgesinger for the confusion and animate dead abilities, but the time these come online, they will be a little lackluster. Instead, let's set an ambitious goal: use bardic Fascinate and Suggestion on a greater deity to have them do us a few favors; perhaps voluntarily handing over all their divine ranks could be in the cards. I've written on this challenge in the past (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?510281-Bards-can-be-TO-Too-Music-of-the-Gods-and-You), but looking back on it, I realize I made a series of RAW errors that invalidated much of the discussion, and overlooked a few key options.
Deities and Divine Ranks
Canonically, deities will visit a bard achieving unnaturally high performance checks; the perform skill's description details that extraplanar beings will begin paying attention to you with a DC 30 check, let alone once you start getting over 100. If you can make your career as a bard crucial to the future moves of dragons in the Xorvintaal game (namely Chorranathau or Morlicantha), deities won't even be warned about your plans via their portfolio sense, leaving you with the perfect lure.
The first step towards subverting a deity is to pick a mark. Of the greater deities, the lowest will save belongs to Hades with a surprisingly paltry +39. However, Music of the Gods will effectively raise this to 49, and then we must account for a greater deity's "Always Maximize Roll."
Always Maximize Roll: Greater deities (rank 16–20) automatically
get the best result possible on any check, saving throw, attack
roll, or damage roll. Calculate success, failure, or other effects
accordingly. For instance, when a greater deity makes an attack
roll, assume you rolled a 20 and calculate success or failure from
there. You should roll the d20 anyway and use that roll to check for
a threat of a critical hit.
This quality means that greater deities never need the Maximize
Spell feat, because their spells have maximum effect already
At first glance, one might think this means that greater deity's auto-pass their saves, but this is not so. As we can see, greater deities are not treated as having rolled a natural 20 as a result of this ability. For example, if a deity were to attack someone, they are prompted to roll for the threat of a critical hit; this would be irrelevant if their "maximized roll" were treated as a natural 20, as that would automatically threaten a critical hit. We also see that it prompts the reader to calculate success, failure, or other effects based on this maximized roll; this would be an odd wording with regard to damage, attack rolls, and saving throws if deities had automatic successes.
Instead, it seems that we are meant to add the maximum value of the die roll into the calculation, then actually roll the die in the event of an attack roll. RAI, we might assume that we would also roll for saving throws to check for nat 20s, but we are not actually prompted to do so; by RAW, greater deities seem to actually denied the opportunity to roll their saves. Based on this, if we can raise our DCs to their will save + 10 (Music of the Gods) + 20 (Always Maximize Roll), they should fail the save 100% of the time.
Thus, we need a DC of 70 in order to overcome Hades' will save. The DC for Suggestion will always be lower than the DC for Fascinate, so we will focus on that.
Suggestion's DC follows the formula 10 + 1/2 bard levels + charisma bonus. After some research, I think I found that the highest charisma we can achieve by level 12 in this build would be around 115 (slightly higher, but we settle there), albeit with WBL abuse (using an artificer cohort).
18 base
4 (22) Phrenic template
2 (24) Magic-Blooded template
2 (26) Unseeley Fey template
3 (29) Age
1 (30) Bloodline
3 (33) Leveling bonuses
5 (38) Wishes (inherent)
1 (39) Worm of Minauros
1 (40) Pact Insidious
3 (43) Fiend of Corruption
4 (47) Command item (competence)
2 (49) Mertoran Leaf (alchemic)
Staff:
5 (54) Maximized Transfusion
4 (58) Visage of the Deity, Greater
4 (62) Snowsong (morale)
4 (66) Righteous Aura (sacred)
8 (74) Nixie's Grace (enhancement)
5 (79) Maximized Devil's Ego (profane)
Level 10 Artificers may use Item Alteration on +6 Items of Charisma to change the bonus type granted to help them stack with one another; there is no limitation on the type of bonus it may be changed to, save that it can't deal with dodge, profane, or sacred bonuses. This leaves: size, shield, resistance, racial, natural armor, luck, insight, deflection, circumstance, and armor.
Artificers get 2 level 4 infusions at level 10, and can get one more for each Ring of Master Artifice they wear (with the Extra Rings feat, this will be 4). Finally, the artificer can gain bonus infusions based on their Int. Thus, the artificer will have between 2 and 10 infusions that day; making no assumptions about their intelligence beyond having an 18, we will grant at least 7 infusions to this exercise, using shield, size, resistance, racial, luck, insight, and circumstance.
This leaves us with 65 + 1/2 levels.
For levels, we had three levels of bard (3, +3 from our Bloodline). Our two levels in Heartfire Fanner stack with that to determine the strength of our bardic music (2, +3 from our Bloodline, cumulative 11), bringing us up to 70, which just hits the mark.
However, we have one more hurdle: Fascinate and Suggestion are SLAs, and so are subject to spell resistance. Hades has SR 49 (whew), and we've given up a lot of caster levels already. Assay Spell Resistance won't be enough to help us here, and Supernatural Transformation only works on "innate" SLAs, so it's shaky RAW to use it here. Fortunately, there is a silver-bullet: the often overlooked Marshal class. With a one-level dip, we can get a minor aura "Determined Caster" to add our charisma to our rolls to overcome spell resistance. Thus, our normal caster level of approximately 10 becomes an automatic success. The build, then, would necessarily look something like this:
Level
Class
Feat
Key Feature/Note
1
Bard
Dragonwrought
Gain Bardic Music, Bardic Knowledge, Countersong, Fascinate, Inspire Courage, and level 0 spellcasting.
