NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The_Gneech" data-source="post: 6657370" data-attributes="member: 6779">Well it depends on the fight in question; most of the recent fights we've had have not been particularly complex affairs, so she hasn't been doing a lot of tricky stuff since hitting 4th level. Keep in mind also that I have not been using her to emulate a warlord specifically– she was actually created to be the party arcanist with a minor in healing, so to speak. But she does buffs, debuffs, and tactical support most of the time. (And she was also created as a Pathfinder character and then ported over, so some of her abilities were designed to emulate her history rather than to be optimal choices.)If we were to get into a big fight, however, probably her first action would be to cast Heroism on melee fighter, using her bonus action to provide Inspiration to the ranged fighter, then backpedal away from the fight and get herself some room to maneuver.On subsequent rounds she would react to the situation and change her actions accordingly, but she typically acts as a pocket healer for the melee guy (who, frankly, gets hurt a lot), hands out inspiration to whoever's having trouble hitting their target, or works on debuffing the foes with Vicious Mockery and/or Cutting Words. If they're trying to lock down a foe, she'll attempt to trip them with her whip using her Martial Adept maneuvers (trip and disarm, specifically), although this is an ability that got considerably weaker in the conversion from Pathfinder and which I mainly kept for continuity's sake, or cast Hold Person. She also directs the party strategy, which is pure RP and not reflected in mechanics, but is still important and effective.If I were going to make a build to specifically emulate a warlord, this character wouldn't be it (she has high Int and low Str, not much in the way of Con, and has sub-optimal equipment choices), but even built this way she does hit all the notes  [MENTION=11821]Obryn[/MENTION] described:BATTLE CAPABLE: She has something like AC 15, +5 to hit, 1d8+2 with her rapier and 33 hit points at 4th level. Not a powerhouse by any stretch, but she's not made of tissue paper. As a valor bard she'd probably have AC 18, with a +1 chain shirt and a shield, but the flexibility of spell selection and debuff options of a lore bard were more than worth the trade since her concept involved never fighting personally if she could help it.BUFF: Heroism, InspirationENABLE: InspirationHEAL: Cure Wounds is her tool of choice, but Healing Word is good too If I was going for more of a mitigation-based character she could remove fear or charms with Calm Emotions, remove poison or disease with Lesser Restoration, and at 6th level pick up some interesting buffs like Haste with her Spell Secrets selection. Also if I were building a warlord-mimicking bard my choice would probably have been valor bard with the Shield Master feat, so I could push foes as a bonus action instead of blowing the feat on only having one superiority die. (As I mentioned when I waded into this thread, I only played a warlord for a little while, but the main thing I remember from playing him is A. healing allies, and B. shoving people around the battlefield.)Hope this helps!-The Gneech <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f60e.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":cool:" title="Cool    :cool:"  data-smilie="6"data-shortname=":cool:" />PS: ETA I found a journal writeup that has the closest to a blow-by-blow describing the sort of stuff my bard does. It dates back to her Pathfinder days, but in practice 5E her is not that different. <a href="http://the-gneech.livejournal.com/2289975.html" target="_blank">http://the-gneech.livejournal.com/2289975.html</a></blockquote>

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