D&D 5E Time to remake the Bard

[Ashrym]

By level 9 bard has 7 level 3 spells. With 6-8 expected encounters you can drop an 8d6 minimum spell every encounter.

So 1st round 8d6 minimum, then two rounds of 2d10+2d6.

The 8d6 part is likely to hit multiple targets and lightning bolt can be easy to avoid hitting your own mooks

You either completely missed the point here or are deliberately ignoring it. I never disputed that and included it in my comparison. The discussion has been based on damage per encounter with the assumption it's maintained through the day by budgeting 1 slot per encounter. The damage per encounter isn't going up or down regardless of the number of encounters because it's based per encounter in the first place.

You are also moving the goal posts by changing from fireball to lightning bolt, likely in response to realizing the point against fireball was correct. It was a pointless move because I was always allowing for the benefit of the doubt and giving the damage for the spell once per combat. The point about not using fireball as often due to friendly fire was just pointing it out, but the damage was still included. I agree lightning bolt would work better and used it in an earlier example with a druid. 8d6 damage doesn't change from 8d6 damage in changing spells.

The point is the bard cannot do as much you are claiming. Right now we're changing from fireball to lightning bolt. We cannot claim to have both because you are using 3 non-bard spells at 9th level: eldritch blast, lightning bolt, hex. We are also going with variant human because that is required to pick up eldritch blast plus 2 more spells at this point. An ASI at 4th and 8th level to cap CHA mean a person cannot claim more feats.

This example has no more spell secrets to work with, doesn't have these ones with any other race, and doesn't have these ones with any other bard subclass. This is important to point out because the premise that bards are overpowered by something a specific race and subclass are using is applying a trait not representative of the class.

Level 10 destructive wave doesn't hit your team mates plus knocks prone.

Yes. It does that. That seems appropriate for a 5th level spell. It does that well within movement speed and that loses the range advantage to do the same damage the lightning bolt in the same slot would do. It also takes another magical secret. These are limited.

They still have another 10-14 known spelks if allies are in the way. And aoe spells don't miss and they don't rely on allies.

Yeah, I already assumed no save bonus when looking at damage, and applied damage on a save when appropriate. I do that because saving throw bonuses tend to be small and rare while armor class does tend to go up.

Only if the bard took one of those spells in the spells known. That's one of the points you are missing or ignoring. When you bumped up from 9th level to 10th level on the lore bard the total number of spells known became 16. You have lightning bolt, hex, and destructive wave.

Rogues often win initiative and can't sneak attack. Or fly critters with no flying allies.

Readying an action solves the initiative issue. That's never been a problem. I agreed range can be an issue earlier but it's not constant and there are many ways to gain advantage for the sneak attack.

Blaster bard damage isn't reliant on allies.

Never said they were, but range gets harder to maintain if there's no one between them and your squishy butt, lol. Especially if you switch to destructive wave and they are now only 30' away for you to be doing damage.

That's in top of bard dice which can be used on skills, song if rest and actual bard spells like invisibility, enhance ability, hypnotic pattern, heat metal etc.

Inspiration dice don't even need to be used on skills. They can be used to any ability check. The problem is repeat rolls empties the pool fast and the dice are usually better spent on inspiration or cutting words. Reliable talent is better than peerless skill and accessible at the levels you were discussing for damage and at 14th level when peerless skill becomes available.

You seem to be presenting Shrodinger's Bard again. A bard cannot cast what he might have taken from the bard list. He can only cast what he has actually taken. That's why I posted actually spell selections at every level.

Here's what happens. You are assuming 2 short rests. You are assuming hex at all times. Hex lasts an hour and short rests take an hour. You had 3 first level slots for hex and it requires a minimum of 3 first level slots to cover hex and that's still assuming not losing it or dropping it for another spell. At 10th level you get 4 first level slot from then to the end of time.

You don't have 1st level slots to spare to recast hex. If you cast invisibility, enhance ability, hypnotic pattern, or heat metal (your examples) you used 1 of your 3 second level slots that you have until the end of time and lost the hex you currently have. You either give up hex or give up another slot to renew it. Hex kills your low level slots with this build. You won't have enough higher level slots to cast those and renew hex and justify a strong damage spell per encounter until 13th or 14th level.

