Bard thoughts from first part of campaign

[Tunewalker]

First level spells feel useful and powerful, only having 2 though makes me feel completely useless pretty quickly if I do not hold onto them. I am sure most casters feel like this. If the party is a lot of martial classes or martial classes and a cleric I am counting on not being useful for 80% of fights.

Inspire courage, The + 1 starts out feeling really cool, but I quickly realized it doesn't do a lot. +1 to attack only makes the attack 5% more likely to hit with how high Monster AC is it is unlikely to affect crit chance at all as Nat 20's seem like the must hit for a crit. The + 1 damage sounds useful, until you realize that if that 1 damage is not the difference between it being alive and it being dead than it is just adding to overkill from a later hit.

Skills: this is actually what feels the worse about this class. You start with 6 skills + your intellect bonus trained, but because you do not get anymore skills ranked up per level than any other class it does not feel like it matters if it is 6 skills, 5 skills or 3 skills, you will still only be able to get 3 to legend or 2 to legend and 1 to master and 1 to elite, and you will always feel the need to get performance up first which causes you to fall behind everyone else who will be taking what ever skill they feel is most useful for the campaign. It makes the bard, which I have always felt to be the "skill monkey" next to the rogue, feel like the least flexible character in terms of skills as you are pigeon holed into maxing out one of your skills for in combat performances.

Overall: spells are nice in the few fights you get to use them, if you do not have a cleric you will not get to use anything except healing spells because you do not have enough slots and your spells are not strong enough to justify using them over keeping the fighter or barbarian topped off. Skills feel awful do to being pigeon holed into a skill and thus having less flexibility than other classes while still having just as few skills as them. As cool as Inspire courage sounds on paper it has very little real affect. Ultimately there seems to be very little reason to bring a bard or even an occult spell caster for that matter over any other class. They just do not bring anything to the table except a good laugh at how ridiculous you can play them.

[Penn]

If you take Versatile Performance then you can use that maxed Prformance skill to do a lot of what Diplomacy, Intimidation and Deception do. That's sort of like having additional higher-level skills, except you can't take the feats.
Okay, so it's not much like it at all.

[Mudfoot]

I'm wondering if this is really a matter of "1st level character feels weak" when that's true of a lot of PF2. I was under the impression that bard was one of the stronger classes.

Interesting point about the skills though, in that you start slightly ahead of other classes but don't progress faster, unlike the rogue who gets more skill feats. Which suggests that the secondary skill monkey classes (bard and ranger) should get at least the option for more skill feats.

[Edge93]

There are some good points here, though I would argue that the Telekinetic Projectile Cantrip is enough to keep you relevant in combat if that's a concern, it's a solid cantrip. And the +1 from Inspire sounds weak on paper but that 5% usually makes a big difference, in my experience it often ups crit range (especially if you combine it with, say, flanking), and if your to-hit is low enough you need a 20 to crit then that extra +5% is even more proportionally useful (i.e., going from 50% to 55% would be more valuable than 60% to 65% for example). I know that in part 2 there were probably a half-dozen attacks saved from missing due to Inspire, and a crit or two it brought on. I can't speak as well to how good the damage boost is but it certainly adds up.

Not saying these aren't valid points but I think IC is far better than it might seem and their cantrips have some pretty good options you can use all day.

[PCScipio]

Tunewalker wrote:

If the party is a lot of martial classes or martial classes and a cleric I am counting on not being useful for 80% of fights.

In that case, Inspire Courage alone would make you useful, and you still have 2 other actions each round. Also, don't underestimate the usefulness of a 3-action Magic Missile when you need it.

[Tunewalker]

PCScipio wrote:

Tunewalker wrote:

If the party is a lot of martial classes or martial classes and a cleric I am counting on not being useful for 80% of fights.

In that case, Inspire Courage alone would make you useful, and you still have 2 other actions each round. Also, don't underestimate the usefulness of a 3-action Magic Missile when you need it.

To make my claims on Inspire courage a little bit more accurate. I am finding that using it as an action over attacking has a chance of doing much less and since Martial classes can attack better it might be better to simply play a martial class.

Now some random math.... if you are the 4th party member of say a barbarian a Paladin and a rogue you have 3 people that are going to go in swords a-swinging so this is your best possible group set up this should be where a bard shines, you have a second person that can do some healing and you have 3 people that will attack with weapons.

If you use inspire courage and each of them has a 55% chance to hit a target you increase both their chance to hit and their chance to crit by 5%, so with your one action you have 10% chance per attack of adding another die of damage to the enemy. With 3 people attacking your action is equivalent to adding a 27% chance of adding an extra die of damage to the round if each player makes 2 attacks this actually increased quite a bit to a whopping 49% chance of adding an extra die to the round

Now compare this to attacking yourself if you have a 55% chance of hitting the first attack than simply making an attack has better odds of adding a die of damage, if you make a second attack at minus 5 you have a 35% so using it when you have an extra action after moving and attacking (something you wont have if you decided to cast a spell that takes 2 actions like T. projectile) and while these numbers are the same for a fighter when the fighter hits he is likely doing 1d8 + 4 damage or 5-12 while you with a short bow are doing 1d6 or 1-6 or with a rapier if you didnt stack strength also a d6 for about 1-6. If you did stack strength than you either took a hit to dexterity which is bad for your survivability and your spell attacks or you took a hit to something like wisdom which is bad for some skills (perception sense is the biggest) or constitution which could leave you pretty low on health for some one that wants to get up close and personal or your primary stat charisma which if you did than why play bard???

This said the extra 1 damage over the course of 3 attacks at 55% will mean you contribute 1 damage 83% of the time. 2 damage (spread out over 2 attacks) about 60% and 3 damage (spread out over 3 attacks about 17% of the time) The chance that the single damage dealt over each of these attack has to make a difference in the actual fight though is even smaller as it depends on how much damage a player can do vs how much health a creature has. Now if you happen to be playing a bard then yes Inspire courage is great, but do not prioritize it over actually attacking yourself the odd of it actually helping by comparison to your attack helping is much smaller.

The biggest issue is this is best case scenario we are working with here and it still doesn't quite shine. In this scenario we would still want a second healer but it would always be the cleric. They are just to good and if I replaced the Paladin with a cleric to begin with then and only then would a bard start to look good, but only about as good as every other caster which in early levels they are not good at all.

I think this may just be a "caster problem" in general right now. They needed to be toned down at higher levels but brought up at lower levels. The fact is the linear fighter and the quadratic casters problem is more than just a caster power problem at high levels it is a caster problem at all levels. They are too weak at low and too strong at high, nerfing them at all levels doesnt solve this problem it just makes them unappealing at all levels of play.

[Tunewalker]

Secondary note: Telekinetic Projectile as a cantrip relies heavily on a GM that actually allows you to use it and is reasonable with the type of damage you find just lying around or for you to waste bag space on carrying around random small knick knack items and having the gm not require you to carry anything to large to count as anything other then pierce damage a lot of if's if you ask me.

[ErichAD]

Unless they've changed it, there isn't a size/weight/bulk limit on telekinetic projectile. There should be some object not bolted down in the room, a wagon, a corpse, something.

[Tunewalker]

ErichAD wrote:

Unless they've changed it, there isn't a size/weight/bulk limit on telekinetic projectile. There should be some object not bolted down in the room, a wagon, a corpse, something.

You would think but that is still technically GM dependent if he wants to say the cave in the middle of the woods is kept spotlessly clean by its inhabitants and if you want a rock to do anything besides pierce damage you need to bring a substantially sized rock by the spells description he has every right to say that making the cantrip gm dependent.