I personally enjoy bards as Gishes. Could care less about Inspire courage now. That's the monks job. You! With the robes! You worthless git! With the sensei archetype! Advise me you non-flurrying class ability giving wench!
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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I personally enjoy bards as Gishes. Could care less about Inspire courage now. That's the monks job. You! With the robes! You worthless git! With the sensei archetype! Advise me you non-flurrying class ability giving wench!
This made me chuckle.
Though for the stabacadabarra types, the bard's BAB/Saves/Spells are the gold standard. Compare any of the types (Vanguard, Magus, my own Damasacrran) to the bard and it's clear how similar they are. You're basically trading bardic abilities for combat themed abilities. (And usually some skill points too)
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Pardon my unannounced intromission into this certainly fascinating and rather educational debate, but I was pointed in the general direction of the thread in question by a fellow reference librarian whom I believe uses to partake in similar discussions on a regular basis. Since the aforementioned argument is, without the shadow of a doubt, associated with the interesting and multi-faced profession of the individuals who are known in the colloquial language as "bards", and since I would undoubtfully be included in this category, even tough the same category would be difficult to define precisely, I figured out I could have come here and present my case for the other participants to decide.
Consider the following: as you can clearly extrapolate from my personal character sheet, which can be easily reached by moving your mouse cursor over my own name tag and the clicking over the same name once with the left button, I can hardly be considered a person whose role is to enhance, or "buff", if you will, the preexistent abilities of an assorted team of daring adventurers. My "job", so to speak, is to search for intriguing and most of the time obscure pieces of information about the creatures, objects and locations the adventurer group mentioned above might encounter during their surely eventful journeys, and to provide this information to ears willing to ear. If they find the information produced in such way useful for them, then I would be glad to have been of some help, but that's not usually something I should be concerned about. Therefore, I find the whole issue debated here perplexing and preposterous, but quite interesting nonetheless.
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I can't recall ever really seeing a Bard 'optimized' for buffing, because you pretty much get everything you'll ever need right there in the vanilla Bard Class Features. Maybe you throw in the Lingering Performance Feat if you're worried about running dry, but that's about it as far as I know. There's some Bardic buff-type spells, but there's plenty of illusions and charms and other options too. In fact, I'd hazard a guess you'd see more advice for optimizing a Wizard or Cleric as a party buffer - via spell selection - than you would a Bard.
So I don't see it as a case of people ever optimizing their Bards as 'buffbots' (sounds rude... ;) ) but rather people not seeing any reason to refrain from using buffing if the Class gives it to you on a plate.
Which leads us on to the Archetypes which switch out the Bard's buffing Class Features for other stuff. Here, as others have said up-thread, I don't see it as so much a case of 'don't take that Archetype, you can't buff' as it is a case of 'what's so good about that Archetype that it's worth losing the ability to buff?' - and I think that'd be a question asked of other Classes in a similar situation. Compared with the Cleric, for example, if there was a Cleric Archetype which removed the ability to heal completely - can't use healing or restoration spells, even in wand form, can't channel to heal... nothing - then I'm pretty sure your average gamer (whatever one of those may be...) is going to be eagerly reading on to see what amazing extra goodies this type of Cleric gets to make up for such a big loss compared with his or her vanilla counterpart.
While a Bard is certainly an effective 'jack of all trades...' you can't forget the other half of the saying: '... and master of none'. Consider, for example, that by the mid-levels a Bard needs to be under the effects of his own Inspire Courage just to keep up with the to-hit chances of the full-BAB classes; put another way, he needs that buff in order to stay relevant in a combat role. If he's not got that buff, then he needs something equal or better to boost his personal attack chances... or needs to realise that he's just not going to cut it as a combat-based character over the long haul. Whatever the roleplay fluff behind the character concept, the character needs the game mechanics which allow him to be that concept, or he'll find himself falling short as the level of the game increases. So, you don't take the Magician Archetype if you're picturing a dashing rapier-wielding duellist type... but you do take it if you picture a guy who spams wands like they're his own personal collection of ray guns...
So... do Bards 'have' to buff the party? I think the reasonable answer is 'only if they happen to be able to buff'... and if they can't buff then there's going to be something else they're looking to be good at. Nobody really wants to play the '... master of none' character, after all, even if they do want to play a 'jack of all trades...'.
I can't recall ever really seeing a Bard 'optimized' for buffing, because you pretty much get everything you'll ever need right there in the vanilla Bard Class Features. Maybe you throw in the Lingering Performance Feat if you're worried about running dry, but that's about it as far as I know. There's some Bardic buff-type spells, but there's plenty of illusions and charms and other options too. In fact, I'd hazard a guess you'd see more advice for optimizing a Wizard or Cleric as a party buffer - via spell selection - than you would a Bard.
So I don't see it as a case of people ever optimizing their Bards as 'buffbots' (sounds rude... ;) ) but rather people not seeing any reason to refrain from using buffing if the Class gives it to you on a plate.
Which leads us on to the Archetypes which switch out the Bard's buffing Class Features for other stuff. Here, as others have said up-thread, I don't see it as so much a case of 'don't take that Archetype, you can't buff' as it is a case of 'what's so good about that Archetype that it's worth losing the ability to buff?' - and I think that'd be a question asked of other Classes in a similar situation. Compared with the Cleric, for example, if there was a Cleric Archetype which removed the ability to heal completely - can't use healing or restoration spells, even in wand form, can't channel to heal... nothing - then I'm pretty sure your average gamer (whatever one of those may be...) is going to be eagerly reading on to see what amazing extra goodies this type of Cleric gets to make up for such a big loss compared with his or her vanilla counterpart.
While a Bard is certainly an effective 'jack of all trades...' you can't forget the other half of the saying: '... and master of none'. Consider, for example, that by the mid-levels a Bard needs to be under the effects of his own Inspire Courage just to keep up with the to-hit chances of the full-BAB classes; put another way, he needs that buff in order to stay relevant in...
Indeed, I think the term Healbot/Buffbot, are both very stupid phrases to use, and in some cases people complaining about those terms are just as closed minded as the parties they complain about. People need to differentiate between 2 things.
1. Expecting you to use a class feature.
2. Expecting you to use nothing but 1 class feature.
2 is actually a case of people expecting you to be a healbot/buffbot, while 1 is you contributing to the party. It is not calling the cleric a healbot when half way through the battle, the fighter that's down to 10% wants the cleric to cast channel energy, it is expecting of a healbot if the fighter yells at the cleric for attacking, or condems him for having combat spells prepared instead of nothing but cure spells.
Same goes for bard, If a bard opens with a buff or a debuff then continues on to fight taking advantage of his buff, he's not a BuffBot, he's using what he has to the best of his ability. Helping himself and his party minimize the resources needed to win the battle. You help your team, they help you back, simple concepts.