2
Bard
-
Gain level 1 spellcasting.
3
Bard
Skill Focus: Perform,
Gain Inspire Competence.Polymorph/Psychic Reformation use to get 30 Perform, 13 Knowledge (Arcana).
4
Seeker of the Song
-
Gain +2 AC when performing, Seeker Music, and Burning Melody. Niche defensive option, but great offensive option.
5
Seeker of the Song
-
Gain use of two musics at once to double our relevant action-economy. Song of Unmaking lets us bully constructs, but not much else.
6
Seeker of the Song
Subsonics
Gain Dirge of Frozen Loss. Another niche defensive option, but strong offensive one that adds some BFC elements.
7
Seeker of the Song
-
Gain +2 to saves while performing, Song of Life. Strong option for addressing disease and poison, plus massive single-target healing.
8
Seeker of the Song
-
Gain the ability to start a second bardic music as a swift action, Anthem of Thunder and Pain. Despite the dramatic name, it is again a niche defensive option followed by a strong offensive option.
9
Seeker of the Song
Negotiator
Gain Hymn of Spelldeath. Enemies are largely prevented from casting spells, and you can area dispel magic using bardic music (and exclude allies from the effect).
10
Heartfire Fanner
Psychic Reformation Negotiator into Leadership
Gain Inspired Fight, Bardic Musics known, use of bardic music up through Inspire Greatness, and level 2 spells
11
Heartfire Fanner
-
Gain Magic Flair
12
Marshal
Music of the Gods, Skill Focus: Diplomacy
Gain Determined Caster
Following this, the character should have divine ranks, so everything else is negligible. If the character levels before gaining divine ranks, I suppose following the prior caster progression would be best, going into Lyric Thaumaturge and then Sublime Chord.
In conclusion...
JaronK describes a T2 class as:
Tier 2: Has as much raw power as the Tier 1 classes, but can't pull off nearly as many tricks, and while the class itself is capable of anything, no one build can actually do nearly as much as the Tier 1 classes. Still potentially campaign smashers by using the right abilities, but at the same time are more predictable and can't always have the right tool for the job. If the Tier 1 classes are countries with 10,000 nuclear weapons in their arsenal, these guys are countries with 10 nukes. Still dangerous and easily world shattering, but not in quite so many ways. Note that the Tier 2 classes are often less flexible than Tier 3 classes... it's just that their incredible potential power overwhelms their lack in flexibility.
Music of the Gods seems to enable bards to be T2 in my opinion. Following the Bardic Spellcaster build, we maintain every strength from the base class of bards (such as spellcasting, plus extra spell slots and spells known), expand the situations where bardic music can be used (including much-needed direct combat power), and avoid many of the pitfalls associated with bardic music (immunities). Additionally, bards can secretly restrict the options of enemies around the clock while still accessing their other music and their spells; notably, this should include epic spells as well, I think, based on the wording of the class feature. Regardless, I hope this was at all as interesting to read as it was to research and write!
The humble bard, a charisma-based limited caster class, is a fun and flavorful class to play and, by JaronK's tier list, a solidly T3 class. For reference, a T3 class is described by JaronK as:
Tier 3: Capable of doing one thing quite well, while still being useful when that one thing is inappropriate, or capable of doing all things, but not as well as classes that specialize in that area. Occasionally has a mechanical ability that can solve an encounter, but this is relatively rare and easy to deal with. Can be game breaking only with specific intent to do so. Challenging such a character takes some thought from the DM, but isn't too difficult. Will outshine any Tier 5s in the party much of the time.
The bard is a focused, limited caster, so next to the sorcerer (the primary charisma-based PHB caster to which the bard might be compared), it may look rather lackluster. Early game, bards gain access to first and third level spells a level later than full-casters, and have drastically fewer spells per day and spells known; late game, bards fall even further behind in casting, capping out at 6ths by level 20. Bards have some very excellent spells in their list, but everything they do with their casting is usually done better by a sorcerer.
However, what bards lack in advanced casting, they make up for with class features. Bardic music, along with the host of ACFs and PrCs that expand or alter it, offer bards a huge amount of options to buff allies, debuff enemies, and resolve non-combat encounters, along with plenty of flexible uses per day. As most bardic music is mind-affecting, however, it is often irrelevant against common enemy types (undead, constructs, plants, vermin, to name a few), higher level enemies (who have access to Mind Blank or some other spell or template-based immunity), and eventually becomes difficult to use on allies as they are driven to keep Mind Blank up as often as possible for defensive purposes. Thus, their mechanical ability is quite "easy to deal with."
There are some feats that allow bards to bypass some of these immunities, however. For example, Requium allows bards to use their bardic music on undead creatures; Green Ear allows bards to use their bardic music on plant creatures. It's a good start, but bards aren't exactly getting bonus feats as the fighter does, so taking one feat for every creature type isn't sustainable. Additionally, there aren't feats printed for every type -- to the best of my knowledge, they stopped at those two. Finally, these style of feats don't touch on immunities from spells, templates, or classes. As such, the best solution seems to be the epic feat "Music of the Gods." With this, we can lean into our identity as a bard: our music.
Accessing Music of the Gods
Music of the Gods states:
Prerequisite: Perform 30 ranks, CHA 25, bardic music class feature,
Benefit: Your bardic music can affect even those normally immune to mind-affecting effects. However, such creatures gain a +10 bonus on their Will saves to resist such effects.
