The school, as a whole, is weak. You saw an occasional Enchanter in 2.0 but 3+? Most people take "X" or "Y" enchantment spell but few specked Enchantment. My 2 cents anyhoo.
Many of my 3.5 villains were enchanters, and I killed more parties with them than with any other same-CR villain I used.
You want a weak school? Evocation in 3.5 is weak. Enchantment is essential.
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The school, as a whole, is weak. You saw an occasional Enchanter in 2.0 but 3+? Most people take "X" or "Y" enchantment spell but few specked Enchantment. My 2 cents anyhoo.Many of my 3.5 villains were enchanters, and I killed more parties with them than with any other same-CR villain I used.
You want a weak school? Evocation in 3.5 is weak. Enchantment is essential.
Charm Person always makes me smile. Saved my butt lots of times. Can't wait for charm monster. :)
Rounds per day versus Performances per day makes me a sad panda. You have just shortened the adventuring day and you have discouraged the use of anything but Inspire Courage as I will need to hoard my rounds per day to have any hope of maintaining it through 4 encounters.
All of the other changes are good but this one just cut the legs out from under my desire to play a Bard. Their only unique ability, their very defining characteristic, took a serious hit from the nerf bat. Under Beta rules I was excited to play a Bard in my next campaign, under the Final rules I'd rather play just about anything else.
I'm afraid I feel just about the same way. Now my bard won't be able to keep up performances all the way through the day. And it seems the proposed solution is actually worse than the original problem. I knew that by level 8 or so my worries about Bardic performances were over. I could keep the song going every combat and still have a few uses afterwards. Now it'll be mid-teens before I can keep up Bardic Music for the entire set of 4 fights (assuming we don't get pushed into a fifth one).
I concur. This is getting hit pretty bad with the nerf bat.
Don't you think this is a bit overreactive?
First, no other magical class can use their primary magical ability all day long. They can't even use their primary magical ability every combat round.
There comes a point in every battle when we've killed the main guy and we're mopping up the mooks that the wizards, clerics, etc., all whip out their staves and maces and start flailing away, just so they can conserve their remaining magic for the next encounter(s).
Now bards have the same limitation.
Frankly, I am quite glad. I got a little tired of the Pied Piper playing a 16-hour flute solo every day, day after day, in towns, in dungeons, in overland travel. That got a little silly.
Now the bard can use all of his perform features because he doesn't have to give up one of his limited daily uses just to help a rogue disable a device - he only has to give up one round of his many daily rounds.
That's a big improvement in my view. Huge.
And combine that with being able to use his other primary class feature, spellcasting, without having to drop his bardic music makes this the best version of a D&D bard ever written.
Go me! Go me! New abilities!
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RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32, 2011 Top 16
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Until we see the full text of the inspire competence ability, it seems like there's a lot of jumping to conclusions on how it interacts with the rounds per day of bardic music. It could easily read that each round of bardic music affect all of the skill checks for a specific skill in a round (such as swim, climb or fly which can be made in a move action), or one skill check for skills that take more than one round (such as disable device or craft).
Personally, I like the flexibility that rounds per day offers, since I almost never saw inspire competence used in play since the choice was always - use it for a tough skill check for one round or save it for inspire courage that lasts a whole fight. Now you can use the 1 round for many skill checks and still have lots of rounds for combat uses.
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i am ambivalent
yes... its nice now that you can use your bardic performance a few more times just by using it for the rounds you need...
but a bard will become useless for longer events than a few seconds or minutes...
yes.. as the preview stated... it can make a few buffs on the party for a mere seconds without worrying in the end...
but for a longer situation... lets say... my bard, she was the captain of a ship... if there is a storm that will take more than a fewminutes, well she used her with performance (oratory) to give orders and Inspire Competence, giving the crew a better chance to save the ship...
now she would be only be able to help them a few seconds or minutes before her orders are useless for her men...
same for the bards in a war or a big battle... even when they continue singing the hymn or using their trumb calling the people to arms... they become useless nothing more than just an ornamentation...
yes... for the adventuring bard i can understand this is a blessing... for those who plan besides the simplicity stated in the preview... the bard has lost a lot...
still baically they gave the bard the perform points that players cried out loud (not me) for take from the barbarian (why? they worked ebtter in the barbarian anyway :S)
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and I am sad... the bard was versatile... but he could just choose one path, he didn't need both... so when they say they have consolidated the bard... it emans mostly that the enxt bard is the same as the last one you saw earlier... ok different spells (considering the limited list) and maybe different perform (really why make something different thatn a singer :S... what happened with the dancer?)
with all of this while the boost to perform for the bard is nice... the skill is still useless for anyone else and not every performer is a bard... the complain mostly was that perform needed to be a better skill more on par with others... not just to make it useful for the bard.
spells are not my area... just see nerf after nerf :S
so.. in sum I will say that I am sad about the changes on the bard in general, its not a deal breaker for me... but I know its for a friend and player of mine... and he didn't liked the changes... beggining... his bard dances... meaning that almost sure most of the powers he used... were send to the traybin
I am very happy with all the previews so far.
I believe being able to cast while performing to be a great thing as it will allow the bard to have a personal say in a fight besides giving a hit and damage bonus to allies (we went from OR to AND). It's a huge thing for the player behind the Bard.
The replacing of those disapointing "0" in the spell progression by "1" will certainly have a huge impact on the spellcasting ability of the Bard.
The versatility of the performances is great fluff & crunch.
All great, many thanks ( even though I will certainly miss the playtest forums!)
