D&D 5E Lore Bard Powerplay

[Nicola Zamagni]

Take one level of life cleric and then 14 levels bard. You get heavy armor, bless, guidance, and a bonus to heal spells of 2 + spell level. Now Aura of Vitality heals 2d6 + 5 HP as a bonus action or 70-170 in total. The benefits of that one level are worth it. You can use it in combat to keep everyone up, if someone gets drop you can get them right back up.

This is certainly awesome, but unfortunately our master denied us the multiclassing because starting at 15 he wanted to avoid powerful combos like sorcadin or coffeelock. So we must do a strong single class character.

 

[Blue]

Take one level of life cleric and then 14 levels bard. You get heavy armor, bless, guidance, and a bonus to heal spells of 2 + spell level. Now Aura of Vitality heals 2d6 + 5 HP as a bonus action or 70-170 in total. The benefits of that one level are worth it. You can use it in combat to keep everyone up, if someone gets drop you can get them right back up.

Improving healing by a few HPs that won't make a huge difference at the levels 15+ to give up on 8th level spells. Ouch, as well as moving bardic inspiration up to d12s. That's quite the trade-off. Heavy armor is a complete trap unless you switch from DEX (which has so many advatnages) to STR so that you aren't slowed. Bless IS a really nice spells - but takes up your concentration slot just like all your good bard spells - the opportunity cost for casting it is really high. Would you rather give a d4 bonus to hit for your party, or take out half the opponents with crowd control?

If they are the primary healer, it may be worth it - not for in-combat healing because the amounts are so low compared to damage done at those levels it's ignoble, but to help heal up after combat. So it's a level to basically boost one spell, but boost it very nicely.

 

[smbakeresq]

Improving healing by a few HPs that won't make a huge difference at the levels 15+ to give up on 8th level spells. Ouch, as well as moving bardic inspiration up to d12s. That's quite the trade-off. Heavy armor is a complete trap unless you switch from DEX (which has so many advatnages) to STR so that you aren't slowed. Bless IS a really nice spells - but takes up your concentration slot just like all your good bard spells - the opportunity cost for casting it is really high. Would you rather give a d4 bonus to hit for your party, or take out half the opponents with crowd control?

If they are the primary healer, it may be worth it - not for in-combat healing because the amounts are so low compared to damage done at those levels it's ignoble, but to help heal up after combat. So it's a level to basically boost one spell, but boost it very nicely.

It certainly helps more if you play to level 15 as opposed to starting there but it is still worth it as the capstone isn’t worth it for bards. Guidance saves your inspiration dice.

Bless is always viable unless you play in an easy environment where you are allowed so many rests that you just blow through your high level spells without fear of running out of spells. My experience isn’t that way unfortunately, you have to ration spell slots carefully so Bless is used for the easier encounters to save resources. It’s common in the games I am in to go 4-6 encounters between each short rest, or 8-12 encounters in a day so you need to conserve and ration most things.

 

[Blue]

Bless is always viable unless you play in an easy environment where you are allowed so many rests that you just blow through your high level spells without fear of running out of spells.

My experience isn’t that way unfortunately, you have to ration spell slots carefully so Bless is used for the easier encounters to save resources. It’s common in the games I am in to go 4-6 encounters between each short rest, or 8-12 encounters in a day so you need to conserve and ration most things.

I think you'll find it's very rare the table that regular exceeds the 6-8 encounters per day recommended by the DMG - in fact the most common thing I see is tables not getting near 6-8 regularly and having less, if more difficult.

If you regularly hit 8-12 encounters a day I can see conserving higher level slots by using Bless on easier encounters, even with the bounty of slots a 15th level caster brings you.

 

[smbakeresq]

I think you'll find it's very rare the table that regular exceeds the 6-8 encounters per day recommended by the DMG - in fact the most common thing I see is tables not getting near 6-8 regularly and having less, if more difficult.

If you regularly hit 8-12 encounters a day I can see conserving higher level slots by using Bless on easier encounters, even with the bounty of slots a 15th level caster brings you.

Unfortunately you are correct. Players complain if they don't have all their resources ready for every encounter. I watched some AL groups, they would never be able to make it through a module like the old A4, where you started in a dungeon naked with no equipment or spell components and had to figure it all out.

My theory is, for example, the BBEG knows he is the BBEG and knows what minions and cannon fodder are for, that's why he/she sits behind all those mooks waiting for the group to be ground down so they are not full strength if they reach him/her. There is a reason the mooks and traps and hazards are there.