As such, in order to access this feat without being level 21 or higher, we need to be able to select epic feats, and we need to be able to meet its steep skill rank requirements.
Normally, epic feats are inaccessible to characters under level 21, but there are notable exceptions. Martial Monks, for example, can arguably select epic fighter feats as their bonus feats. For our purposes, however, the Dragonwrought Kobold is more useful. Dragonwrought is a racial feat that Kobolds may start play with that makes them a dragon. According to the Draconomicon, epic feats "are available to characters of 21st level or higher. Dragons of at least old age also can choose these feats even if they have no class levels." This means that old or older Dragonwrought Kobolds should also be eligible to select epic feats. Some will argue that this means that they need not qualify for the other prerequisites, but as that would also mean that a level 1 Dragonwrought Kobold can take Epic Spellcasting, let's err on the side of caution and agree that the character must also meet the other prerequisites for those epic feats, even if they are allowed to select them pre-epic.
Music of the Gods also requires that you have 30 ranks in Perform. Normally, that would mean that you would need to be level 27 to select the feat, but as with the requirement to be level 21 or higher, there are ways to satisfy this requirement early. For example, the Primary Contact feat would allow a character to exceed their maximum skill rank by 1, although that is woefully insufficient for this job. Likewise, taking three Bloodline levels can raise your maximum skill cap by 3, which falls a little shy of the 30 ranks we need to achieve, but is a step in the right direction. The most significant way to raise your skill ranks past their normal maximum, however, is by using temporary hit dice. There are a variety of ways to gain temporary hit dice, and when they expire, there are no game rules written that remove skill ranks you've expended beyond your new, lower maximum. Indeed, with the Primary Contact feat, there is precedent for legally having skill ranks beyond your maximum without issue. Some common sources of temporary hit dice are:
Inspire Greatness, a bardic music, ironically enough, that grants 2 bonus hit dice, which can be increased with the feats Song of the Heart and Words of Creation to grant 6 bonus hit dice
Contracting one or more strains of Lycanthropy, which grants the relevant animal hit dice for each strain (sadly, not applicable to dragons)
Using the Polymorph spell (or a similar effect) to take the form of a Dusk Giant (Heroes of Horror), gaining their extraordinary Cannibalize special attack. Cannibalize, among other things, allows Dusk Giants to consume 20HD of nonsentient living creatures (take your pick of defenseless creatures like chickens, or perhaps a can of worms) to gain 1 hit dice. They can do this until they reach 24HD, and the HD fade at a rate of 1/day, assuming they don't vanish when the Polymorph ends and you lose the ability, or can be drained off by a handy negative-level-inducing undead.
Combining the Polymorph method with three levels of a Bloodline (or even just one use of Inspire Greatness) would leave us with a maximum skill rank of 30 or higher. If we can maintain this for long enough, we could use the retraining rules to load all the skillpoints we gained at our most recent level, but the easier method is to use the psionic power Psychic Reformation to shuffle our skillpoints around to their desired locations.
As a result of the processes in the spoilers, a Dragonwrought Kobold can take Music of the Gods as early as we can afford the Polymorph and Psychic Reformation, meaning we could take it as our level 3 feat; our level 1 feat must be Dragonwrought. That prompts the question, however: in addition to the basic bardic music abilities granted by vanilla bard, what PrCs or feats would interact with Music of the Gods?
Bardic Prestige Class and Feat Options
After some splatbook diving and critical examination of bardic music, I found that some abilities consume bardic music, but don't seem to count as bardic music in and of themselves. For example, Lyric Spell is a Bardic feat that allows you to expend charges of bardic music to cast spells, but explicitly counts as part of a spellcasting action, not bardic music. In addition, some things create alternate subsystems that look a lot like bardic music, but don't seem to have any text allowing them to count as bardic music. For example, the Evangelist gains "Great Orator" rather than bardic music, and while its class levels stack with bard to determine the strength of their abilities, the great orator abilities seem to be entirely distinct from bardic music.
I decided to take a closer look to make a more comprehensive list at the prcs. The two criteria I was initially interested in were:
Does this class or feat expand the ways we can use bardic music, or does it offer its own subsystem?
If this choice expands our bardic music, do any of these expanded musics have the Mind-Affecting tag so as to benefit from Music of the Gods?
Bard: Yes, and yes, of course.
Dawncaller: Yes, and yes.
Dervish: No.
Dirgesinger: Probably yes, and yes. "Each use of these songs counts as a use of bardic music."
Dread Pirate: No.
Dwarven Chanter: Maybe, and yes. "Chanting follows the same rules as bardic music."
Evangelist: No.
Exalted Arcanist: No.
Fochlucan Lyrist: No.
Heartfire Fanner: Yes, and yes.
Lyric Thaumaturge: No.
Memory Smith: No.
Mourner: No.
Ollam: No.
Prestige Bard: No.
Purple Dragon Knight: No.
Seeker of the Song: Maybe, yes. "Seeker music follows the same rules as bardic music."
Stormsinger: Yes, and no.
Sublime Chord: Yes, and no.
Troubadour of Stars: Yes, and yes.
Virtuoso: No.
War Chanter: Maybe, yes. "War chanter music follows the same rules as bardic music."
Warrior Skald: Yes, and yes.
Arcane Accompaniment: No.
Artist: No.
Battle Dancer: No.