DW
I honestly think that the designers only think combat lasts for a few rounds every time. We had two combats during last night's game and they lasted 9 rounds and 11 rounds which is about typical for us. With our bard having a +4 charisma it would be level 7 before she could even last the two fights we had. By that point under the old system she would only have used a small portion of her resources at level 7 for those two fights.
How were your spellcasters doing after 20 rounds of continuous spellcasting?
What's that? They didn't cast a spell every round because they were saving some resources for later? If only the bard could do that, too...
;-) [Just playing devil's advocate.]
Admittedly a valid point, but we've turned what was its iconic ability and made it two to three castings of a bless spell per day. At higher levels it's a higher ability, but overall it's a major weakening of something that should be the foundation of the class.
Secondly our casters were doing just fine after 20 rounds of casting. They now have at-will powers that make it easy to last for an entire combat. And it's not like a round of inspire courage +2 is worth say 7d6 damage to everyone in a 20' radius.
It's a limited resource that has effectively been even more limited. I wouldn't have a problem, but Bardic Music is the critical feature of the class.
Rounds per day versus Performances per day makes me a sad panda. You have just shortened the adventuring day and you have discouraged the use of anything but Inspire Courage as I will need to hoard my rounds per day to have any hope of maintaining it through 4 encounters.
All of the other changes are good but this one just cut the legs out from under my desire to play a Bard. Their only unique ability, their very defining characteristic, took a serious hit from the nerf bat. Under Beta rules I was excited to play a Bard in my next campaign, under the Final rules I'd rather play just about anything else.
I'm afraid I feel just about the same way. Now my bard won't be able to keep up performances all the way through the day. And it seems the proposed solution is actually worse than the original problem. I knew that by level 8 or so my worries about Bardic performances were over. I could keep the song going every combat and still have a few uses afterwards. Now it'll be mid-teens before I can keep up Bardic Music for the entire set of 4 fights (assuming we don't get pushed into a fifth one).
I concur. This is getting hit pretty bad with the nerf bat.
Don't you think this is a bit overreactive?
First, no other magical class can use their primary magical ability all day long. They can't even use their primary magical ability every combat round.
There comes a point in every battle when we've killed the main guy and we're mopping up the mooks that the wizards, clerics, etc., all whip out their staves and maces and start flailing away, just so they can conserve their remaining magic for the next encounter(s).
Now bards have the same limitation.
Frankly, I am quite glad. I got a little tired of the Pied Piper playing a 16-hour flute solo every day, day after day, in towns, in dungeons, in overland travel. That got a little silly.
Now the bard can use all of his perform features because he doesn't have to give up one of his limited...
I don't have a problem with the limitation. As I stated before I think rounds/day versus uses per day is alright. What I'm upset about is that it doesn't scale quickly enough. I thought CHA + 2 additional uses a level instead of a flat 2 uses would have been a better formaula.
My additional problem is that the uses aren't equivalent. A single round of +1 to hit and +1 damage isn't nearly as useful as a +2 to a difficult skill check for a single round. Also a single round of +4 to hit and +4 damage isn't as useful as 'I kill you'.
As for your idea of the 16-hour long fiddling contest. That's something that should be handled by roleplay. As a GM, I'd say, "You're now exhausted for playing for that many hours straight" or "The NPCs around town are throwing rotten fruit at you because you won't shut up."
Admittedly there really hasn't been a lot of abusing of that power via uses. But again, I'm not against rounds per day. I'm against such a small number of rounds per day at mid to high levels.
Director of Game Design
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Couple of points here folks...
1. For the rounds per day mechanic, this is the same as the barbarian, basically. Most of the characters have a limited/per day mechanic, and asking them to go 20+ rounds in one day using their abilities is pretty tough (as was mentioned earlier). The thought of a bard singing or playing his instrument all day is a bit of a farce, as was mentioned a number of times in the playtest. Until you have used this system, I would hold off on your reservations. Does it mean that the bard stops playing before the fight is over, when the outcome is obvious, yes. It forces bards to do a little bit more resource management, but not much more than they are used to and it really offers the opportunity to use some of the less common performance types. Besides.. it got James' seal of approval.. and he loves bards more than anyone in the office.
2. I also wanted to note that the versatile performances are all tied to appropriate skills, most of which are social in nature. We have found that it can be a real good role playing tool to say, dance your way past an enemy, or influence the kind with a rousing speech.
3. The spells that got nerfed a bit here needed it.. badly. Both of them were pretty hard-core save or suck spells that, at 2nd level, could really make a fight one sided. Mind you, they are still good, they are just not hands down better than the other 2nd level spells.
Hope that helps clear up some issues...
Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer
Paizo Publishing
Couple of points here folks...
1. For the rounds per day mechanic, this is the same as the barbarian, basically. Most of the characters have a limited/per day mechanic, and asking them to go 20+ rounds in one day using their abilities is pretty tough (as was mentioned earlier). The thought of a bard singing or playing his instrument all day is a bit of a farce, as was mentioned a number of times in the playtest. Until you have used this system, I would hold off on your reservations. Does it mean that the bard stops playing before the fight is over, when the outcome is obvious, yes. It forces bards to do a little bit more resource management, but not much more than they are used to and it really offers the opportunity to use some of the less common performance types. Besides.. it got James' seal of approval.. and he loves bards more than anyone in the office.
But a barbarian can go 20+ rounds in a day with his mechanic because he gets CON+2 a level instead of a flat 2. Admittedly long fights might not happen in your campaigns, but they are very much the norm in almost all the campaigns I've played in. Are you saying the GMs are wrong in their style? I think the average for our group is 8 rounds per fight with the maximum being around 40 rounds. No, not every round was doing something, but spells cast that last minutes per level do last that long.
