Optimizing the bard: Inspire Courage

[Gaiden]

I realize I may have been too wordy (again!). Here's my question:

Can an 8th level bard simultaneously use harmony, a natural horn, and Words of Creation to inspire courage? If so, what is the bonus to attack and damage rolls?

The name Words of Creation pretty much sum up the answer to this: words require speech. So you would not be able to use words of creation with the horn. However, I would let harmony work with the horn or with Words of Creation. The bonus from the bard inspire courage ability is a morale bonus. The adjustments to that bonus simply state that the morale bonus is something other than what it was. Effectively an unnamed bonus or penalty is being applied to the morale bonus, much like an enhancement bonus to a weapon that ultimately affects your attack bonus (just indirectly). And the stackability of these unnamed bonuses are self limiting because the harmony spell is worded as a change to the base value as opposed to a +X to the base value and the horn is limited by only being able to play 1 horn physically as are the words of creation limited to...speaking the words of creation.

So to obtain optimal effects:

Horn + harmony (for 3.5 bard): I would treat this as base inspire courage X+2 for attacks/damage and X+0 for the saves of charm/fear. I would compensate for the -2 and +4 respectively for the saves because the initial value is now +1 and not +2. So raise the X to the next higher value for harmany and then add 1 for the horn for attacks and subtract 1 for the saves.

Harmony +WoC: following a similar mechanic raise X to the next higher value (X+1) and then double just as is done for crit multipliers (as someone else suggested). Obviously the WoC are the optimal choice. They're actually quite scary with harmony - suddenly at 8th level the bard is granting a +6 morale bonus to attacks, damage, and saves vs. fear/charm.

It sure puts my cleric to shame.

BTW, I would not view harmony as doubling the IC bonus. Doing so would be the equivalent of adding 6 levels at level 1, or 12 levels at level 8 to the bard for this ability all for only a 1st level spell. WoC on the other hand explicitly states it doubles this bonus and is meant to be that powerful. Ironically, having harmony double the effect (as opposed to adding 1) would be less powerful at lower levels. It would only grant a +3 instead of +4. At IC +2 the effect is equal. However, above that the doubling of the doubling starts to get more powerful. It is up in the air which you would prefer. I would probably rule that the initial intention of harmony was to double the bonus but that was when IC was static. With it being incremental now, I would have the spell just bump it up the next increment.

 

[Stalker0]

I'd go with the sneak attack crit mechanic, double the base bonus with the words, and then slap on the other plus as extra.

 

[Gaiden]

I'd go with the sneak attack crit mechanic, double the base bonus with the words, and then slap on the other plus as extra.

But the SA mechanic is a subcategory of the normal weapon crit mechanic - namely extra die of damage don't multiply. If he were adding a die based bonus to the moral bonus, they yes, this would be the mechanic to work with. But you have contradicted yourself. The sneak attack is the die based damage that is not multiplied and the nonvariable +'s are the bonuses that are explicitly multiplied.

 

[Cheiromancer]

I think the ruling that I'm most comfortable is

1. WoC must be spoken, and so can't be used in conjunction with a horn.

2. WoC multiply a bonus; Horn and Harmony add to a bonus.

3. Multiply first, then add.

4. The modifers from Horn and Harmony stack.

Thanks everyone for your input!