Showing posts with label Our Way. Show all posts

One of the solutions to the Bard Problem Spenser and I discussed was utilizing all of the options WotC has provided for bards to try and create both useful and thematically unique characters. This is the "Easy Way" to fix bards, because as a DM it requires no custom content and you can easily just reference to players some of the better options.

If one of your players wants to play a bard, make sure they understand that while bards are social creatures, they will quickly find themselves feeling left out when push actually does come to shove. The following is an example of a bard that can readily find themselves both the talk of the town and a decent support melee fighter as well.

Arik the Thundercall

Human Bard1/Fighter1/Bard3/Warchanter2
Medium Humanoid
Hit Dice: 1d10+4d6+2d8+14 (45 hp)
Initiative: +1
Speed: 30 ft. (8 squares)
Armor Class: 22 (+7 armor, +3 shield, +1 deflection, +1 dexterity), touch 12, flat-footed 22
Base Attack/Grapple: +6/+8
Attack:+1 heavy mace +10 melee (1d8+3/20)
Full Attack: +1 heavy mace +10/+5 melee (1d8+3/20)
Space/Reach: 5 ft./5 ft.
Special Attacks:
Saves: Fort +9, Ref +6, Will +5
Abilities: Str 14, Dex 12, Con 14, Int 13, Wis 10, Cha 13
Skills: Perform (Oratory) +11. And a whole lot of other ones.
Feats: Combat Expertise, Extra Music, Weapon Focus (Heavy Mace), Chord of Distraction, Battle Dancer
Environment: Battlefields and Taverns
Challenge Rating: 7
Treasure: +2 Mithral Breastplate, +2 Mithral Light Shield, +1 Heavy Mace, +1 Ring of Protection, Cloak of Resistance +1, 35 platinum pieces

At the beginning of battle, Arik casts Bull's Strength on himself and begins shouting terrifying praises to his norselike gods (Inspire courage). Battle Dancer (Complete Warrior) gives him a +2 as long as he moves and attacks while his allies are receiving the bonus from his bardic music. This makes his combat statistics look like this.

Base Attack/Grapple: +6/+10
Attack:+1 heavy mace +14 melee (1d8+6/20)

Not bad for a bard!

Chord of Distraction (Complete Scoundrel) allows him to expend 3 bardic music usages as an immediate action to make his enemy flat footed until he is attacked (or until the bard's next turn). Meanwhile, the entire party is also receiving his bardic music benefit to attack and damage, and he can set up an instant sneak attack with a rogue if the situation demands it.

Battle Dancer (Player's Handbook II) is an interesting feat. Players receive a +2 on attack rolls as long as they are inspiring, moving, and attacking. While setting up a flanking position for the main melee fighters, he is getting some pretty nice attack bonuses that more than make up for the 1 BAB he lost with this build.

Warchanter (Complete Warrior) halts the admittedly flimsy bardic spellcasting and bardic music. Instead, it gives some even better bardic music and full BAB. On top of this, a 5th level Warchanter can use both War Chanter Music and Bardic Music at the same time. Pretty snazzy.

These are just some options aspiring bardlets can consider - in the end, nobody wants a useless character. The bard doesn't have to be one.

One of the solutions to the "Bard Problem" Micheal and I discussed yesterday was coming up with feats that replicate or mimic bard class abilities or functionality so that bards (as a class) can be removed. This the "hard way" to fix this problem, as it means creating a number of feats and possibly re-writing prestige classes your players might still be interested in. Below, I've written up a few feats to get you started if this solution tickles your fancy.

Hypnagogic Voice [General]
You have the ability to induce a trance-like state in others with only your voice.
Prerequisite: Perform (oratory or sing) 4 ranks.
Benefit: You may cast hypnotism as a spell-like ability a number of times per day equal to you Charisma bonus (minimum 1/day). Your caster level equals your character level. You must speak to activate this ability, and the targets must be able to hear you.

Improved Hypnagogic Voice [General]
The hypnagogic power of your voice easily overpowers lesser folk.
Prerequisite: Hypnagogic Voice, Perform (oratory or sing) 9 ranks.
Benefit: You gain the following spell-like abilities, each usable once per day: calm emotions, enthrall, and suggestion. Your caster level equals your character level. You must speak to activate these abilities, and the targets must be able to hear you.

Inspiring Performance [General]
You supernaturally boost your allies’ morale with your musical talent.
Prerequisite: Perform (any) 4 ranks.
Benefit: You can use song or poetics to inspire courage in your allies (including yourself) as a move action, bolstering them against fear and improving their combat abilities. To be affected, an ally must be able to hear you sing. The effect lasts for as long as the ally hears you sing (requiring a move action each round) and for 1d4 rounds thereafter. An affected ally receives a +1 morale bonus on saving throws against charm and fear effects and a +1 morale bonus on attack and weapon damage rolls. If you have 11 ranks in a Perform skill these bonuses increase by 1, and the bonus increases by 1 again for every six additional ranks (+2 at 11 ranks, +3 at 17 ranks, and +4 at 23 ranks). You can activate this ability a number of times per day equal to you Charisma bonus (minimum 1/day). This is a supernatural, mind-affecting ability.