2. I also wanted to note that the versatile performances are all tied to appropriate skills, most of which are social in nature. We have found that it can be a real good role playing tool to say, dance your way past an enemy, or influence the kind with a rousing speech.
These I really liked. I do want to make it clear that I liked 90% of what was done with the Bard. I'm just apprehensive about this one change.
3. The spells that got nerfed a bit here needed it.. badly. Both of them were pretty hard-core save or suck spells that, at 2nd level, could really make a fight one sided. Mind you, they are still good, they are just not hands down better than the other 2nd level spells.
Hope that helps clear up some issues...
Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer
Paizo Publishing
I'd just like to see more partials. For example if you save you're still laughing for one round, but otherwise you get a save every round. My problem with a lot of save or suck spells is that you either end up removing someone from combat completely or they're completely ineffective. I'd like to see a bit of constraining on both fronts.
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But a barbarian can go 20+ rounds in a day with his mechanic because he gets CON+2 a level instead of a flat 2. Admittedly long fights might not happen in your campaigns, but they are very much the norm in almost all the campaigns I've played in. Are you saying the GMs are wrong in their style? I think the average for our group is 8 rounds per fight with the maximum being around 40 rounds. No, not every round was doing something, but spells cast that last minutes per level do last that long.
This was changed with an update to the Barbarians that Jason posted on the boards. It read as follows:
Rage (Ex): A barbarian can call upon inner reserves of strength and ferocity, granting her additional combat prowess. Starting at 1st level, a barbarian can rage for a number of rounds per day equal to 4 + her Constitution modifier. At each level after 1st, she can rage for 2 additional rounds. Temporary increases to Constitution, such as those gained from rage and spells like bear’s endurance, do not increase the total number of rounds that a barbarian can rage per day. A barbarian can enter rage as a free action. The total number of rounds of rage per day are renewed after resting for 8 hours, although these hours do not need to be consecutive.
I believe it is the same in final as this, or at least quite similar. Other things were changed to help, such as the Rage Powers being permanent bonuses during a rage instead of requiring rage points to use.
You can find the update here.
Your God of Knowledge,
Nethys
- Round 1:
- So what do you do?
- I sing.
- Round 2:
- So what do you do now?
- I keep singing.
- Round 3:
- You keep singing?
- Um yeah, I guess. *yawns*
- Round 4:
- You keep singing again?
- I think the fighter took a hit. I'll stop singing and go heal him.
- The cleric just got done healing him a second ago while you were nodding off.
- Oh, sorry...I guess I keep singing.
You guys actually liked that better?
Round 1:
- So what do you do?
- I sing.
Round 2:
- So what do you do now?
- I keep singing.
Round 3:
- You keep singing?
- Um yeah, I guess. *yawns*
Round 4:
- You keep singing again?
- I think the fighter took a hit. I'll stop singing and go heal him.
- The cleric just got done healing him a second ago while you were nodding off.
- Oh, sorry...I guess I keep singing.
You guys actually liked that better?
You still get to attack and disarm and trip and do all the other bard goodness. You're only prohibited from casting and using command word magic items.
It's not a complete loss.
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...It forces bards to do a little bit more resource management,
Added bonus is that many of those seemingly redundant spells on the bard spell list become more useful. Most have fairly significant durations compared to bardic performances, so you have another viable resource to spend instead of/in conjunction with your bardic abilities instead of a lame duck.
...2. I also wanted to note that the versatile performances are all tied to appropriate skills, most of which are social in nature. We have found that it can be a real good role playing tool to say, dance your way past an enemy, or influence the kind with a rousing speech.
As long as the connections between the perform type and skills make sense, it's all good. Promise that things like perform (saucy puppet show) do not replace slight of hand? ;)
Round 1:
- So what do you do?
- I sing.
Round 2:
- So what do you do now?
- I keep singing.
Round 3:
- You keep singing?
- Um yeah, I guess. *yawns*
Round 4:
- You keep singing again?
- I think the fighter took a hit. I'll stop singing and go heal him.
- The cleric just got done healing him a second ago while you were nodding off.
- Oh, sorry...I guess I keep singing.
You guys actually liked that better?
Frogboy -- in 3.5, Inspire Courage did not take a standard action each round. You could keep it going for free, you just couldn't cast spells or use wands at the same time. But you could certainly smack someone with your rapier (say) while singing.
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Great example!
Especially since I would have made a bard continuing his performance through the entire day in 3.0 bring the entire dungeon down on his head, plus if you continue to sing throughout the day, when you gonna eat? spit? take a whiz? talk?
That was a broken mechanic and if your DM let you get away with that, well frankly they're not a very good DM.
It was a resource before, a very finite resource...concentration to continue your performance? You just got shot in the throat with an arrow...
"I keep singing...*gurgle gurgle*
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Director of Game Design
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As long as the connections between the perform type and skills make sense, it's all good. Promise that things like perform (saucy puppet show) do not replace slight of hand? ;)
Unfortunately, Perform (saucy puppet show) replaces Handle Animal and Slight of Hand...
Oh yeah.. umm.. wait.. nevermind.
Unfortunately, Perform (saucy puppet show) replaces Handle Animal and Slight of Hand...
Oh yeah.. umm.. wait.. nevermind.
WHERE ARE YOU PUTTING THAT HAND, JASON?!? STEP AWAY FROM THE SHEEP!!