Captivating Melody: Uses charge, no.
Chant of Fortitude: Uses charge, no.
Chant of the Long Road: Uses charge, no.
Chord of Distraction: Uses charge, no.
Courageous Rally: Expands Inspire Courage, so yes.
Devoted Performer: No.
Doomspeak: Uses charge, no.
Dragonfire Inspiration: Expands Inspire Courage, so yes.
Dragonsong: No.
Enchanting Song: Uses charge, no.
Epic Inspiration: No.
Epic of the Lost King: Uses charge, no.
Extra Music: No.
From Smite to Song: No.
Green Ear: Mimics Music of the Gods for plants, but also affects Virtuoso.
Group Inspiration: No.
Haunting Voice: No.
Ice Harmonics: Uses charge, no.
Initiate of Hlal: No.
Initiate of Milil: No.
Inspire Spellpower: Explicit yes, yes.
Ironskin Chant: Uses charge, no.
Lasting Inspiration: No.
Lingering Song: No.
Lyric Spell: Uses charge, but explicitly says this counts as a spellcasting action. Weaker case than the other charge-consuming abilities.
Melodic Casting: No.
Metamagic Song: Uses charges, no.
Misleading Song: Uses charge, no.
Music of the Gods: Duh.
Music of the Outer Spheres: Explicit yes, yes.
Ranged Inspiration: No.
Rapid Inspiration: No.
Reactive Countersong: No.
Requiem: Mimics Music of the Gods for undead, but also affects Virtuoso.
Snowflake Wardance: Uses charge, no.
Song of the White Raven: No.
Sound of Silence: Uses charge, no.
Subsonics: No.
Sunken Song: No.
Talfirian Song: Uses charge, no.
Warning Shout: Uses charge, yes.
Windsinger: Uses charge, no.
Words of Creation: No.
That left us with this short-list to consider for effects:
Dawncaller: Inspire courage, and music that grants barbarian rage, fatigue-deferral, or DR and various strength-related bonuses. Also gain music that can make an antipathy effect. Antipathy is a level 9 spell, and it lasts 2 hours per class level, so this could actually be notable for some sort of optimization.
Beginning at 6th level, a dawncaller with 14 or more ranks in Perform (sing) can use song to help protect an area from incursion by unwanted creatures. Dawncallers generally use this song to protect a goliath tribe's camp at night. The dawncaller must sing the song of warding for 5 minutes; when this time has elapsed, he creates an antipathy effect that lasts for 2 hours per class level. The Will save DC for a song of warding is 10 + class level + dawncaller's Cha modifier. Song of warding is an enchantment (compulsion), mind-affecting ability. Keeping this effect up on the Dawncaller's person can offer some significant protection against any that engage from any sort of close or medium range.
Dirgesinger: Invoke a -2 debuff to enemy will saves, attack rolls, and damage rolls, or bolster undead against turning, or force confusion on an enemy, or deal a bunch of strength and dex damage, or animate a corpse (with all class features and spells) with total loyalty until the Dirgesinger stops performing. The animation is interesting (even if it doesn't benefit from MotG), but the confusion is probably the highest OP effect. The confusion lasts until the bard stops performing and 5 rounds thereafter, and has an effective range of 60 feet, so it can pretty easily disable a powerful foe.
A dirgesinger of 3rd level or higher can use song or poetics to inspire maddening grief in a living creature. The creature must be within 60 feet of the dirgesinger and able to hear him. Unless the target succeeds on a Will save (DC 10 + the dirgesinger's ranks in Perform), she becomes confused for as long as the dirgesinger performs and for 5 rounds thereafter. Song of grief is an enchantment (compulsion), mind-affecting ability. A 10% chance to act normally, 10% chance to attack the bard with melee or ranged weapons, 30% chance to attack the nearest creature (probably an ally), 30% chance to totally disable, 20% chance to flee or be disabled? Seems very effective. Only works at 60 feet and on a single enemy, however, but still notable.
Dwarven Chanter: Gain a "war chant" that is like inrpite courage, but doesn't scale, and also gives enemies a -1 debuff to attack and damage rolls. A little underwhelming when we're looking for epic synergies.
Heartfire Fanner: Grants two mind-affecting abilities. One is Inspired Fight, which allows the fanner to grant one or more allies a feat from the fighter feat list OR a feat the Fanner has. The other ability is Prolonged Passion, which allows the heartfire fanner to inspire one or more targets to prolong almost any effect on them for rounds equal to the fanner's charisma. This doesn't prevent them from being dispelled or dismissed, however. This seems of note, too, as you can use this on allies, as the text suggest, or on foes.
Inspired Fight: At 1st level, a heartfire fanner with 11 ranks in Perform can ignite a martial passion even beyond the ken of normal bardic inspiration by stirring the hearts of warriors already heady with battle.
This ability confers bonus feats upon an allied subject within 30 feet of the heartfire fanner. The target is free to choose which feats he receives from the feats the heartfire fanner possesses or the fighter class bonus feat list. The target must meet all prerequisites to receive the feats, although he can use one bonus feat as a prerequisite for another.
The heartfire fanner bestows a number of bonus feats equal to the number indicated in Heartfire Fanner advancement table.