A Rogue has to sneak attack a blaster bard doesn't have to blast.

You don't have to blast but you do if you want to do damage and have it considered part of the analysis.

You seem to be taking hypnotic pattern. So percentage of the time? 50/50 support vs attacking? It's not hard to lower the expected potential damage based on blasting with your bard focused on blasting because he's not actually blasting.

That's why I said the only direction you have to go from what I listed is down. I'll remind you the number of times you cast hypnotic pattern is also the number of times you recast hex. If you want to argue this line I'll expect a lot less hex damage.

Which gets back to you missing or ignoring the points I made. Concentration makes keeping hex up all the time is either unrealistic or locks out those other spells you mentioned.

Rogues don't have to sneak attack either. They get to continue sneak attack while the bard does something else, which skews the damage you are claiming even more towards the rogues. On that same note, fast hands is an example of a useful bonus action while not having to give up sneak attack (it lowers chance to hit with it). Arcane tricksters also have spells and can leverage them for sneak attacks or other useful options. Assassins get a free poisoner kit proficiency for a reason and they can be good at harvesting their own poisons.

Bard dice are also hitting d8s and d10s which is actually better than expertise.

Peerless skill becomes available at 14th level. The lore bard cannot use bardic dice on himself until then. It's not even as good as the help another action for free at lower levels other than it stacks.

The correct comparison would be peerless skill vs reliable talent. The average bonus on this system uses 10, 15, and 20 DC's as the most common checks. With absolutely no ability score bonus at 14th level when peerless skill becomes available a rogue has 0% failure on any 15 check in which he's proficient and 0% failure on any skill with expertise.

For example, a rogue with 10 CHA auto-succeeds any DC 20 NPC favor request with expertise in persuasion starting at 14th level for the 5e version of the diplomancer build. That doesn't allow the impossible, change consequences, or create it's own consequences by harassing one's associates all the time. It's a demonstration of how useful this ability is.

Give the bard a 20 ability score compared to the 10 ability score for the rogue at the same level and a combined roll of 4 or less on the dice still fails that DC 20 check. Give the bard a 10 ability score to match the rogue and a combined roll of 9 or less fails the check. That's comparing a limited resource to an always-on ability.

Granting that bonus to someone else still carries that fail chance, especially since expertise to double the proficiency check is highly unlikely to be a factor. Bards do not out skill-rogues just like they don't out-heal clerics, out-blast nukers, out-fight fighters, or out-tank barbarians.

Reliable talent also comes online close to 10th level when you are adding destructive wave and is arguably the best skill-based ability in the game. You keep on fighting the good fight arguing that one though.

Limited yes but if you really need to pass the average roll is more than expertise and applies to any skill.

No, it applies to any ability check. There is a difference between a skill and an ability check. You can use it on initiative and go first if you want. First strike potential on a lore bard is useful, especially if you want to continue with fireball instead of lightning bolt yourself at higher levels, or just beef up that assassin's odds of going before someone else.

How many checks you need to use it for is more of an issue. See my comments on reliable talent above. It's better. Plus the word "average" is relevant. A static bonus is a guaranteed +4 bonus (depending on level OC) and preferable to the 37.5% chance of a lower roll on a d8, imo.

Plus cutting words as well.

How many dice do you have left after handing out inspiration to the party so they could pretend they have expertise on a single check? Those dice disappear fast. I find the best use is still handing them out for the attack or save bonus. Cutting word for emergency protection or reducing damage is good but less impactful in the long run. Used for skills is more situational. That's how I prioritize those 3-5 dice.

Outside combat jack of all trades and enhance ability are also good.

Enhance ability can usually be done with the help action and conflicts with hex for concentration. These are 2 long term concentration spells so you wouldn't even be recasting hex if you were using enhance ability and definitely down damage while enhance ability is maintained.

Bards always good regardless rogue may not be.

Disagree. Rogues are better at skills because expertise comes sooner and reliable talent is huge. The damage you are showing is behind multiple rounds of sneak attack. Evasion and cunning action are good for survivability and bards tend to be squishy. It takes deliberate construction that creates scenarios to make a rogue not good for something.

Note this is something bards are not good at and it's competitive IMHO. Even if the rogue wins (both classes are situational in a rl game) it's not going to be by that much and damage isn't a bard thing.

