nomenoblitum's page

Some of the obvious suspects for signature spell selection appear to be damage, counteract, and incapacitation spells. But while they benefit from being cast at your highest level slots, their value in lower level slots diminishes as you level up.

So is it better to choose signature spells that benefit obviously from heightening or should you choose spells that you want to cast more than three or four times day? Are there spells that fit in both of those buckets?

Pinstripedbarbarian wrote:

Combat bards work great if you try to build a competent combatant that elevates themself and everyone else in the party rather than just a fantastic destroyer-of-faces on their own.

Things like Inspire Heroics and Dirge of Doom tilt things in your favor, especially if you Harmonize them together.

That takes up three actions every round and nails you to the floor, though, unless you have Haste to have an extra action to move/strike. Harmonize is only really good as a prerequisite for Symphony of the Muse at 20th or for an NPC whose role is to stand still in the middle of a huge platoon of allies and double buff them.

Couldn't a maestro bard blow two focus points and use Lingering Composition to extend each effect? You wouldn't get inspire heroics in that, but you'd get your actions back. Or is there a limit to how many focus spells you can use in a round?

There are VERY few feats that increase your damage. That's true for all classes and all combat styles. Your damge isn't supposed to come from feats anymore. You get your damage from your stats, your weapon, some buffs and Weapon Specialization. And a level 20 fighter will deal only about 7 more damage than a bard, which isn't much at that level. His main advantage is the much better chance to hit due to better weapon proficiencies.

Fighter Multiclass is probably your best bet. Or Champion if you want heavier armor. Just don't expect to get much extra damage out of either. It's more about getting more flexibility wiht various special attacks. Those will rarely add some damage and more oftn than not do stuff like debuffing enemies by making them flat-footed or frightened or something like that.

Interesting. It seems like the bulk of the damage as you level will come from weapon dice increases. So what happens if your weapon is stolen or destroyed? Do you just need to have a backup weapon of around the same level handy?

In PF1e, my favorite way to play a bard in combat was to grab a sword, load up on melee feats and go to town. Spells played a support/utility role.

Maybe it's just my unfamiliarity with the system, but it seems to me that there isn't any provision or affordance to push a bard in a more martial direction.

I suppose I could multiclass fighter to add some cool melee tricks, but the fighter feats don't seem to increase damage that much so I'm not sure how a bard's melee attacks stay relevant over time. Am I just supposed to rely on weapon runes for damage?