Lore [General]
You are well traveled and versed in much esoteric lore.
Prerequisite: Int 13, Knowledge (any) 4 ranks.
Benefit: You may make a special lore check with a bonus equal to your character level + your Intelligence modifier to see whether you know some relevant information about local notable people, legendary items, or noteworthy places. See the table below to determine the DC for this check.

DC	Type of Knowledge
10	Common, known by at least a substantial minority of the local population.
20	Uncommon but available, known by only a few people legends.
25	Obscure, known by few, hard to come by.
30	Extremely obscure, known by very few, possibly forgotten by most who once knew it, possibly known only by those who don’t understand the significance of the knowledge.

Spenser: Bards are dumb, Michael.

Michael: Are you joking? Have you seen what I've done with bards before?

Spenser: Yes, yes I have. *weeps* ...But moving on. How can you feel badass running around singing about heroes way cooler that you are?

Michael: That's like saying only losers win "Best Supporting Actor". Sometimes being the paragon of party unity holds its own rewards. Plus, bards get all the ladies.

Spenser: Look, it's not that I really have anything against having a party theme song or anything. I just can't see bards as viable party members. I'd much rather have a bard (read: 1st level expert with max ranks in Perform) as a hireling, and have a rogue or beguiler PC. Plus, either of those classes can be re-flavored to be bards without actually being a bard.

Michael: Well before the bard fangirls start to think I'm on their side I must admit that I do agree with you. Almost all of the bards that I've partied with probably could have roleplayed their character in exactly the same way with a class that actually lends itself to combat usefulness.

Notice that Clerics can reproduce the effects of iconic bard abilities as low as 3rd level at levels lower than even bards get them.

Spenser: Indeed. I think I'm going to have to add insult to injury here by noting that in addition to lacking sufficient combat prowess, they aren't really any better than the next guy at all that talky-roleplay stuff. Sure, they get that fun lore ability, but a well-rounded party is usually rockin' most of the important Knowledge skills anyway. Is there anything cool about bards?

Michael: Well, yeah. If they were all suck nobody would play them. The one thing bards do best is give the NPCs little choice but to become their mindless slaves, by basing all of their abilities off of skill checks. As a DM, however, this frustrates me, because I am practically forced to let them puppet around most of my characters. After all, if I take away their "social mastery" then I've practically robbed them of their character's whole mechanical purpose.

So the question becomes, then; what do we do about bards?

Spenser: As you know, I've all but banned them from my games. I think you're the only person who's played one, and that character was such a convoluted mess of multiclassing that it didn't really bother me.

The simplest thing I've been thinking of is just changing how I think of their abilities; in China Miéville's books Perdido Street Station and The Scar, he refers to a type of magic very similar to what bards use as making one's voice "hypnagogic," and just this single term made me think of bards differently. It removes some of the "silliness" factor, in my opinion, by injecting enough pseudoscience to lend their abilities legitimacy.

Michael: Bards are so iconic you can't just remove them. If we look at their abilities from a developer's standpoint, it becomes obvious that they were created with fantasy stereotype obligations in mind. As pseudo-designers and DMs, we owe it to the fools we trick into reading this a hard solution for the bard problem.

When it came time for WotC to expand on their own material, it became obvious that bards needed some help. We saw an explosion of additional content for existing bards (from the Bardic Music feats in Complete Adventurer) and an avalanche of prestige classes that make bards total badasses (see Sublime Chord in Complete Arcane).

Some of the more powerful bardic music expansions come from far-off splatbooks such as Frostburn. There's a feat available there called "Snowflake Wardance" that expends a bardic music charge to allow you to add your charisma to your attack rolls for a number of rounds. This makes bards immensely more useful in combat and simultaneously keeps them within their "flavor". Bard enthusiasts will get a lot of mileage out of things like that.

Spenser: Very true, but I'm sure we can all agree that the bard should more playable right out of the box. If you're willing to house rule it up a bit, you could "normalize" the save DCs for bardic music; 10 + half your bard level + Cha modifier sounds about right. In addition, it'd probably be a good idea to make bardic music a swift action so that it doesn't force you to sacrifice your actions. What do you think?

Michael: By itself, your first idea would make bards completely useless. But making bardic music a swift action definitely makes it more useful in combat because the "inspire" abilities are free bonuses that are more or less available whenever a bard is in combat. This seems like an intelligent fix.

Spenser: Another method to "fix" bards would be to remove them entirely, and creating a feat tree to duplicate the bard's abilities for musically inclined members of other classes. Counter-intuitive? Perhaps. But this is an oft-proposed fix for the soulknife as well, another potentially-cool-but-underpowered class.

Michael: Rocks fall, everyone dies. You know Spenser, we should write a blog about D&D gaming.

Spenser: Yeah right, who would read that?