But a barbarian can go 20+ rounds in a day with his mechanic because he gets CON+2 a level instead of a flat 2. Admittedly long fights might not happen in your campaigns, but they are very much the norm in almost all the campaigns I've played in. Are you saying the GMs are wrong in their style? I think the average for our group is 8 rounds per fight with the maximum being around 40 rounds. No, not every round was doing something, but spells cast that last minutes per level do last that long.This was changed with an update to the Barbarians that Jason posted on the boards. It read as follows:
Rage (Ex): A barbarian can call upon inner reserves of strength and ferocity, granting her additional combat prowess. Starting at 1st level, a barbarian can rage for a number of rounds per day equal to 4 + her Constitution modifier. At each level after 1st, she can rage for 2 additional rounds. Temporary increases to Constitution, such as those gained from rage and spells like bear’s endurance, do not increase the total number of rounds that a barbarian can rage per day. A barbarian can enter rage as a free action. The total number of rounds of rage per day are renewed after resting for 8 hours, although these hours do not need to be consecutive.
I believe it is the same in final as this, or at least quite similar. Other things were changed to help, such as the Rage Powers being permanent bonuses during a rage instead of requiring rage points to use.
You can find the update here.
Your God of Knowledge,
Nethys
This I had not seen, but even so if you're going to limit it like this I would have liked to have seen some additional goodness come from it. For example, I would have loved to see feats that give you additional bonuses while you're inspiring courage or competence.
Like maybe any of these:
Something to boost the effectiveness of their limited rounds of bard song (like the barbarian has).
Couple of points here folks...
1. For the rounds per day mechanic, this is the same as the barbarian, basically. Most of the characters have a limited/per day mechanic, and asking them to go 20+ rounds in one day using their abilities is pretty tough (as was mentioned earlier). The thought of a bard singing or playing his instrument all day is a bit of a farce, as was mentioned a number of times in the playtest. Until you have used this system, I would hold off on your reservations. Does it mean that the bard stops playing before the fight is over, when the outcome is obvious, yes. It forces bards to do a little bit more resource management, but not much more than they are used to and it really offers the opportunity to use some of the less common performance types. Besides.. it got James' seal of approval.. and he loves bards more than anyone in the office.
2. I also wanted to note that the versatile performances are all tied to appropriate skills, most of which are social in nature. We have found that it can be a real good role playing tool to say, dance your way past an enemy, or influence the kind with a rousing speech.
3. The spells that got nerfed a bit here needed it.. badly. Both of them were pretty hard-core save or suck spells that, at 2nd level, could really make a fight one sided. Mind you, they are still good, they are just not hands down better than the other 2nd level spells.
Hope that helps clear up some issues...
Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer
Paizo Publishing
Is the bonus at least typeless now so that it doesn't overlap so much with the other bardic spells. For why should a bard cast a spell that gives people a +2 morale bonus to hit and damage when they can sing or vice versa.
One of the great things I used to play now with Bards I can no longer do and that makes me a sad bard panda.
One of the things that used to be common with bards is that I would have one setup where you have a two- or three- person team setup where one person was the bard and they would be fascinating a group of people while the other two were going around picking pockets. Now it seems that with such a limited number of rounds of fascinate (effectively) that you wouldn't be able to pick more than one or two pockets in that time (since they're being all sneaky and such and not moving their full 30' a round).
I'll miss those days.
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Great example!
Especially since I would have made a bard continuing his performance through the entire day in 3.0 bring the entire dungeon down on his head, plus if you continue to sing throughout the day, when you gonna eat? spit? take a whiz? talk?
That was a broken mechanic and if your DM let you get away with that, well frankly they're not a very good DM.
It was a resource before, a very finite resource...concentration to continue your performance? You just got shot in the throat with an arrow...
"I keep singing...*gurgle gurgle*
i would be very careful of language here. simply because someone chooses to allow for a (granted, verisimilitude-breaking and contentious) ability, that does NOT directly correspond to "not very good dm."
In point of fact, I take significant offense to this.
But, that's neither here nor there, and the upcoming abilities (especially the differences in Competence and Spellcasting) seem really exciting.
As far as the "hit something with your rapier" comment above, I currently have a Bard/Mindbender 15 in the tail end of the Savage Tide AP. Anything he can reasonably hit in melee is either a pure mook, and the cohort taking out a mook is perfectly reasonable, OR, something that will shred him into ribbons post haste.
Granted, he uses a bow most of the time, taking pot-shots in between song-changes and other buffs cast, but still, every combat starts with "Cast Haste" followed by "Inspire Courage + Inspirational Boost," not necessarily in that order. While I appreciate the force-multiplication of the class, and think it's wicked fun to play, in a straight combat situation I have very limited options. He's just much better in the social-circle-arena.
-t
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Director of Game Design
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Is the bonus at least typeless now so that it doesn't overlap so much with the other bardic spells. For why should a bard cast a spell that gives people a +2 morale bonus to hit and damage when they can sing or vice versa.
Actually the bonus type was changed to competence, which prevents it from stacking with many spells and other abilities.
Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer
Paizo Publishing
Round 1:
- So what do you do?
- I sing.
Round 2:
- So what do you do now?
- I keep singing.
Round 3:
- You keep singing?
- Um yeah, I guess. *yawns*
Round 4:
- You keep singing again?
- I think the fighter took a hit. I'll stop singing and go heal him.
- The cleric just got done healing him a second ago while you were nodding off.
- Oh, sorry...I guess I keep singing.
You guys actually liked that better?
