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How would you balance the Bard & the Cleric?
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Darklone
Registered User
Cleric (as all other full spellcasters): d6 HD, 4 skill points per level, more knowledge skills, medium armour proficiency + shields only.
Bard (as Rogue): d8 HD, more spells known.
At low levels, I like the bard vs sorcerer comparison that a bard knows more spells but can cast far less... Makes the bard the versatile guy who can pull a rabbit out of his hat, but who's not a machinegun.
Bard (as Rogue): d8 HD, more spells known.
At low levels, I like the bard vs sorcerer comparison that a bard knows more spells but can cast far less... Makes the bard the versatile guy who can pull a rabbit out of his hat, but who's not a machinegun.
MarauderX
Explorer
PA said:Less than a rogue.
If the Bards were at least the best a social interactions, it wouldn't be all that bad. But with more Skill points, I can build a better socialite with a Rogue.
You might, but that bard might kick his @$$ then. I could build a more charismatic sorcerer too, but that's not what you are aiming for with those classes in a typical party. It would depend on the DM too, as bardic knowledge might go further in different campaigns compared to the cliched 'thieve's guild information network'. How did the thieve's guild learn the princess is afraid of daylight? Probably paid a bard, IMC.
Humanophile
First Post
I don't think bards really need fixing. Yes, they're not a good replacement for one of the four "core" party members. They're still good as backup for buffs, social situations, and otherwise as a fifth member. Let the class be what it'll be, even if such is not what's expected of your average dungeon-crawler. If someone choses to play the class outside of its proper range, it shouldn't be too hard to see that they can't leverage their strengths well. A +2 bonus to perform, akin to the druid's bonus to survival, would be archetype-cementing and flavor, but hardly central.
Clerics, I have a pretty big list of house rules to bring them into line with where I think they "should" be. I swap the spells/day list for divine casters and wizards. (Oh no! At 11th level, the guy who is solely dependant on his spells is one first level spell ahead, while the guy with armor and a cure stick lacks. For shame. (And yes, I do bump up sorcerers a little to keep them competitive - same infinitesimal bump - but that's outside the scope of this discussion.)) Domain spells still stick around, so clerics still have the psuedo-specialist edge, although I'm very fond of UA's spontaneous divine casters rule, too. Clerics lose heavy armor proficiency; at low levels, medium armor's going to be all you have anyways, at higher levels your buffs will make the difference negligible, and if you really want to play a full-fledged war cleric, a fighter level or a single feat is not too much to ask. And finally, I'm still iffy on this as it may make the cleric feel too pigeonholed and unattractive, is to take away one spell available at each level in exchange for a Lay On Hands mechanic. (1 take away 1 would be -, not 0, so Wis bonus spells wouldn't come into play until later. And evil clerics would have a damaging negative-energy equivalent, I'd have to add a Will for half and playtest to see how well it'd work.) This would make domains more important, throw an interesting hiccup into artificing (as it should be; making clerics pay sorcerer prices for most items would help highlight wizards as the best item-makers), and throw a little more multiple-ability stickiness into the game. I worry a little that it'd make a starting cleric a little too dull and be just the power cut to make the cleric 2e medkit unattractive, though.
Clerics, I have a pretty big list of house rules to bring them into line with where I think they "should" be. I swap the spells/day list for divine casters and wizards. (Oh no! At 11th level, the guy who is solely dependant on his spells is one first level spell ahead, while the guy with armor and a cure stick lacks. For shame. (And yes, I do bump up sorcerers a little to keep them competitive - same infinitesimal bump - but that's outside the scope of this discussion.)) Domain spells still stick around, so clerics still have the psuedo-specialist edge, although I'm very fond of UA's spontaneous divine casters rule, too. Clerics lose heavy armor proficiency; at low levels, medium armor's going to be all you have anyways, at higher levels your buffs will make the difference negligible, and if you really want to play a full-fledged war cleric, a fighter level or a single feat is not too much to ask. And finally, I'm still iffy on this as it may make the cleric feel too pigeonholed and unattractive, is to take away one spell available at each level in exchange for a Lay On Hands mechanic. (1 take away 1 would be -, not 0, so Wis bonus spells wouldn't come into play until later. And evil clerics would have a damaging negative-energy equivalent, I'd have to add a Will for half and playtest to see how well it'd work.) This would make domains more important, throw an interesting hiccup into artificing (as it should be; making clerics pay sorcerer prices for most items would help highlight wizards as the best item-makers), and throw a little more multiple-ability stickiness into the game. I worry a little that it'd make a starting cleric a little too dull and be just the power cut to make the cleric 2e medkit unattractive, though.