That's what makes the bard so good you can build them to be decent at something they're supposed to be bad at.

Replace "supposed to be" with "supposedly". There's no rule or guideline that says bards are not supposed to be good at any particular option. Then replace "good" with "good enough". Adding a damage option here really hasn't gone anywhere special. This is adding a good enough damage option when the class is supposedly not good at damage. It's still not special and simply didn't take other reasonable choices.

And that's just on thing they can do. You could build one to focus on healing instead and it's still useful due to the class abilities and actual bard spell list.

It's useful because the alternative is not useful? So, WAI? Were you expecting that a bard should have spell list full of ribbon abilities and fluff or something, lol? The goal is to be useful. The benefit is giving up being the best at anything and being useful support with options.

Yes, a bard can pick up a few spells and then cast them with equal-to-or-less-than ability compared to other full casters with a customization option (secrets) after another full caster would have already had the spell for 1 or more levels.

The bard still isn't close enough to those casters in their chosen fields to validate that claim. The bard has a useful variety of options.

You could pick spells like banishment or just cherry pick good spells and not focus on anything. Healing spirit plus fly/haste/fireball or whatever is still good.

So a bard cherry-picking a few spells from the wizards list is over-powered because the bard also has good spells, even though the wizard has been cherry-picking the best wizard spells at every single level, got them first, and can cast them better? Replace "wizard" with "cleric" in the preceding paragraph and repeat? That doesn't seem logical.

The bard's breadth cost a lot of focus in respect to either of those classes. The closest competitor to the bard is actually the druid as a cleric / wizard support hybrid and that turns into a debate between the value of wildshape vs inspiration+skills if you want look at that too for an over-all comparison.

 

[Zardnaar]

You either completely missed the point here or are deliberately ignoring it. I never disputed that and included it in my comparison. The discussion has been based on damage per encounter with the assumption it's maintained through the day by budgeting 1 slot per encounter. The damage per encounter isn't going up or down regardless of the number of encounters because it's based per encounter in the first place.

You are also moving the goal posts by changing from fireball to lightning bolt, likely in response to realizing the point against fireball was correct. It was a pointless move because I was always allowing for the benefit of the doubt and giving the damage for the spell once per combat. The point about not using fireball as often due to friendly fire was just pointing it out, but the damage was still included. I agree lightning bolt would work better and used it in an earlier example with a druid. 8d6 damage doesn't change from 8d6 damage in changing spells.

The point is the bard cannot do as much you are claiming. Right now we're changing from fireball to lightning bolt. We cannot claim to have both because you are using 3 non-bard spells at 9th level: eldritch blast, lightning bolt, hex. We are also going with variant human because that is required to pick up eldritch blast plus 2 more spells at this point. An ASI at 4th and 8th level to cap CHA mean a person cannot claim more feats.

This example has no more spell secrets to work with, doesn't have these ones with any other race, and doesn't have these ones with any other bard subclass. This is important to point out because the premise that bards are overpowered by something a specific race and subclass are using is applying a trait not representative of the class.



Yes. It does that. That seems appropriate for a 5th level spell. It does that well within movement speed and that loses the range advantage to do the same damage the lightning bolt in the same slot would do. It also takes another magical secret. These are limited.



Yeah, I already assumed no save bonus when looking at damage, and applied damage on a save when appropriate. I do that because saving throw bonuses tend to be small and rare while armor class does tend to go up.

Only if the bard took one of those spells in the spells known. That's one of the points you are missing or ignoring. When you bumped up from 9th level to 10th level on the lore bard the total number of spells known became 16. You have lightning bolt, hex, and destructive wave.



Readying an action solves the initiative issue. That's never been a problem. I agreed range can be an issue earlier but it's not constant and there are many ways to gain advantage for the sneak attack.



Never said they were, but range gets harder to maintain if there's no one between them and your squishy butt, lol. Especially if you switch to destructive wave and they are now only 30' away for you to be doing damage.



Inspiration dice don't even need to be used on skills. They can be used to any ability check. The problem is repeat rolls empties the pool fast and the dice are usually better spent on inspiration or cutting words. Reliable talent is better than peerless skill and accessible at the levels you were discussing for damage and at 14th level when peerless skill becomes available.