For every three character levels the heartfire fanner has, he can bestow bonus feats to one additional creature. Each inspired creature may select her own feats. The heartfire fanner must perform his bardic music for round and the targets must hear him before they gain the bonus feats. The feats remain for as long as the heartfire fanner sings and for 5 rounds thereafter. This is a mind-affecting ability. Unlike other bardic songs, the heartfire fanner cannot use this ability on himself; he can only inspire others with it. Inspired fight is considered bardic music, so using this ability takes up one use of the heartfire fanner's bardic music ability for the day.The ability to grant allies floating feats cannot be understated in terms of resource conservation. If the bard can get access to a quick method of swapping their own feats around (Psychic Reformation comes to mind, but it's probably inaccessible and has a 10-minute manifesting time regardless), this could add a lot of adaptability to the party; even without relevant feats on the bard, the ability to grant floating Martial Study adds so much versatility to the party composition.
Prolonged Passion: At 5th level, a heartfire fanner with 13 ranks in Perform learns not only to inspire passionate emotion in others, but also masters the art of blending his music to amplify his allies' existing passions.
This use of bardic music inspires one target within 30 feet of the heartfire fanner, and one additional target for every three heartfire fanner and bard levels the character possesses.
The duration of any one spell, or any one extraordinary, supernatural, or spell-like ability effecting the targets of prolonged passion is increased by round per point of Charisma bonus of the heartfire fanner. The target of prolonged passion chooses which effect to extend when the heartfire fanner uses the ability. Thus, a raging barbarian targeted with prolonged passion by a fanner with a Charisma of 18 could rage for an additional 4 rounds, and a fighter under the effects of a haste spell would retain the benefits of that spell for an additional 4 rounds. Likewise, the effects of another type of bardic music (such as inspire courage) can be extended.
Only creatures currently under the effects of an effect with a duration can gain any benefit of prolonged passion. If the extended effect ends prematurely (through dispel magic, for example), prolonged passion no longer has any effect.
The heartfire fanner must perform for round and be heard by his targets for the song to take effect. Prolonged passion is a mind-affecting ability. Prolonged passion is considered bardic music, so using this ability takes up one use of the heartfire fanner's bardic music for the day. The heartfire fanner cannot target himself with this ability. Prolong ally buffs, prolong enemy debuffs; this ability is probably as good as your party, although I'd imagine when combined with Melodic Casting, there is a strong option for bards to prolong otherwise shorter spell-effects on enemies.
Seeker of the Song: Grants a million abilities (actually 17). Only one is mind-affecting, however. This allows the Seeker to cause any creature that can hear them performing to need to make a concentration effect when casting spells, or else lose the spell and have no effect. This is what countersong wants to be, and given that eventually casters are the best of the best, this may be one of the best options available to an epic bard. The bard need only keep it playing at all times for what amounts to a limited, but selective AMF.
A seeker of the song of 6th level or higher with 19 or more ranks in a Perform skill can turn the power of the primal music against magic effects. Any creature that can hear the seeker perform must make a Concentration check opposed by the seeker?s Perform check in order to cast a spell. If the Concentration check fails, the spell is lost and has no effect. If the Concentration check succeeds, the spell is cast as normal. A hymn of spelldeath is a mind-affecting ability. Anti-casting on any enemy that can hear the speaker seems powerful enough, but combine it with Subsonics so that it works on enemies that cannot hear it for maximum effect. This seems like one of the highest-OP uses of the ability, and I'd think it puts Seeker of the Song in as a mandatory inclusion. As if that weren't enough, you can use an extra use as a Dispel Magic centered on the Seeker, and gets extra action-economy from the Seeker's Combine Songs and Subvocalize class features.
Troubadour of Stars: Play music that requires a fixed DC for evil creatures to cast spells or use SLAs, or inspire hope (+2 to saves, attacks, ability checks, skill checks, damage, extra save against fear and despair, and use the perform check instead of the save against fear and despair if the perform is higher), or copy a holy word spell. The holy word ability is probably the most valuable one here, but your caster level is limited to your class level, and given you can't take this class from level 1, only being able to use is on HD9 or less creatures is super underwhelming.
War Chanter: War chanter's signature abilities actually aren't morale effects or mind-affecting. The only music this class grants you that benefits from Music of the Gods is Inspire Recklessness, which lets you buff one ally to be able to trade our AC up to their BAB to add it to their attack roll s for a round. Damage is fine, but again, this is a little underwhelming, especially as it only affects one enemy.
Warrior Skald: Cure fatigue, or cause enemies to be shaken, or make people get some benefits of the Endurance feat, or give a bunch of buffs to one or more allies (+4 to attacks, damage, saves, and AC), or cause enemies to be frightened, or cause enemies to be panicked, or buff allies with barbarian rage. The ability to render foes panicked is definitely the best option here, as it ends an encounter. It works on any enemy within 20 feet, and requires a will save of 10 + skald levels + cha, so a bloodline and cha-buffing can raise the DC a bit, but the DC will always be pretty low compared to the other options that use a perform check. It is still notable though!
A 9th-level warrior skald's oratory is so frightening that few can withstand it. Once they've heard the warrior skald for a full round, opponents within 20 feet must succeed on a Will save (DC 10 + warrior skald levels + Cha bonus) or be panicked (-2 morale penalty on saves, and creature flees or cowers, dropping items) as long as the warrior skald continues to recite and for 5 rounds thereafter. This is a mind-affecting, language-dependent ability that counts as three daily uses of bardic music. Panicked creatures are completely neutralized. However, the 20-foot range makes this... situational. Additionally, the limited DC makes this less useful than other abilities. This is probably better than the Dirgesinger's ability, given it ramps folks all the way up to panicked and adds charisma, but the limited range makes it debatable.
