Having taken to heart the advice given to me in this thread, I've decided my Power Broker character will stick almost entirely to the Bard class (with maybe a couple of minor dips). I also intend to work on brining his usefulness in combat up a bit -- mostly as a buffer.
But I've also decided that if he's going to have his hands in a lot of different cookie jars, it would prrbably be best for him to have sources to rely on that are more trustworthy than a diplomacy roll, and more obedient than fellow PC's. Hence, the decision to aim for the Leadership feat.
The question becomes what to do with his cohort. The followers are a little more generic, but the Cohort seems to be a well-fleshed out NPC. My DM will allow me to build the cohort myself, even though he will run it, so I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions as to what class would be a good base for such a cohort, given what you see in the previous thread about my character concept.
One thing to note: my leadership score SHOULD be high enough to abnsorb the -1 penalty for differing alignment, and my character's NG, so the Cohort coult be any alignment except the evil ones.
Given the 2-level mandatory difference between leader and cohort, I'm thinking that any in-combat usefulness of the cohort would be as a bodyguard for my bard. But what I'd really like is a cohort that's useful out of combat as well, a lieutenant, or in the case of my bard's character concept, a chief spy or informant. I was thinking of aiming for either arcane trickster or shadowdancer, with rogue as the base for either one.
Any other ideas/thoughts on these two classes?
Ok, here are my thoughts on the leadership feat:
Cohorts are a tricky sort, and difficult to manage on many tabletops. PCs that are given free reign with their cohort (building & running) are essentially rewarded with a second set of actions every round- making it the best feat in the game, hands down. PCs that play up the roleplaying aspects of their cohort tend to take up even more "spotlight" time, and can get on the nerves of other players (I've been at fault here more than once). Cohorts become a drain on party resources, requiring magic items, healing, etc. Some DMs will compensate for this by allotting additional treasure, but most times your cohort simply won't be as well geared as any given PC. Cohorts are also, at minimum, 2 levels behind your character. Achieving the leadership score to get a cohort 2 levels behind you is easy at lower levels, but at higher levels it becomes very difficult for characters with lower charisma and penalties (familiar/animal companion, alignment issues). This means that leadership should almost always be taken right at level 7.
So what does all this mean? (These are strictly my opinions.)
Cohorts are either completely awesome or totally suck, but generally they hang out in the "good to have around" to "great addition" region. The biggest problem with cohorts will probably be your party-mates. Unless your cohort is filling a vital role within the group, other PCs may see it as a drain on the game. For instance, in our group I'm usually taking the leadership feat to net us a healer. Our group is generally pretty good about doling the best items to the most appropriate characters, so it's rarely an issue- but I've been in groups where the group would rather sell an item than give it to my cohort.
When choosing a cohort, I recommend picking one that will function reasonably well at a lagging 2 levels. This means that builds that bloom late (mystic theurge, arcane trickster) are right out as they will be between 4-6 levels behind the average encounter, at which point they might as well not be there at all. Also, gear is definitely going to be an issue no matter how your group and DM approaches the topic. Classes that are less gear dependent are going to be your best option, which should cut out pretty much any class that lives in melee. Full spellcasters are good choices because their magic can shore up lacking gear, while any martially oriented class that functions well in the archery bracket is an excellent choice as well.
For the specific type of character you're thinking about... hmm. A couple of suggestions right off the top of my head would be:
Archery Ranger - Rangers are great skill monkeys, and it wouldn't be hard to build an urban style ranger. You could even dip wizard & go the arcane archer route to alleviate some issues with gear dependency.
Archery Rogue - Archery is really a theme here. Rogue is a good choice, but avoid melee (sad, I know). You could choose to go shadowdancer, but anything more than a 1 level dip just doesn't seem worth it to me. Pure rogue has a lot to offer, and will be competitive with PCs well into the higher levels.
Archery Bard - Seriously. Bards now suffer from the fact that they can only play a single song at once, since performances no longer linger. If you had a bard ally that was more combat focused you'd be an unstoppable combat buff system. You could even play the character off as your apprentice, which would make a lot of sense. Arcane Archer is a great option here, but you'd lose a lot of the bardic benefits for excellent combat ability.
Sorcerer - Sorcerers rock, even at a 2 level delay. You'd be much behind on your spell abilities, but it would be easy to build a buff-focused caster, and buffs never go out of style. A high charisma will help with socially focused skills (since she'll lack skill points). I'd recommend Fey or Arcane for the best flavor synergy.
Anyways, hope some of that helps.
@ Sean
Thanks. I've talked it out with my DM and he's givcen me some guidelines as to what he'd allow -- I can build the cohort, but he'll run him/her. Our gaming group is only 1 DM and 3 players, so an extra NPC to help us wouldn't hurt. He wants me to build a "Man Friday" character, someone whose main responsibilities are protecting the bard and assisting him, helping run our camp for us, take care of mundane stuff. That means your ranger idea appeals to me, since "Man Friday" just SCREAMS "Skill Monkey" to me. The apprentice bard idea's a good one too.
As for the problem of bards not getting two songs, if you or your DM allows importation of old 3.5 items, check out the Masterwork Lute from Song and Silence.
Haha, funny you should mention the lute from song and silence. I'm playing an 8th level bard now, and our average combats per day are about 3 and last 4 to 10 rounds.
The true weakness of the new bard is how music functions- it is inheriently more powerful, and offers more out of combat utility- but you get so much less. In 3.5 a bard had all the music she needed by level 4: one inspire courage for every encounter. Feats like lyric spell and such were as mandatory as divine metamagic for clerics. You simply needed to get rid of useless excess. Now the bard gets so few uses that she really has to be a miser with her rounds.
Don't get me wrong, though. I love the new mechanic. I mean, when I level up I'm excited for two additional rounds of performance. It also means that spells like enthrall and suggestion, and feats like dazzling display are actually useful to a bard, despite mimicing bardic performance effects. My bard has 22 rounds of performance, and i'd much rather burn a spell slot than waste half of them distracting a tavern of patrons.
If he were burning two rounds at a time he'd be done in less than two encounters, even using them conservatively.
Interesting. We're still low level (1-2, depending on the character), and we're averaging 1or 2 combats, 2 to 4 round each -- last combat we had was over before it even got around to our bards turn.
I can see why you'd want to be a bit miserly with your bardic music, I'm just saying, there ARE options even without music still lingering.
One thing about Rangers. They get all the combat feats they need from the class. They can afford to spend some of their character feats on things like skill focus and still remain combat viable.
One thing about Rangers. They get all the combat feats they need from the class. They can afford to spend some of their character feats on things like skill focus and still remain combat viable.
That's an important thing to note in the case of this character, thanks for pointing that out.