+1
I have a player running a bard in Second Darkness right now, and it gets to where I just skip over him in the initiative every round because it's ALL HE DOES.
DM: Okay, all the enemies have attacked, you're doing X, you're doing Y ... oh, and [bard], I assume you're still singing?
Bard: Yeah [without looking up, as he continues to text his girlfriend throughout the combat]
Please, make him put some thought into what he's doing.
(And, yes, I know he could have taken other actions while maintaining his song. The problem is, he doesn't. Now, maybe, if he runs out of Perform rounds, he'll have to do something.)
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Is the bonus at least typeless now so that it doesn't overlap so much with the other bardic spells. For why should a bard cast a spell that gives people a +2 morale bonus to hit and damage when they can sing or vice versa.Actually the bonus type was changed to competence, which prevents it from stacking with many spells and other abilities.
Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer
Paizo Publishing
But not the ones that matter most, like bless. This is a good thing.
Round 1:
- So what do you do?
- I sing.
Round 2:
- So what do you do now?
- I keep singing.
Round 3:
- You keep singing?
- Um yeah, I guess. *yawns*
Round 4:
- You keep singing again?
- I think the fighter took a hit. I'll stop singing and go heal him.
- The cleric just got done healing him a second ago while you were nodding off.
- Oh, sorry...I guess I keep singing.
You guys actually liked that better?
+1
I have a player running a bard in Second Darkness right now, and it gets to where I just skip over him in the initiative every round because it's ALL HE DOES.
DM: Okay, all the enemies have attacked, you're doing X, you're doing Y ... oh, and [bard], I assume you're still singing?
Bard: Yeah [without looking up, as he continues to text his girlfriend throughout the combat]
Please, make him put some thought into what he's doing.
(And, yes, I know he could have taken other actions while maintaining his song. The problem is, he doesn't. Now, maybe, if he runs out of Perform rounds, he'll have to do something.)
We can't help it that he doesn't realize you can actually do stuff while you sing, but you can and you always could. You can sing and fight all day long. I think this was more a misunderstanding of the class. Additionally even in the situation where you were singing and didn't think you could fight you could still move around to provide flanks and position yourself to drop out of singing in order to provide a critical heal. The class still had tactical decisions to make.
I honestly think that the designers only think combat lasts for a few rounds every time. We had two combats during last night's game and they lasted 9 rounds and 11 rounds which is about typical for us. With our bard having a +4 charisma it would be level 7 before she could even last the two fights we had. By that point under the old system she would only have used a small portion of her resources at level 7 for those two fights.
How were your spellcasters doing after 20 rounds of continuous spellcasting?
What's that? They didn't cast a spell every round because they were saving some resources for later? If only the bard could do that, too...
Admittedly a valid point, but we've turned what was its iconic ability and made it two to three castings of a bless spell per day. At higher levels it's a higher ability, but overall it's a major weakening of something that should be the foundation of the class.
Secondly our casters were doing just fine after 20 rounds of casting. They now have at-will powers that make it easy to last for an entire combat. And it's not like a round of inspire courage +2 is worth say 7d6 damage to everyone in a 20' radius.
It's a limited resource that has effectively been even more limited. I wouldn't have a problem, but Bardic Music is the critical feature of the class.
Hyperbole on both sides of your argument. You undervalue the bardic ability by saying it is now "two to three castings of a bless spell per day". No, it's more like 8 castings of a bless spell per day. 4+ CHA.
Then you overstate the ability of the spellcaster at-will. Sure, it's great at levels 1 through 4, but after that, an at-will ability that does maybe 10 HP/round to a single target really pales in comparison to what a high-level caster can do, and I would hardly call that "easy to last for an entire combat" unless you define "last" as "being completely ineffective".
Then to really drive home your point, as if downplaying the bards and overstating the other casters wasn't enough, you're evidently comparing low-level bards against high-level casters if you're assuming a caster has 20 rounds worth of spells.
You're kinda going out of your way to make this look worse than it is. Wouldn't it be more meaningful to make your point by sticking with actual facts?
To note:
I'll not be surprised if that the Extra Performance feat is stackable; 6 extra rounds each time you take it.
Is the bonus at least typeless now so that it doesn't overlap so much with the other bardic spells. For why should a bard cast a spell that gives people a +2 morale bonus to hit and damage when they can sing or vice versa.Actually the bonus type was changed to competence, which prevents it from stacking with many spells and other abilities.
Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer
Paizo Publishing
Why oh why would you prevent it from working more often? It just feels to me like we're taking something that was a moderately good to very good aspect of the bard and making it something that people won't want to use as often.
I will reserve final judgement for the class until I play the final for awhile as I will every other mechanic in the final. But it just feels to me that the most important part of the bard concept is now more limited when I was hoping it would be expanded.
Couple of points here folks...
1. For the rounds per day mechanic, this is the same as the barbarian, basically. Most of the characters have a limited/per day mechanic, and asking them to go 20+ rounds in one day using their abilities is pretty tough (as was mentioned earlier). The thought of a bard singing or playing his instrument all day is a bit of a farce, as was mentioned a number of times in the playtest. Until you have used this system, I would hold off on your reservations. Does it mean that the bard stops playing before the fight is over, when the outcome is obvious, yes. It forces bards to do a little bit more resource management, but not much more than they are used to and it really offers the opportunity to use some of the less common performance types. Besides.. it got James' seal of approval.. and he loves bards more than anyone in the office.