Courageous Rally: Build an anti-fear feature into your bardic music! ... except that, if you want Music of the Gods to be useful here, that makes this specifically and only useful against the victims of a Dread Witch, I'm pretty sure.
Dragonfire Inspiration: Do lots of damage! Useful in low-OP campaigns where you have access to epic feats (or if you have undead or plant party members), but there are typically better ways to dispatch enemies than damage by the time you're optimizing to bypass immunities. Notable, however.
Inspire Spellpower: Increase your allies' caster levels by 1! It's a notable way to help your party members who are not in melee, although I'm not sure how many scenarios exist where this is the optimal music to use.
Music of the Outer Spheres: The debuff modes don't benefit from Music of the Gods, but it does let you buff the DCs and AC of allied aberrations who are otherwise immune to mind-affecting effects. The DCs-mode might make this useful on a cohort, although cohorts with epic feats may be few and far between.
Warning Shout: As an immediate action, grant a single aly a +5 to a reflex save and Evasion, as of the monk class feature, until your next turn or until they make a reflex save. This mode is somewhat relevant, but still not high-OP. On the other hand, unlike the other modes included here, this only has a loose case to count as bardic music, as it consumes bardic music charges, but does not explicitly count as or expand bardic music.
Lyric Spell: With the weakest case to work so far, this would be the strongest option if it did work, allowing all the bard's mind-affecting spells to bypass an immunity to mind-affecting. However, like Warning Shout, it is not explicitly bardic music, and unlike Warning Shout, it is explicitly said to count as a spellcasting action (which may or may not preclude it from counting as a "bardic music" action). If you can swing this at a DM's table, this with Sublime Chord, perhaps theurged with Ur Priest using Fochulan Lyricist, is probably your best option, but this is shaky RAW/RAI at best.
Early-Game Class and Feat Selection
The ability to deny enemy spellcasting (unless they beat our absurd perform check with a concentration check) seems too valuable to give up, especially when combined with the Subsonics feat to explicitly prevent them from identifying the source of the problem if you don't have a visual component to your performance (such as using your perform: sing to hum). This is a unique ability that disables a lot of enemy archetypes, and provides a lot of protection from traditional high-OP scry-and-die tactics. Therefore, we will necessarily want to include 6 levels of Seeker of the Song in any build. Seeker requires Skill Focus: Perform, and unfortunately the PrC is from Complete Arcane, so there's no getting around using it for our level 3 feat.
We could then follow this sort of simple progression for a build to rush access to the Hymn of Spelldeath:
Level
Class
Feat
Key Feature/Note
1
Bard
Dragonwrought
Gain Bardic Music, Bardic Knowledge, Countersong, Fascinate, Inspire Courage, and level 0 spellcasting.
2
Bard
-
Gain level 1 spellcasting.
3
Bard
Skill Focus: Perform
Gain Inspire Competence.Polymorph/Psychic Reformation use to get 30 Perform, 13 Knowledge (Arcana).
4
Seeker of the Song
-
Gain +2 AC when performing, Seeker Music, and Burning Melody. Niche defensive option, but great offensive option.
5
Seeker of the Song
-
Gain use of two musics at once to double our relevant action-economy. Song of Unmaking lets us bully constructs, but not much else.
6
Seeker of the Song
Subsonics
Gain Dirge of Frozen Loss. Another niche defensive option, but strong offensive one that adds some BFC elements.
7
Seeker of the Song
-
Gain +2 to saves while performing, Song of Life. Strong option for addressing disease and poison, plus massive single-target healing.
8
Seeker of the Song
-
Gain the ability to start a second bardic music as a swift action, Anthem of Thunder and Pain. Despite the dramatic name, it is again a niche defensive option followed by a strong offensive option.
9
Seeker of the Song
Music of the Gods
Gain Hymn of Spelldeath. Enemies are largely prevented from casting spells, and you can area dispel magic using bardic music (and exclude allies from the effect).
By level 9, we can stymie enemy magic, dispel ongoing effects, deal a lot of damage, protect ourselves and the party, heal enormously, and cure disease/poison, along with normal bardic fascinate/courage. This leaves us with a lot to contribute to social situations and combat, but in exchange we've delayed access to level 2 and 3 spells (well, all levels of spells, but specifically these by level 9), Suggestion, and Inspire Greatness. As such, it would probably be wise to add at least one level of Heartfire Fanner in. The remaining levels of Seeker are relatively underwhelming (use of bardic music to TP only ourselves short distances, interfere with nearby enemy bards, another blast attack, and use of bardic music to banish extraplanar creatures), so we could add it in at level 10 (delaying Music of the Gods so that we can take Negotiator to meet the prerequisite, and then Psychic Reformation it back).
Mid-Game Class and Feat Selection
Following reaching the Hymn of Spelldeath, we have some options.
We can try to scramble to reach worthwhile casting ability to provide wider versatility
We can try to expand on our synergies with Music of the Gods and expand our bardic music
With regard to the former, our best bet might be to take three more levels in a bardic casting class (effective level 7 Bard spellcasting), to qualify for Sublime Chord at level 14. We'd still be able to reach 8th level spells by level 20, which is not great, but it brings us back up to par with normal bardic spell progression -- and then exceeds it a bit at the end. Planning for this, we might actually see a progression along this path:
Level
Class
Feat
Key Feature/Note
1
Bardic Sage
Dragonwrought
Gain Bardic Music, Bardic Knowledge, Countersong, Fascinate, Inspire Courage, 10 divination spells, and level 0 spellcasting.