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Achan hiArusa
Explorer
Fixing the Bard
I am partial to giving the bard the druidic abilities from the UA plus a some wild shape (slower progression, no elementals, and tiny form [no large]). It gives them more of a 1st ed feel. As for the cleric, no matter how powerful he is, you still don't have players flocking to the class, so its fine as is by me.
As for getting rid of classes, I don't like doing that. Class systems are so limited in character options opposed to point-based systems (like GURPS and Hero) that taking away classes just makes it harder to do a good fit to a character concept (though they don't have the problem of everyone eventually spending his points to become the same, very efficient warrior/thief/spellcaster). In fact, I have more classes than standard in my games to ensure that (An expert with 8 + Int skill points, two good saves of his choice, and 1 bonus feat at 1st, plus one every even level which he may choose freely; the Dragonlance noble with some abilities from the Star Wars Noble [both editions] and the Charm tree of the Charismatic Hero; the AU totem warrior, akashic, champion, and a modified mage blade [made the athame like the OA samurai sword and made him into a spellbook caster like the wizard, and I made some of the Mystic of Nog abilities from the Sha'ir's Handbook into "Arcane" feats]). I did use psionic classes in my games, but the XPH killed that until I have time to use the two books to make the classes and system I want.
Besides my extra core classes, depending on the game I use other classes. In my Mindshadows game (which will require me to sit down and work on psionics) I use the OA sohei and a Complete Warrior/OA cross samurai (I turned all the CW samurai abilities that were feats into bonus feats instead, spread them out evenly and then took that and its class abilities and layered them on the OA samurai [taking its feats out of course]). In Dragonstar I don't use their suggested classes, instead using the Star Wars Technical Specialist with the bonus feat and Jury Rig schedule of the Fringer, and created a Fringer without Jury Rig, but gave him some of the abilities of the Tough and Dedicated Hero (energy/damage resistance, and intuition; makes him more of a survivor type).
And that doesn't include the changes I made to the core classes (see the bard above, my wizard is more like the wizard/wu jen/initiate [from WoT]/magister, and I added some stuff to the sorceror to make taking a prestige class less palatable).
I am partial to giving the bard the druidic abilities from the UA plus a some wild shape (slower progression, no elementals, and tiny form [no large]). It gives them more of a 1st ed feel. As for the cleric, no matter how powerful he is, you still don't have players flocking to the class, so its fine as is by me.
As for getting rid of classes, I don't like doing that. Class systems are so limited in character options opposed to point-based systems (like GURPS and Hero) that taking away classes just makes it harder to do a good fit to a character concept (though they don't have the problem of everyone eventually spending his points to become the same, very efficient warrior/thief/spellcaster). In fact, I have more classes than standard in my games to ensure that (An expert with 8 + Int skill points, two good saves of his choice, and 1 bonus feat at 1st, plus one every even level which he may choose freely; the Dragonlance noble with some abilities from the Star Wars Noble [both editions] and the Charm tree of the Charismatic Hero; the AU totem warrior, akashic, champion, and a modified mage blade [made the athame like the OA samurai sword and made him into a spellbook caster like the wizard, and I made some of the Mystic of Nog abilities from the Sha'ir's Handbook into "Arcane" feats]). I did use psionic classes in my games, but the XPH killed that until I have time to use the two books to make the classes and system I want.
Besides my extra core classes, depending on the game I use other classes. In my Mindshadows game (which will require me to sit down and work on psionics) I use the OA sohei and a Complete Warrior/OA cross samurai (I turned all the CW samurai abilities that were feats into bonus feats instead, spread them out evenly and then took that and its class abilities and layered them on the OA samurai [taking its feats out of course]). In Dragonstar I don't use their suggested classes, instead using the Star Wars Technical Specialist with the bonus feat and Jury Rig schedule of the Fringer, and created a Fringer without Jury Rig, but gave him some of the abilities of the Tough and Dedicated Hero (energy/damage resistance, and intuition; makes him more of a survivor type).
And that doesn't include the changes I made to the core classes (see the bard above, my wizard is more like the wizard/wu jen/initiate [from WoT]/magister, and I added some stuff to the sorceror to make taking a prestige class less palatable).
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Clerics and Bards
Clerics are pretty good as is.
As for Bards... they could use a bump. I'l like to see the number of songs they can sing per day doubled. Their songs are the most powerful ability they have and they can hardly use them. A first level bard can use it only once.
I am personally playing a bard right now and discovered a few handy things. First, the whip is a very handy weapon. i stand in the second row of combatants and crack away with the whip. One of my feats is improved disarm. I don't ever kill anyone with it, but I disarm the opponents about half of the time. I carry one of the group's wands of Cure Light wounds and heal members as needed.
My character is never on the front lines, and should never be. Bards are there for support only.
