During my last playtest session we came across a serious problem with Bards. The Dirge of Doom bardic music ability makes all foes within 30 ft. shaken, with no save, and with the duration only limited by how long the bard is willing to maintain it.
By itself, this isn't so bad, -2 to ability checks, skills, attacks and saves is nice, but not gamebreaking. The problem is in the way shaken stacks. A creature that is already shaken will become frightened, fleeing as quickly as possible from the scene, and there are a lot of other ways to make an opponent shaken at that level, Intimidate, Fear, Cause Fear, Doom, etc.
Even worse, several fear effects (including Fear, which a bard has access to around the same level they get Dirge of Doom) can make one or more opponents shaken even on a successful save. The combination of Fear and Dirge of Doom can trivialize almost any encounter with foes that are affected by fear.
Dirge of Doom really needs to either have a save and a limited duration, or it needs to just inflict the penalties without the shaken condition.
Oh, and a quick edit, even after a creature flees, and the effect wears off, there's nothing in the wording of Dirge of Doom that would prevent a bard from just inflicting it again as soon as the opponent closes to with 30 ft. One of the fairly standard "Cannot be affected by dirge of doom again for 24 hours" lines would be nice.
Oh, and a quick edit, even after a creature flees, and the effect wears off, there's nothing in the wording of Dirge of Doom that would prevent a bard from just inflicting it again as soon as the opponent closes to with 30 ft. One of the fairly standard "Cannot be affected by dirge of doom again for 24 hours" lines would be nice.
That would probably be wise.
You point out a potent combination, but I don't know if it's as broken. I have encountered it before, and often counteract it wiht creatures that don't flee (undead) or opposing bards. I've also used a house rule that unintelligent or single-minded opponents simply can only be shaken, as running isn't in their nature.
Past that, there's nothing to stop ranged opponents from targeting a singing bard.