You seem to be presenting Shrodinger's Bard again. A bard cannot cast what he might have taken from the bard list. He can only cast what he has actually taken. That's why I posted actually spell selections at every level.

Here's what happens. You are assuming 2 short rests. You are assuming hex at all times. Hex lasts an hour and short rests take an hour. You had 3 first level slots for hex and it requires a minimum of 3 first level slots to cover hex and that's still assuming not losing it or dropping it for another spell. At 10th level you get 4 first level slot from then to the end of time.

You don't have 1st level slots to spare to recast hex. If you cast invisibility, enhance ability, hypnotic pattern, or heat metal (your examples) you used 1 of your 3 second level slots that you have until the end of time and lost the hex you currently have. You either give up hex or give up another slot to renew it. Hex kills your low level slots with this build. You won't have enough higher level slots to cast those and renew hex and justify a strong damage spell per encounter until 13th or 14th level.



You don't have to blast but you do if you want to do damage and have it considered part of the analysis.

You seem to be taking hypnotic pattern. So percentage of the time? 50/50 support vs attacking? It's not hard to lower the expected potential damage based on blasting with your bard focused on blasting because he's not actually blasting.

That's why I said the only direction you have to go from what I listed is down. I'll remind you the number of times you cast hypnotic pattern is also the number of times you recast hex. If you want to argue this line I'll expect a lot less hex damage.

Which gets back to you missing or ignoring the points I made. Concentration makes keeping hex up all the time is either unrealistic or locks out those other spells you mentioned.

Rogues don't have to sneak attack either. They get to continue sneak attack while the bard does something else, which skews the damage you are claiming even more towards the rogues. On that same note, fast hands is an example of a useful bonus action while not having to give up sneak attack (it lowers chance to hit with it). Arcane tricksters also have spells and can leverage them for sneak attacks or other useful options. Assassins get a free poisoner kit proficiency for a reason and they can be good at harvesting their own poisons.



Peerless skill becomes available at 14th level. The lore bard cannot use bardic dice on himself until then. It's not even as good as the help another action for free at lower levels other than it stacks.

The correct comparison would be peerless skill vs reliable talent. The average bonus on this system uses 10, 15, and 20 DC's as the most common checks. With absolutely no ability score bonus at 14th level when peerless skill becomes available a rogue has 0% failure on any 15 check in which he's proficient and 0% failure on any skill with expertise.

For example, a rogue with 10 CHA auto-succeeds any DC 20 NPC favor request with expertise in persuasion starting at 14th level for the 5e version of the diplomancer build. That doesn't allow the impossible, change consequences, or create it's own consequences by harassing one's associates all the time. It's a demonstration of how useful this ability is.

Give the bard a 20 ability score compared to the 10 ability score for the rogue at the same level and a combined roll of 4 or less on the dice still fails that DC 20 check. Give the bard a 10 ability score to match the rogue and a combined roll of 9 or less fails the check. That's comparing a limited resource to an always-on ability.

Granting that bonus to someone else still carries that fail chance, especially since expertise to double the proficiency check is highly unlikely to be a factor. Bards do not out skill-rogues just like they don't out-heal clerics, out-blast nukers, out-fight fighters, or out-tank barbarians.

Reliable talent also comes online close to 10th level when you are adding destructive wave and is arguably the best skill-based ability in the game. You keep on fighting the good fight arguing that one though.



No, it applies to any ability check. There is a difference between a skill and an ability check. You can use it on initiative and go first if you want. First strike potential on a lore bard is useful, especially if you want to continue with fireball instead of lightning bolt yourself at higher levels, or just beef up that assassin's odds of going before someone else.

How many checks you need to use it for is more of an issue. See my comments on reliable talent above. It's better. Plus the word "average" is relevant. A static bonus is a guaranteed +4 bonus (depending on level OC) and preferable to the 37.5% chance of a lower roll on a d8, imo.



How many dice do you have left after handing out inspiration to the party so they could pretend they have expertise on a single check? Those dice disappear fast. I find the best use is still handing them out for the attack or save bonus. Cutting word for emergency protection or reducing damage is good but less impactful in the long run. Used for skills is more situational. That's how I prioritize those 3-5 dice.



