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Making effective use of the Bard's Multiclass Mastery
How would you stat up a bard to make use of the Multiclass Mastery feature?
AFAIK, Paladins, Sorcerers and Warlocks have Cha-based attacks. But of these three, Paladins have a Str requirement. Otherwise, attractive to all Bards.
Swordmages and Wizards have Int-based attacks, so they're good for Cunning Bards. This is especially true for Swordmages, who have "Weapon" powers. Both classes have an Implement overlap with Bards, as well.
Warlocks have some Con-based powers, good for Vigorous Bards.
Nearly all other classes have Str, Dex or Wis-based attacks, which aren't a Bard's forte.
All told, a Bard is looking at some serious MAD issue, no?
I've mostly been thinking about Cunning Bards, since they appeal to me. I think the answer is to look primarily at the initial M/C feats, and think of them as feats that yield encounter powers. Since typically feats modify powers rather than yield new ones, I think that is the value of bard multi-multi-classing. More encounter powers.
I think a viable Cunning Bard M/M/C build can be done emphasizing just Charisma and Intelligence. I would stick to ranged powers, and avoid weapon powers. Unfortunately, Arcana is already mandatory for Bards, which weakens Warlock and Wizard M/Cs, but still, they can all use wands, and more encounter powers is a good thing.
Sometimes you just don't care about the powers of the multiclass.
For instance, the half-elf valorous bard I'm building has 13 str ... to take heavier armour with.
But then ... why not take Berserker's Fury (MC Barbarian) since I have the stats anyway?
It's not like you get any barbarian powers ... you just get a daily encounter-long +2 bonus to all damage rolls. Oh, and a skill.
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I like the strength option best, but it depends a bit on the race also.
A Dragonborn Valorous Bard can manage a 13 Strength without breaking a sweat. You can basically become a skill monkey with Warrior of the Wild, Student of Battle, and Berserker's Fury, one of which gives you a good encounter power, and two give you excellent daily powers. You can pick up Scale fairly easily as a bonus.
A Halfling Valorous Bard could easily get a 13 dex. Warrior of the Wild is again an excellent choice. You could pick up Sneak of Shadows for thievery, which you have a racial bonus for, and Whip Training to add more interest to your Guiding Strike, simultaneously giving your allies a bonus to attack and defense, with reach.
I think the most important flexibility comes from filling in a missing role in the party. A Tiefling Cunning Bard who is missing a controller in his group can easily pick up arcane initiate for some control. And if the group is small and he finds himself occasionally needing more defense, he could also pick up Blade Initiate.
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There are a lot of potential advantages but haven't done enough mixing yet to have a bunch of concrete examples.
Besides the mutliclass feat bonuses themselves, doesn't the Bard also get access to:
1) multiple sets of class feats?
2) the ability to cherry pick multiclass swap powers (power-swap feats) from any of his/her other classes?
3) maybe a paragon multi class that is actually worth it? (nahh...)
Sometimes you just don't care about the powers of the multiclass.
For instance, the half-elf valorous bard I'm building has 13 str ... to take heavier armour with.
But then ... why not take Berserker's Fury (MC Barbarian) since I have the stats anyway?
It's not like you get any barbarian powers ... you just get a daily encounter-long +2 bonus to all damage rolls. Oh, and a skill.
Yeah, this is kind of what I figured too. If you had the DEX, for example, you could pick up the Ranger and Rogue MC feats and then have access to both Quarry and Sneak Attack once per encounter. Combine with the Barb or the Sorcerer feats, and you could potentially really up your damage with certain abilities or during a couple encounters per day.
Adding powers on top of that would just be gravy really. I mean, when you can Quarry someone, Sneak Attack them, get a +1 on the attack, add +2 to damage, then another +2 for the rest of the encounter (all on the same attack), do you really need to be able to use Hammer and Anvil or some other class' encounter power?
jack of all trades doesn´t work with bardic knowledge because both are feat bonuses... so there are two good options to become the jack of all trades... and maybe beginning with jack of all trades and retraining it could be a 3rd option...
I Tend to Agree w/ the general consensus for Bard multi-classing is to focus less on powers, but more on skills and encounter power.
