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So, there's been some hate. Bards, despite their countless improvements in 3.PF, are still the most controversial core class since the start of 3rd edition. People on the forums seem to fall into two categories: those who see the inherent strength of the song-caster, and those that see it as a largely underpowered class that functions better as a cohort than as a player. These people tend to throw out their points on what's strong and what's weak, and there's very little "convincing" done between the two. I thought I would organize my thoughts into a single thread to really expand on the strengths and weaknesses of the class. I'm not looking to try to convince anyone, but I *am* looking to explore the possible strengths of the wandering minstrel.
Attributes: Charisma is touted as the bard's main stat, but like the Paladin, it is its secondary stat. Bards are not sorcerers, and as such don't gain the immense benefits of a high charisma. With only 2/3 the level of spells, many of the bonus spells derived from a high ability score are never seen. Adding to this, all of the Bard's best performances don't allow for saves (inspire courage/competence/greatness/heroics, dirge of doom, soothing performance), which makes a high score useless.
All of that means that a charisma score of 16 is the ideal score for a bard. 16, with the inevitable +6 headband, grants the bard a score of 22, which is the point at which she gains at least 1 bonus spell of every level. Make Dexterity your highest score, as it provides the most benefits to a bard (much like a rogue).
Combat: Bards have a medium BAB, which means that they're built for combat. Whether you choose to pursue melee or ranged combat, the bard is decently suited to either. Both require a moderate feat investment, but most classes do. Melee bards should invest in weapon finesse at first level, while Ranged bards should acquire point blank shot and precise shot as quickly as possible. All bards should take Arcane Strike as you near 10th level, since it allows you to add +3 to your weapon damage rolls and shore up your poor strength score. This makes archer bards a viable choice. With Inspire Courage & Arcane Strike, their attacks deal up to +9 by level 20, which makes them ideal candidates for "flurry attack" builds. Spells like heroism, haste, and good hope all add to this.
Spellcasting: Many people brush off the bard's modest spellcasting as "backup" compared to the sorcerer or wizard. Because their spell list is only 6 levels long, their most powerful spells have a DC trailing by up to 3 points compared to a full caster. On top of this, Bards shouldn't focus on Charisma, which means that their save DCs are even lower than usual. Bards have several advantages, though. First, their spell lists contain light healing magic, which no other arcane list has. Secondly, when a bard reaches level 8 they have a powerful tool at their disposal: Dirge of Doom. Activating a bardic performance is a move action at level 7, which means that you can first activate this ability and then cast your standard action spell. Enemies don't get a save, which is incredibly powerful, and are given the shaken status. Shaken imposes a -2 penalty to all saving throws, which effectively boosts your DC by 2.
Remember how I said that all bards belong in combat? Well, at level 13 bards qualify for Critical Focus, and at level 15 they qualify for Sickening Critical. The finesse melee bard is probably using a rapier, and the dual wielding bard is probably using a pair of daggers, which both have excellent critical ranges. Whenever you successfully score a critical hit, the enemy is sickened (No save) for a minute. One minute is essentially the length of combat. Further, the sickened condition imposes a -2 penalty to all saving throws, which stacks with shaken. This means that at 15, whenever your bard scores a critical hit (which should be fairly often) she can cast spells at the target at a +4 DC for the rest of combat. This keeps the bard a competitive spellcaster all the way to 20.
Fear Effects: At 8th level bards gain access to Dirge of Doom, a no-save fear effect that imposes Shaken. The effect clearly states that it cannot cause a creature to become frightened or panicked, even if already shaken from another source. Depending on how you, or your DM, interprets this line, it may mean that while the Dirge cannot be the instigator that causes a creature to go from shaken to frightened, it can be the start. For instance, a bard could begin the performance and then perform a dazzling display (intimidate vs. all foes within 30', the same range as Dirge). If the bard began the performance first, her enemies would be shaken. If she then intimidated them successfully, they would become frightened. The dirge of doom did not cause them to become frightened, and thus is legal (by interpretation). I'd actually love some feedback on this one.
Buffing and Debuffing: This is actually the mechanical concept at the core of the bard. Many people see this as a boring character to play, never seeming to have the spotlight. This is a completely incorrect standpoint on the bard. The bard begins as a primary support character, yes, but as she progresses she becomes far more independent in her abilities. Her main form of buffing/debuffing, bardic music, becomes easier to activate and thus removed the feeling of "Wasting a round" as you level. Also, all of the buffs and debuffs she provides for the party ALSO count for her, allowing her to also cast spells against enemies with lower saves (shakened) or take advantage of the high combat boosts from inspire courage and haste. Everything she does for her party she also does for herself, making her superior to any other class in terms of being an enabler.
Skill Monkey: Bards have 6 skill points at every level, and a list of class skills second only to the rogue. At 10th level she can make any skill check, even if it requires her to be trained. At 16th, every skill becomes a class skill, and at 19th she can take a 10 on ANY skill, even if not normally allowed. Bardic Knowledge has also been improved, adding phantom points to every knowledge skill from level 1 on. This means that a bard will always know something about something, and needs only invest 1 point in each knowledge to gain a great bonus to the check (4+1/2 bard level+INT). At 5th level, bards gain the ability to take 10 on any knowledge check. Further, her versatile performance ability allows her to abandon certain skills with the ability to substitute perform checks in place of them. This feature starts off strong, with powerful social skills like bluff, diplomacy, and intimidate, but falters near the high levels when you already have all the skill substitutions available and this becomes a wasted class feature.
So, that's pretty much what I see as the bard class. I'd love to hear what everyone else thinks. While I don't believe you should keep your game core, I do believe that to properly analyze the class you SHOULD keep this discussion core.