2
Bardic Sage
-
Gain level 1 spellcasting.
3
Bardic Sage
Skill Focus: Perform
Gain Inspire Competence.Polymorph/Psychic Reformation use to get 30 Perform, 13 Knowledge (Arcana). Trade Inspire Competence for Soothe the Beast
4
Seeker of the Song
-
Gain +2 AC when performing, Seeker Music, and Burning Melody. Niche defensive option, but great offensive option.
5
Seeker of the Song
-
Gain use of two musics at once to double our relevant action-economy. Song of Unmaking lets us bully constructs, but not much else.
6
Seeker of the Song
Subsonics
Gain Dirge of Frozen Loss. Another niche defensive option, but strong offensive one that adds some BFC elements.
7
Seeker of the Song
-
Gain +2 to saves while performing, Song of Life. Strong option for addressing disease and poison, plus massive single-target healing.
8
Seeker of the Song
-
Gain the ability to start a second bardic music as a swift action, Anthem of Thunder and Pain. Despite the dramatic name, it is again a niche defensive option followed by a strong offensive option.
9
Seeker of the Song
Negotiator
Gain Hymn of Spelldeath. Enemies are largely prevented from casting spells, and you can area dispel magic using bardic music (and exclude allies from the effect).
10
Heartfire Fanner
Psychic Reformation Negotiator into Versatile Spellcaster
Gain Inspired Fight, Bardic Musics known, use of musics up through Inspire Greatness, and level 2 spells
11
Sublime Chord
Psychic Reformation Versatile Spellcaster into Melodic Casting
Gain level 4 and 5 spells
12
Sublime Chord
Music of the Gods
Gain Song of Arcane Power, use of Song of Freedom
We can maintain our Song of Spelldeath to interfere with enemy casters, use Subsonics to hide the fact that we are playing bardic music in the first place, and use Melodic Casting to use our spells to resolve problems simultaneously. Add in the Swift Concentration skill trick at some point to allow us to use concentration spells while using bardic music, too. We oddly don't get level 3 spells known (except our divination spell) or any level 3 spellslots, but we do get spells all the way up to 9ths at level 19, only two levels later than the wizard!
With regard to the latter, we could transition into Dirgesinger for the confusion and animate dead abilities, but the time these come online, they will be a little lackluster. Instead, let's set an ambitious goal: use bardic Fascinate and Suggestion on a greater deity to have them do us a few favors; perhaps voluntarily handing over all their divine ranks could be in the cards. I've written on this challenge in the past (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?510281-Bards-can-be-TO-Too-Music-of-the-Gods-and-You), but looking back on it, I realize I made a series of RAW errors that invalidated much of the discussion, and overlooked a few key options.
Deities and Divine Ranks
Canonically, deities will visit a bard achieving unnaturally high performance checks; the perform skill's description details that extraplanar beings will begin paying attention to you with a DC 30 check, let alone once you start getting over 100. If you can make your career as a bard crucial to the future moves of dragons in the Xorvintaal game (namely Chorranathau or Morlicantha), deities won't even be warned about your plans via their portfolio sense, leaving you with the perfect lure.
The first step towards subverting a deity is to pick a mark. Of the greater deities, the lowest will save belongs to Hades with a surprisingly paltry +39. However, Music of the Gods will effectively raise this to 49, and then we must account for a greater deity's "Always Maximize Roll."
Always Maximize Roll: Greater deities (rank 16–20) automatically
get the best result possible on any check, saving throw, attack
roll, or damage roll. Calculate success, failure, or other effects
accordingly. For instance, when a greater deity makes an attack
roll, assume you rolled a 20 and calculate success or failure from
there. You should roll the d20 anyway and use that roll to check for
a threat of a critical hit.
This quality means that greater deities never need the Maximize
Spell feat, because their spells have maximum effect already
At first glance, one might think this means that greater deity's auto-pass their saves, but this is not so. As we can see, greater deities are not treated as having rolled a natural 20 as a result of this ability. For example, if a deity were to attack someone, they are prompted to roll for the threat of a critical hit; this would be irrelevant if their "maximized roll" were treated as a natural 20, as that would automatically threaten a critical hit. We also see that it prompts the reader to calculate success, failure, or other effects based on this maximized roll; this would be an odd wording with regard to damage, attack rolls, and saving throws if deities had automatic successes.
Instead, it seems that we are meant to add the maximum value of the die roll into the calculation, then actually roll the die in the event of an attack roll. RAI, we might assume that we would also roll for saving throws to check for nat 20s, but we are not actually prompted to do so; by RAW, greater deities seem to actually denied the opportunity to roll their saves. Based on this, if we can raise our DCs to their will save + 10 (Music of the Gods) + 20 (Always Maximize Roll), they should fail the save 100% of the time.
Thus, we need a DC of 70 in order to overcome Hades' will save. The DC for Suggestion will always be lower than the DC for Fascinate, so we will focus on that.
Suggestion's DC follows the formula 10 + 1/2 bard levels + charisma bonus. After some research, I think I found that the highest charisma we can achieve by level 12 in this build would be around 115 (slightly higher, but we settle there), albeit with WBL abuse (using an artificer cohort).
