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I am hoping there are a few individuals that love character creation and would like to help me tweak this concept for a beta-version bard for the Rise of the Runelords AP.
I will be as concise as possible.
General Idea: I want to play a character that has finished a career in the Coins District Token Guards in Absolom. Everything that has kept him in Absolom all these years; children, wife, and career are all gone. Children moved away to Varisia, the mother’s homeland, wife passed away, and 26 years in the coins guard was enough for anyone. So, my character sails to Magnimar from Absolom on his final life quest: To die a hero through force of arms, something he never was able to accomplish in Absolom during his tour of duty. He had wanted to be a part of the Azlanti Keep’s city guard, but his ties to the thieves guild kept such a promotion from happening. This character ended up being in charge of training new recruits for the coins guard, thus, this character has the “military drill sergeant” theme
Base character Game mechanics: Attribute modification for being Middle Aged (46 year old human), and the Rich parents trait modified to represent his savings for a career already completed (+900gp starting). I have not decided on my second character trait.
Class Progression: Bard to Level 7, (1) level of War Weaver, then Lyric Theurge for (7) levels.
Bard: Perform skills are based off Full Metal Jacket’s drill sergeant, so Oratory and Storytelling will be my only perform skills (of course, I will have Weapon Drill as a perform skill for obvious reasons). This character will not be able to sing or play an instrument. Inspire Courage is the main power focus of this bard, with alternate class features from the Complete Champion such as Hymn of Fortification and Healing Hymn rounding out the first three levels perfectly. Picture this guy in the face of the cleric, “pumping up” his adrenaline with a few chosen words before he heals, and then the cleric pushing out some fantastic healing. +1pt per rank in perform? Oh yea! And the second part of the Healing hymn goes along perfectly with the “before we go to bed” speech, prepping the group for a hard day of battle in the morning, allowing a double nights rest of healing and recovery in an 8 hour period. Very nice.
Lyric Theurge: From the complete Mage. This prestige class allows for my bardic music uses to keep increasing every level, and at the same time, gives a few extra spells and spell slots so I can round out my military spell selection with spells from the Sorcerer/wizard spell list. Spells that enhance my allies abilities and others that shape the battlefield will be reserved for these select spell slots. Also, my sonic spells increase in potency with this PrC.
War Weaver: With my military background, I can see this very basic power manifesting in my bard. Creating a web of magic that allows for pre-battle buff spells to be cast once and they affect every ally in the group. This simulates my drill sergeant’s awesome motivation skills by a simple speech. If you picture Full Metal Jacket when the drill sergeant finds the jelly donut of Pyle, the screw up recruit, you will see a follow up speech by him to the group of marines that were Pyles classmates. Well, they (the other marines) had to do pushups while pyle ate the donut. If that had been my bard in there, those marine recruits would have received cats grace so they could sneak up on pyle that night and kick the crap out of him. That’s what I am thinking here…
Spell Selection and Feats: Here is where the character is so different than other bards that I have seen and read about. For my feats, I will be taking:
1st Character: Extra bardic song
1st Human: Extra bardic song
3rd Character: Melodic Casting (required for Lyric Theurge – Comp Mage)
5th Character: Extra bardic song
7th Character: Lyric Spell (Comp Adventurer)
9th Character: Extra bardic song
I want to stop there as these feats define this character. As you can see, with this array of feats, I am building my song count so by 9th level, I will have a total of 25 uses per day of my bardic song. The Lyric spell feat allows me to use my bardic song for casting spells. If I wanted to cast a 2nd level spell, that would cost me (1) bardic song use per level of the spell +1. In this case, that 2nd level spell would cost me 3 bardic music uses.
Spell Choices: I am only going to 3rd level here for discussion.
0: level – Lullaby, Stick
1st: level – Inspirational Boost, Sleep, Improvisation, Phantom Threat, Cure Lt.
2nd: level – Iron Silence, Sonic Weapon, Tactical Precision, Spymasters Coin, Cure Mod
3rd: level – Allegro, Hymn of Praise, Harmonic Chorus, Nightmare Terrain, Listening Coin, Cure Serious.
Spell Themes:
Infiltration / Gather Information: Based off Coins experience in Absolom
Lullaby: makes sneaking around others much easier, and, if a sleep spell is cast on someone affected by lullaby, they get a -5 on their will save.
Stick: glue small objects to surfaces. With the spymaster’s coin and listening coin, I will be able to eavesdrop on unsuspecting people and gather information I might not otherwise be able to get.
Iron Silence: Allows for me to make my armored friends have no armor check penalty on most medium armors and all light armors. It also lessens the penalties on heavy armors.
Improvisation: A spell that grants a pool of points to use on any d20 roll at any time (similar to action points).
Battefield Spells: Based off experience in Absolom and books read on tactics and rules of war.
Inspirational Boost: Makes my Inspire Courage ability have an extra +1 to all bonuses. (swift action spell as well)
Tactical Precision: +2 to hit and +1d6 damage against flanked foes. Which, I will also use the 1st level spell Phantom Threat to produce flanking as needed.
Allegro: +30ft. movement for 1min/level. There is so much this can help with, but the theme behind it comes from the long 5mi. runs most drill sergeants take their trainees through. My characters inspiration will bring my men to new feats of speed and endurance.
Nightmare Terrain: To shape the battlefield in my enemies mind. Nothing is more intimidating than a cussing nasty tempered drill sergeant scaring the crap out of people, especially when he knows they are scared, and makes things on the field of battle (in their own minds) rise up against them.
Hymn of Praise / Harmonic Chorus: These spells up the caster level of good Divine casters and arcane spell casters by +2. Very nice.
Sonic Weapon: This is the one "out of place" spell for this character. I would love if someone could help me figure out a way to weave this on in to my spells known list from the information I gave above. I have not decided if I am going to want to be a secondary melee combatant, or be ranged. If melee, then this is easilly decided upon. But mainly, this will be one of my last bard 2nd level spells known that comes at 9th or 10th level. This spell, once I get 5th level Lyric theurge, does 3d6 extra sonic damage. A very nice addition to any weapon I or my allies use.
I would love feedback on this along with any suggestions that fit this character’s theme.
Thanks in advance everyone.
CC