Some very nice points - I think I'll be pointing the other players in my Council of Thieves game here (we have 3 bards out of 4 players).
One point on fear effects - Intimidate also cannot be used to stack into Frightened. As far as I know, this is a "soon-to-come" errata.
I think you undervalue Charisma a little bit, but you're definitely correct that you don't *need* to have a particularly high score.
Some very nice points - I think I'll be pointing the other players in my Council of Thieves game here (we have 3 bards out of 4 players).
One point on fear effects - Intimidate also cannot be used to stack into Frightened. As far as I know, this is a "soon-to-come" errata.
I think you undervalue Charisma a little bit, but you're definitely correct that you don't *need* to have a particularly high score.
Didn't know about the Intimidate thing, but it's interesting to hear.
And yes, you're probably 100% right about my undervaluing of Charisma. I'm big into roleplaying, but I lived and died on the CharOP boards of 3.5 (somewhat of the 4e). Stats, from a mechanical standpoint, have their benefits, and dexterity (AC, attack, initiative, combat skills) far outweighs charisma (spell DCs, social skills) to me.
Didn't know about the Intimidate thing, but it's interesting to hear.
And yes, you're probably 100% right about my undervaluing of Charisma. I'm big into roleplaying, but I lived and died on the CharOP boards of 3.5 (somewhat of the 4e). Stats, from a mechanical standpoint, have their benefits, and dexterity (AC, attack, initiative, combat skills) far outweighs charisma (spell DCs, social skills) to me.
Oh NOO!! A charcter op guy :(
LOL I'm joking of course.
When I read your post I was like "$#!T I should have went with that bard in my current campaign rather than my rogue/ranger."
Good work man.
I would still want a high Charisma. There are some great spells for bards
--Charm Person: Makes one person your friend.
--Hideous Laughter: Subject loses actions for 1 round/ level.
--Hold Person: Paralyzes one humanoid for 1 round/level.
--Blindness/Deafness: Makes subject blind or deaf.
I would still want a high Charisma. There are some great spells for bards
--Charm Person: Makes one person your friend.
--Hideous Laughter: Subject loses actions for 1 round/ level.
--Hold Person: Paralyzes one humanoid for 1 round/level.
--Blindness/Deafness: Makes subject blind or deaf.
I totally agree (except Hideous Laughter. -4 DC for different creature types? No thanks). Caster bards do well to dip Fey Sorcerer for the +2 DC for compulsion effects, including bardic music.
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I agree that the new pathfinder bard is much better suited to being a self-buffing front line combat character than the previous 3.5 bard. The addition of a real shield doesn't stop them from casting most of the usual mid-combat buffs (Blur, Displacement, etc.) as they don't have a somatic component.
However, don't discount the caster bard. The core spell list is rather lackluster in debuffs, but it's not completely without merit. They only have one real reflex save crowd control ability (Grease), but it's rather potent and flexible. And their one fort save debuff (Blindness/Deafness) is also quite good. Their biggest weakness here is that most of the rest of their core spells all give will saves, so they don't have the flexibility of a wizard or sorcerer that specializes in debuffing. With a few non-core spells this weakness all but vanishes. But for any of this to be effective they need a decent Charisma to bolster their DCs.
In my opinion the biggest weakness of the pathfinder bard isn't their melee combat ability (which is slightly better than before and was fine before) or their casting (which was also fine before.) It's that they are no longer the best buffers in the game. In 3.5 the bard was capable of keeping up Inspire Courage almost constantly. This was their staple ability and why you had a bard around. Other casters could bring the same short term buffs (stat bonuses, heroism, bless, etc.), and some of those buffs were better than the songs that bards could perform. But no one had the stamina of the bard in the buffing department.
Don't get me wrong, the non-combat skill utility that pathfinder brought to bards is outstanding. The odd mechanics of Versatile Performance notwithstanding, these changes are quite welcome. But the alteration of bardic performance to rounds per day seems to have come with some baggage, and in my opinion, has reduced the usefulness of some of the songs (I'm looking at you Inspire Greatness) to less than nothing.
Caster bards do well to dip Fey Sorcerer for the +2 DC for compulsion effects, including bardic music.
Err... unless the paradigm has been deliberately changed, that should only apply to Sorcerer spells, and should receive an erratum stating such. In any case, it does explicitly apply only to spells, therefore not bardic music.
P.S. bards rock. :D
Hmm...makes me wish this post had come out before I rolled my current bard. I might have made some different choices.
Regardless, I am happy with the way my bard has been *ahem* performing.
I just dont' get it. I have only played one bard before in 3.5(I'm sure I played one in second ed, I just can't think that far back right now) and I had an AMAZING time. Was I killing things in one blow? No, but I made sure that my bodyguards(the rest of the party, who did not share my sentiment although I DID pay them a lot of money once) were near me in case things got ugly. In combat, I did my fair share, whether it was trading blades or enspelling foes. More people should try actually playing a bard instead of just hating on it- particularly an evil one.
I just dont' get it. I have only played one bard before in 3.5(I'm sure I played one in second ed, I just can't think that far back right now) and I had an AMAZING time. Was I killing things in one blow? No, but I made sure that my bodyguards(the rest of the party, who did not share my sentiment although I DID pay them a lot of money once) were near me in case things got ugly. In combat, I did my fair share, whether it was trading blades or enspelling foes. More people should try actually playing a bard instead of just hating on it- particularly an evil one.
I totally agree. My very first character was a 3.0 bard, full 20 levels, which as we all remember, was roughly on par with an NPC class. Still, he was one of my favorite characters, even if he blew harder than hoover.