To make matters a bit more complicated, the guy is a Bard/Cleric of Sune. Now I ruined him by adding a third class (rogue), but even now he still does well, just that advancing him is a royal pain in the butt. I piced up rogue so that someone in the party could disarm traps. The sneak attack is nice, but not real useful most of the time.
THe rest of the party consists of a Kensai (Fighter focused on one weapon), metal druid (interesting, but slightly overpowered), my Bard/Rogue/Cleric of Sune and a halfling wizard who burns through his spells too quick and ends up useless.
My thoughts,
Clerics are pretty good as is.
As for Bards... they could use a bump. I'l like to see the number of songs they can sing per day doubled. Their songs are the most powerful ability they have and they can hardly use them. A first level bard can use it only once.
I am personally playing a bard right now and discovered a few handy things. First, the whip is a very handy weapon. i stand in the second row of combatants and crack away with the whip. One of my feats is improved disarm. I don't ever kill anyone with it, but I disarm the opponents about half of the time. I carry one of the group's wands of Cure Light wounds and heal members as needed.
My character is never on the front lines, and should never be. Bards are there for support only.
To make matters a bit more complicated, the guy is a Bard/Cleric of Sune. Now I ruined him by adding a third class (rogue), but even now he still does well, just that advancing him is a royal pain in the butt. I piced up rogue so that someone in the party could disarm traps. The sneak attack is nice, but not real useful most of the time.
THe rest of the party consists of a Kensai (Fighter focused on one weapon), metal druid (interesting, but slightly overpowered), my Bard/Rogue/Cleric of Sune and a halfling wizard who burns through his spells too quick and ends up useless.
My thoughts,
cleavthorn
Explorer
I found Monte Cook's alternate bard in the Book of Eldritch Might to be an excellent alternate bard class.
I took the character to 5th level bard/ 5th level fighter and then went the way of the Knight of the Chord (which enhanced the bard and the fighter classes).
He uses an alternate magic system as well, Spellsongs. The alternate bards have fewer spells in the selection total, but a broader appilacation IMO.
I took the character to 5th level bard/ 5th level fighter and then went the way of the Knight of the Chord (which enhanced the bard and the fighter classes).
He uses an alternate magic system as well, Spellsongs. The alternate bards have fewer spells in the selection total, but a broader appilacation IMO.
Plane Sailing
Astral Admin - Mwahahaha!
mmu1 said:
umm, who has magic vestment? Who has shield of faith? Both of which stack with any armour worn and scale up with level (unlike shield and mage armour, the only two arcane AC boosting spells that immediately come to mind.
Kalendraf
Explorer
IMHO, the cleric is overpowered, but as someone above pointed out, that may be done purely to entice people to play this class. I've had some difficulty getting players in my campaigns to play clerics, even though they are obviously powerful characters. Personally, I'd like to see the hit dice dropped from d8 to d6, and knock their armor down to medium profiency instead of heavy. Combined, I think those two changes might be enough to bring them into line with the other classes.
As for the bard, I don't think it needs any changing. IMHO, bards aren't anywhere near the weakest class, and are actually somewhere in the middle when compared to the other classes, and their bad rep comes from people just don't know how to play them properly. If someone insists on changing them, I think the only sensible way to do that is to revamp their bard songs/spell lists and perhaps make them into a single coherent form of sound magic.
As someone above mentioned, Monte Cook attempted to do this in BoEM2 with his bard variant. Sadly, that version of the bard is very unbalanced at high levels. My group found in playtesting that it was more powerful than all other classes in terms of damage potential. The main issue was a couple of the low-level damage "notes" in combination with one of the the special music feats (IIRC, Intensify) which become way too good together at the higher levels. I think Monte's bard was a fantastic effort at differentiating how magic works for the bard, but it needs more refinement to keep it balanced.
Note - The BoEM books have been updated for 3.5, but I don't own those, so perhaps Monte addressed some of these concerns with the revision.
As for the bard, I don't think it needs any changing. IMHO, bards aren't anywhere near the weakest class, and are actually somewhere in the middle when compared to the other classes, and their bad rep comes from people just don't know how to play them properly. If someone insists on changing them, I think the only sensible way to do that is to revamp their bard songs/spell lists and perhaps make them into a single coherent form of sound magic.
As someone above mentioned, Monte Cook attempted to do this in BoEM2 with his bard variant. Sadly, that version of the bard is very unbalanced at high levels. My group found in playtesting that it was more powerful than all other classes in terms of damage potential. The main issue was a couple of the low-level damage "notes" in combination with one of the the special music feats (IIRC, Intensify) which become way too good together at the higher levels. I think Monte's bard was a fantastic effort at differentiating how magic works for the bard, but it needs more refinement to keep it balanced.
Note - The BoEM books have been updated for 3.5, but I don't own those, so perhaps Monte addressed some of these concerns with the revision.
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