[3.5] Factotum vs. Bard

[Black_Zawisza]

Two questions:

1) What's the best role for a factotum to play within a party? What about a bard?

2) Assuming high optimization and all splatbooks are allowed, which is overall a better class?

[Keld Denar]

1) Factotum tends to fill a lot more of the rogue's roles than the bard's. Factotum's can get all of the synergy skills for diplomancery, but they generally tend to be tooled for combat and scouting than social interaction. Not always, but often. Bard's are a melee force multipler. The more non-spellcaster characters you have in your party (even factotums!), the more powerful any given bard is. Every hit by every party member is damage delt vicariously by the bard through Inspire Courage and its derivatives. Spellcasters gain some benefit from this, but not as much as a character that is actually making weapon attacks.

2) Bards. Period. Bards have a PrC that turns them into a Sorcerer-1. That means they get 9th level spells by level 19, 1 level behind a sorcerer and 2 behind a wizard. That alone is worth more than ANYTHING a factotum can bring to the table. And thats just the tip of what they can do.

[Pechvarry]

I don't mean to derail at post 2; I'm hoping this is seen as more of an extension:

how about factotums and bards filling each other's shoes?
a) How good of a party support role can a Factotum become?
b) How good is the original jack-of-all-trades, the bard, at contributing to whatever the party needs for the moment? How about being a sneak and a thief?

[PairO'Dice Lost]

I don't mean to derail at post 2; I'm hoping this is seen as more of an extension:

how about factotums and bards filling each other's shoes?
a) How good of a party support role can a Factotum become?

If by "filling in for a party's needed role" or "being a utility guy" it can do an exceptional job. If you mean "buffing everyone else," not too well; it's better at self-improvement than team buffing.

b) How good is the original jack-of-all-trades, the bard, at contributing to whatever the party needs for the moment? How about being a sneak and a thief?

Bards have the potential to do pretty much anything, but a given bard really has to specialize to do well. They make awesome buffers, debuffers, healers, arcanists, skillmonkeys, and other things...just not all in the same character.

[grarrrg]

Two questions:

1) What's the best role for a factotum to play within a party? What about a bard?

A Factotum is AWESOME at being a Skill Monkey.
Compared to a Bard they also do a better job at filling a Melee, or Healer role.

The Bard can do what he does 'longer', he has more spell slots (effectively), and he can sing all day long providing boosts.

If a DM gives you 1 or 2 encounters a day, or a lot of short ones, then Factotum is 'better'.
If a DM gives you 5+ encounters a day, or just really long ones, then Bard is probably 'better'.

2) Assuming high optimization and all splatbooks are allowed, which is overall a better class?

Well, Bard gets a LOT of help from the splatbooks, in straight core, it's near the bottom, but with splatbooks they can get INSANE song modifiers, or Dragon Fire Inspiration, or, as mentioned, level 9 spell casting.

Factotum, being IN a splatbook, doesn't get much added to it. Able Learner is worth mentioning for Human (or shapshifter) class-dippers though.

[JaronK]

Two questions:

1) What's the best role for a factotum to play within a party? What about a bard?

Factotum: Basically the traditional Rogue role, only better. Taking a single point in many skills is enough with the Factotum's abilities, but you can still focus on skills that need to be used a lot. Their magical abilities allow them to use utility spells regularly as well. They make great assassin types too.

Bards are best in the party buffing role. The more people in the party (including undead minions, summoned critters, etc) the more potent the bard gets. They're also good in many areas of skills, but not as many as a Factotum.

2) Assuming high optimization and all splatbooks are allowed, which is overall a better class?

Depends on campaign. A Factotum can make good use of the fact that spell like abilities are always a standard action (unless the original spell was faster than that), using spells like Minor Creation (for tons of Black Lotus or Sinmaker's Surprise) and Ghoul Glyph (no save instant lose spell) in combat. Their stealth is almost unbeatable if they want it to be (Int to move silently and hide + Darkstalker!) and they can nova like crazy, so any campaign that's more about planning and assassination will play right to their strengths. And of course their level 19 ability is 10 pounds of broken in a 5 pound bag (hey, I'd like all the abilities of a Sorcerer right now, whee! Now I'll cast Shapechange and become a Cleric!). Plus they can really thrash undead with their Turn Undead if they take a few Turn Resistance Reducers (Rod of Defiance, Lyre of the Restful Soul). But a campaign that's got large armies clashing or lots of minions will see Bards shine greatly, and of course the right PrCs (I'm looking at you, Sublime Chord) give Bards a big bump over certain levels. Both classes are amazing in diplomatic settings.

how about factotums and bards filling each other's shoes?
a) How good of a party support role can a Factotum become?
b) How good is the original jack-of-all-trades, the bard, at contributing to whatever the party needs for the moment? How about being a sneak and a thief?

