Does anyone use these bard abilities?

[RDM]

dirge of doom, inspire heroics, inspire greatness ?

Despite being higher level abilities they seem to be less useful than the lower level inspire courage.

If you do use them ... In what situations would you substitute using inspire courage for one of these others and why?

[Chris Kenney]

Typically, these things a situational at best.

Dirge of Doom - this works well for a defensive/retreat situation, where the primary concern isn't doing damage but simply getting away. It's NOT an exit strategy by itself, it just helps along whatever the strategy is by automatically lowering chances to hit.

Inspire Greatness - Switch to this to save a party member's life at range, as a move/swift action. At least long enough for someone to get in there and do the job properly. Restart it if the temp HP get burned through before someone can do that. Switch back to Inspire Courage at earliest opportunity.

Inspire Heroics - Use this to get your friends into melee with the lich. Switch to Inspire Courage to take him down once you're there.

But really, it's not common to keep these up for very long. They're kind of a holdover from 3.0 when Bardic Performance was a standard action every round.

[Rory]

Dirge of Doom - this is an amazing ability, you can move action Dirge of Doom and then standard action cast a spell that forces a save, it's a built in +2 save DC mechanic that works for your other casters as well, use this ability and then cast the Fear spell

Inspire Greatness - this is a decent opening move into an encounter where you know you will take damage (the party jumping thru a wall of fire, the barbarian setting off a trap, etc.), you can cycle this ability to prevent quite a bit of damage

Inspire Heroics - this is a pure defensive play, sometimes you will need a huge boost in defenses more than you need offense and this boosts saves and AC by quite a bit

Inspire Greatness and Inspire Heroics being limited to very few targets reduces their usefulness to situational encounters only. They will never hold a candle to the Inspire Courage workhorse.

[MurphysParadox]

The bard in my game was gleeful when he ran into an enemy spell caster and won the initiative round. He did Dirge of Doom as a move action and then cast Blindness/Deafness and the caster was quite blind. It isn't a huge deal, but -2 to saves can mean the difference (as it did in this case, actually).

[Troubleshooter]

I was thrilled when I got to use Countersong and Distraction in the same campaign.

[Charlie Bell]

Countersong is hilarious when it works. It totally shuts down some encounters.

[ThatEvilGuy]

Spoiler:

In Curse of the Crimson Throne my bard completely trivialized the encounter with the demilich via countersong.

[Charlie Bell]

Mine too!

[Sesharan]

I especially love countersong while using the Harp of Contagion, a magic item that lets you repurpose your countersong to work on poison and disease.

[DrDeth]

Ok, we all know Inspire Courage is *THE* Go-to bardic ability. But sometimes, it can’t be used effectively. It’s a Morale bonus, which does not stack with other moral bonuses- which are common. So, if there is another morale bonus up (you might have two bards, we do! Spells, magic items, etc), you might want to do something else .

Dirge of doom hits the bad guys, so you don’t have to worry about a Morale bonus up on your allies.

Inspire Greatness stacks with Inspire Courage and other, similar effects.

Countersong works great vs Harpies.

[Iammars]

DrDeth wrote:

Ok, we all know Inspire Courage is *THE* Go-to bardic ability. But sometimes, it can’t be used effectively. It’s a Morale bonus...

Nope. It's a competence bonus.

[Charlie Bell]

Iammars wrote:

DrDeth wrote:

Ok, we all know Inspire Courage is *THE* Go-to bardic ability. But sometimes, it can’t be used effectively. It’s a Morale bonus...

Nope. It's a competence bonus.

Which means it stacks with good hope, importantly.

Also means it doesn't stack with, for instance, bracers of archery. Lot of folks miss that.

[tonyz]

As a fighter, I took Leadership to have a cohort who was a bard. He did Dirge of Doom to automatically shake opponents, and then I went to town with Shatter Defenses and Deadly Stroke

[Zhayne]

The only bard I'd ever play is the Archaeologist kit, with no performance stuff, so ... no. :)

[Pan]

I wish I could still stack inspire courage and greatness :(

[anon fem]

RDM wrote:

dirge of doom, inspire heroics, inspire greatness ?

Despite being higher level abilities they seem to be less useful than the lower level inspire courage.

If you do use them ... In what situations would you substitute using inspire courage for one of these others and why?

I cant speak for the others

but dirge of doom is great for the casters, lowering saves by 2 with no save is a pretty potent ability.