Bard vs Bard

[drowdude]

I'd much rather cast a 3 hour charm person as standard action than cast a 36 second charm person as a move equivalent action. Charm isn't a combat spell, and it needs a significant duration to accomplish anything.

I also disagree about Chords and Melodies. Charm monster is level 4 spell for mages and level 3 for bards. They both get the spell at the same time. The variant bard's charm monster, soothe the savage beast is effectively the same as Charm Monster, except with much shorter range. He can first learn song at level 13. Old bards would be dominating stuff before that. The variant bard's charms, one of their apparent advantages, aren't competitive with mages or their PHB counterparts. Is essentially doubling the level of key bard ability worth 2 extra points? Also, none of the bard songs strike me as very unique. I loved the bard only spell Modify Memory. Now it's unique effect has been replaced with Sound Channel!?

I'd much rather just prentend my arcane bard casts spells through songs than have a weaker, singing, evasive bard that can't do anything.

Well as I noted before, spells are easily converted into spell-songs generally. If you want Modify Memory just tweak it a little and add to the list of spell-songs available.

Also the duration problem could be easily addressed by modifying the Sustain Song feat a little and extending the chart out to allow ever greater extensions to the duration.


Maybe you shouldnt have to do that at all, maybe it should have already been done for you. But I dont think it's that big of a hassle to go though in order to have a Bard class with a unique flavor to it.

 

[Victim]

I assumed a successful use of Sustain song for double duration (20 DC) in my example. For low level bards, even with high abilities scores, there's a not insignificant chance of failure with the check. Even extending the chart won't help much because they'll be more likely to fail. I don't see much point in a charm that barely lasts long enough to exchange introductions. I have thought of one use: charm someone to get them to cease their attack, then use Diplomacy to attempt a more lasting change in attitude. However, one probably wouldn't have enough time to even do that.

The problem with adding new songs is that the levels that various songs are aquired change greatly. As mentioned earlier, Charm Monster at level 7 versus 13. Which is more appropriate? Bards could take Dominate at level 10. It's generally superior to Charm Monster, but the only appropriate slots would be at the melody level. There's little room for more powerful effects. Some effects, such as Mass Suggestion, are probably to powerful for the existing categories, thus depriving bards of group attack ability.

Adding a minimum level would be very similar to introducing a new song "level," except that there's then little reason to use similar effects because you can trade one for one. Why not just add some more song ranks, thus adding a better power curve?

Also, several of the buff spells were changed to self only, thus reducing their group support role. Self only Haste isn't that impressive on a bard, especially when they have few other useful spells.

Who is going to want character throwing effects little better than cantrips at 5th level? Getting second level spells at 4th level is bad enough for sorcerers, but bards with cantrips/level one spells all the way until level 6 are almost inexcusable. I can't think of any other class that has scaling issues like that.

 

[Black Omega]

I like the PHB Bard class for it's mish-mosh variety. You didn't have to be the poofy singer with the PHB bard, you could do other things and be effective. The bard in the game I run does War Chants for the bardic bless.

 

[drowdude]

@ Victim:


Ok, well I have to concede that some of the spell-songs need better durations. Momentary Charm for instance should prolly be 1 minute per level.

There are, as they say, numerous ways to skin a cat. Having a minimum level required on some spell-songs would just be one way to achieve a desired end. In the end I probably wont even go that route and will merely reduce the effective power levels down a bit more.

I dont mind some of the buff spells being limited to self-only. Buffing up an entire party with spells like Haste should be the sorcerer's forte anyways IMO.


Something else that I think is getting glossed over here is that the spell-songs require no Material or Somatic components.

If you play it according to the core rules, then Monte's bard should suffer NO arcane spell failure at all, regardless of the ACP.

Even if you go by the rule given for this in BOEM2 (no ASF is the ACP is 3 or less) that is still pretty awesome. A bard can fight in a masterwork chain shirt with virtually no penalties.

 

[Zarrock God of Evil]

Don't forget that the new bard also gets Evasion and Improved Evasion....

-Zarrock

 

[Scarab]

Man, I was expecting a Spy vs Spy parody or something...

Heh. Me too. Black Bard vs. White Bard, setting up silly traps for each other.

I don't have BoEM2 yet, but both the new sorcerer and the new bard seem very interesting, and will probably replace the original classes IMC.

 

[Axiomatic Unicorn]

I never really liked the Bardic music 1/day per level powers anyways. They were too easy too abuse (via taking one level of Bard), and I never liked that all bards were assumed to develop identical abilities. Not to mention they capped out at like 9th level or so.

Monte's version fixes those problems as I preceived them.

Also, when comparing the power of the 2 classes dont forget the bump in skill points... that is *really* nice.
Although that puts me in the mind of the other change I made to PHB bards that I will prolly transfer over to Monte's...

Bards getting 4 free ranks in Perform at level 1, and then 1 free rank per bard level attained.
(I word it that way so that if someone multiclasses into Bard later on in the career they dont get maxed out ranks for their character level.)

Abuse? 1 level of bard would give you one use per day. If you took other classes with perform as a skill or spent double points on perform as cross classm you could use higher level abilities that one time. so what?

I did mention the bump in skill point already. 2 points for level is certainly nice, but I don't know about " *really* nice " Not enough to off-set the bardic music ability loss.

 

[Erifnogard]

I like the concept of Monte's new bard, but the execution leaves me a bit cold. The spellsong idea is great, but as presented guts the bard as a useful PC caster. And no, I don't think that 2 more skill points and evasion make up for the power loss.