There is a Warlord Multi-classing feat in Martial Powers that once per encounter when an ally that can see you uses an Action point the ally gets Temp HP equal to 1/2 level (or such)....which basically make you better at what you do...pre req: Str 13, Cha 13.
A rogue M/C feat also in Martial Powers gives you training in Stealth, and prof in maces and clubs.
I have yet to resolve in my mind the mechanical advantage vs Trained and Untrained. Clearly some skills that give additional benefit (Arcana, Acrobatics), or where the cost of failure is too high (Thievery) there is a clear value vs +5 and in the case of a Bard w/ Jack of all Trades a +3.
For me it comes down to rituals. A Bard w/ the large size of the Skill list can potentially use any Ritual. Moreover some rituals....that say give a bonus to Perception, that in PHB 1 a Cleric or Wizard do not have a a class skill....the Bard could have Trained in.
Well, I admit my character is not optimized for combat, but I've used multiclassing to pick up 7 additional trained skills plus lots of additional encounter/daily powers.
13 trained skills (only 4 untrained). Even two of the untrained skills have an extra +1 to them from multiclassing.
He can be reasonable effective in combat, but is awe-inspiring when interacting with NPCs and/or skill challenges out of combat.
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Yes, there can be more than one right answer to a rules question! It can be an exercise in futility to attempt to apply a great deal of precision to an imprecise set of rules.
It is actually the Jack of All Trades feat that is the sucker's bet, in my opinion.
I strong disagree. Combining Jack of All Trades with Skill Versatility yields +3 for every untrained skill. That's a lot of return for the investment of a single feat.
Quote:
Originally Posted by UngeheuerLich
jack of all trades doesn´t work with bardic knowledge because both are feat bonuses...
Ah, but Bardic Knowledge can apply to trained skills, whereas Jack of All Tradesonly applies to untrained skills. Bardic Knowledge is almost as good as Skill Focus for all those skills, whereas Jack of All Trades is almost as good as Skill Focus for all untrained skills.
They actually complement each other quite nicely.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Artoomis
He can be reasonable effective in combat, but is awe-inspiring when interacting with NPCs and/or skill challenges out of combat.
If you had Jack of All Trades instead, you'd be almost as awesome, and have quite a number of feats to improve yourself in combat.
I remain unconvinced of the advantages of bard multi-multi-classing.
Smeelbo
Last edited by Smeelbo; 1st April 2009 at 09:36 PM..
I remain unconvinced of the advantages of bard multi-multi-classing.
Even the fact that you can pick two multiclass feats is a bonus (I'm playing a warlord who would jump at the opportunity of picking up a second multi-class feat), but I think it's mostly just for some corner cases.
I gave this example already, but it's a good one. Say you're playing a halfling bard, and want a bit of striking nova power. Picking up Ranger and Rogue multiclass can give you exactly that. And you can add two more skills to your arsenal, one of which is thievery that you do not have access to as a bard, and get a racial bonus to.
A gnome bard could do some fun stuff with paladin multiclass for marking, warlock multiclass for eyebite and fade away shenanigans, rogue multi-class for extra damage, and ranger multiclass for stealth (to put that racial +2 to good use).
I don't really see picking up several multiclass feats as being the norm for a bard, it'll be more of the exception I think, but it certainly opens doors for some interesting options.
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I...If you had Jack of All Trades instead, you'd be almost as awesome, and have quite a number of feats to improve yourself in combat.
I remain unconvinced of the advantages of bard multi-multi-classing.
Smeelbo
Nah... I'd rather have the trained skills plus Bardic Knowledge. +7 for trained skils vs. +3 for untrained. Plus, I still have +1 (and +2 in some cases) for untrained skills.
I did not take Jack of All Trades as it was not worth it.
I like my way - so much fun! All the extra powers. Cool.
Jack of All Trades is GREAT is most of your skills are untrained, though.
__________________ Forward! We've got them right where they want us!
Yes, there can be more than one right answer to a rules question! It can be an exercise in futility to attempt to apply a great deal of precision to an imprecise set of rules.
