Bless, is it any good?

[morbon]

After playtesting 2 different scenarios, I'm of the opinion that the spell Bless, on both the Divine and Occult spell lists, is just not good any more. Admittedly, I have been playing a bard, but having it on my spell list just feels so dumb.

Bless is a 2 action cast that only grants a +1 bonus to attack rolls, and requires Concentration to keep it active, up to 1 minute. While ok, a Bard at level 1 gets Inspire Courage as a cantrip, which is a 1 action cast, but only lasts a round. Inspire Courage does all that Bless does, granting the +1 bonus to attack, AND also grants a +1 bonus to damage and saves against fear. It is the same bonus type as Bless gives, so they can't stack, and casting it every round, for 1 action, is essentially the same as taking a Concentration action every round to maintain Bless. Functionally the spell ending at the beginning of the round versus the end of the round isn't enough of a benefit to outweigh the other benefits that Inspire Courage gets.

So, why is Bless even on the Occult list, other than for Sorcerers?

[Xenocrat]

Other classes in the future will likely also use the Occult list, via new classes or Bard/Sorcerer archetypes.

[Fumarole]

My group has both a cleric and bard, and after seeing Inspire Courage in use the cleric realized how inferior Bless was and thus didn't use it. The bard ended up using Inspire Courage almost every round of combat. Bless might be worth it if it didn't require concentration.

[Draco18s]

Fumarole wrote:

My group has both a cleric and bard, and after seeing Inspire Courage in use the cleric realized how inferior Bless was and thus didn't use it. The bard ended up using Inspire Courage almost every round of combat. Bless might be worth it if it didn't require concentration.

Yeah, that'd be nice.

[Scythia]

I believe it could be worth it, if it had heighten bonus progression.

[Ediwir]

Scythia wrote:

I believe it could be worth it, if it had heighten bonus progression.

Careful.

Numerical bonuses already scale, due to the way P2 math works, as they are power multiplier and not simply additions.
A +2 bonus is a lot more impactful than a +1... which is why being able to heighten Inspire Courage is a whole entire feat, costs spell points, and doesn't even guarantee it.

[swordchucks]

Heightening would work if it didn't boost the bonus but rather expanded it. At 1st it's +1 to attacks. At 3rd, maybe +1 to attacks, saves, and AC. At 5th, all checks. Etc. Or at a certain heightening the duration just became "one minute" and no concentration. Because it's conditional, it's not going to stack with other conditional stuff, so broadening it shouldn't cause any real issues.

A bard is still generally better, but that's kind of the bard's Thing. Soothe sucks compared to heal, for instance, because heal is the cleric's Thing.

[Fuzzypaws]

Bless should at least do exactly what Inspire Courage does, since Bless costs a limited resource (spell slots). Heightening Bless can then expand what it applies to, increase the radius of the aura, and at higher level get rid of concentration then increase bonus to +2.

[Red Griffyn]

They should absolutely make the inspire courage cantrip scale (maybe heighten to +2 at spell level 4, and heighten to +3 at spell level 8). Remember you can only take one free action after a trigger, so you can't have a lingering + improved bardic performance by applying both class feats. It makes any feat investment past lingering useless. Why waste a turn trying for a +2 when you can linger for a +1 for 3 rounds and get back 2 actions? Its needlessly punitive. As well since spells almost always give conditional actions the cantrip is outpaced by other spells (i.e, heroism) or other effects. The +1 to hit is really what you want here over +1 damage due to the janky 2e system math.

[JoelF847]

The requiring concentration is a deal breaker to me. Almost every spell that requires it (with the exception of summon monster which makes a bit more sense) means that casters need to stay locked in place to cast and have a concentration spell in place, which seems counter to the new 3-action economy's goal of making people more mobile on the battlefield.

Also, with only 2 types of bonuses now, requiring concentration to limit the number of buffs in place doesn't make sense, since you can't have more than 2 buffs that add together anymore.