I understand that Barbarian Rage is the closest in terms of mechanics to Bardic Performance but it really isn't all that close from a functionality stand point. Rage is only used in combat to help the Barbarian overcome a BBEG and in this way it is very similar to Inspire Courage. Bardic Performance, however, is asked to function in several different ways in combat and out of it; Inspire Courage isn't intended to be its only application. As a result Bardic Performance should be capable of being used far more times than an ability like Rage. If it is overly limited you will force it into being used only for one or two of the available options - see argument below.
You might note that none of the people who are concerned by the change to rounds versus performances were advocating playing or singing for 16 hours per day. The posters suggesting that use were using a hyperbolic example to apparently attempt to demonstrate that the Bard was an overpowered class in 3.5. Moreover, the only way any Bard gets away with such silliness is through poor and lazy DMing and the game should not be balanced under the assumption that its users will be poor and lazy DMs. If you felt the need to add something to the rules it would have made more sense to cap the length of time a Bard could sustain a performance.
I also think you are incorrect to assume that this will result in more of the Bardic abilities being used. I think you have virtually guaranteed that only Inspire Courage will see play in games. Under the Beta rules, once I got to level 4 I virtually had my Inspire Courages taken care of for any given day (4 uses and 4 encounters suggested per day) so any additional uses could be put toward other interesting abilities. By the time I qualified for Dirge of Doom I had enough uses to be able to perform both Inspire Courage and Dirge of Doom in each encounter, so on and so forth as level increased. Now I need to take a feat and hit levels in the double digits before I have a hope of maintaining my Inspire Courage across all of my encounters. I simply don't have the stamina to help other players outside of combat, I need to save my strength for when death is on the line.
This is a lot more resource management than Bards are used to. As others have pointed out Bards were effectively getting 6+ rounds of performance per level. The Beta Bard is ahead of the Final Bard in terms of uses of the ability by level 2 and the gap only widens from there.
I am glad Mr. Jacobs likes the changes. I imagine they support his view of how a Bard should be played. However, you have limited the versatility of the class and those of us who had a different vision of the Iconic Jack of All Trades are left looking for something else to play. I am sure many people will like this new version, but personally I would have preferred the Beta version as it was, warts and all, compared to what was previewed today.
I have to be honest, this is the only preview I've disliked thus far. The previous bard system was fine (I've never seen a group run into the problem described at the beginning of the chapter, but I have seen a huge mass combat go on for ten rounds more than once per day in military campaigns). I wish this system had previewed in Beta, because I think the community, after playing with it, would've torn it apart.
The argument that 'well, casters can't cast for 20 rounds, so it's resource management' is kind of stupid. If there's one thing we've learned from the nightmare of 4th edition, it's that having a variety of mechanics work completely differently is totally fine. The bard doesn't NEED to work like the paladin and barbarian. The idea behind bardic music was that, while significantly weaker than spellcasting, could go on for much longer (most of us can sing for 2 minutes). The problem was that it was too weak.
Giving a mechanic a tiny boost (one more inspire courage at low levels, woo) and then hitting it with a massive nerfbat doesn't really make sense for something that's already underpowered. And I have to wonder if the people thinking the new boost would overpower the old mechanic would share whatever they were smoking with the rest of the gaming community.
How disappointing.
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Funny enough, this would not surprise me either...
Finally I'll have something to spend those extra feats on! ;)
Having inspire courage and bless as stackable effects is great! Our party cleric and my bard have had a sort of rivalry over who can put out their morale bonus buffs first. No longer an issue once the new edition is in hand. He was getting tired of losing anyways.
Round 1:
- So what do you do?
- I sing.
Round 2:
- So what do you do now?
- I keep singing.
Round 3:
- You keep singing?
- Um yeah, I guess. *yawns*
Round 4:
- You keep singing again?
- I think the fighter took a hit. I'll stop singing and go heal him.
- The cleric just got done healing him a second ago while you were nodding off.
- Oh, sorry...I guess I keep singing.
You guys actually liked that better?
Ermmm....I hope you didn't play a bard. 'Cause, that's not how it worked.
I don't have a problem with the limitation. As I stated before I think rounds/day versus uses per day is alright. What I'm upset about is that it doesn't scale quickly enough. I thought CHA + 2 additional uses a level instead of a flat 2 uses would have been a better formaula.
Hmmm. That would give Lem 56 uses of bardic music per day. At 8th level. That's quite a lot. And Lem has an awfully low CHA for an 8th level bard. He should be at least 2-4 points higher, IMO, which would give him 8-16 more uses by your formula. 72 rounds of bardic music per day is a whole heckuva lot.
My additional problem is that the uses aren't equivalent. A single round of +1 to hit and +1 damage isn't nearly as useful as a +2 to a difficult skill check for a single round. Also a single round of +4 to hit and +4 damage isn't as useful as 'I kill you'.
And Bless isn't as useful as Cure Light Wounds, and a level 1 magic maissile does far less damage than a level 1 Enlarge Person. And Haste isn't as useful as Wish.
As for your idea of the 16-hour long fiddling contest. That's something that should be handled by roleplay. As a GM, I'd say, "You're now exhausted for playing for that many hours straight" or "The NPCs around town are throwing rotten fruit at you because you won't shut up."
Except there is no rule for bardic musing causing exhaustion. Are we discussing core mechanics or houserules?
As for the rotten fruit (fruit? really? that's a precious commodity - how about rotten vegetables instead...) all a bard has to do is stop playing on the way into to town then start again on the way out, so now it's two performances in a 16-hour day.
None of which addresses 16 hours of piping in the dungeon.
Admittedly there really hasn't been a lot of abusing of that power via uses. But again, I'm not against rounds per day. I'm against such a small number of rounds per day at mid to high levels.