A) Party support really isn't the Factotum's thing. They've got spells that could do it, but they're not good at that. Factotums are more independent than that... they're designed to be Rogues, Assassins, and Ninjas more than party supporters. But they handle the bard role of diplomat quite nicely.

B) A bard who takes the Bardic Knack variant should be reasonably good at having the right skill for the job, at least to a degree, but they're definitely not as good as Factotums at this. They don't have the ability to pull out the huge variety of spells Factotums have though, so they're not actually as flexible when it comes to "we need X ability." They're not as good at being sneaky either, though they can pull it off to a degree. The lack of trapfinding certainly hurts in that role.

Really, these two classes aren't in the same areas. Factotums and Beguilers are far closer. The Bard is a fifth wheel class, more comparable to Marshals (though they're better than those, obviously) than Factotums. So having one try to do the other's job is wasting the class's talents, even if it is possible to a degree.

JaronK

[Pechvarry]

After posting earlier, I thought about it some. As far as party support Factotums, I feel like a melee battlefield controller (chain-tripper getting INT to the checks) should somehow be better on a factotum chassis than standard melees, but there's a logic leap I'm not quite making.

For night-at-the-improv bards, Bardic Knack plus Improvisation (fantastic level 1 spell from Spell Compendium!) should cover a lot. JaronK's right, though. Without Trapfinding, it can only go so far (I imagine there's a spell for that...).

If a DM gives you 1 or 2 encounters a day, or a lot of short ones, then Factotum is 'better'.
If a DM gives you 5+ encounters a day, or just really long ones, then Bard is probably 'better'.

I feel like the reverse is true; a bard is at its finest when he can whip out tons of spells (it's not his weak songs that make a vanilla bard 20 potent; it's their fantastic spell selection). Meanwhile, Inspiration points are per-encounter. They continue to contribute meaningfully throughout the day.

[JaronK]

After posting earlier, I thought about it some. As far as party support Factotums, I feel like a melee battlefield controller (chain-tripper getting INT to the checks) should somehow be better on a factotum chassis than standard melees, but there's a logic leap I'm not quite making.

Swordsage. The Dex based throws means you can have Dex+Int based tripping, and being smaller doesn't hurt. It's quite handy, and other Swordsage abilities work really well with Factotums, especially the combo of standard action maneuvers + Cunning Surge. 2 levels of Swordsage should be enough. You might as well use the unarmed variant.

Also, consider Knowledge Devotion if you don't actually want to be a skill monkey. Suddenly Factotums hit shockingly hard.

I'm a huge fan of Whispergnome Factotums with a 2 level dip into Unarmed Swordsage. Knowledge Devotion + Trivial Knowledge + Keen Intellect is impressive, though it does eat up a lot of feats and skill points. Use Shadow Hand maneuvers to get around (Cloak of Shadows + Shadow Jaunt), Sapphire Nightmare Blade to make enemies flat footed (you ARE using Iajuitsu focus, right? And Complete Warrior lets Whispergnomes get the Gnomish Quickrazor proficiency for free). Setting Sun moves to chuck people around unexpectedly. It makes a great assassin/archer type with the unexpected ability to launch ogres.

I'd say that Factotums are better in a series of fast, discrete encounters. Bards are solid when the single encounter runs long (for example, a 10+ round encounter involving armies attacking each other).

JaronK

[WinceRind]

Just using core classes, I'd pick Factotum over Bard. Sure, bard got a few neat tricks up his sleeve, but Factotum can simply be a better skill monkey and decent fighter at the same time, with it's int being applied to just about everything.

If we're using PrCs, I'd pick the bard. Sure, they're both pretty decent classes that can be skill monkeys and yet have other capabilities in combat, not to mention the prospects of multiclassing into, say, ToB classes (or picking the feat) because come on, martial maneuvers and stances are incredible, but in the end of the day if you look just at default class features bards got very nice PrCs available to them. And they are casters, too, that ought to amount for something.

Really it all depends on what roles you want to fill and how cheesy you're willing to get.