18 base
4 (22) Phrenic template
2 (24) Magic-Blooded template
2 (26) Unseeley Fey template
3 (29) Age
1 (30) Bloodline
3 (33) Leveling bonuses
5 (38) Wishes (inherent)
1 (39) Worm of Minauros
1 (40) Pact Insidious
3 (43) Fiend of Corruption
4 (47) Command item (competence)
2 (49) Mertoran Leaf (alchemic)
Staff:
5 (54) Maximized Transfusion
4 (58) Visage of the Deity, Greater
4 (62) Snowsong (morale)
4 (66) Righteous Aura (sacred)
8 (74) Nixie's Grace (enhancement)
5 (79) Maximized Devil's Ego (profane)
Level 10 Artificers may use Item Alteration on +6 Items of Charisma to change the bonus type granted to help them stack with one another; there is no limitation on the type of bonus it may be changed to, save that it can't deal with dodge, profane, or sacred bonuses. This leaves: size, shield, resistance, racial, natural armor, luck, insight, deflection, circumstance, and armor.
Artificers get 2 level 4 infusions at level 10, and can get one more for each Ring of Master Artifice they wear (with the Extra Rings feat, this will be 4). Finally, the artificer can gain bonus infusions based on their Int. Thus, the artificer will have between 2 and 10 infusions that day; making no assumptions about their intelligence beyond having an 18, we will grant at least 7 infusions to this exercise, using shield, size, resistance, racial, luck, insight, and circumstance.
This leaves us with 65 + 1/2 levels.
For levels, we had three levels of bard (3, +3 from our Bloodline). Our two levels in Heartfire Fanner stack with that to determine the strength of our bardic music (2, +3 from our Bloodline, cumulative 11), bringing us up to 70, which just hits the mark.
However, we have one more hurdle: Fascinate and Suggestion are SLAs, and so are subject to spell resistance. Hades has SR 49 (whew), and we've given up a lot of caster levels already. Assay Spell Resistance won't be enough to help us here, and Supernatural Transformation only works on "innate" SLAs, so it's shaky RAW to use it here. Fortunately, there is a silver-bullet: the often overlooked Marshal class. With a one-level dip, we can get a minor aura "Determined Caster" to add our charisma to our rolls to overcome spell resistance. Thus, our normal caster level of approximately 10 becomes an automatic success. The build, then, would necessarily look something like this:
Level
Class
Feat
Key Feature/Note
1
Bard
Dragonwrought
Gain Bardic Music, Bardic Knowledge, Countersong, Fascinate, Inspire Courage, and level 0 spellcasting.
2
Bard
-
Gain level 1 spellcasting.
3
Bard
Skill Focus: Perform,
Gain Inspire Competence.Polymorph/Psychic Reformation use to get 30 Perform, 13 Knowledge (Arcana).
4
Seeker of the Song
-
Gain +2 AC when performing, Seeker Music, and Burning Melody. Niche defensive option, but great offensive option.
5
Seeker of the Song
-
Gain use of two musics at once to double our relevant action-economy. Song of Unmaking lets us bully constructs, but not much else.
6
Seeker of the Song
Subsonics
Gain Dirge of Frozen Loss. Another niche defensive option, but strong offensive one that adds some BFC elements.
7
Seeker of the Song
-
Gain +2 to saves while performing, Song of Life. Strong option for addressing disease and poison, plus massive single-target healing.
8
Seeker of the Song
-
Gain the ability to start a second bardic music as a swift action, Anthem of Thunder and Pain. Despite the dramatic name, it is again a niche defensive option followed by a strong offensive option.
9
Seeker of the Song
Negotiator
Gain Hymn of Spelldeath. Enemies are largely prevented from casting spells, and you can area dispel magic using bardic music (and exclude allies from the effect).
10
Heartfire Fanner
Psychic Reformation Negotiator into Leadership
Gain Inspired Fight, Bardic Musics known, use of bardic music up through Inspire Greatness, and level 2 spells
11
Heartfire Fanner
-
Gain Magic Flair
12
Marshal
Music of the Gods, Skill Focus: Diplomacy
Gain Determined Caster
Following this, the character should have divine ranks, so everything else is negligible. If the character levels before gaining divine ranks, I suppose following the prior caster progression would be best, going into Lyric Thaumaturge and then Sublime Chord.
In conclusion...
JaronK describes a T2 class as:
Tier 2: Has as much raw power as the Tier 1 classes, but can't pull off nearly as many tricks, and while the class itself is capable of anything, no one build can actually do nearly as much as the Tier 1 classes. Still potentially campaign smashers by using the right abilities, but at the same time are more predictable and can't always have the right tool for the job. If the Tier 1 classes are countries with 10,000 nuclear weapons in their arsenal, these guys are countries with 10 nukes. Still dangerous and easily world shattering, but not in quite so many ways. Note that the Tier 2 classes are often less flexible than Tier 3 classes... it's just that their incredible potential power overwhelms their lack in flexibility.
Music of the Gods seems to enable bards to be T2 in my opinion. Following the Bardic Spellcaster build, we maintain every strength from the base class of bards (such as spellcasting, plus extra spell slots and spells known), expand the situations where bardic music can be used (including much-needed direct combat power), and avoid many of the pitfalls associated with bardic music (immunities). Additionally, bards can secretly restrict the options of enemies around the clock while still accessing their other music and their spells; notably, this should include epic spells as well, I think, based on the wording of the class feature. Regardless, I hope this was at all as interesting to read as it was to research and write!