Enhance ability can usually be done with the help action and conflicts with hex for concentration. These are 2 long term concentration spells so you wouldn't even be recasting hex if you were using enhance ability and definitely down damage while enhance ability is maintained.



Disagree. Rogues are better at skills because expertise comes sooner and reliable talent is huge. The damage you are showing is behind multiple rounds of sneak attack. Evasion and cunning action are good for survivability and bards tend to be squishy. It takes deliberate construction that creates scenarios to make a rogue not good for something.



Replace "supposed to be" with "supposedly". There's no rule or guideline that says bards are not supposed to be good at any particular option. Then replace "good" with "good enough". Adding a damage option here really hasn't gone anywhere special. This is adding a good enough damage option when the class is supposedly not good at damage. It's still not special and simply didn't take other reasonable choices.



It's useful because the alternative is not useful? So, WAI? Were you expecting that a bard should have spell list full of ribbon abilities and fluff or something, lol? The goal is to be useful. The benefit is giving up being the best at anything and being useful support with options.

Yes, a bard can pick up a few spells and then cast them with equal-to-or-less-than ability compared to other full casters with a customization option (secrets) after another full caster would have already had the spell for 1 or more levels.

The bard still isn't close enough to those casters in their chosen fields to validate that claim. The bard has a useful variety of options.



So a bard cherry-picking a few spells from the wizards list is over-powered because the bard also has good spells, even though the wizard has been cherry-picking the best wizard spells at every single level, got them first, and can cast them better? Replace "wizard" with "cleric" in the preceding paragraph and repeat? That doesn't seem logical.

The bard's breadth cost a lot of focus in respect to either of those classes. The closest competitor to the bard is actually the druid as a cleric / wizard support hybrid and that turns into a debate between the value of wildshape vs inspiration+skills if you want look at that too for an over-all comparison.

With feat you can pick up hex, eb plus fireball.

I used the enhance ability as an example. If you're using that you're not using hex true but you have a few lower level spells that are best used on buffs.

I used hypnotic pattern as an example because bards get their normal spells on too of magic secrets.

It gives you options. If you want to use spells apart from hex you don't have to build a blaster bard just taking 1-2 blaster spells is fine.

The Bard can cherry pick any spells, sure the wizard has a great spell selection doesn't really get that many more slots except via recalling spells.

You could just take warcaster, 18 Cha plus a feat is often better than 20 cha.

You can take warcaster instead and take healing spirit, fireball lvl 6, destructive wave and say banishment level 10.

Rogue damage isn't that much bards coming close enough in utility and damage and is still a primary caster.

No rogues a primary caster no matter how hard they try.

 

[MostlyHarmless42]

Honestly? My only real complaint with the bard is that it must be musical. I love a good lute minstrel, mind you, but the most common house rule I have regarding bard is to allow them to use any type of performance to cast their spells. The one great thing about the pathfinder version was that I could play a storyteller, narrator, or politician through oration, or use art or dancing as a medium as a bard and not have to pull out an instrument.

 

[gyor]

In Soviet Forgotten Realms bard remakes you!

 

[Ashrym]

With feat you can pick up hex, eb plus fireball.

That's something we both said. I'm not sure where that comment is coming from or your point.

I used the enhance ability as an example. If you're using that you're not using hex true but you have a few lower level spells that are best used on buffs.

Which they cannot do. At 6th level, as you claim, it takes 3 of those 1st level slots to cover hex to cover the 2 short rests assumed that also renew your bardic inspiration. Using enhance ability once cost 1 of those 2nd-level slots and the last 1st-level slot to renew hex. That leaves 2 of the 2nd-level slots. If the bard casts any 2nd-level spell with concentration the final 2nd-level slot also goes to renewing hex. If the bard casts a ritual than another slot goes to renewing hex. If the bard cast any non-ritual non-concentration spell with a casting time greater 1 action another slot goes to renewing hex. Every time the bard takes damage and fails a concentration check that's another slot to renew hex.

What I've been telling you is those spells you mention casting, even for good reasons, don't just take hex away while using concentration for something else. Spell slots go twice as fast and the 1st-level slots are already depleted by renewing after short rests.

Running out of slots prevents applying other spells or damage. That specific spell is the problem keeping the bard from applying hex all the time and still casting those other spells at that level.

I used hypnotic pattern as an example because bards get their normal spells on too of magic secrets.