[Cadian 9th]

I'd have to say that I prefer Factotum, because he relies on Intelligence. Bard relies on Charisma.

Intelligence focus gets you additional skill points and goes with a lot of good abilities/feats (Such as Wizard , and as JaronK said, Knowledge Devotion, stuff like Warmage Edge, good PrCs, etc. )

Charisma focus is kinda... Social stuff, UMD (Yes, this one is good), but without feat investment it has less use. Sure, there are a few X to Ys for Charisma, but they're not as good, IMO, as the Int ones.

Bard however, does have the ace up his sleeve of his splatbook support, as an above poster mentioned, Dragonfire Inspiration, but not only that stuff like Snowflake wardance, Bow of Songs, the bardic music feats, and of course that one broken spell per splatbook that we see with WotC.

[true_shinken]

A Factotum is AWESOME at being a Skill Monkey.
Compared to a Bard they also do a better job at filling a Melee, or Healer role.

Factotums are better skillmonkeys alright, but Bard get more tools for melee and healing.
A Bard focused on melee or healing will be a lot better than a Factotum on it, even if a nonfocused Bard will be worse than a nonfocused Factotum.

[grarrrg]

Factotums are better skillmonkeys alright, but Bard get more tools for melee and healing.
A Bard focused on melee or healing will be a lot better than a Factotum on it, even if a nonfocused Bard will be worse than a nonfocused Factotum.

Well, that was sort of my point.
They both fill the "Red Mage" do-anything slot. The Bard can be good at anything, the Factotum can be good at anything, the problem is that a Bard needs to specialize to be 'great' at something, but at the cost of his utility. The Factotum doesn't have this problem, and can switch gears on the fly.
They are both flexible out of the box, but once you get to a certain point the Bard ceases to be (as) flexible, while the Factotum is still do anything.

If you take all the better Bard builds (alliteration!) and compare them to the few Factotum builds, then the Factotum is more often better at melee or healing, not always, but usually.

[Boci]

And Complete Warrior lets Whispergnomes get the Gnomish Quickrazor proficiency for free.

Thats not actually true. There is a feat called improved weapon familiarity which allows you to treat all racial exotic weapons as martial weapons, so it would be better than EWP for a gnome, but they still need to spend a feat.

[Draz74]

Thats not actually true. There is a feat called improved weapon familiarity which allows you to treat all racial exotic weapons as martial weapons, so it would be better than EWP for a gnome, but they still need to spend a feat.

Nope, they can use the Complete Warrior rules to trade out their racial weapon familiarity with (useless) Gnome Hooked Hammers for racial weapon familiarity with Gnomish Quickrazors. No feat required.

[Tytalus]

Thats not actually true. There is a feat called improved weapon familiarity which allows you to treat all racial exotic weapons as martial weapons, so it would be better than EWP for a gnome, but they still need to spend a feat.

He's referring to the rules on page 154 on replacing weapon familiarity.

[Jack_Simth]

Two questions:

1) What's the best role for a factotum to play within a party? What about a bard?

Factotum: Skillmonkey. He's a Rogue-replacement with a low spells-per-day 3/4th's casting (7th level spells, full caster level, very few spells-per-day) and a few other tricks in place of Sneak Attack and a few extra skill points.

Bard: Usually Buffmonkey, secondary skillmonkey... the Bard's biggest problem in the skillmonkey regard is that he doesn't have trapfinding. Really, a Bard does best in either a party that's smaller than the game expects (where the 'jack of all trades' nature of having access to some offensive spells, some healing, and having high skill points comes in handy), or in a party that's larger than the game expects (where Bardic Music shines the most, having no particular limit on the number of critters it can affect at once, and having a lot of per-day uses, making it a *very* useful way to buff larger crowds).

2) Assuming high optimization and all splatbooks are allowed, which is overall a better class?

Toss up.

In high optimization, the Factotum has a painful, painful trick at 19th: Cunning Brilliance: Spellcasting and Psionic Manifesting, of themselves, are technically Ex abilities, even if the spells/powers are not. Which means he can potentially grab Full Manifesting from the Psion/Wilder/Ardent/Whatever, or full Casting from the Cleric/Druid/Wizard/Sorcerer/Whatever.

Likewise, in high optimization, the Bard can get 9th level spells (also at 19th, interestingly... although there's a few tricks to get it earlier than that), and can get some *insane* buffing going on (which also applies to himself, and for something like six rounds after he stops playing).