Don't forget that unlike all the other primary casters, except maybe for druids, bards offer a wide variety of other features. They are not a one-trick pony that can only do their main class feature or nothing. Their combat is lacking, but as good as any primary caster and better than most. Their skill selection is better than anyone but rogues. And best of all, they have TWO primary abilities. Music AND spells. Nobody else gets that.
So yeah, maybe they can't play their bardic music every round of combat throughout the day. But those other rounds they will be spellcasting and/or meleeing with enough efficiency to make all the primary spellcasters, all of them, wish they could be as useful as bards in as many rounds/day as bards can be useful.
I honestly think that the designers only think combat lasts for a few rounds every time. We had two combats during last night's game and they lasted 9 rounds and 11 rounds which is about typical for us. With our bard having a +4 charisma it would be level 7 before she could even last the two fights we had. By that point under the old system she would only have used a small portion of her resources at level 7 for those two fights.
How were your spellcasters doing after 20 rounds of continuous spellcasting?
What's that? They didn't cast a spell every round because they were saving some resources for later? If only the bard could do that, too...
Admittedly a valid point, but we've turned what was its iconic ability and made it two to three castings of a bless spell per day. At higher levels it's a higher ability, but overall it's a major weakening of something that should be the foundation of the class.
Secondly our casters were doing just fine after 20 rounds of casting. They now have at-will powers that make it easy to last for an entire combat. And it's not like a round of inspire courage +2 is worth say 7d6 damage to everyone in a 20' radius.
It's a limited resource that has effectively been even more limited. I wouldn't have a problem, but Bardic Music is the critical feature of the class.
Hyperbole on both sides of your argument. You undervalue the bardic ability by saying it is now "two to three castings of a bless spell per day". No, it's more like 8 castings of a bless spell per day. 4+ CHA.
Then you overstate the ability of the spellcaster at-will. Sure, it's great at levels 1 through 4, but after that, an at-will ability that does maybe 10 HP/round to a single target really pales in comparison to what a high-level caster can do, and I would hardly call that "easy to last for an entire combat" unless you define "last" as "being completely ineffective".
Then to really drive home your point, as if...
I have a lot of respect for you DM_Blake, and you make a lot of good points, but I wasn't comparing high-level casters to low-level bards, I was recounting a combat from last night while making mental adjustments in my head for the final rules.
Bless lasts 1 minute per level or 10 rounds per casting at first.
In our campaign we're level 5 and 6.
At level 6 the bard with 18 CHA is being compared to the Sorcerer with 18 CHA.
The bard has 4+4+5*2 or 18 rounds of Inspire Courage +2.
The Sorcerer casts Bless once for 60 rounds of +1 hit/+1 vs fear.
That isn't hyperbole, and that certainly isn't 8 castings of bless at level 1. At level 1 bless will last longer than a bard can maintain its song unless it has a 22 CHA which is unlikely.
Now the Bard's ability is better, but it's certainly limited in the amount of time it can be used.
Good Hope shows up at 7th level and is completely superior to Inspire Courage as it gives +2 attack rolls, damage, skills, saves, and ability checks. And it lasts 1 min./level or 70 rounds when you can get it and affects a creature per level (7 when you get it).
All I'm saying is that it's not as good as it should be considering the alternatives. It should last as long as the magic equivalents, if not longer.
A simpler fix to the bardic song problem is that using a bard song more than an hour requires an additional use of the power at the start of each hour.
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I have to be honest, this is the only preview I've disliked thus far. The previous bard system was fine (I've never seen a group run into the problem described at the beginning of the chapter, but I have seen a huge mass combat go on for ten rounds more than once per day in military campaigns). I wish this system had previewed in Beta, because I think the community, after playing with it, would've torn it apart.
The argument that 'well, casters can't cast for 20 rounds, so it's resource management' is kind of stupid. If there's one thing we've learned from the nightmare of 4th edition, it's that having a variety of mechanics work completely differently is totally fine. The bard doesn't NEED to work like the paladin and barbarian. The idea behind bardic music was that, while significantly weaker than spellcasting, could go on for much longer (most of us can sing for 2 minutes). The problem was that it was too weak.
Giving a mechanic a tiny boost (one more inspire courage at low levels, woo) and then hitting it with a massive nerfbat doesn't really make sense for something that's already underpowered. And I have to wonder if the people thinking the new boost would overpower the old mechanic would share whatever they were smoking with the rest of the gaming community.
How disappointing.
Change the rules for military campaigns...Military campaigns are not standard D&D.
Make an alternate class ability. (one that mimics the original) or a feat,
Lingering Performance
The lines of the poem reverberate in your mind long after the bard stops reciting the poem.
The effects of your performance persist for the number of rounds you perform, up to your charisma modifier.
example: If your Bard with a +3 CHA modifier, plays for 5 rounds, the performance lasts for 3 additional rounds.
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Director of Game Design
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So... let me get this straight here...
3.5 8th level Bard (with Extra Music) in one day does the following:
1 Use Fascinating the guard and using Suggestion to sneak past him (taking 2 rounds).
1 Use of Countersong to cancel a sonic spell (taking 1 round).
3 Uses of Inspire Competence to grant a bonus to the group's cleric use the Heal skill to stabilize, the Wizard to make a knowledge check, and the rogue to disarm a trap (taking a total of 5 rounds)
4 Uses of Inspire Courage during a host of combats (lasting about 5 rounds each, for a total of 20 rounds)
Using the Pathfinder Rules, the sample Bard (with Extra Performance) could do the exact same thing.