Right. That's because hypnotic pattern is a 3rd-level spell just like fireball is a 3rd-level spell. The spell level ranking system considers them of roughly equal value. Learning fireball isn't overpowered when hypnotic pattern is very often the better spell to use. It's just a different use of the same 3rd-level spell slot. The actual power increase was at 5th level and gaining that slot, and not at 6th level with simply adding more spells to use it.

Using hypnotic pattern, not only cost hex during that time but cost the slot to renew hex.

It gives you options. If you want to use spells apart from hex you don't have to build a blaster bard just taking 1-2 blaster spells is fine.

There's too much competition for too few slots by referencing or using too many concentration spells in your example, but that's because the bard's spell list is loaded with concentration spells.

Having used your examples and cast enhance ability once and hypnotic pattern once there are enough 3rd-level spell slots to cast fireball twice in the day total. That mean 4 out of 6 encounters will just be eldritch blast and hex.

The spell DC is 15 at 6th level. Assuming absolutely no saving throw bonus or resistance the primary target will take about 35 or 17.5 on average and that blends to 30 with a 30% save rate. Each bolt does ~6.3 damage. 2 encounters do ~55 damage averaged out. 4 encounters would do ~38 damage. That's a rough damage break down.

Hex is killing the versatility you would have for that damage by eating slots and all you are really doing is spamming eldritch blast without agonizing blast. That sucks compared to a standard vanilla warlock at that point. The bard could arguably out-damage the hex build using those lost slots for dissonant whispers leveraging opportunity attacks, remove a major concentration conflict, and still have another secret to take instead. That's still keeping eldritch blast and fireball.

Bards never needed hex to do damage. Using secrets to grab a really good damage multiplier instead of using the really good damage multiplier already available does not prove your cherry-picking premise. The disadvantage in the approach is needing people near the target, much like the typical rogue sneak attack.

Sneak attack, btw, at that level is bringing the rogue ~52 for those 3 rounds encounters. Clearly outdoing the EB's and catching up to the fireball rounds. That's before selecting a race and/or feat, or a subclass to match. Scaling up sneak attack for every round of combat while fireball is only applied to 1 round of combat and EB/hex don't scale until 11th level is still why the rogue will keep outpacing the concept. Spell level and sneak attack both go up at the same but that scaling up is applied 3 times as often for the rogue.

Conversely, losing hex can drop the damage quite a bit and the rogue tanks it without sneak attack at ~21 for a 3 round encounter no sneak attack.

The trick isn't in getting sneak attack. It's getting that second sneak attack.

The Bard can cherry pick any spells, sure the wizard has a great spell selection doesn't really get that many more slots except via recalling spells.

It's not just the extra spell slots from recovery. Arcane recovery is pretty good and eventually spell mastery is a thing. I can live without ritual casting, but it's still a good ability and the wizard mechanic grants a lot of it.

The sparse table misleads. Wizards get a lot out of the traditions the directly improve their spellcasting. Casting divinations on a diviner are almost free, for example. A more direct comparison is the evoker who can ignore friendly fire with a lot of spells for tactical advantage, turns save cantrips from damage or none to damage or half (create bonfire synergy), adds damage as well, still has more spells prepped than the bard, and then pops in overchannel. Your bard example adds skills and healing to the mix but fails tactics with sculpt spells and fails hard compared to overchannel surging. That's not a bard being powerful using secrets. That's a caster making a trade-off.

You could just take warcaster, 18 Cha plus a feat is often better than 20 cha.

You can take warcaster instead and take healing spirit, fireball lvl 6, destructive wave and say banishment level 10.

I can take anything I want that the DM hasn't decided to opt out of the campaign. It's my character, lol. Truth be told, my personal preference is to match my concept and then go for mechanical advantage to match. The concept trumps the cheese tactics.

I would never take destructive wave. I would take banishment and have. I always take an efficient healing spell. When you show destructive wave and banishment, I see "how do I manage raise dead, greater restoration, and mass cure wounds?"

That's something I was getting at in your examples. Your bard sucks as a healer. He does more damage but he's rather marginal even for minor supplemental healing. Throwing those slots at maintaining hex lost the efficient healing by slot bottleneck even if a spell had been selected, and enough wizard spells were being mentioned at 6th and 10th level it didn't look like that was even an option.