I strong disagree. Combining Jack of All Trades with Skill Versatility yields +3 for every untrained skill. That's a lot of return for the investment of a single feat.Ah, but Bardic Knowledge can apply to trained skills, whereas Jack of All Tradesonly applies to untrained skills. Bardic Knowledge is almost as good as Skill Focus for all those skills, whereas Jack of All Trades is almost as good as Skill Focus for all untrained skills.
They actually complement each other quite nicely.If you had Jack of All Trades instead, you'd be almost as awesome, and have quite a number of feats to improve yourself in combat.
I remain unconvinced of the advantages of bard multi-multi-classing.
Smeelbo
A bard with Str 13 can dabble in Fighter, Barbarian, Ranger, in addition to Paladin, Sorcerer and Warlock. The first 3 classes give you a choice of trained skill, plus a daily ability (the barbarian's is specially neat, since it lasts for the whole encounter).
But then ... why not take Berserker's Fury (MC Barbarian) since I have the stats anyway?
It's not like you get any barbarian powers ... you just get a daily encounter-long +2 bonus to all damage rolls. Oh, and a skill.
Well, you could take Heart Strike (level 10 utility).
I strong disagree. Combining Jack of All Trades with Skill Versatility yields +3 for every untrained skill. That's a lot of return for the investment of a single feat.Ah, but Bardic Knowledge can apply to trained skills, whereas Jack of All Tradesonly applies to untrained skills. Bardic Knowledge is almost as good as Skill Focus for all those skills, whereas Jack of All Trades is almost as good as Skill Focus for all untrained skills.
They actually complement each other quite nicely.If you had Jack of All Trades instead, you'd be almost as awesome, and have quite a number of feats to improve yourself in combat.
I remain unconvinced of the advantages of bard multi-multi-classing.
Smeelbo
yes, but if you intend to take all knowledge skill you could as well multiclass a bit... if you only take knowledges in the beginning, your feat choice sounds good...
however if you try to specialize in insight or whatever, jack of all trades + bardic knowledge is not the way to go. It really depends on your taste.
As I said before: Two well balanced routes to go with either jack of all trades or 2-3 multiclass feats...
bardic knowlege could be handy for both routes, depending on your initial skill choices...
Last edited by UngeheuerLich; 2nd April 2009 at 10:45 AM..
Bards look very interesting - there are a whole bunch of different builds that leap to mind (not that I am sure all of them are terribly effective). Here are some I have looked at (I even played one of them once).
1) Skill Monkey. You can get all skills trained via multiclass feats by level 20 (16 as Human). Ironically you dump INT as the INT classes double up on Arcana. This gives you a raft of marginal powers & some quite decent ones (1-2 extra heals, Battle Awareness, Quarry, Sneak Attack, the ability to turn into a beast, a damage boost). You trade some combat efficiency from your class feats but those mentioned abilities pick some back up. You might not want to go this nuts so fast – you have 6-8 spare feats that could be fed in earlier.
2) Font of Knowledge. Bardic Knowledge does not stack with JoT so if you are planning to take the former training knowledge skills is worth +4, instead of +2 after JOT, so it is more tempting. If you are training skills you might as well use MC feats as you get some other benny.
3) Dilettante. A lot of the MC feats are tasty in their own right & the skill training is free, even if it is only +2 effectively with JoT. You might be attracted to damage boost most of the striker feats give to you, all of which stack. As a Valorous Bard you might not even have the INT for JoT so the MC feats are even more appealing. This also opens up class feats & paragon paths, one or more of which might be very good for you.
4) Weird MC thingy. It might be possible to cherry pick powers from pretty much any class you have the stats for then paragon MC. Some do not even really need a good attack stat – the wall types. I have not really explored this – there may be some cheesy horror combos but for myself I tend to like a fair number of the powers from any given class.
Human Bard multiclassed into Cleric and Shaman. That nets you all the "knowledge" skills trained, gets you a little extra healing, and with the right armor (Warding Spirit), a bonus to AC vs. Opportunity Attacks. That's 2 feats. if you get Bardic Knowledge and Jack of All Trades, you have a +7 bonus to six skills and a +3 bonus to nine other skills. That is the most efficient use of feats to skill bonuses possible.
Obviously if you don't care about skills all that much, there are better feats to spend on. But an extra Healing Word each day is not bad. And putting a fair stat in Wisdom does help a lot of skills.
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