This does not seem like an unreasonable list of uses to me and it really feels about right for the amount of versatility this class should give. The big payoff comes in the fact that the Pathfinder Bard can start his songs as a move action at this level and maintain them as a free, allowing him to take other actions (not that you can't with some of these abilities in 3.5, but it is less restrictive now). At low levels this ability is even more versatile than before.
I think that you will find that the number of rounds per day is really not nearly as restrictive as it might appear.
Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer
Paizo Publishing
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I have a lot of respect for you DM_Blake, and you make a lot of good points, but I wasn't comparing high-level casters to low-level bards, I was recounting a combat from last night while making mental adjustments in my head for the final rules.
Bless lasts 1 minute per level or 10 rounds per casting at first.
In our campaign we're level 5 and 6.
At level 6 the bard with 18 CHA is being compared to the Sorcerer with 18 CHA.
The bard has 4+4+5*2 or 18 rounds of Inspire Courage +2.
The Sorcerer casts Bless once for 60 rounds of +1 hit/+1 vs fear.
That isn't hyperbole, and that certainly isn't 8 castings of bless at level 1. At level 1 bless will last longer than a bard can maintain its song unless it has a 22 CHA which is unlikely.
Now the Bard's ability is better, but it's certainly limited in the amount of time it can be used.
Good Hope shows up at 7th level and is completely superior to Inspire Courage as it gives +2 attack rolls, damage, skills, saves, and ability checks. And it lasts 1 min./level or 70 rounds when you can get it and affects a creature per level (7 when you get it).
All I'm saying is that it's not as good as it should be considering the alternatives. It should last as long as the magic equivalents, if not longer.
A simpler fix to the bardic song problem is that using a bard song more than an hour requires an additional use of the power at the start of each hour.
You're comparing a primary spellcaster to the Bard, which is not a primary anything. They're a secondary everything.
Sure the sorcerer has better spells, or the cleric. They're meant to! The Bard has their spells too, and can be casting them *while* his Performance is going on. Or he can fight. Or he can help with traps. Or do a number of things.
The bard is good at everything, best at nothing (except now Knowledge checks, it seems). This is A+.
If people are worried about Inspire Competence while PCs are solving a complex puzzle that takes half an hour, a simple houserule is that you use 1 round worth of bardic performance per check. So if a skill check takes an hour, you use 1 round worth of music. Done.
During combat, rounds of use = rounds of benefit, as usual.
I don't have a problem with the limitation. As I stated before I think rounds/day versus uses per day is alright. What I'm upset about is that it doesn't scale quickly enough. I thought CHA + 2 additional uses a level instead of a flat 2 uses would have been a better formaula.Hmmm. That would give Lem 56 uses of bardic music per day. At 8th level. That's quite a lot. And Lem has an awfully low CHA for an 8th level bard. He should be at least 2-4 points higher, IMO, which would give him 8-16 more uses by your formula. 72 rounds of bardic music per day is a whole heckuva lot.
Bard's aren't really primary casters, they are a gishish class, and as such they need to spread their stats around. 18 is a reasonable Cha for an 8th level Bard especially when you note he also has an 18 Dex.
We can't help it that he doesn't realize you can actually do stuff while you sing, but you can and you always could. You can sing and fight all day long. I think this was more a misunderstanding of the class. Additionally even in the situation where you were singing and didn't think you could fight you could still move around to provide flanks and position yourself to drop out of singing in order to provide a critical heal. The class still had tactical decisions to make.I have a player running a bard in Second Darkness right now, and it gets to where I just skip over him in the initiative every round because it's ALL HE DOES.
DM: Okay, all the enemies have attacked, you're doing X, you're doing Y ... oh, and [bard], I assume you're still singing?
Bard: Yeah [without looking up, as he continues to text his girlfriend throughout the combat]
Please, make him put some thought into what he's doing.
(And, yes, I know he could have taken other actions while maintaining his song. The problem is, he doesn't. Now, maybe, if he runs out of Perform rounds, he'll have to do something.)
It's not that he doesn't realize he can do other things. It's that he chooses not to. I don't think he has ever rolled an attack, and he's almost 5th level now. Now, I don't think it's my place to take him aside and tell him he's playing his character wrong; however, I do applaud a mechanic that will make him consider what else he can do if he's not singing.
I guess I just don't care for an ability that works out to basically being "always on."
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So... let me get this straight here...
3.5 8th level Bard (with Extra Music) in one day does the following:
1 Use Fascinating the guard and using Suggestion to sneak past him (taking 2 rounds).
1 Use of Countersong to cancel a sonic spell (taking 1 round).
3 Uses of Inspire Competence to grant a bonus to the group's cleric use the Heal skill to stabilize, the Wizard to make a knowledge check, and the rogue to disarm a trap (taking a total of 5 rounds)
4 Uses of Inspire Courage during a host of combats (lasting about 5 rounds each, for a total of 20 rounds)Using the Pathfinder Rules, the sample Bard (with Extra Performance) could do the exact same thing.
This does not seem like an unreasonable list of uses to me and it really feels about right for the amount of versatility this class should give. The big payoff comes in the fact that the Pathfinder Bard can start his songs as a move action at this level and maintain them as a free, allowing him to take other actions (not that you can't with some of these abilities in 3.5, but it is less restrictive now). At low levels this ability is even more versatile than before.
I think that you will find that the number of rounds per day is really not nearly as restrictive as it might appear.
Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer
Paizo Publishing
I agree Jason, and so far, everyone in my group agrees. They really like they new mechanics of the bard.