Taking a feat can be better than an ASI. It also just dropped your damage potential again by missing more and targets saving more.

Rogue damage isn't that much bards coming close enough in utility and damage and is still a primary caster.

No rogues a primary caster no matter how hard they try.

Except in the example the bard cast enhance ability once and that then did nothing but trail damage except for 2 fireballs. Saying "primary caster" didn't give your primary caster anything to warrant the dismissive comment. The spells and approach to claim the damage for the bard haven't changed that.

A primary caster doing nothing but damage and less than the rogue and "close enough in utility" isn't demonstrating any advantage just by putting on his "I am a caster" t-shirt at that point.

 

[Ashrym]

Honestly? My only real complaint with the bard is that it must be musical. I love a good lute minstrel, mind you, but the most common house rule I have regarding bard is to allow them to use any type of performance to cast their spells. The one great thing about the pathfinder version was that I could play a storyteller, narrator, or politician through oration, or use art or dancing as a medium as a bard and not have to pull out an instrument.

That "Pathfinder version" is just a copy over from 3.x, lol. I used to take exotic male dancing as a performance and use that to fascinate people before Pathfinder existed.

5e touches on it by mentioning bards as scholars in the fluff description and the power of their words. The music part is minor and can be stated as words just fine. Use a spell component pouch instead of an instrument as a focus.

A person can go hard the other way and call their spells "songs", and use an instrument every time. Flavor is easy to adjust.

 

[Zardnaar]

I would use enhance ability out of combat or when walkinging into a dungeon and use it on dexterity. It would depend on what type of blaster bard I built and when.

One half decent fireball or lightning bolt will outdamage a rogue over 3 rounds. Either one will probably hit two targets.

The blaster bard doesn't have to beat a dedicated blaster, it just has to bring the bards damage out of the hole.

I just find the rogue an easy class to dump due to lots of other ways to do it's thing if that's damage or skill use.

Main point is bards regarded as one of the most powerful classes and the rogue isn't.

 

[OB1]

Was just going to say that. In the extreme of a high level of groupthink, it could be as high as 30% of groups!

(and, of course, the 70% approval statistic is based on a group of play-testers who are not likely representative of the wider gaming community, so really, who knows)

The 70% approval statistic is for the public playtest, which is absolutely representative of the wider gaming community.

Furthermore, even assuming independence, 0.3^5 is the probability that a group will dislike the bard specifically. The probability that the group will dislike some class is 1-(1-0.3^5)^12, or a respectable 0.029.

Ahh right, which means that for a group of 5 to 6 it's between a 0.9% and 3% chance that the group as a whole won't like some class, which is what I was trying to say. My math wasn't too far off after all!

 

[Esker]

The 70% approval statistic is for the public playtest, which is absolutely representative of the wider gaming community.

They may not be too far off from representative, but I'll bet that someone who wants to try out a new edition before it's released is more dedicated than your average D&D player, which likely comes along with other differences.

 

[Esker]

The blaster bard doesn't have to beat a dedicated blaster, it just has to bring the bards damage out of the hole.

The main reason to take a spell like fireball with magical secrets is if the party is lacking AoE damage. The bard will never be as good at AoE damage as a wizard, sorcerer, or even cleric, but if the party is, say, a fighter, a rogue, and a non-fiend warlock, then it's a decent pick because it fills a gap. Hex on the other hand I can't see ever taking. You're just not set up to get much out of it as a bard.

In general I think that's what's great about Magical Secrets: it's not that it's going to help you be the best at anything (other than some of those spells with ability checks), but it lets you fill in a gap in your party. If there's no druid/ranger, taking Pass Without Trace at 6th is great. If there's no Cleric, taking Heal at level 14 is great. If there's no Wizard, taking Wall of Force at 10 is a great idea. If there's nobody with AoE damage, taking Fireball at 6th or Destructive Wave at 10th (but not both) would be worthwhile. Etc.

I can't really see spending Magical Secrets on doing single target damage though, since how many parties have a deficiency in that?

Main point is bards regarded as one of the most powerful classes and the rogue isn't.

This is true, but it's not because of bards' ability to do damage. They are powerful because of how well they can boost other members in the party, while also excelling in social interactions.